Landscape, Environment and Technology in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa

This volume seeks to identify and examine two categories of colonial and postcolonial knowledge production about Africa. These two broad categories are &quote;environment&quote; and &quote;landscape,&quote; and both are useful and problematic to explore. Discussions about African environments often concentrate on Africans as perpetrators of their own land, causing degradation from lack of knowledge and technology. &quote;Landscape&quote; defines the category of knowledge produced by foreigners about Africa, where Africans remain part of the scenery and yield no agency over their surroundings. To flesh out these categories and explore their creation and how they have been deployed to shape colonial and postcolonial discourses on Africa, this volume investigates the &quote;technological pastoral,&quote; the points of convergence and conflict between Western notions of pastoral Africa and the introduction of colonial technology, scientific ideas and commodification of land and animals.

Autorentext

Toyin Falola is the Frances Higginbotham Nalle Centennial Professor in History and a Distinguished Teaching Professsor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Emily Brownell is a graduate student in the Department of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

Inhalt

Introduction: Landscapes, Environments and Technology: Looking Out, Looking Back Emily Brownell and Toyin Falola Part One: Commodifying Nature and Constructing Landscapes 1. Chimpanzees in the Colonial Maelstrom: Struggles over Knowledge, Race, and Commodities in the Gabonese Primate Trade, c. 1850-1940 Jeremy Rich 2. Appraising Nature: Pastoralist Practice, Hunting Logics, and Landscape Ideology in Colonial Southern Africa Laura J. Mitchell 3. The Railway in Colonial East Africa: Colonial Iconography and African Appropriation of a New Technology Christiane Reichart Part Two: Colonized Environments: Domestication, Medicine and Technology 4. Science, Technology and the African Woman During (British) Colonization, 1916-1960: The Case of Bamenda Province Bridget A. Teboh 5. Western Biomedicine and Colonialism: The Church Missionary Society Medical Mission in the Lake Victoria Basin Hannington Ochwada 6. The Price of "Modernity"? Western Railroad Technology and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in Nigeria Tokunbo A. Ayoola Part Three: Cultivation and Conservation: Contested Theory and Practice in Colonial Encounters 7. Labor Costs and the Failed Support of Progressive Farmers in Colonial Malawi Erik Green 8. Cattle in British Southern Cameroons: Innovations in Grazing and Environmental Control 1916-1960 Emmanuel M. Mbah 9. The Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Environmental Conservation in Africa: The Case of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya Maurice Amutabi 10. Managerial Technologies, [I]legal Livelihoods and the Forgotten Consumers of Africa's Largest Freshwater Fishery Jennifer Lee Johnson Part Four: Postcolonial African Landscapes: Locating Africa in the Global Environmental Crisis 11. Fictionalizing the Crisis of the Environment in Ben Okri's The Famished Road and Songs of Enchantments Kayode O. Ogunfolabi 12. Health Transitions and Environmental Change in Contemporary Africa Kathryn H. Jacobsen 13. Growing a Global Green Economy: Getting Africa Prepared to Lend a Hand Rubin Patterson. Conclusion: Environmental Crisis and Development Emily Brownell