Environment, Knowledge, and Injustice in Lesotho

The Poverty of Progress
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-1-84701-330-9
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, 282 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 576 g

Shows that a fraught historical process was at work in which Basotho drew on local and global sources of knowledge and how this small nation surrounded by South Africa can serve as a valuable case-study for wider conversations about 'progress' and 'modernization' in the Global South.

Both place-based environmental history and global intellectual history, this book explores the politics of environment, agriculture, poverty, development, and science in Lesotho. Drawing on diverse experiences with this landlocked, mountainous nation, and based on bilingual archival and oral history research in Sesotho and English, the book examines how Basotho intellectuals, farmers, migrant workers, chiefs, experts, and politicians formed vernacular ideas of tsoelopele (progress) amid the structural violence of colonialism and capitalism in southern Africa. Rather than a unidirectional flow of 'enlightened' knowledge from Europe to Africa, the study shows that a fraught historical process was at work in which Basotho drew on local and global sources of knowledge, from ancestral agricultural practices to colonial soil science and from African American missionaries to African nationalists in Ghana. Basotho ideas about tsoelopele, it is argued, informed the many political, social, and environmental innovations that enabled survival within a sea of white supremacy and that underpin approaches to development in independent Lesotho. Throughout, the book shows how this small nation surrounded by South Africa can serve as a valuable case-study for wider conversations about 'progress' and 'modernization' in the Global South.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Conz, Christopher

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltpolitik, Umweltprotokoll
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Umwelt- und Gesundheitspolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Afrikanische Geschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Geopolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations

Selected Sesotho Terms Used

Introduction
1. Making a Place in the Mountains
2. Animals, Pests, and the Politics of Veterinary Knowledge
3. Forestry in an Imperial Watershed
4. Soil, Progress, and Preserving the Status Quo
5. Agriculture, Knowledge, and Paths of Progress
6. Nutrition in the Era of Decolonization
Conclusion

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Conz, Christopher
CHRISTOPHER R. CONZ is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA and a Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of the Free State in South Africa.