Environmental infrastructure in African history : examining the myth of natural resource management in Namibia / Emmanuel Kreike, Princeton University.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kreike, Emmanuel, 1959- author.

Series:

Studies in environment and history.

Studies in environment and history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Human ecology--Namibia--History.

Human ecology.

Natural resources--Namibia--Management--History.

Natural resources.

Namibia--Environmental conditions.

Namibia.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 242 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Environmental Infrastructure in African History offers a new approach for analyzing and narrating environmental change. Environmental change conventionally is understood as occurring in a linear fashion, moving from a state of more nature to a state of less nature and more culture. In this model, non-Western and pre-modern societies live off natural resources, whereas more modern societies rely on artifact, or nature that is transformed and domesticated through science and technology into culture. In contrast, Emmanuel Kreike argues that both non-Western and pre-modern societies inhabit a dynamic middle ground between nature and culture. He asserts that humans - in collaboration with plants, animals, and other animate and inanimate forces - create environmental infrastructure that constantly is remade and re-imagined in the face of ongoing processes of change.

Contents:

1. The ends of nature and culture

2. Architects of nature

3. Dark earths : field and farm environmental infrastructure

4. Water and woodland harvesting : village environmental infrastructure

5. Browsing and burning regimes : bushland savanna as environmental infrastructure

6. Valuing environmental infrastructure and the myth of natural resource management

7. Science and the failure to conquer nature : environing and the modern west

Conclusion.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-107-23400-X

1-107-32657-5

1-107-33550-7

1-107-33231-1

1-107-33301-6

1-107-33467-5

1-107-33633-3

1-139-02612-7

OCLC:

840258584