From Enslavement to Environmentalism

From Enslavement to Environmentalism PDF Author: David McDermott Hughes
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800518
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

From Enslavement to Environmentalism

From Enslavement to Environmentalism PDF Author: David McDermott Hughes
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800518
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Mapping Water in Dominica

Mapping Water in Dominica PDF Author: Mark W. Hauser
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295748737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Get Book Here

Book Description
Open access edition: DOI 10.6069/ 9780295748733 Dominica, a place once described as “Nature’s Island,” was rich in biodiversity and seemingly abundant water, but in the eighteenth century a brief, failed attempt by colonial administrators to replace cultivation of varied plant species with sugarcane caused widespread ecological and social disruption. Illustrating how deeply intertwined plantation slavery was with the environmental devastation it caused, Mapping Water in Dominica situates the social lives of eighteenth-century enslaved laborers in the natural history of two Dominican enclaves. Mark Hauser draws on archaeological and archival history from Dominica to reconstruct the changing ways that enslaved people interacted with water and exposes crucial pieces of Dominica’s colonial history that have been omitted from official documents. The archaeological record—which preserves traces of slave households, waterways, boiling houses, mills, and vessels for storing water—reveals changes in political authority and in how social relations were mediated through the environment. Plantation monoculture, which depended on both slavery and an abundant supply of water, worked through the environment to create predicaments around scarcity, mobility, and belonging whose resolution was a matter of life and death. In following the vestiges of these struggles, this investigation documents a valuable example of an environmental challenge centered around insufficient water. Mapping Water in Dominica is available in an open access edition through the Sustainable History Monograph Pilot, thanks to the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Northwestern University Libraries.

Scars on the Land

Scars on the Land PDF Author: David Silkenat
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780197564226
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
They worked Virginia's tobacco fields, South Carolina's rice marshes, and the Black Belt's cotton plantations. Wherever they lived, enslaved people found their lives indelibly shaped by the Southern environment. By day, they plucked worms and insects from the crops, trod barefoot in the mud as they hoed rice fields, and endured the sun and humidity as they planted and harvested the fields. By night, they clandestinely took to the woods and swamps to trap opossums and turtles, to visit relatives living on adjacent plantations, and at times to escape slave patrols and escape to freedom. Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce. They saw the landscape as disposable, relocating to more fertile prospects once they had leached the soils and cut down the forests. On the leading edge of the frontier, slavery laid waste to fragile ecosystems, draining swamps, clearing forests to plant crops and fuel steamships, and introducing devastating invasive species. On its trailing edge, slavery left eroded hillsides, rivers clogged with sterile soil, and the extinction of native species. While environmental destruction fueled slavery's expansion, no environment could long survive intensive slave labor. The scars manifested themselves in different ways, but the land too fell victim to the slave owner's lash. Although typically treated separately, slavery and the environment naturally intersect in complex and powerful ways, leaving lasting effects from the period of emancipation through modern-day reckonings with racial justice.

Decolonial Ecology

Decolonial Ecology PDF Author: Malcom Ferdinand
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509546243
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
The world is in the midst of a storm that has shaped the history of modernity along a double fracture: on the one hand, an environmental fracture driven by a technocratic and capitalist civilization that led to the ongoing devastation of the Earth’s ecosystems and its human and non-human communities and, on the other, a colonial fracture instilled by Western colonization and imperialism that resulted in racial slavery and the domination of indigenous peoples and women in particular. In this important new book, Malcom Ferdinand challenges this double fracture, thinking from the Caribbean world. Here, the slave ship reveals the inequalities that continue during the storm: some are shackled inside the hold and even thrown overboard at the first gusts of wind. Drawing on empirical and theoretical work in the Caribbean, Ferdinand conceptualizes a decolonial ecology that holds protecting the environment together with the political struggles against (post)colonial domination, structural racism, and misogynistic practices. Facing the storm, this book is an invitation to build a world-ship where humans and non-humans can live together on a bridge of justice and shape a common world. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in environmental humanities and Latin American and Caribbean studies, as well as anyone interested in ecology, slavery, and (de)colonization.

Exchanging Our Country Marks

Exchanging Our Country Marks PDF Author: Michael A. Gomez
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807861715
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Get Book Here

Book Description
The transatlantic slave trade brought individuals from diverse African regions and cultures to a common destiny in the American South. In this comprehensive study, Michael Gomez establishes tangible links between the African American community and its African origins and traces the process by which African populations exchanged their distinct ethnic identities for one defined primarily by the conception of race. He examines transformations in the politics, social structures, and religions of slave populations through 1830, by which time the contours of a new African American identity had begun to emerge. After discussing specific ethnic groups in Africa, Gomez follows their movement to North America, where they tended to be amassed in recognizable concentrations within individual colonies (and, later, states). For this reason, he argues, it is possible to identify particular ethnic cultural influences and ensuing social formations that heretofore have been considered unrecoverable. Using sources pertaining to the African continent as well as runaway slave advertisements, ex-slave narratives, and folklore, Gomez reveals concrete and specific links between particular African populations and their North American progeny, thereby shedding new light on subsequent African American social formation.

Blood and Earth

Blood and Earth PDF Author: Kevin Bales
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0812995775
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
For readers of such crusading works of nonfiction as Katherine Boo’s Beyond the Beautiful Forevers and Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains comes a powerful and captivating examination of two entwined global crises: environmental destruction and human trafficking—and an inspiring, bold plan for how we can solve them. A leading expert on modern-day slavery, Kevin Bales has traveled to some of the world’s most dangerous places documenting and battling human trafficking. In the course of his reporting, Bales began to notice a pattern emerging: Where slavery existed, so did massive, unchecked environmental destruction. But why? Bales set off to find the answer in a fascinating and moving journey that took him into the lives of modern-day slaves and along a supply chain that leads directly to the cellphones in our pockets. What he discovered is that even as it destroys individuals, families, and communities, new forms of slavery that proliferate in the world’s lawless zones also pose a grave threat to the environment. Simply put, modern-day slavery is destroying the planet. The product of seven years of travel and research, Blood and Earth brings us dramatic stories from the world’s most beautiful and tragic places, the environmental and human-rights hotspots where this crisis is concentrated. But it also tells the stories of some of the most common products we all consume—from computers to shrimp to jewelry—whose origins are found in these same places. Blood and Earth calls on us to recognize the grievous harm we have done to one another, put an end to it, and recommit to repairing the world. This is a clear-eyed and inspiring book that suggests how we can begin the work of healing humanity and the planet we share. Praise for Blood and Earth “A heart-wrenching narrative . . . Weaving together interviews, history, and statistics, the author shines a light on how the poverty, chaos, wars, and government corruption create the perfect storm where slavery flourishes and environmental destruction follows. . . . A clear-eyed account of man’s inhumanity to man and Earth. Read it to get informed, and then take action.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “[An] exposé of the global economy’s ‘deadly dance’ between slavery and environmental disaster . . . Based on extensive travels through eastern Congo’s mineral mines, Bangladeshi fisheries, Ghanian gold mines, and Brazilian forests, Bales reveals the appalling truth in graphic detail. . . . Readers will be deeply disturbed to learn how the links connecting slavery, environmental issues, and modern convenience are forged.”—Publishers Weekly “This well-researched and vivid book studies the connection between slavery and environmental destruction, and what it will take to end both.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review) “This is a remarkable book, demonstrating once more the deep links between the ongoing degradation of the planet and the ongoing degradation of its most vulnerable people. It’s a bracing reminder that a mentality that allows throwaway people also allows a throwaway earth.”—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Saltwater Slavery

Saltwater Slavery PDF Author: Stephanie E. Smallwood
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674043770
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
This bold, innovative book promises to radically alter our understanding of the Atlantic slave trade, and the depths of its horrors. Stephanie E. Smallwood offers a penetrating look at the process of enslavement from its African origins through the Middle Passage and into the American slave market. Saltwater Slavery is animated by deep research and gives us a graphic experience of the slave trade from the vantage point of the slaves themselves. The result is both a remarkable transatlantic view of the culture of enslavement, and a painful, intimate vision of the bloody, daily business of the slave trade.

Epidemics and Enslavement

Epidemics and Enslavement PDF Author: Paul Kelton
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803215576
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

Get Book Here

Book Description
Tracing the pathology of early European encounters with Native peoples of the Southeast, this work concludes that, while indigenous peoples suffered from an array of ailments before contact, Natives had their most significant experience with new germs long after initial contacts in the sixteenth century.

Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean

Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean PDF Author: James A. Delle
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 1683403177
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Get Book Here

Book Description
While previous research on household archaeology in the colonial Caribbean has drawn heavily on artifact analysis, this volume provides the first in-depth examination of the architecture of slave housing during this period. It examines the considerations that went into constructing and inhabiting living spaces for the enslaved and reveals the diversity of people and practices in these settings. Contributors present case studies using written descriptions, period illustrations, and standing architecture, in addition to archaeological evidence to illustrate the wide variety of built environments for enslaved populations in places including Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the islands of the Lesser Antilles. They investigate how the enslaved defined their social positions and identities through house, yard, and garden space; they explore what daily life was like for slaves on military compounds; they compare the spatial arrangements of slave villages on plantations based on type of labor; and they show how the style of traditional laborer houses became a form of vernacular architecture still in use today. This volume expands our understanding of the wide range of enslaved experiences across British, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies. Contributors: Elizabeth C. Clay | James A. Delle | Todd M. Ahlman | Marco Meniketti | Kenneth Kelly | Hayden Bassett | James A. Delle | Kristen R. Fellows | Allan D. Meyers | Elizabeth C. Clay | Alicia Odewale | Meredith D. Hardy | Zachary J. M. Beier | Mark W. Hauser A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Historical Dictionary of Environmentalism

Historical Dictionary of Environmentalism PDF Author: Peter Dauvergne
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442269618
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 391

Get Book Here

Book Description
To capture the diversity within environmentalism, this dictionary takes a global tack with a focus on ideas, events, institutions, initiatives, and green movements since the 1960s. It strives to avoid a common error in many histories of environmentalism: to exaggerate the input of the wealthy countries of Europe and North America and understate the influence of Africa, Asia, South and Central America, and the Polar Regions. It aims as well for a more comprehensive analysis than most histories of the modern environmental movement, understanding environmentalism as emerging not only from grassroots and formal nongovernmental associations, but also from corporate, governmental, and intergovernmental organizations and initiatives. This assumes the ideas and energy infusing environmentalism with political purpose arise from hundreds of thousands of sources: from corporate boardrooms to bureaucratic policies to international negotiations to activists. Thus, environmentalists are not only indigenous people blocking a logging road, Greenpeace activists protesting a seal hunt, or green candidates contesting an election; an equal or larger number of environmentalists are working within the Japanese bureaucracy to implement environmental policies, within the World Bank to assess the environmental impacts of loans, within Wal-Mart to green its purchasing practices, or within intergovernmental forums to negotiate international environmental agreements. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Environmentalism contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important events, issues, organizations, ideas, and people shaping the direction of environmentalism worldwide. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about environmentalism.