In Rough Waters, Christine Walley analyzes the politics of the creation of Tanzania’s first marine park, on Mafia island, an initiative meant to test ideas about linking conservation to sustainable development and the active participation of park residents. Walley first describes the field site and identifies the major actors: the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), representatives of the Tanzanian government, and island residents. Fieldwork on the island gave Walley day-to-day contact with residents and the local WWF representative and intermittent interaction with short-term experts and tourists. She had less contact with Tanzanian government officials, who lived at some distance; interaction with them was also limited by national, age, and gender differences.

In part 1, Walley thickly describes the conflicts over the future direction of the marine park, particularly those between the government-appointed acting warden and the WWF technical advisor. The former was ultimately removed after allegations of embezzlement; the latter resigned amid complaints that he was arrogant and noncollaborative. Walley contextualizes this social drama in terms of the historical development of the Swahili coast and the ideology of the Tanzanian state. In particular, Tanzanian elites saw themselves as progressive and identified with the nation, in contrast to Mafia residents, who believed that elites often acted in their own self-interest and at the expense of the poor.

In part 2, Walley focuses on the interests and values of local residents, showing how these were affected by a long history of involvement in sea-based regional trade networks. Colonization by Omani Arabs brought slavery, creating a stratified and ethnically mixed population. Later colonization by Germans and British, and then independence, moved centers of influence to the Tanzanian interior, marginalizing especially the smaller islands. Since abolition, island residents have become more equal yet poorer; their sense of community is based on notions of local ownership buttressed by close social networks. Residents, who earned income from fishing, tree products, and wage labor, believed that the park would help them face challenges to fishing, especially illegal dynamiting, and would help youth get jobs. To improve their lives, they used patron–client relationships to encourage more powerful mediators to influence national elites.

In part 3, Walley illustrates the perspectives of conservation experts, national bureaucrats, and tourism personnel. In Tanzania, approaches to conservation evolved from support for elite hunting to rationalization of resource use to participation and sustainable development. Nevertheless, some national staff used bureaucratic procedures to blunt planned participation and exclude the concerns of island residents. When Walley returned to the island in 2000, she discovered that the participatory and local development aspects of the park had been cut back, and residents had come to see officials and tourists as the major beneficiaries.

Arriving for fieldwork as the park was being created in 1995, Walley had exceptional access to the social drama surrounding it. She was able to observe, in formal and informal contexts, the uses of power that accompanied conservation initiatives. Living on the island alongside its residents and a few other expatriates, she had privileged access to their perspectives; she also was given access to many WWF documents. In contrast, as she recognizes, her relationships with Tanzanian officials were more tenuous, the major weakness in this otherwise outstanding ethnography. The reader can see Mafia residents as real people who use multiple strategies to address challenges to their livelihoods. The portrait of the WWF technical representative is also sympathetic, even though he exhibited flaws as well as strengths. At the same time, Tanzanian officials are primarily portrayed as bureaucratic and corrupt; readers get only a minor understanding of the constraints they faced.

Such portrayals are common in ethnographies of development projects. Anthropologists’ disciplinary training leads us to render visible those with less power, such as the residents of Mafia; our own backgrounds often facilitate access to other expatriates, but we face challenges to understanding national elites. Data collection at different levels is not equivalent, nor is analysis. In particular, we need to distinguish between actual corruption versus the tendency of elites to consider state interests as homologous to those of individuals and communities. In this case, the two tendencies overlapped, but state interests may dominate even without corruption.

Overall, this book has many strengths. Walley proposes more nuanced views of globalization and hybridity and effectively integrates a variety of methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives. I would strongly recommend this work to all interested in the dynamics of international development projects.