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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Ethnography in the Reconstruction of African Land Use Histories: A Sierra Leone Example
Author:Nyerges, A. EndreISNI
Year:1996
Periodical:Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
Volume:66
Issue:1
Pages:122-144
Language:English
Geographic term:Sierra Leone
Subjects:Susu
environment
land use
agricultural land
Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups)
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/1161515
Abstract:The history of vegetation and land use in western Africa includes a pattern of environmental change that can best be described as gradual, subtle, and difficult to measure accurately. Local ethnographic, ecological and ethnohistorical techniques can be used to develop the information required to advance an understanding of the processes of land use and forest change in the region. In this article, information on the ecology and ethnography of the Susu of northwestern Sierra Leone, derived from field research carried out over seventeen months from 1981 to 1984, is combined with historical data from Portuguese and British traveller and explorer accounts, as well as African oral histories. The central premise of the study is that processes of local environmental change are brought about by the dynamics of individual human action. Individual action, in turn, is produced by the effort to achieve and maintain socially defined management goals in the context of established systems of hierarchy, whether based on age and gender or on structures of clan, class and ethnicity. On the basis of his field findings, the author argues that individual producers interacting in the context of asymmetrical social relationships create an environment characterized by patterned risk, change, and degradation. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French.
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