This book is the first about private wildlife conservation and community involvement in Zimbabwe. It is a case study based on ethnographic fieldwork done in 1998. It focuses on the joint venture between a private wildlife conservation initiative, the Save Valley Conservancy, and its surrounding communities in terms of reciprocal exchange and the land question. It makes clear, amongst other things, that the current political tragedy in Zimbabwe about land did not start when Mugabe lost the referendum in February 2000. The book tries to offer an explanation for the unforgiving route that Mugabe...

This book describes efforts by the Zimbabwean government to enforce land reforms on African farmers in northern Zimbabwe. These efforts compounded rather than alleviated the problem of land scarcity for black small-scale farmers, a problem government now allegedly seeks to redress through invasions of white-owned farms. The book describes the similarities between the post-Independence land reforms and those attempted by the Rhodesian regime. The land reforms in Dande rendered a considerable number of farmers officially landless. The book describes the resulting internal conflicts over land...

This book is about urban agriculture as a source of livelihood for urban dwellers in Nakuru town, Kenya. Various aspects of the phenomenon are discussed, with particular emphasis on its importance for the urban poor.

Ordinary social violence, - i.e. recurrent mental or physical aggression occurring between closely related people - structures social relationships in Africa, and in the world. Studies of violence in Africa often refer to ethnic wars and explicit conflicts and do not enter the hidden domain of violence that this book reveals through in-depth anthropological studies from different parts and contexts in Africa. Ordinary violence has its distinctive forms embedded in specific histories and cultures. It is gendered, implicates witchcraft accusations, varies in rural and urban contexts, relates to...

Since the early nineteenth century, the things which Black South Africans have had in their homes have changed completely. They have adopted things like tables, chairs, knives, forks, spoons, plates, cups and saucers, iron pots, beds, blankets, European clothing, and later electronic apparatus. Thus they claimed modernity, respectability and political inclusion. This book is the first systematic analysis of this development. It argues that the desire to possess such goods formed a major part of the drive behind the anti-apartheid struggle, and that the demand to consume has significantly...