ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the specific definition of protected areaboundaries is analysed by drawing attention to the discourses informing boundary construction and maintenance. The social construction of spatiality underpinning the managers' conceptions was rooted in their training as natural scientists as well as their professional environment in the natural sciences, premised by notions of pre-existing biophysical boundaries revealed by objective enquiry. Because boundaries participate in spatial socialization, structuring all socio-political and socio-economic projects by modifying territoriality, their (re)definition inevitably heralds (re)territorialisation. In contrast to the rich literature on the actual management of protected areas in collaboration with or directly by local people, the use of 'societal' or 'political' arguments in designing them is surprisingly little discussed. Yet in order to maintain the privileged position and increased legitimacy guaranteed by this access to rationalised knowledge, the political dimension of zonation is negated.
