1st Edition

Resilience and Collapse in African Savannahs Causes and consequences of environmental change in east Africa

Edited By Michael Bollig, David M. Anderson Copyright 2017
242 Pages
by Routledge

242 Pages
by Routledge

242 Pages
by Routledge

This book assesses the causes and consequences of environmental change in East Africa, asking whether local African communities are sufficiently resilient to cope with the ecological and social challenges that confront them. It focuses on the savannahs of the Baringo-Bogoria basin, and the surrounding highlands of Kenya’s northern Rift Valley that form the social-ecological system of the... Read more

1. Introduction: Resilience and collapse: Histories, ecologies, conflicts and identities in the Baringo-Bogoria basin, Kenya. David M. Anderson & Michael Bollig

2. Adaptive cycles in the savannah: pastoral specialization and diversification in northern Kenya Michael Bollig

3. The beginning of time? Evidence for catastrophic drought in Baringo in the early nineteenth century David M. Anderson

4. Landscape, time and cultural resilience: a brief history of agriculture in Pokot and Marakwet, Kenya Matthew I.J. Davies & Henrietta L. Moore

5. Changes in landscape vegetation, forage plant composition and herding structure in the pastoralist livelihoods of East Pokot, Kenya Hauke-Peter Vehrs

6. Land use changes and the invasion dynamics of shrubs in Baringo Mathias Becker, Miguel Alvarez, Gereon Heller, Paul Leparmarai, Damaris Maina, Itambo Malombe , Michael Bollig & Hauke-Peter Vehrs

7. Agricultural change at the margins: adaptation and intensification in a Kenyan dryland
Clemens Greiner & Innocent Mwaka

8. Comparative nutritional indicators as markers of resilience: the impacts of low-intensity violence among three pastoral communities of northern Kenya Ivy L. Pike, Bilinda, Charles Hilton & Matthias Osterle

9. 'Dust people’: Samburu perspectives on disaster, identity, and landscape Bilinda Straight, Paul Lane, Musa Letua (deceased) & Charles Hilton

10. A victory in theory, a loss in practice: struggles for political representation in the Lake Baringo-Bogoria Basin, Kenya Peter D. Little

11. What’s in a name? The politics of identity in the Cherangany Hills, Kenya, Gabrielle Lynch

Biography

David M Anderson is Professor of African History in the Global History and Culture Centre, at the University of Warwick, UK. He has published widely on history and politics in Eastern Africa, including Eroding the Commons (2002), The Khat Controversy (2007), Histories of the Hanged (2005) and The Routledge Handbook of African Politics (ed. 2013).

Michael Bollig is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne, Germany. His recent books include African Pastoralism: Past, Present and Future (2013), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on African Landscapes (2009) and Risk Management in a Hazardous Environment (2006). He is currently researching the political ecology of conversation in Southern Africa and land use changes in dryland East Africa.