|
Showing 1 - 3 of
3 matches in All Departments
Tales of deforestation and desertification in North Africa have
been told from the Roman period to the present. Such stories of
environmental decline in the Maghreb are still recounted by experts
and are widely accepted without question today. International
organizations such as the United Nations frequently invoke these
inaccurate stories to justify environmental conservation and
development projects in the arid and semiarid lands in North Africa
and around the Mediterranean basin. Recent research in arid lands
ecology and new paleoecological evidence, however, do not support
many claims of deforestation, overgrazing, and desertification in
this region. Diana K. Davis's pioneering analysis reveals the
critical influence of French scientists and administrators who
established much of the purported scientific basis of these stories
during the colonial period in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia,
illustrating the key role of environmental narratives in imperial
expansion. The processes set in place by the use of this narrative
not only systematically disadvantaged the majority of North
Africans but also led to profound changes in the landscape, some of
which produced the land degradation that continues to plague the
Maghreb today." Resurrecting the Granary of Rome" exposes many of
the political, economic, and ideological goals of the French
colonial project in these arid lands and the resulting definition
of desertification that continues to inform global environmental
and development projects. The first book on the environmental
history of the Maghreb, this volume reframes much conventional
thinking about the North African environment. Davis's book is
essential reading for those interestedin global environmental
history.
The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations
throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans,
isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often
framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded
in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in
most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of
misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries,
increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the
eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to
critically examine culturally constructed views of the
environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have
often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the
peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the
questionable policies and practices born of these environmental
imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the
region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in
the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and
hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge
production. Contributors: Samer Alatout, Edmund Burke III, Shaul
Cohen, Diana K. Davis, Jennifer L. Derr, Leila M. Harris, Alan
Mikhail, Timothy Mitchell, Priya Satia, Jeannie Sowers, and George
R. Trumbull IV
The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations
throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans,
isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often
framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded
in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in
most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of
misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries,
increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the
eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to
critically examine culturally constructed views of the
environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have
often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the
peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the
questionable policies and practices born of these environmental
imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the
region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in
the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and
hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge
production. Contributors: Samer Alatout, Edmund Burke III, Shaul
Cohen, Diana K. Davis, Jennifer L. Derr, Leila M. Harris, Alan
Mikhail, Timothy Mitchell, Priya Satia, Jeannie Sowers, and George
R. Trumbull IV
|
You may like...
Hampstead
Diane Keaton, Brendan Gleeson, …
DVD
R66
Discovery Miles 660
|