This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions that govern land access are fundamental in affecting the distribution of wealth in a society. Property rights matter because they affect political development and economic growth. Development economists and policy makers often work on the assumption that property rights evolve from collective to more specified systems. The author has set out to test this theory by using the evidence available in the special cases of Ethiopia and Eritrea....
This book looks at the microfoundations of poverty in the developing world and in particular those present in property rights. The local institutions ...
This long-awaited book is a considerable revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more widely, colonialism in Africa. There is a substantial amount of new work and this is interlocked with shared areas of concern that the authors have been exploring since 1976. The authors investigate major themes. These include the conquest origins and subsequent development of the colonial state, the contradictory social forces that articulated African societies to European capitalism, and the creation of new political communities and changing meanings of ethnicity in Africa,...
This long-awaited book is a considerable revision in the understanding of the history of colonial Kenya and, more widely, colonialism in Africa. There...
Kenya was where the term informal sector was first used in 1971. During the 1980s the term jua kali in Swahili hot sun came to be used of the informal sector artisans, such as carworkers and metalworkers, who were working under the hot sun because of a lack of premises. Gradually it came to refer to anybody in self-employment. And in 1988 the government set up the Jua Kali Development Programme. In this remarkable book Kenneth King brings the subject alive through the photographs and life histories of jua kali people. He has also revisited, twenty years later, many of the artisans...
Kenya was where the term informal sector was first used in 1971. During the 1980s the term jua kali in Swahili hot sun came to be used of the infor...
In 1991 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years later after a referendum in May 1993. It was the climax of a thirty-year struggle, though the EPLF itself was formed only in the early 1970s. From the beginning, Eritrean nationalism was divided. Ethiopia's appeal to a joint Christian imperial past alienated the Muslim pastoral lowland people in the areas where Eritrean nationalism first appeared. It was not until the early 1970s that the Christian elements of the population finally joined the...
In 1991 the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took over Asmara and completed the liberation of Eritrea; formal independence came two years lat...
CONVENTIONAL HISTORY ASSUMES THAT THE RISE of the Steamship trade killed off the Indian Ocean dhow trade in the twentieth century. Erik Gilbert argues that the dhow economy played a major role in shaping the economic and social life of colonial Zanzibar. Dhows, and the regional trade they fostered, allowed a class of indigenous entrepreneurs to thrive in Zanzibar. These entrepreneurs, whose economic interests stretched across continents and colonial boundaries, were able to thwart or shape many of the colonial state's pet projects. Not only did steamships fail to drive out indigenous sailing...
CONVENTIONAL HISTORY ASSUMES THAT THE RISE of the Steamship trade killed off the Indian Ocean dhow trade in the twentieth century. Erik Gilbert argues...
ISLANDS OF INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE are areas of local cultivation surrounded by low-density livestock herders or extensive cultivators. Along the line of the East Africa Rift Valley, and in the highlands on either side, communities of considerable historical depth have developed highly specialized agricultural regimes, employing such labor-intensive devices as furrow irrigation, hillside terracing, and stall-feeding of cattle. This collection continues the advance in the understanding of African agricultural practices through the combination of geographical, ethnographic, and archaeological...
ISLANDS OF INTENSIVE AGRICULTURE are areas of local cultivation surrounded by low-density livestock herders or extensive cultivators. Along the line o...
Since 1991, Ethiopia has gone further than any other country in using ethnicity as the fundamental organizing principle of a federal system of government. And yet this pioneering experiment in ethnic federalism has been largely ignored in the growing literature on democratization and ethnicity in Africa and on the accommodation of ethnic diversity in democratic states. "Ethnic Federalism" brings a much-needed comparative dimension to the discussion of this experiment in Ethiopia. "Ethnic Federalism" closely examines aspects of the Ethiopean case and asks why the use ofterritorial...
Since 1991, Ethiopia has gone further than any other country in using ethnicity as the fundamental organizing principle of a federal system of governm...
What do ordinary women in an African city do in the face of "serious enough" infections in themselves and signs of acute illness in their young children? How do they manage? What does it take to get by? How do they maintain the wellbeing of the household in a setting without what would be considered as basic health provision in an American or European city? Professor Wallman focuses on women in a densely-populated part of Kampala called Kamwokya. With the help of a team of Ugandans and non-Ugandans, a vivid picture emerges, enhanced by color photographs, sketches and maps. Women are...
What do ordinary women in an African city do in the face of "serious enough" infections in themselves and signs of acute illness in their young childr...
"Kiswahili" has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa. Yet there can be few historic peoples whose identity is as elusive as that of the Swahili. Some have described themselves as Arabs, as Persians or even, in one place, as Portuguese. It is doubtful whether, even today, most of the people about whom this book is written would unhesitatingly and in all contexts accept the name Swahili. This book was central to the thought and lifework of the late James de Vere Allen. It is his major study of the origin of the Swahili and of their cultural identity. He focuses on how the African...
"Kiswahili" has become the lingua franca of eastern Africa. Yet there can be few historic peoples whose identity is as elusive as that of the Swahili....
This pioneering book was one of the first to place the history of East Africa within the context of the environment. It has been used continuously for student teaching. It is now reissued with an introduction placing it within the debate which has developed on the subject; there is also an updated bibliography. The book puts people at the centre of events. It thus serves as a modification to nationalist history with its emphasis on leaders. It presents environmental factors which had been underestimated; for instance, it points to the critical importance of the rinderpest outbreak. Helge...
This pioneering book was one of the first to place the history of East Africa within the context of the environment. It has been used continuously for...
