The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors to this collection, in contrast, use diverse analytic approaches to demonstrate that pastoralist gender relations are dynamic, relational, historical, and produced through complex local-translocal interactions. Combining theoretically sophisticated analysis with detailed case studies, this collection will appeal to those doing research and teaching in African studies, gender studies, anthropology, and history. Among the topics discussed are...
The dominant trend in pastoralist studies has long assumed that pastoralism and pastoral gender relations are inherently patriarchal. The contributors...
The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along their common borders and spent several hundred million dollars on military equipment. Outside observers found it difficult to evaluate the highly polarized official statements and proclamations issued by the two governments in conflict. Brothers at War presents important, contextual aspects to explain the growing discord between the two formerly friendly governments. It looks at the historical relations between the two countries since the late...
The war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, which began in May 1998, took the world by surprise. During the war, both sides mobilized huge forces along thei...
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...
This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks four questions: - Why was Kenya's welfare operation so idiosyncratic and spartan compared with that of other British colonies? - Why did a transformation from social welfare to community development produce further neglect of the very poor? - Why was there no equivalent to the French tradition of community medicine? - If there was a transformatory element of colonial rule that sought to address poverty, where and why did it fall down? The...
This history of administrative thought and practice in colonial Kenya looks at the ways in which white people tried to engineer social change. It asks...
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...
KHAT IS A QUASI-LEGAL PSYCHOACTIVE SHRUB, produced and marketed in the province of Harerge, Ethiopia, and widely consumed throughout Northeast Africa. In the late nineteenth century the main cash crop of Harerge was coffee. Leaf of Allah examines why farming families shifted from cultivating coffee and food crops to growing khat. Demographic, market, and political factors facilitated the emergence of khat as Harerge's leading agricultural commodity. This development increased the scale of unofficial cross-border trade in consumer goods. This study explores the consequences of the new cash...
KHAT IS A QUASI-LEGAL PSYCHOACTIVE SHRUB, produced and marketed in the province of Harerge, Ethiopia, and widely consumed throughout Northeast Africa....
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...
The Kingdom of Bunyoro's story demonstrates convincingly that environmental change there was not a uniform, statewide process. In one of the first studies of the political ecology of a major African kingdom, Crisis & Decline in Bunyoro addresses state capacity, ideology, and government legitimacy as crucial issues. Shane Doyle particularly focuses on the interplay between levels of environmental activity within a highly stratified society. Political ecology was as much about the differential impact of conflict on society as it was about the uneven extraction and distribution of resources.The...
The Kingdom of Bunyoro's story demonstrates convincingly that environmental change there was not a uniform, statewide process. In one of the first stu...
For centuries, Kenya's game-laden plains and forests were the rewarding hunting grounds of her native African population. Black Poachers, White Hunters traces the history of hunting there in the colonial era, describing the British attempt to impose the practices and values of nineteenth-century European aristocratic hunts. This both created and enforced an image of African inferiority and subordination. Ultimately conservationists came to claim sovereignty over African wildlife, completing the transformation of indigenous hunters into criminal poachers and seeking to eliminate them...
For centuries, Kenya's game-laden plains and forests were the rewarding hunting grounds of her native African population. Black Poachers, White Hun...
