This text argues that the scale of deforestation wrought by West African farmers during the 20th century has been vastly exaggerated and global analyses have unfairly stigmatized them and obscured their more sustainable, landscape-enriching practices. On a country by country basis (covering Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin) and using historical and social anthropological evidence, it illustrates that more realistic assessments of forest cover change, and more respectful attention to local knowledge and practices, are necessary bases for effective and appropriate environmental policies.

Reframing Deforestation suggests that the scale of deforestation wrought by West African farmers during the twentieth century has been vastly exaggerated and global analyses have unfairly stigmatised them and obscured their more sustainable, even landscape-enriching practices.
The book begins by reviewing how West African deforestation is represented and the types of evidence which inform deforestation orthodoxy. On a country by country basis (covering Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote D'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Benin), and using historical and social anthropological evidence subsequent chapters evaluate this orthodox critically. Together the cases build up a variety of arguments which serve to reframe history and question how and why deforestation has been exaggerated throughout West Africa, setting the analysis in its institutional and social context.
Stessing that dominant policy approaches in forestry and conservation require major rethinking worldwide, Reframing Deforestation illustrates that more realistic assessments of forest cover change, and more respectful attention to local knowledge and practices, are necessary bases for effective and appropriate environmental policies.

The astounding saga of an American sea captain and the New Guinean nobleman who became his stunned captive, then ally, and eventual friend Sailing in 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 chance to return home with the only person who knew where his island was. 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-as Melville's Queequeg, for example, and in Poe's Pym. The encounters confound indigenous peoples and Americans alike as both puzzle over what it is to be truly human and alive.

Across the world, ecosystems are for sale. 'Green grabbing' - the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends - is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. A vigorous debate on 'land grabbing' already highlights instances where 'green' credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel. Yet in other cases, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs. Green grabs may be drivn by biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services or ecotourism, for example. In some cases theyse agendas involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances. This book draws together seventeen original cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings to ask: To what extent and in what ways do 'green grabs' constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? What political and discursive dynamics underpin 'green grabs'? How and when do appropriations on the ground emerge out of circulations of green capital? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? Who is gaining and who is losing? How are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests? This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

Across the globe, controversies around vaccines exemplify anxieties thrown up by new technologies. Whether it is growing parental concerns over the MMR vaccine in the UK or Nigerian communities refusing polio vaccines-associating them with genocidal policies-these controversies feed the cornerstone debates of our time concerning trust in government, media responsibility, scientific impartiality, citizen science, parental choice and government enforcement. This book is a groundbreaking examination of how parents are reflecting on and engaging with vaccination, a rapidly advancing and universally applied technology. It examines the anxieties emerging as today's highly globalized vaccine technologies and technocracies encounter the deeply intimate personal and social worlds of parenting and childcare, showing these to be part of transforming science-society relations. The authors interweave rich ethnographic data from participant-observation, interviews, group discussions and parental narratives from the UK and West Africa with the findings of large-scale surveys, which reveal more general patterns. The book takes a comparative approach and draws perspectives from medical anthropology, science and technology studies and development studies into engagement with public health and vaccine policy. The authors show how vaccine controversies involve relations of knowledge, responsibility and interdependence across multiple scales that challenge easy dichotomies: tradition versus modernity, reason versus emotion, personal versus public, rich versus poor, and Northern risk society versus Southern developing society. They reflect critically on the stereotypes that at times pass for explanations ofparents' engagement with both routine vaccination and vaccine research, suggesting some routes to improved dialogue between health policy-makers, professionals and medical researchers, and the people they serve. More broadly, the book suggests new terms of debate for thinking about science-society relations in a globalized world.

Across the globe, controversies around vaccines exemplify anxieties thrown up by new technologies. Whether it is growing parental concerns over the MMR vaccine in the UK or Nigerian communities refusing polio vaccines-associating them with genocidal policies-these controversies feed the cornerstone debates of our time concerning trust in government, media responsibility, scientific impartiality, citizen science, parental choice and government enforcement. This book is a groundbreaking examination of how parents are reflecting on and engaging with vaccination, a rapidly advancing and universally applied technology. It examines the anxieties emerging as today's highly globalized vaccine technologies and technocracies encounter the deeply intimate personal and social worlds of parenting and childcare, showing these to be part of transforming science-society relations. The authors interweave rich ethnographic data from participant-observation, interviews, group discussions and parental narratives from the UK and West Africa with the findings of large-scale surveys, which reveal more general patterns. The book takes a comparative approach and draws perspectives from medical anthropology, science and technology studies and development studies into engagement with public health and vaccine policy. The authors show how vaccine controversies involve relations of knowledge, responsibility and interdependence across multiple scales that challenge easy dichotomies: tradition versus modernity, reason versus emotion, personal versus public, rich versus poor, and Northern risk society versus Southern developing society. They reflect critically on the stereotypes that at times pass for explanations ofparents' engagement with both routine vaccination and vaccine research, suggesting some routes to improved dialogue between health policy-makers, professionals and medical researchers, and the people they serve. More broadly, the book suggests new terms of debate for thinking about science-society relations in a globalized world.

West African landscapes are generally considered as degraded, especially on the forest edge. This unique study shows how wrong that view can be, by revealing how inhabitants have enriched their land when scientists believe they have degraded it. Historical and anthropological methods demonstrate how intelligent African farmers' own land management can be, while scientists and policy makers have misunderstood the African environment. The book provides a new framework for ecological anthropology, and a challenge to old assumptions about the African landscape.

Across the world, ecosystems are for sale. 'Green grabbing' - the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends - is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. A vigorous debate on 'land grabbing' already highlights instances where 'green' credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel. Yet in other cases, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs. Green grabs may be drivn by biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services or ecotourism, for example. In some cases theyse agendas involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances. This book draws together seventeen original cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings to ask: To what extent and in what ways do 'green grabs' constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? What political and discursive dynamics underpin 'green grabs'? How and when do appropriations on the ground emerge out of circulations of green capital? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? Who is gaining and who is losing? How are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests? This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Peasant Studies.

This book brings science to the heart of debates about globalization by exploring the globalization of science and its contrasting effects in Guinea (one of the world's poorest countries) and Trinidad (a more prosperous, industrialized and urbanized island). It focuses on environment, forestry and conservation, sciences that are central to these countries and involve resources that many depend upon for their livelihoods. Taking a unique ethnographic approach drawn from anthropology, development and science studies, the work will appeal to students and researchers across the social sciences, as well as policy-makers and practitioners.

In the 1860s, as America waged civil war, several thousand African Americans sought greater freedom by emigrating to the fledgling nation of Liberia. While some argued that the new black republic represented disposal rather than emancipation, a few intrepid men set out to explore their African home. African-American Exploration in West Africa collects the travel diaries of James L. Sims, George L. Seymour, and Benjamin J. K. Anderson, who explored the territory that is now Liberia and Guinea between 1858 and 1874. These remarkable diaries reveal the wealth and beauty of Africa in striking descriptions of its geography, people, flora, and fauna. The dangers of the journeys surface, too Seymour was attacked and later died of his wounds, and his companion, Levin Ash, was captured and sold into slavery again. Challenging the notion that there were no black explorers in Africa, these diaries provide unique perspectives on 19th-century Liberian life and life in the interior of the continent before it was radically changed by European colonialism."

This book brings science to the heart of debates about globalization by exploring the globalization of science and its contrasting effects in Guinea (one of the world's poorest countries) and Trinidad (a more prosperous, industrialized and urbanized island). It focuses on environment, forestry and conservation, sciences that are central to these countries and involve resources that many depend upon for their livelihoods. Taking a unique ethnographic approach drawn from anthropology, development and science studies, the work will appeal to students and researchers across the social sciences, as well as policy-makers and practitioners.