The Nature of Politics: State Building and the . LaRocco**

The Nature of PoliticsState Building and the Conservation Estate in Postcolonial Botswana\nAuthor(s): Annette A. LaRocco\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Ohio University Press, United States\nImprint: Ohio University Press\nISBN-13: 9780896803343, 978-0896803343\nSynopsis\nThis case study of Botswana focuses on the state-building qualities of biodiversity conservation in southern Africa. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Annette A. LaRocco argues that discourses and practices related to biodiversity conservation are essential to state building in the postcolonial era. These discourses and practices invoke the ways the state exerts authority over people, places, and resources; enacts and remakes territorial control; crafts notions of ideal citizenship and identity; and structures economic relationships at the local, national, and global levels.\n The books key innovation is its conceptualization of the conservation estate, a term most often used as an apolitical descriptor denoting land s.