Africa: Histories, Ecologies and Societies

Carruthers, Jane

doi:10.3197/0967340042772649

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…53 In Africa, environmental history is often part of the history of social justice. 54 World history preceded the formal study of environmental history in China, and the span of ancient Chinese environmental history makes the distinction between them somewhat spurious. The ecological and environmental elements of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism, especially what Bao Maohong summarises as 'harmony of heaven and humankind', were key questions not only for Chinese scholars, but also for ecological philosophy internationally.…”

Section: Environmental Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

History for the Anthropocene

Robin

Steffen

2007

History Compass

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Global history has become the business of more than just historians. This paper explores the history of scientific historiography, particularly a recent initiative of the Global Change community to write an Integrated History and future Of People on Earth (IHOPE). A new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, has been declared, reflecting the scientific fact that anthropogenic change is now shaping planetary systems. Describing changes to the Earth system over time demands understanding of the history of the biophysical factors, the human factors and their integration. While global warming has motivated the recent initiative to write global history, the global atomic era also provided an incentive for scientists to write global history, as was revealed in the 1940s UNESCO initiatives for a Scientific and Cultural History of Mankind and an International Union for the History of Science. We review recent developments in world and environmental historiography, and popular ‘millennial’ projects, such as the Clock of the Long Now, to identify potential common interests between historians and non‐historians writing world history at very different scales, and for different audiences.

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Section: Environmental Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

History for the Anthropocene

Robin

Steffen

2007

History Compass

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“…Documentation from Southern Africa includes persuasive commentaries on the interplay between imperial, American and local influences. Conservationism's broader African legacy is a demanding compound of persistent ambivalences, hot rejections, impenetrable ambiguities and heroic endeavour which continues to defy succinct description (Conte, 1999; McCann, 1999; Carruthers, 2004). For instance, incremental entanglements were aggravated by official spins on the battle with human and animal diseases – associated deforestation and resettlement programmes brought stark environmental change and deeply resented social deformation.…”

Section: South African Initiativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Empire Meets the New Deal: Interwar Encounters in Conservation and Regional Planning

Powell¹

2005

Geographical Research

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British imperial and American experiences in conservation and planning are providing fresh interdisciplinary challenges for university teaching and research. The Roosevelt administration's ‘New Deal’ included government‐sponsored interventions in soil erosion and water management and sophisticated regional development agendas. Reviewing samples of the latter areas of concern, this article explores the proposition that, although the British Empire was scarcely bereft of comparable interwar programmes and was becoming somewhat preoccupied with centrifugal tendencies, persistent porosity, exhausting struggles with postwar reconstruction, and comprehensive economic depression, New Deal evangelism was in fact variously anticipated, harnessed, challenged and ignored. A discussion of widely separated national and regional examples locates a layered interplay between uneven imperial and US pulsations, independent local manoeuvres, and critical inputs from key individual agents. The most important filters included the presence of comparatively robust bureaucratic infrastructures and the cultivation of international relationships by scientists and technologists. Encounters with convergent revisionism suggest cautionary leads for students, researchers and teachers alike. Reconstructions of selected contexts underline the presence of familiar posturing, opportunism, and astute patriotic deployment during the emergence of modern styles of globalization.

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“…Although this is contested, the stereotypes of differences are reinforced about the continent and its people. Africa has always been assertive in many ways, from contesting slavery and colonialism to economic and international political assertiveness through the colonial and now post‐colonial periods (Carruthers ). Legacies of this assertiveness can be discerned to include symbols of African resistance in many cities of the countries on the continent, as well as other cultural artefacts like museums, nationalist symbols, and literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Appreciating the heterogeneity in the unity of Africa: A socio‐ecological perspective on Africa's geographies

Lwasa

2019

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

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The African continent is known by various metaphors and geographies, but for many there are also unknowns about the continent. Geopolitically, Africa is a continent that is considered remote—an economically emerging continent seen as entangled in persistent challenges of wars, political dictatorship, poverty, disease, and more recently migration. Given these predispositions it is typical to stereotype events, practice, and behaviour as “African.” There is, however, now recognition of the continent as emerging economic power house. But unpacking the diversity of Africa reveals a huge potential with respect to resource endowments, diversity of ecology, socio‐cultural economic advancement, politics, language, and demographics. Colonial history coupled with traditional Africa shaped the geopolitical boundaries that have added to the confusion about this massive and diverse continent. Intellectual discourses either amplify the differences due to specificities of geographical focus or generalizations such as the contested notion of “African.” However, using socio‐ecological lenses, Africa is unified by these very differences in addition to being a massive landmass with several big and small island states. Appreciating these differences is useful to understanding the observed patterns of social, economic, and political systems that unify the continent. This paper illustrates the notion of “African” to describe the heterogeneous nature of a “unified” continent. Some illustrative examples between Africa and other continents are used.

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Africa: Histories, Ecologies and Societies

Cited by 16 publications

References 65 publications

History for the Anthropocene

History for the Anthropocene

The Empire Meets the New Deal: Interwar Encounters in Conservation and Regional Planning

Appreciating the heterogeneity in the unity of Africa: A socio‐ecological perspective on Africa's geographies

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