Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (African Studies)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 374 pages
• Published by: Cambridge University Press October 28, 1996
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0521564999
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0521564991
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

Product Review
'This is a bold and important book, an analytical tour de force. It mounts a forceful attack against the received wisdom on deforestation and the spread of the desert.' Wendy James and Richard P. Werbner, Amaury Talbot Prize 1997

'Misreading the African Landscape is a powerful and amibtious book which offers a compelling new paradigm of research method and management philosophy.' Journal of African History

'Misreading the African Landscape splendid geography but written by social anthropologists The story that the book tells is fascinating and one that is based on substantive, original field investigation.'

'Misreading the African Landscape is a powerful and ambitious book which offers a compelling new paradigm of research method and management philosophy No doubt Fairhead and Leach seek to inspire an audience of social scientists and policy specialists - they doubtlessly will do so. Yet, more than anyone, I hope historians will be the ones responding to this superb example of environmental research.' James C. McCann, Journal of African History

'James Fairhead and Melissa Leach provide a splendid example of the new genre in a thoroughly researched and well-presented case study of the 'islands' of Kissidougou.' Land Degradation & Development

Product Description
Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences of a century of erroneous policy. Interweaving historical, social anthropological and ecological data, this unique study advances a novel theoretical framework for ecological anthropology, forcing a radical reexamination of some central tenets in each of these disciplines.

Reader Reviews
When the authors of this paradigm-shifting book traveled to Guinea, they planned to study the social dimensions of what generations of ecologists had perceived as a tragedy of the commons which had led to massive deforestation. What they discovered instead was that generations of ecologists had been reading this African landscape backwards: mistaking forest islands which had been cultivated by precolonial peoples for the last remaining stands of an ancient forest which they imagined had once completely covered the plains. In fact, the area where rural farmer-silviculturalists had been accused of decimating a fictitious oldgrowth forest is too dry to allow tree communities to thrive naturally. Only through human intervention had the grassland been interrupted with small pockets of highly biodiverse forest communities. A landmark work in political ecology, this remarkable study exposes the dark side of environmentalist intervention measures that seek to curb perceived tragedies of the commons by nationalizing the management of natural resources and prohibiting traditional land-use practices that are believed to have adverse consequences. Under the influence of an expert-generated misreading of the local ecological history, the Guinean government had instituted environmental protection measures which penalized the traditional silvicultural practices that the precious forest islands depended upon for survival, on the mistaken supposition that these apparently primitive and abusive practices were a threat to the "last remaining" forests in the district. Pay close attention to the ecological historiography presented in this book, which reveals what shaky data are often used by highly educated environmental scientists to infer the natural and social systems dynamics at work in a given environment. This blows away the widely-held assumption that low-income rural people without college-level environmental educations are the most short-sighted and ignorant decision-makers involved in the management of public forests and other ecologically complex natural resources.