Download or read book Mean and Lowly Things written by Kate Jackson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2005 Kate Jackson ventured into the remote swamp forests of the northern Congo to collect reptiles and amphibians. Her camping equipment was rudimentary, her knowledge of Congolese customs even more so. She knew how to string a net and set a pitfall trap, but she never imagined the physical and cultural difficulties that awaited her. Culled from the mud-spattered pages of her journals, Mean and Lowly Things reads like a fast-paced adventure story. It is JacksonÕs unvarnished account of her research on the front lines of the global biodiversity crisisÑcoping with interminable delays in obtaining permits, learning to outrun advancing army ants, subsisting on a diet of Spam and manioc, and ultimately falling in love with the strangely beautiful flooded forest. The reptile fauna of the Republic of Congo was all but undescribed, and JacksonÕs mission was to carry out the most basic study of the amphibians and reptiles of the swamp forest: to create a simple list of the species that exist thereÑa crucial first step toward efforts to protect them. When the snakes evaded her carefully set traps, Jackson enlisted people from the villages to bring her specimens. She trained her guide to tag frogs and skinks and to fix them in formalin. As her expensive camera rusted and her Western soap melted, Jackson learned what it took to swim with the snakesÑand that thereÕs a right way and a wrong way to get a baby cobra out of a bottle.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo written by Emizet Francois Kisangani and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 718 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The third edition of the Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo looks back at the nearly 48 years of independence, over a century of colonial rule, and even earlier kingdoms and groups that shared the territory. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and over 800 cross-referenced dictionary entries on civil wars, mutinies, notable people, places, events, and cultural practices.
Download or read book The Poisonwood Bible written by Barbara Kingsolver and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.
Download or read book Towards a sustainable participatory and inclusive wild meat sector written by Coad, L. and published by CIFOR. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The meat of wild species, referred to in this report as ‘wild meat’, is an essential source of protein and a generator of income for millions of forest-living communities in tropical and subtropical regions. However, unsustainable harvest rates currently
Download or read book Swahili Language Handbook written by Edgar C. Polomé and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Ecology Conservation and Management of Wild Pigs and Peccaries written by Mario Melletti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-23 with total page 1417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wild pigs inhabit vast areas in Europe, Southern Asia and Africa, and have been introduced in North and South America, while feral pigs are widespread in Australia and New Zealand. Many wild pig species are threatened with extinction, but Eurasian wild boar populations, however, are increasing in many regions. Covering all wild pig and peccary species, the Suidae and Tayassuidae families, this comprehensive review presents new information about the evolution, taxonomy and domestication of wild pigs and peccaries alongside novel case studies on conservation activities and management. One hundred leading experts from twenty five countries synthesise understanding of this group of species; discussing current research, and gaps in the knowledge of researchers, conservation biologists, zoologists, wildlife managers and students. This beautifully illustrated reference includes the long history of interactions between wild pigs and humans, the benefits some species have brought us and their role and impact on natural ecosystems.
Download or read book Eating Apes written by Dale Peterson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation As Jane Goodall never fails to mention, "bush meat is the greatest conservation crisis in my lifetime." This book documents in text and photographs how wild animals in the Congo Basin, particularly the Great Apes but also chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas, are slaughtered and used for human consumption.
Download or read book Wild Cats written by Kristin Nowell and published by World Conservation Union. This book was released on 1996 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available on the 36 wild cats of the world. It includes the first published collection of detailed range maps and some of the first photographs of rare species in the wild. It provides a thorough review of major issues in cat conservation such as habitat loss and management of big cats in livestock areas; field and laboratory research; international trade; the role of zoos; and reintroduction. High priority are identified to further the cause of cat conservation.
Download or read book Crude Existence written by Kristin Reed and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-11-15 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After decades of civil war and instability, the African country of Angola is experiencing a spectacular economic boom thanks to its most valuable natural resource: oil. Focusing on the everyday realities of people living in the extraction zones, Reed explores the exclusion, degradation, and violence that are the fruits of petrocapitalism in Angola.
Download or read book Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures Continental Europe and its Empires written by Prem Poddar and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-21 with total page 847 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first reference work to provide an integrated and authoritative body of information about the political, cultural and economic contexts of postcolonial literatures that have their provenance in the major European Empires of Belgium, Denmark, France, G
Download or read book Gesture and Power written by Yolanda Covington-Ward and published by Duke University Press Books. This book was released on 2015-12-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gesture and Power Yolanda Covington-Ward examines the everyday embodied practices and performances of the BisiKongo people of the Lower Congo to show how their gestures, dances, and spirituality are critical in mobilizing social and political action. Conceiving of the body as the center of analysis, a catalyst for social action, and as a conduit for the social construction of reality, Covington-Ward focuses on specific flash points in the last ninety years of Congo's troubled history, when embodied performance was used to stake political claims, foster dissent, and enforce power. In the 1920s Simon Kimbangu started a Christian prophetic movement based on spirit-induced trembling, which swept through the Lower Congo, subverting Belgian colonial authority. Following independence, dictator Mobutu Sese Seko required citizens to dance and sing nationalist songs daily as a means of maintaining political control. More recently, embodied performance has again stoked reform, as nationalist groups such as Bundu dia Kongo advocate for a return to precolonial religious practices and non-Western gestures such as traditional greetings. In exploring these embodied expressions of Congolese agency, Covington-Ward provides a framework for understanding how embodied practices transmit social values, identities, and cultural history throughout Africa and the diaspora.
Download or read book Coltan Congo and Conflict written by Artur Usanov and published by The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. This book was released on 2013-06-05 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report evaluates the links between coltan trade and violence in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and examines the potential for recent legislation to break such links and reduce conflict.
Download or read book Natural Acts A Sidelong View of Science and Nature written by David Quammen and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "David Quammen is simply the best natural essayist working today."--Tim Cahill, author of Lost in My Own Backyard "Lively writing about science and nature depends less on the offering of good answers, I think, than on the offering of good questions," said David Quammen in the original introduction to Natural Acts. For more than two decades, he has stuck to that credo. In this updated version of curiosity leads him from New Mexico to Romania, from the Congo to the Amazon, asking questions about mosquitoes (what are their redeeming merits?), dinosaurs (how did they change the life of a dyslexic Vietnam vet?), and cloning (can it save endangered species?). This revised and expanded edition best-loved "Natural Acts" columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s, and includes recent pieces such as "Planet of Weeds," an influential new Natural Acts is an eye-opening journey that will please both Quammen fans and newcomers to his work. Song lyrics have been redacted from this ebook owing to permissions issues.
Download or read book African History A Very Short Introduction written by John Parker and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2007-03-22 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.
Download or read book Grassroots Literacy written by Jan Blommaert and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-06-03 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What effect has globalization had on our understanding of literacy? Grassroots Literacy seeks to address the relationship between globalization and the widening gap between ‘grassroots’ literacies, or writings from ordinary people and local communities, and ‘elite’ literacies. Displaced from their original context to elite literacy environments in the form of letters, police declarations and pieces of creative writing, ‘grassroots’ literacies are unsurprisingly easily disqualified, either as ‘bad’ forms of literacy, or as messages that fail to be understood. Through close analysis of two unique, handwritten documents from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jan Blommaert considers how ‘grassroots’ literacy in the Third World develops outside the literacy-saturated environments of the developed world. In examining these documents produced by socially and economically marginalized writers Blommaert demonstrates how literacy environments should be understood as relatively autonomous systems. Grassroots Literacy will be key reading for students of language and literacy studies as well as an invaluable resource for anyone with an interest in understanding the implications of globalization on local literacy practices.
Download or read book Ethnobotany written by Gary J. Martin and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-07-29 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethnoecology has blossomed in recent years into an important science because of the realization that the vast body of knowledge contained in both indigenous and folk cultures is being rapidly lost as natural ecosystems and cultures are being destroyed by the encroachment of development. Ethnobotany and ethnozoology both began largely with direct observations about the ways in which people used plants and animals and consisted mainly of the compilation of lists. Recently, these subjects have adopted a much more scientific and quantitative methodology and have studied the ways in which people manage their environment and, as a consequence, have used a much more ecological approach. This manual of ethnobotanical methodology will become an essential tool for all ethnobiologists and ethnoecologists. It fills a significant gap in the literature and I only wish it had been available some years previously so that I could have given it to many of my students. I shall certainly recommend it to any future students who are interested in ethnoecology. I particularly like the sympathetic approach to local peoples which pervades this book. It is one which encourages the ethnobotanical work by both the local people themselves and by academically trained researchers. A study of this book will avoid many of the arrogant approaches of the past and encourage a fair deal for any group which is being studied. This manual promotes both the involvement oflocal people and the return to them of knowledge which has been studied by outsiders.
Download or read book African Indigenous Vegetables in Urban Agriculture written by Charles Michael Shackleton and published by Earthscan. This book was released on 2009 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2009. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.