Download or read book Misreading the African Landscape written by James Fairhead and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-10-17 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intriguing 1996 study showing how Africans enrich their land, while scientists believe they damage it.
Download or read book Misreading the African Landscape written by James Fairhead and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1996-10-17 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intriguing 1996 study showing how Africans enrich their land, while scientists believe they damage it.
Download or read book Misreading the African Landscape written by and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Lie of the Land written by Melissa Leach and published by James Currey Publishers. This book was released on 1996 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions the reasoning behind Western images of the environmental destruction taking place in Africa. This book addresses the issue of how environmental orthodoxies become established, and what the alternative and appropriate approaches for policy-making are. It shows that many of the established orthodoxies are ill-conceived or represent the interests of certain powerful groups. The editors draw together material from 11 key case studies across the continent which use first hand research in different ecological zones. Melissa Leach & RobinMearns are Fellows at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex Published in association with the International African Institute
Download or read book The Ends of the Earth written by Donald Worster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unifying discussion of our increasingly integrated global economy, higher population levels and greater resource demands.
Download or read book Imperial Gullies written by Kate Barger Showers and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once the grain basket for South Africa, much of Lesotho has become a scarred and treeless wasteland. The nation's spectacular gullying has concerned environmentalists and conservationists for more than half a century, In Imperial Gullies: Soil Erosion and Conservation in Lesotho, Kate B. Showers documents the truth behind this devastation. Showers reconstructs the history of the landscape, beginning with a history of the soil. She concludes that Lesotho's distinctive erosion chasms, called dongas, often cited as an example of destructive land-use practices by African farmers, actually were caused by colonial and postcolonial practices. The residents of Lesotho emerge as victims of a failed technology. Their efforts to mitigate or resist implementation of destructive soil conservation engineering works were thwarted, and they were blamed for the consequences of policies promoted by international soil conservationists since the 1930s. Imperial Gullies calls for an observational, experimental and, most importantly, a fully consultative and participatory approach to address Lesotho's serious contemporary problems of soil erosion. The first book to bring to center stage the historical practice of colonial soil science and a cautionary tale of western science in unfamiliar terrain it will interest a broad, interdisciplinary audience in African and environmental studies, social sciences, and history. "Showers shows how local people understood that colonial contour conservation methods and road building actually stimulated gully erosion, something colonial scientists failed to realize. Overall it is undoubtedly one of the most important books written to date on any part of the environmental history of Africa. Moreover it stands out in the discipline of environmental history in general as an unusually sophisticated work of great insight and explanatory power."---Richard H. Grove, author of Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 Kate B. Showers is a visiting research fellow and senior research associate at the Centre for World Environmental History, University of Sussex, England. She has lived in rural Lesotho and has served as head of research, Institute of Southern African Studies, National University of Lesotho.
Download or read book Science Society and Power written by James Fairhead and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-10-16 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach bring science to the heart of debates about globalisation, exploring transformations in global science and contrasting effects in Guinea, one of the world's poorest countries, and Trinidad, a more prosperous, industrialised and urbanised island. The book focuses on environment, forestry and conservation sciences that are central to these countries and involve resources that many depend upon for their livelihoods. It examines the relationships between policies, bureaucracies and particular types of scientific enquiry and explores how ordinary people, the media and educational practices engage with this. In particular it shows how science becomes part of struggles over power, resources and legitimacy. The authors take a unique ethnographic perspective, linking approaches in anthropology, development and science studies. They address critically prominent debates in each, and explore opportunities for new forms of participation, public engagement and transformation in the social relations of science.
Download or read book African Environmental Crisis written by Gufu Oba and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-13 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African Environmental Crisis explores how and why the idea of the African environmental crisis developed and persisted through colonial and post-colonial periods, and why it has been so influential in development discourse.
Download or read book The Contested Lands of Laikipia written by Marie Ladekjær Gravesen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the violence and conflict that lead up to the land invasions prior to Kenya's 2017 general election. The Contested Lands of Laikipia tells how, and why, land claims and ethnic categories became increasingly politicized here over the past century.
Download or read book European Rural Landscapes written by Hannes Palang and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-06-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, a compendium of 28 papers selected from two recent conferences on the topic, focuses on aspects of rural landscape, broadly related to issues of language, representation and power. These are issues that have not been addressed on a pan-European landscape level before.The aim is to offer a deeper interdisciplinary understanding of historical and contemporary processes in European landscapes.
Download or read book Isle of Fire written by Christian A. Kull and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2004-07-07 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long considered both best friend and worst enemy to humankind, fire is at once creative and destructive. On the endangered tropical island of Madagascar, these two faces of fire have fueled a century-long conflict between rural farmers and island leaders. Based on detailed fieldwork in Malagasy villages and a thorough archival investigation, Isle of Fire offers a detailed analysis of why Madagascar has always been aflame, why it always will be aflame, and ultimately, as Christian Kull argues, why it should remain aflame.
Download or read book Water for Food Security Nutrition and Social Justice written by Lyla Mehta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive effort to bring together Water, Food Security and Nutrition (FSN) in a way that goes beyond the traditional focus on irrigated agriculture. Apart from looking at the role of water and sanitation for human well-being, it proposes alternative and more locally appropriate ways to address complex water management and governance challenges from the local to global levels against a backdrop of growing uncertainties. The authors challenge mainstream supply-oriented and neo-Malthusian visions that argue for the need to increase the land area under irrigation in order to feed the world’s growing population. Instead, they argue for a reframing of the debate concerning production processes, waste, food consumption and dietary patterns whilst proposing alternative strategies to improve water and land productivity, putting the interests of marginalized and disenfranchized groups upfront. The book highlights how accessing water for FSN can be challenging for small-holders, vulnerable and marginalized women and men, and how water allocation systems and reform processes can negatively affect local people’s informal rights. The book argues for the need to improve policy coherence across water, land and food and is original in making a case for strengthening the relationship between the human rights to water and food, especially for marginalized women and men. It will be of great interest to practitioners, students and researchers working on water and food issues.
Download or read book An Introduction to Tropical Rain Forests written by T. C. Whitmore and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1998-03-26 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Whitmore's classic introduction to tropical rain forests has been comprehensively revised and updated, reflecting the changes which have taken place since it was first published in 1990. The sections on human impact have been extended, including a new global assessment of deforestation, and details of new research on biodiversity and conservation. The book remains unique in linking rain forest biology and ecology with silviculture, and with concerns over sustainable resource utilization and the future of the tropical rain forests. Accessibly written and illustrated throughout, it is a must for biology and geography students, and anyone who seeks to know more about the nature and importance of the world's tropical rain forests.
Download or read book The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze written by David John Arnold and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a new interpretation of the history of colonial India and a critical contribution to the understanding of environmental history and the tropical world. Arnold considers the ways in which India’s material environment became increasingly subject to the colonial understanding of landscape and nature, and to the scientific scrutiny of itinerant naturalists.
Download or read book Ethiopic an African Writing System written by Ayele Bekerie and published by The Red Sea Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking book about the history and principles of Ethiopic (Ge'ez), an African writing system designed as a meaningful and graphic representation of a wide range of knowledge.
Download or read book The Captain and the Cannibal written by James Fairhead and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-24 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sailing the uncharted waters of the Pacific in 1830, Captain Benjamin Morrell of Connecticut became the first outsider to encounter the inhabitants of a small island off New Guinea. The contact quickly turned violent, fatal cannons were fired, and Morrell abducted young Dako, a hostage so shocked by the white complexions of his kidnappers that he believed he had been captured by the dead. This gripping book unveils for the first time the strange odyssey the two men shared in ensuing years. The account is uniquely told, as much from the captive’s perspective as from the American’s. Upon returning to New York, Morrell exhibited Dako as a “cannibal” in wildly popular shows performed on Broadway and along the east coast. The proceeds helped fund a return voyage to the South Pacific—the captain hoping to establish trade with Dako’s assistance, and Dako seizing his only chance to return home to his unmapped island. Supported by rich, newly found archives, this wide-ranging volume traces the voyage to its extraordinary ends and en route decrypts Morrell’s ambiguous character, the mythic qualities of Dako’s life, and the two men's infusion into American literature—Dako inspired Melville’s Queequeg, for example. The encounters confound indigenous peoples and Americans alike as both puzzle over what it is to be truly human and alive.
Download or read book Green Land Brown Land Black Land written by James McCann and published by Heinemann Educational Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James C. McCann provides a synthesis of evidence and a narrative of Africa's evironmental history over the past two centuries. In a book readily accessible to undergraduates and nonspecialists, Professor McCann argues that far from being pristine and primordial spaces, Africa's landscapes were created by human activity. This argument contrasts strongly with the idealized notions of an African Eden commonly held in the West and in Africa itself. It also confronts more recent alarm about degradation of Africa's natural and human resources by examining the historical evidence of environmental change. Key topics within the book are the effects of population growth, disease, agricultural change, the state of natural resources, and the changing role of the state in how Africans have managed and changed their own landscapes.
