University of Hradec Králové Journals
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“They Have Stolen Our Land”: Enclosure, Commodification and Patterns of Human-Environment Relations among Afar Pastoralists in Northeastern Ethiopia
Get PDFThis paper takes enclosure and commodification processes of “nature” one step beyond a political economy perspective conceptualising them from ontological notions of nature-culture relations. Taking the case of enclosure for large-scale commercial agriculture schemes and a game reserve in northeastern Ethiopia, the paper argues that enclosure and nature commodification are part of neoliberal environmental governance that has been built on the notion of subduing nature and subaltern groups into the power of capitalism. More specifically, while the economic and political dimensions of these processes are salient, the ontological notions of the natureculture dualism has been invoked by states in their justification of expropriating pastoralist lands, thus nullifying indigenous people’s claim to ancestral homelands. The data for this paper was collected from 2013 to 2016 through ethnographic fieldwork, mainly conducted by the authors. The findings show oscillating perceptions of humane-environment relations among the Afar pastoralists: from human-environment, conjointly constituted by humans and non-humans, to the utilitarian dualist approach of environmental use which is mainly caused by the infiltration of capitalist economy and state driven development and conservation projects
Bridging Disciplinary Gaps in Studies of Human-Environment Relations: A Modelling Framework
Get PDFModern human-environment relations are problematic and difficult to analyse in terms of nature and culture. Many authors suggest to abandon and overcome the nature-culture dichotomy in order to reorganise the academic division of labour, not only on environmental questions. Anthropologist Philippe Descola, for example, surveyed the empirical evidence of patterns in humanenvironmental relations, suggesting four abstract cosmologies. Here, we propose a translation into a modelling terminology, which is compatible with the formalisation of programmes in computer science. The generalised framework contains four ideal types of modelling paradigms. It can be tested on various other classification schemes in a number of disciplines. In each application, the categories of classification can be translated and then the patterns of the four logic types can be compared with the phenomenology of each case. Implications for interdisciplinary cooperation between science and the humanities are sketched for some environmental issues. This work demonstrates how tools from computer science can help, metaphorically, conceptually and technically, to organise interdisciplinary exchanges between science and the humanities. The categorical approach of applying the “divide and conquer†technique to different disciplinary models serves as a yardstick for comparing the implicit logic and modelling assumptions across examples whose phenomenological contents appear as unrelated. It gives useful hints how a dilemma of choosing between rigorous or relevant models can be resolved (e.g., in environmental science) and how the nature-culturedichotomy might be replaced by a general and flexible framework of a few model types
Nordic Africa Days 2018: African Mobilities Conference held in Uppsala, Sweden, 19-21 September 2018
Get PDFThomas Laely, Marc Meyer, Raphael Schwere (eds.). 2018. Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe. A new field for museum studies. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag - Kampala: Fountain Publishers. ISBN 978-3-8376-4381-7, 240 pages
Get PDFChallenges to Political Cosmopolitanism: The Impact of Racialised Discourses in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Get PDFOne of the key challenges of post-apartheid South Africa has been the need to create a South African “nation.” The efforts of the leading African National Congress started with Nelson Mandela’s reconciliatory discourse of a “rainbow nation,” via Thabo Mbeki’s concept of the African Renaissance, to the current stream of racial nationalism articulated as “Africanisation.” The present article attempts to examine the dilemma which the ANC as the major custodian of nation-building has been facing since the 1990s: how to reach a balance between a civic nationalism based on cosmopolitan values and the need to redress the legacy of apartheid and persisting racial inequalities. It is argued that the current culturalist discourse of Africanisation is not only contentious but also dangerous for the cohesion of the fragile democratic society of post-apartheid South Africa
Refractory Frontier: Intra-party Democracy in the Zambian Polity
Get PDFDespite the important role that intra-party democracy plays in democratic consolidation, particularly in third-wave democracies, it has not received as much attention as inter-party democracy. Based on the Zambian polity, this article uses the concept of selectocracy to explain why, to a large extent, intra-party democracy has remained a refractory frontier. Two traits of intra-party democracy are examined: leadership transitions at party president-level and the selection of political party members for key leadership positions. The present study of four political parties: United National Independence Party (UNIP), Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), United Party for National Development (UPND) and Patriotic Front (PF) demonstrates that the iron law of oligarchy predominates leadership transitions and selection. Within this milieu, intertwined but fluid factors, inimical to democratic consolidation but underpinning selectocracy, are explained
We are going to join millions of unemployed graduates: The Problem of Incorporating Entrepreneurship Courses into the Youth Service Programme in Nigeria
Get PDFAs part of the measures to deal with the rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria, entrepreneurship programmes were incorporated into the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme, which was initially meant to promote common national awareness among graduate youths. While this experiment created a problem due to the NYSC posting policy, the empowerment programmes face other challenges that constrain their outcome. The posting policy privileged the allocation of graduate youths to work establishments where many of them are either under-utilised or incompetent. The NYSC empowerment programmes, on the other hand, grappled with the problems of corruption by job empowerment agencies, the negative attitude of corps members towards vocational and technical skill acquisition and inadequate resources to assist corps members who want to put their business plans into practice. The present paper concludes that the NYSC posting policy and empowerment programmes offer corps members little chance for the acquisition of relevant skills needed for self-development and is unable to properly address the problem of unemployment in Nigeria
