Description
Book SynopsisThis text examines community-based natural resource management in Africa.This book reveals a dynamic picture of African rural society in which production patterns change rapidly in response to market opportunities. These changes are driven largely by local farmers' initiatives, and are often associatedwith an increase in market-based access to land that is evident under both customary and private land tenure. North America: Africa World Press
Trade ReviewWhile ecological critics have gained something of an upper hand in this debate of late, the editors of African Enclosures have given the pendulum a huge shove in the opposite direction. For Philip Woodhouse, Henry Bernstein and David Hulme, the most critical determinant of environmental change in Africa is the creeping commoditization of land and water resources ... this unfashionable but cogent and vigorously argued, structuralist position marks African Enclosures as a valuable and timely contribution to political ecology and a range of cognate fields. It should be widely read by those who share its authors' interest in returning political ecology to its political-economic roots. - -- Richard A. Schroeder * AFRICAN AFFAIRS *
A theoretical, and important and revealing book. * SPORE *
Customary tenure provides the best protection for the land claims of poorer people. True or false? In all four areas covered by this research programme on land rights and governance, customary authority to control land remains very important, despite the state's attempts to impose other forms of governance. And it demonstrates that, as land becomes scarcer and more valuable, such customary systems provide no guarantee of equitable access for poor, vulnerable groups ...This book combines effectively a series of detailed case studies and broader discussion which places the relevance of field-level material in a larger discussion of environmental management, land rights and policy. It will be essential reading for many courses on African development at undergraduate and Master's level. - -- Camilla Toulmin * AFRICA *
Table of ContentsFrom commons to enclosures? Philip Woodhouse, Henry Bernstein, David Hulme; a very decentralized development - exploiting a new wetland in the Sourou Valley, Mali, Philip Woodhouse, Pippa Chenevix-Trench, Martin Tessougue; uncommon property - the scramble for wetland in Southern Kenya, Christopher Southgate, David Hulme; modernizing communal lands - evolving resource use in the Shoshong Hills, Botswana, Andrew Clayton, Philip Woodhouse; the Mutale River Valley - an apartheid oasis, Edward Lahiff; whose environments? whose livelihoods, Henry Bernstein, Philip Woodhouse, David Hulme.
