Natures Of Africa

One of the first edited volumes to encompass transdisciplinary approaches to a number of cultural forms, including fiction, non-fiction, oral expression and digital media. Environmental and animal studies are rapidly growing areas of interest across a number of disciplines. Natures of Africa is one of the first edited volumes which encompasses transdisciplinary approaches to a number of cultural forms, including fiction, non-fiction, oral expression and digital media. The volume features new research from East Africa and Zimbabwe, as well as the ecocritical and eco-activist 'powerhouses' of Nigeria and South Africa. The chapters engage one another conceptually and epistemologically without an enforced consensus of approach. In their conversation with dominant ideas about nature and animals, they reveal unexpected insights into forms of cultural expression of local communities in Africa. The analyses explore different apprehensions of the connections between humans, animals and the environment, and suggest alternative ways of addressing the challenges facing the continent. These include the problems of global warming, desertification, floods, animal extinctions and environmental destruction attendant upon fossil fuel extraction. There are few books that show how nature in Africa is represented, celebrated, mourned or commoditised. Natures of Africa weaves together studies of narratives - from folklore, travel writing, novels and popular songs - with the insights of poetry and contemporary reflections of Africa on the worldwide web. The chapters test disciplinary and conceptual boundaries, highlighting the ways in which the environmental concerns of African communities cannot be disentangled from social, cultural and political questions. This volume draws on and will appeal to scholars and teachers of oral tradition and indigenous cultures, literature, religion, sociology and anthropology, environmental and animal studies, as well as media and digital cultures in an African context.

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "African Nature Notes and Reminiscences" by Frederick Courteney Selous. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

This book brings together recent and ongoing empirical studies to examine two relational kinds of politics, namely, the politics of nature, i.e. how nature conservation projects are sites on which power relations play out, and the politics of the scientific study of nature. These are discussed in their historical and present contexts, and at specific sites on which particular human-environment relations are forged or contested. This spatio-temporal juxtaposition is lacking in current research on political ecology while the politics of science appears marginal to critical scholarship on social nature. Specifically, the book examines power relations in nature-related activities, demonstrates conditions under which nature and science are politicised, and also accounts for political interests and struggles over nature in its various forms. The ecological, socio-political and economic dimensions of nature cannot be ignored when dealing with present-day environmental issues. Nature conservation regulations are concerned with the management of flora and fauna as much as with humans. Various chapters in the book pay attention to the ways in which nature, science and politics are interrelated and also co-constitutive of each other. They highlight that power relations are naturalised through science and science-related institutions and projects such as museums, botanical gardens, wetlands, parks and nature reserves.

Originally published in hardcover in 1998.

The influence of human economies and cultures on ecosystems is particularly striking in the new worlds into which Europeans have expanded over the past five hundred years. Using a comparative and multidisciplinary approach, Beinart and Coates examine this neglected aspect of the history of settler incursion and dominance in two frontier nations, the USA and South Africa. They also seek to explain change in indigenous ideas and practices towards the environment, and discuss the rise of popular environmentalism up to the present day.

"In treeless deserts again within the tropics, where the rainfall is very scanty and the climate excessively hot and dry, with intense sunlight throughout the year, all resident living organisms, mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects, are found to be of a dull coloration which harmonises in the most wonderful way with the sandy or stony soil on which they live. It is also very often the case that animals which live in forests where the foliage is not too dense to allow the sun to penetrate are spotted or striped, whilst those which live in really thick jungle or amongst deep gloomy ravines are of a uniform dark coloration. Now a most interesting question arises as to the true causes which have brought about the extraordinary variations of colour to be seen in living organisms inhabiting different parts of the world."African Nature Notes and Reminiscences is a classic literature about Africa written by the British explorer and conservationist, Frederick Courteney Selous.

Selous was a British explorer, hunter and conservationist famous for his exploits in Southeast Africa. His real-life adventures inspired Rider Haggard's fictional character, Allan Quatermaine. This work, with a foreword by President Roosevelt, was first published in 1908.