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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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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