Conservation Song
A history of peasant-state relations and the environment in Malawi, 1860-2000
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6028071 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kate B Showers (University of Sussex, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 111 |
| Issue | 445 |
| Pages | 684-686 |
| Publication date | 2012-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0001-9909 • E-ISSN: 1468-2621 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/afraf/ads048 |
| OpenAlex | W2105301278 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
Bravely rejecting a sharp division between colonial and post-colonial conservation policies, Mulwafu insists that Malawi's current conservation and sustainability debates should be informed by their social and environmental histories. Given the centrality of agriculture to Malawi's economy and the importance of access to soil, water, and forests to rural lives, even consideration of regulation or management has inherent political dimensions. Analysis of interventions is, therefore, crucial to understanding relationships of power and poverty. Mulwafu argues that variations of the same conservation ‘song’ have been sung since the 1920s. The song's narrative has two actors – state and peasantry. Its structure – and that of the book – is call and response. Seven of ten substantive chapters concerning state policy and practice interact with three that analyse rural livelihoods and reaction to state interventions. The first full chapter takes a longue durée approach to the time before the song was sung. Conservation practices were undifferentiated components of an integrated land-use system derived from a belief that human beings are part of the environment, with obligations to respect and protect it. This worldview asserts that catastrophe occurs when humanity is out of balance with nature. Rather than living in romanticized harmony, pre-colonial Malawians produced food and other goods for subsistence and trade, utilizing ecosystem diversity to minimize risk. It was population increase after the 1840s – refugees from Portuguese Mozambique as well as European settlers – that eroded the traditional system's integrity, not inherent weaknesses
Agrarian society · Agriculture · Colonialism · Development economics · Economics · Geography · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Poverty · Sociology · Subsistence agriculture · Sustainability · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Ecology · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Law
Cooking Data Culture and Politics in an African Research World
Assembling Population Data in the Field
Cooking Data Culture and Politics in an African Research World
Environmental Change and African Societies
Repairing rifts or reproducing inequalities? Agroecology, food sovereignty, and gender justice in Malawi
Malawi’s land problem and potential for rural conflict
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2022 (6) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |