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 Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies written by Paul S. Sutter and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 2015-12-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providence Canyon State Park, also known as Georgia’s “Little Grand Canyon,” preserves a network of massive erosion gullies allegedly caused by poor farming practices during the nineteenth century. It is a park that protects the scenic results of an environmental disaster. While little known today, Providence Canyon enjoyed a modicum of fame in the 1930s. During that decade, local boosters attempted to have Providence Canyon protected as a national park, insisting that it was natural. At the same time, national and international soil experts and other environmental reformers used Providence Canyon as the apotheosis of human, and particularly southern, land abuse. Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies uses the unlikely story of Providence Canyon—and the 1930s contest over its origins and meaning—to recount the larger history of dramatic human-induced soil erosion across the South and to highlight the role that the region and its erosive agricultural history played in the rise of soil science and soil conservation in America. More than that, though, the book is a meditation on the ways in which our persistent mental habit of separating nature from culture has stunted our ability to appreciate places like Providence Canyon and to understand the larger history of American conservation.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History written by Andrew C. Isenberg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History draws on a wealth of new scholarship to offer diverse perspectives on the state of the field.

Download or read book Plunder for Profit written by Elijah Doro and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-04-30 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Exploring over a century of Zimbabwe's colonial and post-colonial history, Elijah Doro investigates the murky and noxious history of that powerful crop: tobacco. In a compelling narrative that debunks previous histories glorifying tobacco farming, Doro reveals the indelible marks that tobacco left on landscapes, communities, and people. Demonstrating that the history of tobacco farming is inseparable from that of colonial encounter, Doro outlines how tobacco became an institutionalised culture of production, which was linked to state power and natural ecosystems, and driven by a pernicious heritage of unbridled plunder. With the destruction of landscapes, the negative impacts of the export trade and the growing tobacco epidemic in Zimbabwe, tobacco farming has a long and varied legacy in southern African and across the world. Connecting the local to the global, and the environmental to the social, this book illuminates our understandings of environmental history, colonialism and sustainability"--

Download or read book The Nature State written by Wilko Hardenberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together case studies from around the globe (including China, Latin America, the Philippines, Namibia, India and Europe) to explore the history of nature conservation in the twentieth century. It seeks to highlight the state, a central actor in these efforts, which is often taken for granted, and establishes a novel concept – the nature state – as a means for exploring the historical formation of that portion of the state dedicated to managing and protecting nature. Following the Industrial Revolution and post-war exponential increase in human population and consumption, conservation in myriad forms has been one particularly visible way in which the government and its agencies have tried to control, manage or produce nature for reasons other than raw exploitation. Using an interdisciplinary approach and including case studies from across the globe, this edited collection brings together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and historians in order to examine the degree to which sociopolitical regimes facilitate and shape the emergence and development of nature states. This innovative work marks an early intervention in the tentative turn towards the state in environmental history and will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental history, social anthropology and conservation studies.

Download or read book A Scientific Bibliography of the Drakensberg Maloti and Adjacent Lowlands written by Rodney Moffett and published by UJ Press. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This bibliography includes scientific articles on the Drakensberg, Maloti and Adjacent Lowlands published between 1808 and 2019. Although focusing on material appearing in accredited journals, there is such a wealth of information in the form of unpublished, yet traceable, reports, documents, presentations and dissertations, these are also included. The bibliography has two parts – a complete list arranged alphabetically, and the same references arranged in 33 different disciplines. These range from Palaeobotany with 17 entries, to Rock Art with 502 entries.

Download or read book The Environment and World History written by Edmund Burke III and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2009-04-08 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since around 1500 C.E., humans have shaped the global environment in ways that were previously unimaginable. Bringing together leading environmental historians and world historians, this book offers an overview of global environmental history throughout this remarkable 500-year period. In eleven essays, the contributors examine the connections between environmental change and other major topics of early modern and modern world history: population growth, commercialization, imperialism, industrialization, the fossil fuel revolution, and more. Rather than attributing environmental change largely to European science, technology, and capitalism, the essays illuminate a series of culturally distinctive, yet often parallel developments arising in many parts of the world, leading to intensified exploitation of land and water. The wide range of regional studies—including some in Russia, China, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, Southern Africa, and Western Europe—together with the book's broader thematic essays makes The Environment and World History ideal for courses that seek to incorporate the environment and environmental change more fully into a truly integrative understanding of world history. CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Adas, William Beinart, Edmund Burke III, Mark Cioc, Kenneth Pomeranz, Mahesh Rangarajan, John F. Richards, Lise Sedrez, Douglas R. Weiner

Download or read book Nature and History in Modern Italy written by Marco Armiero and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Italy il bel paese—the beautiful country—where tourists spend their vacations looking for art, history, and scenery? Or is it a land whose beauty has been cursed by humanity’s greed and nature’s cruelty? The answer is largely a matter of narrative and the narrator’s vision of Italy. The fifteen essays in Nature and History in Modern Italy investigate that nation’s long experience in managing domesxadtixadcated rather than wild natures and offer insight into these conflicting visions. Italians shaped their land in the most literal sense, producing the landscape, sculpting its heritage, embedding memory in nature, and rendering the two different visions inseparxadable. The interplay of Italy’s rich human history and its dramatic natural diversity is a subject with broad appeal to a wide range of readers.

Download or read book Globalization Environmental Change and Social History written by Peter Boomgaard and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout all ages, the activities of mankind have weighed heavily upon the environment. In turn, changes in that environment have favoured the rise of certain social groups and limited the actions of others. Despite this, environmental history has remained a 'blind spot' for most social and economic historians. This is to be regretted, as the various and unequal effects of environmental change often explain the strengths and weaknesses of certain social groups, irrespective of their being defined along the lines of class, gender and ethnicity. This volume brings together the expertise of social and environmental historians in an effort to assess the extent to which transnational agents changed socioecological space as a consequence of globalization since the Late Middle Ages.

Download or read book Mad Dogs and Meerkats written by Karen Brown and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the ages, rabies has exemplified the danger of diseases that transfer from wild animals to humans and their domestic stock. In South Africa, rabies has been on the rise since the latter part of the twentieth century despite the availability of postexposure vaccines and regular inoculation campaigns for dogs. In Mad Dogs and Meerkats: A History of Resurgent Rabies in Southern Africa, Karen Brown links the increase of rabies to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Her study shows that the most afflicted regions of South Africa have seen a dangerous rise in feral dog populations as people lack the education, means, or will to care for their pets or take them to inoculation centers. Most victims are poor black children. Ineffective disease control, which in part depends on management policies in neighboring states and the diminished medical and veterinary infrastructures in Zimbabwe, has exacerbated the problem. This highly readable book is the first study of rabies in Africa, tracing its history in South Africa and neighboring states from 1800 to the present and showing how environmental and economic changes brought about by European colonialism and global trade have had long-term effects. Mad Dogs and Meerkats is recommended for public health policy makers and anyone interested in human-animal relations and how societies and governments have reacted to one of the world’s most feared diseases.

Download or read book Coffee Is Not Forever written by Stuart McCook and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-02 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The global coffee industry, which fuels the livelihoods of farmers, entrepreneurs, and consumers around the world, rests on fragile ecological foundations. In Coffee Is Not Forever, Stuart McCook explores the transnational story of this essential crop through a history of one of its most devastating diseases, the coffee leaf rust. He deftly synthesizes agricultural, social, and economic histories with plant genetics and plant pathology to investigate the increasing interdependence of the world’s coffee-producing zones. In the process, he illuminates the progress and prognosis of the challenges—especially climate change—that pose an existential threat to a crop that global consumers often take for granted. And finally, in putting a tropical plant disease at the forefront, he has crafted the first truly global environmental history of coffee, pushing its study and the discipline in bold new directions.

Download or read book Saving the World written by Brett M. Bennett and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2024-07-06 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating history of the forgotten concept of climatic botany that underscores how vital forests are to our future. Saving the World tells the forgotten history of climatic botany, the idea that forests are essential for creating and recycling rain. Long before the specter of global warming, societies recognized that deforestation caused drastic climate shifts—as early as 1770, concerns over deforestation spurred legislation to combat human-induced climate change. Across the twentieth century, climatic botany experienced fluctuating fortunes, influenced by technological advancements and evolving meteorological theories. Remarkably, contemporary scientists are rediscovering the crucial role of forests in rainfall recycling, unaware of the long history of climatic botany. This enlightening book is essential reading for anyone passionate about conserving the world’s forests and preserving our climate for future generations.

Download or read book Deforestation and Reforestation in Namibia written by Emmanuel Kreike and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-10-26 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descriptions of the late 1800s landscape in the Ovambo floodplain in north-central Namibia closely match the area’s late 1900s appearance, suggesting that little change occurred between the pre-colonial baseline and the postcolonial outcome. Yet, paradoxically, colonial conquest, population pressure, biological invasions, new technology, and economic globalization caused both dramatic deforestation and reforestation in less than a century. The paradox stems from the fact that the prevailing global environmental models obscure and homogenize the process of environmental change: different and contradictory interpretations are dismissed as alternative readings or misreadings of the same process. Deforestation and Reforestation, however, argues that the paradox highlights the need to reframe environmental change as plural processes occurring along multiple trajectories that may be dissynchronized and asymmetrical.

Download or read book The Historical Ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia written by James C. McCann and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malaria is an infectious disease like no other: it is a dynamic force of nature and Africa’s most deadly and debilitating malady. James C. McCann tells the story of malaria in human, narrative terms and explains the history and ecology of the disease through the science of landscape change. All malaria is local. Instead of examining the disease at global or continental scale, McCann investigates malaria’s adaptation and persistence in a single region, Ethiopia, over time and at several contrasting sites. Malaria has evolved along with humankind and has adapted to even modern-day technological efforts to eradicate it or to control its movement. Insecticides, such as DDT, drug prophylaxis, development of experimental vaccines, and even molecular-level genetic manipulation have proven to be only temporary fixes. The failure of each stand-alone solution suggests the necessity of a comprehensive ecological understanding of malaria, its transmission, and its persistence, one that accepts its complexity and its local dynamism as fundamental features. The story of this disease in Ethiopia includes heroes, heroines, witches, spirits—and a very clever insect—as well as the efforts of scientists in entomology, agroecology, parasitology, and epidemiology. Ethiopia is an ideal case for studying the historical human culture of illness, the dynamism of nature’s disease ecology, and its complexity within malaria.

Download or read book Environment Power and Justice written by Graeme Wynn and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2022-07-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning the colonial, postcolonial, and postapartheid eras, these historical and locally specific case studies analyze and engage vernacular, activist, and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity. This book highlights the ways poor and vulnerable people in South Africa, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe have mobilized against the structural and political forces that deny them a healthy and sustainable environment. Spanning the colonial, postcolonial, and postapartheid eras, these studies engage vernacular, activist, and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity. Some chapters track the genealogies of contemporary activism, while others introduce positions, actors, and thinkers not previously identified with environmental justice. Addressing health, economic opportunity, agricultural policy, and food security, the chapters in this book explore a range of issues and ways of thinking about harm to people and their ecologies. Because environmental justice is often understood as a contemporary phenomenon framed around North American examples, these fresh case studies will enrich both southern African history and global environmental studies. Environment, Power, and Justice expands conceptions of environmental justice and reveals discourses and dynamics that advance both scholarship and social change. Contributors: Christopher Conz Marc Epprecht Mary Galvin Sarah Ives Admire Mseba Muchaparara Musemwa Matthew A. Schnurr Cherryl Walker

Download or read book Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment in Africa and North America written by David M. Gordon and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-01 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indigenous knowledge has become a catchphrase in global struggles for environmental justice. Yet indigenous knowledges are often viewed, incorrectly, as pure and primordial cultural artifacts. This collection draws from African and North American cases to argue that the forms of knowledge identified as “indigenous” resulted from strategies to control environmental resources during and after colonial encounters. At times indigenous knowledges represented a “middle ground” of intellectual exchanges between colonizers and colonized; elsewhere, indigenous knowledges were defined through conflict and struggle. The authors demonstrate how people claimed that their hybrid forms of knowledge were communal, religious, and traditional, as opposed to individualist, secular, and scientific, which they associated with European colonialism. Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment offers comparative and transnational insights that disturb romantic views of unchanging indigenous knowledges in harmony with the environment. The result is a book that informs and complicates how indigenous knowledges can and should relate to environmental policy-making. Contributors: David Bernstein, Derick Fay, Andrew H. Fisher, Karen Flint, David M. Gordon, Paul Kelton, Shepard Krech III, Joshua Reid, Parker Shipton, Lance van Sittert, Jacob Tropp, James L. A. Webb, Jr., Marsha Weisiger

Download or read book The Nature of the Path written by Marcus Filippello and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of the Path reveals how a single road has shaped the collective identity of a community that has existed on the margins of larger societies for centuries. Marcus Filippello shows how a road running through the Lama Valley in Southeastern Benin has become a mnemonic device that has allowed residents to counter prevailing histories. Built by the French colonial government, and following a traditional pathway, the road serves as a site where the Ọhọri people narrate their changing relationship to the environment and assert their independence in the political milieus of colonial and postcolonial Africa. Filippello first visited the Yorùbá-speaking Ọhọri community in Benin knowing only the history in archival records. Over several years, he interviewed more than 100 people with family roots in the valley and discovered that their personal identities were closely tied to the community, which in turn was inextricably linked to the history of the road that snakes through the region’s seasonal wetlands. The road—contested, welcomed, and obstructed over many years—passes through fertile farmlands and sacred forests, both rich in meaning for residents. Filippello’s research seeks to counter prevailing notions of Africa as an “exotic” and pristine, yet contrarily war-torn, disease-ridden, environmentally challenged, and impoverished continent. His informants’ vivid construction of history through the prism of the road, coupled with his own archival research, offers new insights into Africans’ complex understandings of autonomy, identity, and engagement in the slow process we call modernization.