The Non-Western World: Environment, Development and Human Rights

Book Description

This new introductory textbook provides an integrated, up-to-date introduction to the lands, people, and cultures of the non-Western world. Through a cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary approach, the book focuses on critical issues of development, environment, and cultural conflicts facing most area of the non-Western world. Areas covered include China, Japan, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and sub-Saharan Africa. Each chapter focuses on one of these regions, framing within historical context the issues of geography, socioeconomics, politics, culture, environment, human rights, and gender. Illustrations and sidebar boxes augment the text.

Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation (Texts In Regional Geography)

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Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation (Texts In Regional Geography)
Robert Stock
Manufacturer: The Guilford Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Atlas of African Affairs
Africa: A Biography of the Continent
Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa (2nd Edition)
Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future
Survey of Subsaharan Africa: A Regional Geography

ASIN: 1572308680

Book Description

Now in an extensively revised and expanded second edition, this authoritative text provides a broad introduction to the geography of this rapidly changing region. Exploring contemporary issues without losing sight of their historical roots, the volume analyzes the sociocultural, political, economic, and environmental processes that shape resource use and development in Africa south of the Sahara. Students gain a balanced view of the continent's trials and triumphs-from postcolonial political strife and the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS to current progress toward democratization and sustainable growth.

The Second Edition
Updated throughout and featuring extensive new material, the second edition includes expanded coverage of physical geography and new chapters on water resources, the social geography of African children, and Western perceptions of the continent. The latest available data is reflected in numerous maps, tables, and figures; new and revised case studies; and helpful resource listings, now with key websites.

Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History (Nature and Human Societies)

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A fine pick for any college-level collection strong in either environmental history or African history.

Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History (Nature and Human Societies)
Gregory Maddox
Manufacturer: ABC-CLIO
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1851095551
Release Date: 2006-03-24

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A fine pick for any college-level collection strong in either environmental history or African history........2006-10-15

Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History joins others in the 'Nature and Human Societies' series to survey both positive and negative environmental effects of human activities from colonialism to modern urban pressures. Chapters link historic events to environmental impact and consequences, providing a running blend of details on history, culture, and lasting results. A fine pick for any college-level collection strong in either environmental history or African history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

Survey of Subsaharan Africa: A Regional Geography

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Correction to Amazon description

Survey of Subsaharan Africa: A Regional Geography
Roy Cole , and Harm J. de Blij
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Africa South of the Sahara, Second Edition: A Geographical Interpretation (Texts In Regional Geography)
Africa: A Biography of the Continent
Rand McNally Goode's World Atlas 21st Edition

ASIN: 0195170806

Book Description

Survey of Subsaharan Africa: A Regional Geography provides empirical, analytical, and thought-provoking coverage of the different countries, populations, economies, and climates of Subsaharan Africa, a geographic realm that has changed dramatically over the last twenty years. It retains the successful structure of de Blij and Best's classic work, African Survey. Designed to stimulate discussion and debate, Survey of Subsaharan Africa consists of nine systematic chapters that look at central and southern Africa as a whole and twenty-one regional chapters that cover individual countries. The systematic chapters explore broad themes including the geography of human origin, lingual patterns, historical and political geography, urbanization and development, health, the diffusion of AIDS, and agriculture. Both the systematic chapters and the regional chapters weave themes of democracy, human rights, and private enterprise throughout. In addition, Survey of Subsaharan Africa offers rich visual content, with more than 190 illustrations and 160 maps. Featuring a lively writing style that embraces all the diverse theoretical interpretations of geography, Survey of Subsaharan Africa is ideal for advanced undergraduate courses in African Geography or African Studies.

Customer Reviews:

Correction to Amazon description.......2006-06-21

This text consists of 8 chapters focused on the entire continent of Africa and 22 chapters devoted to the regions of Subsaharan Africa. The Amazon description of the content of the book is in error.

Roy Cole

Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back

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Art from Africa: Long Steps Never Broke a Back
Pamela McClusky , and Robert Farris Thompson
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The Royal Arts of Africa: The Majesty of Form (Perspectives) (Trade Version) (Perspectives)
Art and Oracle African Art and Rituals of Divination
Africa: The Art of a Continent (African Art)
The Tribal Arts of Africa
History of Art in Africa, A (2nd Edition)

ASIN: 0691092753

Book Description

This strikingly unusual and beautifully illustrated book represents a turning point in African art history. The authors draw on personal memories, interviews, and oral narratives to present twelve "case histories" of objects--or clusters of objects--in the Seattle Art Museum's renowned collection of African art. Each case history is enriched by comments from artists, art historians, writers, community members, and patrons who guide readers back into the markets, palaces, ceremonies, shrines, and streets where African art originated.

Often sitting still and silent in a museum display case, African art is frozen in an alien frame. Vibrant music, movement, debate, and cryptic voices are among the missing elements that once surrounded the mask, sculpture, ring, or stool. Reframing the objects, Art from Africa proposes looking at what was once done with them while also listening carefully to what was once said in their presence. As the case histories reveal, the gross mislabeling of objects as "fetishes," "idols," and "devil masks" dissolves as art becomes better known as medicine, philosophy, personality correctives, and blessings for the future.

Known for his scintillating analyses of African art, Robert Farris Thompson devotes his opening essay to introducing the missing dimension of motion, exploring the meaning of postures and gestures in various African cultures. A curator dedicated to telling the stories behind such art, Pamela McClusky explores subjects ranging from royal art of the Kom and Asante kingdoms, masquerades from the Yoruba, Dan, and Mende cultures, hunters' shirts from the Mande empire, sculpture from the Kongo kingdom, Mercedes-Benz coffins from the streets of Ghana, photographs from Mali, and Maasai body ornaments. This book accompanies a special exhibition of the museum's collection, but, as all art lovers who look beyond museum walls will appreciate, it is much more than an exhibition catalogue.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Philadelphia Museum of Art
October 2, 2004 - January 2, 2005.

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one of the best novels ever written and published
The Last Hero
Historical fiction doesn't get any better than this.
The Last Hero
Wonderfully Written Historic Novel

The Last Hero
Peter Forbath
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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LORD OF THE KONGO: A Novel

ASIN: 0671242857

Customer Reviews:

one of the best novels ever written and published.......2007-02-02

this is a great phenomenal saga. an adventure that rarely successfully delivered with a pen. 'the last hero' is a modern classic that should be on your bookshelf with 'lonesome dove', 'brules', 'shantaram', 'the kite runner', stephen hunter's 'point of impact' swagger series, robert ludlum's genuine creations from 'the gemini contender' to 'the matarese circle', all of a. j. quinnelle's novels, all of louis la'mor's westerns....they are all good memories, touched your soul and made your life more vividly colorful.

The Last Hero.......2005-02-02

This book is quite simply amazing. From the first page you are hooked and become an invisible member of the crew hacking your own way through the Ituri Forest. Stanley is brought to life along with many other real-life people, including Tipoo Tib, the slave dealer. Read this book and you will never forget it, the whole atmosphere of unexplored Africa and its hidden tribes will be with you always. The unknown beauty of the Congo River and its people take you into a new world with different standards, different morales and a very different slant on life. The actions of Emin Pasha will move you to tears and the whole experience of this book is one that every person should enjoy.

Historical fiction doesn't get any better than this........2002-08-05

Compulsively readable, thrilling story, vivid evocation of darkest Africa and a potrait of Henry Morgan Stanley that leaps right of the page and grabs you by the throat, this story of the insane expedtion to rescue Emin Pasha's people from the conquering dervishes is everything you want a serious book of historical fiction to be. Especially recommended for those interested in the literature of exploration and discovery into land's unkown in the Western world in the 19th century. How many 700+ page books are you sorry to see come to an end? This is such a one. Enjoy.

The Last Hero.......2002-01-12

This awesome novel of exploration into Central Africa during a time of civil unrest is by far one of the best books I have ever read. The characters are well developed and the tale gripping, based on actual historical events, the novel is a must read. Once you pick it up, you will not want to put it down. Since reading this novel, I have acquired all, of the late, Peter Forbath's novels. His vivid detail of the surroundings, the authority figure that demostrates both compassion and understanding as well as harsh punishments, and the intertwining of the characters' lives make this an amazing tale of Central Africa events in the late 1800's.

Wonderfully Written Historic Novel.......2000-06-22

The story told in "The Last Hero" is that of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" fame, but that's another story) who, in 1885 organized and led a mission to rescue Emin Pasha, governor of Equatoria, the southernmost province of the Egyptian Sudan, which was surrounded by the Mahdist uprising. Amazingly, Stanley decided to approach Equatoria from the Atlantic side of Africa by going up the Congo river and overland through central African forest. The expedition crossed hundreds of miles of then-unknown Africa, encountering every obstacle and difficulty along the way. The eventual end of the mission is one of history's great ironies, but I don't want to give anything away.

"The Last Hero" is a very well-written adventure story, all the more interesting because it is true. My only complaint (a very minor one) concerns the absence of notes and bibliography which could have given some historical documentation and sources.

Book Description

This book is a study of the multi-faceted aspects of the physical and human geography of Sub-Saharan Africa. An introductory book, it is designed for those readers with little or no knowledge of geography to a variety of contemporary ideas, theories, and concepts in African geography, and their applicability to “real world” situations. Using extensive maps, photographs, and illustrations, this book covers such topics as the physical-environmental, socio-cultural, and developmental aspects of Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the region's prospects for global integration. For anyone interested in African geography and its socio-political climate.

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One of the most comprehensive texts on Sub-Saharan Africa........1999-11-21

This is one of the most comprehensive books written onSub-Saharan Africa. It starts off with the spatial location of theregion and the physical aspects - Climate, Vegetation, Soils, and Drainage, that makes the region unique. The authors go on to discussing the human-environmental impacts, one of the most problematic of environmental activities in Sub-Saharan Africa. They discuss reasons for deforestation in Africa South of the Sahara, effects of forest degradation, and desertification a very real problem of desert encroachment that has turned productive lands in Sub-Saharan Africa into desert environments. One of the topics covered in this text that is absent in many textbooks is the Historical Background of Sub-Saharan Africa, especially when most of the old historical records are said to be "non-existent" because of the lack of a written language in the region. The authors have done a good job incorporating culture, conflict of culture and change in the face of cultural multiplicity of that exists in this region. Another important aspect of this book is the comprehensive coverage of gender and the roles of men and women in this part of the world. This book is interesting to read, it is informative and best of all, it is current.

Rural Change in Tropical Africa: From Colonies to Nation States (Institute of British Geographers Special Publications)

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Rural Change in Tropical Africa: From Colonies to Nation States (Institute of British Geographers Special Publications)
David J. Siddle , and Kenneth Swindell
Manufacturer: Blackwell Pub
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Binding: Hardcover

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Roots in the African Dust: Sustaining the Sub-Saharan Drylands

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Roots in the African Dust

Roots in the African Dust: Sustaining the Sub-Saharan Drylands
Michael Mortimore
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History (Studies in Environment and History)
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ASIN: 0521457858

Book Description

The traditional image of contemporary Africa is of a continent dogged by poverty, drought, degradation and famine. This study, drawing on the best work of the past decade and based on researched case studies from East and West Africa, rejects the notion of runaway desertification, driven by population growth and inappropriate land use. It suggests a more optimistic model of sustainable land use and an appropriate set of policy priorities to support dryland peoples in their efforts to sustain land and livelihoods.

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Roots in the African Dust.......2000-06-05

Roots in the African Dust Michael Mortimore is best known for his extensive studies of farming systems, environmental change and human adaptation to drought in the drylands of northern Nigeria. Mortimore's focus is on local, populist human adaptations to a harsh and complex environment. He developed his research focii when teaching geography at the universities of Ahmadu Bello and Bayero in Nigeria for over twenty-five years, before moving to the UK in the late 1980s where he is now a consultant. He has produced several influential and thought provoking texts; these include Adapting to Drought (1989), Working the Sahel (with W.M. Adams, 1999) and a revisionist account of livelihoods in Machakos, Kenya entitled More People, Less Erosion (with M Tiffen and F Gichuki, 1994). Roots in the African Dust is a synthesis volume, accessible to students, scholars and policymakers, that reviews some of the empirical material contained in these and other works. The book offers a forceful argument that the sub-Saharan drylands (the natural environment, and the people) are still coping under conditions of environmental, monetary and demographic stress. Ten well-presented, liberally illustrated chapters respond to questions posed in the introduction. If we believe expert views, Mortimore says, the Sahelian peoples should have been engulfed by an expanding Sahara many years ago, livestock markets should have collapsed due to overgrazing, farms would have been obliterated by land degradation, fuelwood should have run out, and entire areas depopulated for lack of economic opportunity. Since rural communities farming systems clearly still exist, the author uses several local examples to challenge these erronous crisis discourses. The second chapter addresses the legacy of worries about desertification and its impacts. Mortimore concludes that desertification is usually short-term, and reversible. Chapter three responds to the need to earth the global discourse in the realities of dryland households objectives (p38) since the majority of decisions about farming in Africa (outside the major commercial farms and ranch areas) are taken by smallholders. Defining farmers goals in terms of welfare and the reproductive needs of households, he offers a rich selection of material on labour, crop mixes and land use systems, technical change, trees, water management, and the importance of livestock (walking resources). Three chapters examine risk management. Systems primarily dependent on pastoralism are shown to use opportunistic stocking and herd mobility in an unstable, but resilient environment. Farmers exploit rain and moisture, and manage technological and biological diversity through sequential decision-making. Holding to a broad definition if the African household as a network of implicit contracts (following Robert Netting), Mortimore shows how risk is negotiated through maintenance of household numbers, a focus on flexible food production, and famine avoidance. He recognises that catastrophic policy errors and economic greed contributed to recent famines, but concludes that Sahelian farming is resilient (p111). This is partly due to non-farm activities, and the vigorous marketing of crops and animals (despite price and demand fluctuations and political uncertainty). Wage labour (involving circulatory migration), asset liquidation, agricultural sales, and exploitation of social networks also help to see people through hardship, and diversification away from agriculture and pastoralism is not the act of desperate people. A clear policy recommendation here is the necessity to keep borders permeable to migrants; in the absence of a rich industrial or commercial sector in most African countries, individuals will still keep their links to their rural homes. A further three chapters examine the extent of soil degradation, merits of agricultural intensification, and conservation of biotic resources. Mortimore claims that high population densities fuel intensification of agricultural production, if other constraints are absent. His well-known Machakos studies are used to demonstrate how commercial opportunities and population pressures drive resource conservation. The highlight of the book is the last chapter, where he speculates on the driving forces behind the transformation of rural African land use systems, again trying to demonstrate resilience and diversity in locally managed livelihoods. Africa's environmental and human systems change at different rates, but their trajectories are closely linked. Transitions are underway in land uses, and these are economic, demographic and institutional. Policy must, for Mortimore, follow a populist model by nourishing local creativity and adaptability (a version of Paul Richard's indigenous agricultural revolution). All interventions must be technically and culturally appropriate, and the goal of environmental management might be best served by protecting local innovation and investment against crises, for example through improving access to markets and recognising the need for free circulation of people and capital. Mortimore's project is, therefore, an intriguing and a potentially controversial one. In holding to a notion of strong (Boserupian) human adaptation to environmental and economic stresses, there is an open invitation for the political ecologist/economist (some cited above) to wade in with countervailing evidence of class exploitation, conflict, the systematic prevention of intensification or human development, or economic crisis brought on by commodity markets or corruption. Social and political conflict is downplayed (but not excluded) in the book. Not much is said about struggle and open resistance and why such struggles (often gendered, or to do with access issues) might have been necessary. Although at no point does the author say that rural Nigerians and Kenyans are always capable of solving problems without the state or any external assistance, but his view is that they usually are, and that the state and development agencies may not be suitable agents of positive agricultural transformation. Nonetheless, I have great faith in the author's experience, his findings, and his main recommendations. So much hinges on whether Northern Nigeria and Machakos (in particular) are typical of other regions and situations. Intensified agricultural systems have not always developed elsewhere, because different social and environmental histories apply. What is most gratifying is that Mortimore retains an attachment to rigorous comparative fieldwork that, frankly, few other scholars can demonstrate; a dedication to supporting the African smallholder; and a methodology that places equal weight on the natural environment, and the relationship between environmental change and human response. The book is an example of the real contribution of the committed geographer to African agrarian and development studies, and it is pleasing to have a single volume that offers such a breadth of analysis in a holistic, wide-ranging view of rural livelihoods and landscapes.

Africa South of the Sahara (Regions of the World)

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Africa South of the Sahara (Regions of the World)
Rob Bowden
Manufacturer: Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Ages 9-12 | Children's Books | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1403499101

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