Bush Base Forest Farm

Taking a unique anthropological apprach, Bush Base: Forest Farm explores the management of resources in third would development programmes. The contributors, all distinguished anthropologists with practical experience of development projects, focus on the role of human cultural imagination in the use of environmental resources. They challenge the traditional sharp distinction between human settlement and natual environment (farm or camp, forest or bush), and argue that development programmes should place at their centre an appreciation of people's cosmologies and cultural understandings.

Development' is clearly a contentious concept. It is common knowledge that there is frequently a troubling divide between what Western developers think development entails and how those people affected understand the ensuing processes. By treating development as problematic, this book seeks to generate new insights into the relationships between the various parties involved and to enhance understanding of the ways in which particular 'discourses of development' are generated. Authors raise provocative questions about the relationship of politics, power, ideology and rhetoric to the institutional practice of development. These hegemonic considerations are shown to have a profound effect on the 'culture of aid' and the interface between development personnel and those whom development is supposed to benefit.

How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture?- What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development?Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes:- nature as a cultural construction;- the cultural management of the environment; and- relations between plants, animals and humans.

This title was first published in 2000. This study looks at the contestation of forestry in West Africa, taking into account historical considerations, cultural negotiations and environmental issues.

How does everyday life change when electricity becomes available to a group of people for the first time? Why do some groups tend to embrace this icon of development while other groups actively fight against it? This book examines the effects of electricity’s arrival in an African, rural community. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Zanzibar at different points in time, the author provides a compelling account of the social implications in question. The rhythm of life changes and life is speeding up. Sexuality and marriage patterns are affected. And a range of social relations, e.g. between generations and genders, as well as relations between human beings and spirits, become modified. Despite men and women’s general appreciation of the new services electricity provides, new dilemmas emerge. By using electricity as a guide through the social landscape, the particularities of social and cultural life in this region emerge. Simultaneously, the book invites readers to understand the ways that electricity affects and becomes implicated in our everyday life.

Located in a wide spectrum of current research and practice, from analyses of green ideology and imagery, enviromental law and policy, and local enviromental activism in the West to ethnographic studies of relationships between humans and their enviroments in hunter/gatherer societies, Enviromentalism: The View from Anthropology offers an original perspective on what is probably the best-known issue of the late twentieth century. It will be particularly useful to all social scientists interested in environmentalism and human ecology, to environmental policy-makers and to undergraduates, lecturers and researchers in social anthropology, development studies and sociology.

This book explores the relationships between theory, policy and practice in early childhood services. Although primarily focused on the UK, it draws on contributions from Europe and further afield to explore the strengths and limitations of present practices and suggests ways in which new initiatives might be developed.

The "extensive wilderness" of Zambia’s central Luangwa Valley is the homeland of the Valley Bisa whose cultural practices have enriched this environment for centuries. Beginning with the intrusions of warlords and later British colonials, successive generations have experienced the callousness and challenges of colonialism. Their homeland, a slender corridor surrounded by three national parks and an escarpment, is a microcosm of the political, economic and cultural battlefields surrounding most African protected areas today. The story of the Valley Bisa diverges from the myths that conservationists, administrators, and philanthropists, tell about Africa’s environmental and wildlife crises.