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In the early years of the twentieth century, an awareness was growing among European Australians of an unexpected threat, one that seemed the very embodiment of the dark, ominous power of the Australian bush. To the Indigenous people of the Guugu Yimithirr nation, it was nguman; to the whites it was the taipan, an eight foot, lightning fast venomous snake whose bite meant certain death. Venom is an examination of European settlers' troubled and often antagonistic relationship with the land, seen through the lens of the desperate scramble for an antivenom, and highlighted by the story of George Rosendale, a taipan bite victim of the Guugu Yimithirr nation.
Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories brings together intellectuals from a variety of fields, backgrounds, generations, and continents to deepen and reinvigo-rate the theoretical and intellectual integrity of African studies. Building on recent debate within African studies that has revolved around the role of Africanists in the United States as “gatekeepers” of knowledge about Africa and Africans, this volume of interdisciplinary essays focuses on the contested character of the production of knowledge itself. In every chapter, case studies and ethnographic materials, drawn from such regions as South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Malagasy Republic, Angola, Ghana, and Senegal, demonstrate the application of theory to concrete situations.
This book presents the methodology and results of a three-year, eleven-country science-to-policy research project – Toward a Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development – undertaken between 2005 and 2008 and financed under the European Union's Sixth Framework program. It deals with an important contemporary policy issue: how best to ensure that an agriculturally-based policy can contribute to the development of rural regions. It tackles this problem in a number of different but complementary ways, primarily by the development of a unique and innovative dynamic systems model, POMMARD (a Policy Model of Multifunctional Agriculture and Rural Development).
The publication provides the first comprehensive text that reflects on a century of the development of geography as an academic discipline at South African universities. The book showcases a broad and textured review of South Africa's geography departments, their staff members, their times, and the different Geographies they engaged in. The book lays thefoundation from which more expansive individual departmental histories can be written in the future.
Between the nineteenth century and the mid-twentieth century television transformed from an idea to an institution. In Gender and Early Television, Sarah Arnold traces women's relationship to the new medium of television across this period in the UK and USA. She argues that women played a crucial role in its development both as producers and as audiences long before the 'golden age' of television in the 1950s. Beginning with the emergence of media entertainment in the mid-nineteenth century and culminating in the rise of the post-war television industries, Arnold claims that, all along the way, women had a stake in television. As keen consumers of media, women also helped promote television to the public by performing as 'television girls'. Women worked as directors, producers, technical crew and announcers. It seemed that television was open to women. However, as Arnold shows, the increasing professionalisation of television resulted in the segregation of roles. Production became the sphere of men and consumption the sphere of women. While this binary has largely informed women's role in television, through her analysis, Arnold argues that it has not always been the case.
In Racial Integration in the Church of Apartheid Marthe Hesselmans uncovers the post-apartheid transformation of South Africa’s Dutch Reformed Church. This church once constituted the religious pillar of the Afrikaner apartheid regime (1948-1994). Today, it seeks to unite the communities it long segregated into one multiracial institution. Few believe this will succeed. A close look inside congregations reveals unexpected stories of reconciliation though. Where South Africans realize they need each other to survive, faith offers common ground – albeit a feeble one. They show the potential, but also the limits of faith communities untangling entrenched national and racial affiliations. Linking South Africa’s post-apartheid transition to religious-nationalist movements worldwide, Hesselmans offers a unique perspective on religion as source of division and healing.
After more than three decades of economic malaise, many African countries are experiencing an upsurge in their economic fortunes linked to the booming international market for minerals. Spurred by the shrinking viability of peasant agriculture, rural dwellers have been engaged in a massive search for alternative livelihoods, one of the most lucrative being artisanal mining. While an expanding literature has documented the economic expansion of artisanal mining, this book is the first to probe its societal impact, demonstrating that artisanal mining has the potential to be far more democratic and emancipating than preceding modes. Delineating the paradoxes of artisanal miners working alongsid...
Long run processes of socio-economic change generate prodigious problems of social conflict and social control, and governments responsible for these processes must therefore manage the resultant conflict. Consequently, the success or failure of a government's management of such conflicts is a crucial factor in development outcomes. This volume investigates the political struggle for development specifically in two vital regions - East Asia and Latin America. This analysis calls into question the dominant emphasis on institutional and cultural bases for stable growth. A careful historical account of the two regions is presented, which permits the rigorous testing of conventional wisdoms regarding development. Of importance to a broad range of academics in the spheres of development studies, politics, political economy and sociology, this book will also make an interesting read for those with a general interest in these areas.
For millennia, contact between societies was limited to trade or wars, a situation that changed profoundly with the development of global markets serving industrialization. The outcome was the emergence of one global human civilization, and one common future that will depend on the capacity of individuals and societies to manage the potentials for social development. This edited collection is dedicated to the discussion of four global trends: upgrading the rationality of organizations, individualization, the spreading of instrumental activism and universalization of value-normative systems. The mutual influence of these interrelated trends brings about both constructive and destructive effects in social life, social integration and change. Contributors examine questions such as: How do global trends pave their way in regions? What are the similarities and differences of regional development? How do agencies cope with the challenges of global trends in regional development?
Amirahmadi focuses on the Iranian economy under the Islamic Republic, a subject that remains largely neglected in post-revolutionary Iranian research and analysis. Drawing from a wealth of primary sources, he uses an empirical-logical framework of analysis within a modified world-system perspective to offer a detailed and balanced picture of the macroeconomic trends, problems, and policies since 1976.