From enslavement to environmentalism : politics on a Southern African frontier / David McDermott Hughes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hughes, David McDermott.

Series:

Culture, place, and nature.

Culture, place, and nature

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Land use--Zimbabwe--Vhimba--History.

Land use.

Land tenure--Zimbabwe--Vhimba--History.

Land tenure.

Land use--Mozambique--Gogói--History.

Land tenure--Mozambique--Gogói--History.

Vhimba (Zimbabwe)--Colonization.

Vhimba (Zimbabwe).

Gogói (Mozambique)--Colonization.

Gogói (Mozambique).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (310 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

From Enslavement to Environmentalism takes a challenging ethnographic and historical look at the politics of eco-development in the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border zone. David Hughes argues that European colonization in southern Africa--essentially an unsuccessful effort to turn the region into another North America or Australia--has profoundly reshaped rural politics and culture and continues to do so, as neoliberal developers commoditize the lands of African peasants in the name of conservation and economic progress.Hughes builds his engaging analysis around a sort of natural experiment: in the past, whites colonized British Zimbabwe but avoided Portuguese Mozambique almost entirely. In Zimbabwe, chiefdoms that had historically focused on controlling people began to follow the English example of consolidating political power by dividing and controlling land. Meanwhile, in Mozambique, Portugal perpetuated traditional practices of recruiting and distributing forced labor as the primary means of securing power. The territory remained unmapped. For almost the entire twentieth century, a sharp disjuncture in the politics of land, leadership, labor, and resource use marked the border zone.In the late 1990s, as white South Africans began to establish timber plantations in Mozambique, that difference began to be effaced. Under the banner of environmentalism and economic progress, tourism firms were allowed to claim peasant farmland. The objectives of liberal conservationists and developers, though high-minded, led them to commoditize ancestral lands. Southern African policymakers supported this new form of colonization as a form of racial integration between white investors and black peasants, paving the way for an ironic and contentious situation in which ethnic tolerance, gentrification, and land-grabbing have gone hand in hand.From Enslavement to Environmentalism engages topics central to current debates in anthropology, resource politics, and development policy, and will be of interest to both regional specialists and generalists.

Contents:

Introduction : power on African frontiers

Colonization, failed and successful

Compulsory labor and unclaimed land in Gogoi, Mozambique, 1862-1992

From clientship to land-grabbing in Vhimba, Zimbabwe, 1893-1990

The border

Refugees, squatters, and the politics of land allocation in Vhimba

Community forestry as land-grabbing in Vhimba

Expatriate loggers and mapmakers in Gogoi

Native questions

Open native reserves or none?

In conclusion, three liberal projects reassessed.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-271) and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN:

9780295800516

0295800518

OCLC:

748551785