Description
Book SynopsisThe Contested Floodplain tells the story of institutional changes in the management of common pool resources (pasture, wildlife, and fisheries) among Ila and Balundwe agro-pastoralists and Batwa fishermen in the Kafue Flats, in southern Zambia. It explains how and why a once rich floodplain area, managed under local common property regimes, becomes a poor man's place and a degraded resource area. Based on social anthropological field research, the book explains how well working institutions in the past, regulating communal access to resources, have turned into state property and open access or privatization. As a basis for analysis, the author uses Elinor Ostrom's design principles for well working institutions and the approach of the New Institutionalism by Jean Ensminger. The latter approach focuses on external factors and change in relative prices. It explains how local actors face changing bargaining power and use different ideologies to legitimize and shape resource use regulation
Trade ReviewEnvironmental management in Africa suffers from a dearth of deep scholarly study. Fusing Elinor Ostrom's institutional analysis, Fikret Berkes's "traditional ecological knowledge," and Jean Ensminger's theories in economic anthropology, Haller (anthropology, Univ. of Berne, Switzerland) seeks to explain why common pool resources in central Zambia are under threat of overuse and mismanagement. He presents lengthy introductions on the ecology, the people, and the history of the area before moving into the heart of his analysis. This is important, as his analysis portrays a complex web of power structures, authority figures, and ideology. Without the first several chapters, the reader would be easily lost. Fortunately, Haller's mixed qualitative and quantitative approach to moving through various levels of power successfully shows how a changing economy, legal regimes, and the environment itself threaten local management strategies. The book is written at an advanced level. Haller covers an important topic and presents a strong case study. Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *
Haller’s extensive examination of this particular floodplain in Central Africa offers a much needed longitudinal understanding of the history of social, environmental, and institutional change leading up to the current problems of sustainable common pool resource use. . . .Taken together, Haller’s ethnography, framed with current theoretical discussion, results in a robust and important monograph in political-ecology, of which ecological and economic anthropologists, Africanists, environmental scientists, and historians should take note. . . .The ethnographic data and detail in this volume are profound, and they stand equally alongside other classics in anthropology. . . .The theoretical framework advances our understanding of institutional change, illustrated so well through this case study, and consequently stands as an example of well-integrated theory and grounded ethnography. . . .The Contested Floodplain stands as a solid scientific endeavor. * Current Anthropology *
The Contested Floodplain is the most detailed analysis to date of the impact of external institutional changes on the population and environment of an African floodplain. Starting with analysis of the cultural and socio-economic systems of pre-colonial herders, fishers, and farmers living on Zambia’s Kafue Flats, Tobias Haller explains institutional impacts associated with British and Zambian governance that converted previously viable systems of limited access commons into a degraded open access system. -- Thayer Scudder, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, California Institute Of Technology
Table of ContentsForeword: by Elizabeth Colson, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley Chapter 1: Introduction: the role of institutions in the management of common pool resources Chapter 2: The Kafue Flats Ecosystem: A rich floodplain in a semi-arid environment Chapter 3: A “fierce” people. Ethnography of the Ila, Balundwe and Batwa Chapter 4: From Lozi raids to ineffective state control: the political economy of Southern Province and Zambia Chapter 5: Transformations in a pastoral commons: Institutional change of cattle and pasture management Chapter 6: We will throw the Lozi into the water“ Institutional change and conflict in the fisheries Chapter 7: From hunting to poaching: Wildlife management from Common Property to de facto open access Chapter 8: Irrigation for the poor – cattle for the rich? Contesting the institutional design of the floodplain Conclusions: Institutional change, bargaining power and conflicts
