From enslavement to environmentalism : politics on a Southern African frontier

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Title:

From enslavement to environmentalism : politics on a Southern African frontier

Author:

Hughes, David McDermott.

ISBN:

9780295985909

Personal Author:

Hughes, David McDermott.

Publication Information:

Seattle : University of Washington Press, c2006.

Physical Description:

xvii, 285 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.

Series:

Culture, place, and nature

Series Title:

Culture, place, and nature

General Note:

Formerly CIP.

Contents:

Introduction : power on African frontiers -- Compulsory labor and unclaimed land in Gogoi, Mozambique, 1862-1992 -- From clientship to land-grabbing in Vhimba, Zimbabwe, 1893-1990 -- Refugees, squatters, and the politics of land allocation in Vhimba -- Community forestry as land-grabbing in Vhimba -- Expatriate loggers and mapmakers in Gogoi -- Open native reserves or none? -- In conclusion, three liberal projects reassessed.

Abstract:

"This book 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 to this day, as neoliberal developers commoditize the lands of African peasants in the name of conservation and economic progress."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject Term:

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

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

Land use -- Mozambique -- Gogói -- History.

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

Geographic Term:

Vhimba (Zimbabwe) -- Colonization.

Gogói (Mozambique) -- Colonization.

Electronic Access:

Table of contents only http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/ecip061/2005027615.html

Copies:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
Searching... 1:IIEMSA	1:GEN-BOOK	33168025409646	333.3096891 H893F 2006	2	Searching... Unknown

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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.