Conversations with Nature Spirits: The Political Ecology of Power and Progress in Rural Zimbabwe

Through a conversation between two people who ‘see through different eyes’, this chapter explores the different motivations capable of uniting or dividing people from each other and from the landscape upon which they depend. One perspective is embedded within the remote rural community of Chikukwa, Zimbabwe, seeking to stem the dramatic erosion of bio-cultural diversity by reconnecting people and plants through traditional ritual and farming practices. The other is a political ecologist interested in the structural violence and power inequalities that have scarred this social-ecological landscape and left its people evermore exposed to compounding shocks of increasing severity. Together they discuss the more-than-human interactions grounded in a deep relationship with place that have intensified since the cyclone hit the community in 2019.