Beyond territory and scarcity : exploring conflicts over natural resource management

Abstract

The attainment of sound and sustainable environmental management is one of humanity's greatest challenges this century, particularly in Africa, which is still heavily dependent on the exploitation of natural and agricultural resources and is faced with rapid population growth. Yet, this challenge should not be reduced to Malthusian parameters and the simple question of population growth and failing resources.In this volume, ten anthropologists and geographers critically address traditionalMalthusian discourses in essays that attempt to move "beyond territory andscarcity" by:- Exploring alternatives to the strong natural determinism that reduces natural resource management to questions of territory and scarcity.- Presenting material and methodologies that explore the different contexts in which social and cultural values intervene, and discovering more than 'rational choice' in the agency of individuals.- Examining the relevance of the different conceptions of territory for the ways in which people manage, or attempt to manage, natural resources.- Placing their research within the framework of the developing discussion on policy and politics in natural resource management. The studies are drawn from a range of sub-Saharan African countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Lesotho, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan. CONTENT Introduction. Quentin Gausset and Michael Whyte Land and Labour: Agrarian Change in Post-retrenchment Lesotho. Christian Boehm Social Resilience in African Dryland Livelihoods: Deriving Lessons for Policy. Michael Mortimore The Making of an Environment: Ecological History of the Kapsiki/Higi of North Cameroon and North Eastern Nigeria. Walter van Beek and Sonja Avontuur Agro-pastoral Conflicts in the Tikar Plain (Adamawa, Cameroon). Quentin Gausset Transhumance, Tubes and Telephones: Drought Related Migration as a Process of Innovation. Kristine Juul Understanding Resource Management in Western Sudan: A Critical Look at New Institutional Economics. Leif Manger Within, and Beyond, Territories: A Comparison of Village Land Use Management and Livelihood Diversificationin Burkina Faso and Southwest Niger. Simon Batterbury Moving the Boundaries of Forest and Land Use History: The Case of Upper East Region in Northern Ghana. Andrew Wardell Transnational Dimensions to Environmental Resource Dynamics: Modes of Governance and Local Resource Management in Eastern DRC. James Fairhead