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The Oxford Handbook of Commodity History features contributions from scholars involved in the field's development across a range of countries and linguistic regions. Each of the handbook's thirty-one chapters focuses on an important theme within commodity history: essential approaches, global histories, modes of production, people and land, environmental impact, consumption, and new methodologies.
Does the diagnosis of irreversible destruction of both forests and their biodiversity actually mask a wide range of patterns? Based on the results of natural and social scientists, this book attempts to answer fundamental questions such as: what is deforestation and how do we mesure it? What changes result from deforestation and how do human societies manage these changes? It explores the many and varied aspects of deforestation, a process whose effects are not always as negative as perceived.
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The success of rural development schemes in Africa, particularly those involving land, is heavily dependent on understanding the local ecology. Any farmer knows this, yet rarely has development project design catered adequately for the vicissitudes of the African environment. Although environmental unpredictability was recognized in the temperate zone by the mid-nineteenth century, the ecological theory which was subsequently developed and most widely accepted, was based on concepts of norms and equilibria. History has shown that the application of such ecological assumptions to African environments is wholly inappropriate. This book argues that many methods used by West African smallholder farmers and pastoralists are properly adapted to the region's unpredictable physical environment. Field examples from the semi-arid and humid zones demonstrate the nature of environmental variability, and the skill of indigenous farmers and pastoralists in exploiting this. It is thus argued that development planners should, where possible, model development schemes on the more successful, ecologically sound methods of indigenous land management.
The Indian Ocean Rim Association for Regional Cooperation was formally established in 1997 under the leadership of South Africa, India and Australia. The demise of Apartheid, the fall of the Soviet empire, and the rapid advance of globalization altered the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean region in the early 1990s and served as a catalyst in the creation of the IOR. This book contextualizes the founding of the IOR by outlining the historical aspects of economic ties across the Indian Ocean and previous attempts to promote regional cooperation. The contributors to this volume analyse the post-colonial ideological legacy, the political and economic constraints caused by Apartheid and communism, the end of protectionism and the problem of globalization. These major themes in the history of the IOR are applied to what the future holds for Southern Africa within this economic grouping, and whether or not regional cooperation will manage to compete with globalization. This volume will be of interest to scholars of development studies, international relations, Third World studies, and regional development.
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