Environment at the Margins brings literary and environmental studies into a robust interdisciplinary dialogue, challenging dominant ideas about nature, conservation, and development in Africa and exploring alternative narratives offered by writers and environmental thinkers. The essays bring together scholarship in geography, anthropology, and environmental history with the study of African and colonial literatures and with literary modes of analysis. Contributors analyze writings by colonial administrators and literary authors, as well as by such prominent African activists and writers as Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Mia Couto, Nadine Gordimer, Wangari Maathai, J. M. Coetzee, Zakes Mda, and Ben Okri. These postcolonial ecocritical readings focus on dialogue not only among disciplines but also among different visions of African environments. In the process, Environment at the Margins posits the possibility of an ecocriticism that will challenge and move beyond marginalizing, limiting visions of an imaginary Africa. Contributors: Jane Carruthers Mara Goldman Amanda Hammar Jonathan Highfield David McDermott Hughes Roderick P. Neumann Rob Nixon Anthony Vital Laura Wright

This book provides new insights into popular understandings of urbanism by using a wide range of case studies from lesser studied cities across the Global South and Global North to present evidence for the need to reconstruct our understanding of who and what makes urban environments. Myers explores the global hierarchy of cities, the criteria for positioning within these hierarchies and the successes of various policymaking approaches designed specifically to boost a city's ranking. Engaging heavily with postcolonial studies and Global South thinking, he shows how cities construct one another's spaces and calls for a new understanding of planetary urbanism that moves beyond Western-centric perspectives.

Africa's urban population is growing rapidly, raising numerous environmental concerns. Urban areas are often linked to poverty as well as power and wealth, and hazardous and unhealthy environments as the pace of change stretches local resources. Yet there are a wide range of perspectives and possibilities for political analysis of these rapidly changing environments. Written by a widely respected author, this important book will mark a major new step forward in the study of Africa's urban environments. Using innovative research including fieldwork data, map analysis, place-name study, interviewing and fiction, the book explores environmentalism from a variety of perspectives, acknowledging the clash between Western planning mind-sets pursuing the goal of sustainable development, and the lived realities of residents of often poor, informal settlements. The book will be valuable to advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in geography, urban studies, development studies, environmental studies and African studies.

Africa's urban population is growing rapidly, raising numerous environmental concerns. Urban areas are often linked to poverty as well as power and wealth, and hazardous and unhealthy environments as the pace of change stretches local resources. Yet there are a wide range of perspectives and possibilities for political analysis of these rapidly changing environments. Written by a widely respected author, this important book will mark a major new step forward in the study of Africa's urban environments. Using innovative research including fieldwork data, map analysis, place-name study, interviewing and fiction, the book explores environmentalism from a variety of perspectives, acknowledging the clash between Western planning mind-sets pursuing the goal of sustainable development, and the lived realities of residents of often poor, informal settlements. The book will be valuable to advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in geography, urban studies, development studies, environmental studies and African studies.

As African societies come to live more and more in cities, they do so in ways that challenge prevailing theories and models of urban development in geography, sociology, anthropology, and planning. This book uses African urban concepts and experiences to speak back to theoretical and practical concerns in urban studies and disciplines that study cities, as well as in African studies. It argues for a re-vision a seeing again, and a revising of how cities in Africa are discussed and written about in both urban studies and African studies. Cities in Africa still are either ignored, banished to a different, other, lesser category of not-quite cities, or held up as examples of all that can go wrong with urbanism in much of both the mainstream and even critical urban literature. This book encourages African studies and urban studies scholars across the world to engage with the vibrancy and complexity of African cities with fresh eyes. It uses the author's own research and a close reading of works by other scholars, writers, and artists on a broad range of sixteen cities in Africa to highlight six themes that help illuminate what is happening in and across the region's cities.

How do recent trends toward globalization affect the Caribbean, a region whose suppliers, production, markets, and politics have been globalized for centuries? What is the status of neoliberal development policy in the Caribbean, where the rewards for belt tightening and economic opening have been slow in coming? How have Caribbean policymakers and citizens responded to and resisted the pressures to conform to the new rules of the global economy? By examining these questions through the lens of political economy, this volume explores the interaction among development, trade, foreign policy, the environment, tourism, gender relations, and migration. With its global implications, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars from all disciplines who are concerned with the impact of development and globalization.

As African societies come to live more and more in cities, they do so in ways that challenge prevailing theories and models of urban development in geography, sociology, anthropology, and planning. This book uses African urban concepts and experiences to speak back to theoretical and practical concerns in urban studies and disciplines that study cities, as well as in African studies. It argues for a re-vision a seeing again, and a revising of how cities in Africa are discussed and written about in both urban studies and African studies. Cities in Africa still are either ignored, banished to a different, other, lesser category of not-quite cities, or held up as examples of all that can go wrong with urbanism in much of both the mainstream and even critical urban literature. This book encourages African studies and urban studies scholars across the world to engage with the vibrancy and complexity of African cities with fresh eyes. It uses the author's own research and a close reading of works by other scholars, writers, and artists on a broad range of sixteen cities in Africa to highlight six themes that help illuminate what is happening in and across the region's cities.