The Geopolitics of Problematic Information: Epistemic Territorialization and Wildlife Conservation Volunteering in Namibia

This article describes how power—socioeconomic, epistemic, and political—is harnessed and maintained through information exchanged under the aegis of private property. What was “real” in conservation was created by two Namibia-based international nongovernmental organization (NGOs) online and through wildlife conservation volunteer experiences at their private facilities in Namibia. Through private property, the NGOs control the means of knowledge production, constructing wildlife conservation according to their own agenda and goals. Embedded in every aspect of the volunteer experience was the practice, the theory, and the approach of the NGOs to control the conservation narrative, agenda, authority, and space. This process is conceptualized in this article as epistemic territorialization. The concept of epistemic territorialization describes how knowledge claims organize and consolidate geographic, epistemic, and virtual communities into territories within a controlled space and bounded system. This process underscores the volunteer experience and extends through broader conservation communication over media platforms, expanding into epistemic territory. By controlling geographic, spatial, and epistemic territories, the NGOs create the conditions for “what can be known” in conservation based on problematic information. The volunteer programs are illustrative of how problematic information is circulated in ways that disrupt politics and power in conservation and mask the economic and political interests of the NGOs studied. The production of problematic information results in information asymmetries, drawing into question the local, national, and global implications of conservation knowledge claims by these NGOs.