BOSERUP BACKWARDS? AGRICULTURAL INTENSIFICATION AS ‘ITS OWN DRIVING FORCE’ IN THE MBULU HIGHLANDS,TANZANIA

Why do farmers intensify their agricultural practices? Recent revisions of African environmental historiographies have greatly enriched our understanding of human–environmental interactions. To simply point at poor farming practices as the main cause of deforestation, desertification and other processes of land degradation is, for example, no longer possible. The contemporary analytical focus is instead on the complex and often unpredictable set of causal relations between societal, ecological and climatic factors. In the literature on agricultural intensification, conventionally defined driving forces, such as population pressure and market demand, remain important explanatory factors despite a growing body of research that suggests more dynamic scenarios of agricultural development and landscape change. This article reports on a case where the common‐sense logic of population pressure theory has dominated the historical narrative of a local process of agricultural intensification among an agro‐pastoral people in north‐central Tanzania. By way of a ‘detailed participatory landscape analyses’ a more complex and dynamic historical process of intensification is suggested, in which the landscape and the process of agricultural intensification itself are in focus. It is concluded that the accumulation of landesque capital has been incremental in character, and that the process of agricultural intensification in the study area has largely been its own driving force based on self‐reinforcing processes of change, and not a consequence of land scarcity and population pressure. This result demonstrates the possibility and usefulness of reversing the Bose‐rupian argument in analyses of agricultural intensification.     

Symbols of Cultural Identity: A Case Study from Tanzania

Cultural expressions and their contexts of use among two groups of Maconde form a basis for a discussion of cultural reproduction and the fluidity of ethnic boundaries. The material presented here is based on ethnoarchaeological fieldwork in Tanzania and Mozambique. Two groups, one based in Tanzania and the other in Mozambique, both identify themselves as one group, although they use and display material culture quite differently. The arguments in the paper are concerned with understanding the highly dynamic character of ethnicity in these East African societies and an attempt to look at shifting ethnic boundaries among the groups in the Rovuma Basin, in particular, over the last centuries. Here symbols of cultural identity have been manipulated and reintroduced into new contexts, as cultures change and groups adjust to their social environment.     

Connecting global health interventions and lived experiences: suspending ‘normality’ at funerals in rural Tanzania

In this paper, we use the funeral space and its liminal nature as a milieu for exploring how a ‘modern’ health intervention, the mosquito bednet, is negotiated by its recipients in relation to its (non)-usage in such spaces. With a focus on sleeping arrangements at funerals and drawing on empirical data from participants living in rural southern Tanzania, we discuss how the bednet is linked to the notion of being unsympathetic to the death. Viewed as a symbol of modernity and a reflection of wealth and individual pride, the bednet becomes physically and symbolically inappropriate in the more sacred, ‘in-between’ site of the funeral. We also uncover how risk perceptions regarding malaria transmission are re-cast in funeral spaces, with socio-cultural practices and health-related behaviours being simultaneously ‘risky’ for individual mourners and reinforcing in terms of group social cohesion. As individual mourners' concerns about malaria risks are suspended, notions of pain and discomfort come to the fore as part of the mourning process and respect for the deceased.     

Picturing Austria–Hungary. The British Perception of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1865–1870

In the late 1960s a Joint Nordic Co-operative Assistance Project was established in Tanzania. Its objective was to promote co-operative development in Tanzania based on Nordic experiences in the field. The project's effort to export Nordic co-operative ideas and traditions to Tanzania soon encountered major problems as the Government of Tanzania (GoT) launched a villagization process in the beginning of the 1970s, which sought to move the entire peasant population into ujamaa villages. The resettlement effort was implemented with the use of force and coercion and implied a dismantling of the traditional co-operative structures in Tanzania. This article finds that the Nordic countries helped facilitate GoT's compulsory policy by adjusting and restructuring the project to GoT's villagization strategy, despite the fact that the primary objective of the project was no longer present. As the article will reveal, there was a clear concern in the Nordic aid administrations that the Nordic project could be linked with the politics of coercion ingrained in the ujamaa policy.     

Why Land Here? Ports and Harbors in Southeast Tanzania in the Early Second Millennium AD

The east African Swahili ports developed extensive maritime trading links around the Indian Ocean, and supported economic, political, and urban growth in the early second millennium AD. This article identifies ports of varying function and importance in SE Tanzania, and seeks to understand their development in the context of natural harbor advantage, boat technology, sailing practice, and resource needs. Field data from landing places are combined with weather patterns, historical documents, and oral traditions to provide an integrated survey of the ports and harbors that once sustained medieval commerce along this section of the Swahili coast. The emergence of Kilwa as an entrepôt to become the key center is based initially upon its naturally advantageous harbor facilities, safety and flexibility of approach in days of sail, and assurance of monsoon winds. Original natural advantages gradually become self-sustaining with its economic and political growth. To the north and south of Kilwa a series of ports of call with drinking water and boat servicing supported trade to and from the pre-eminent city, although some such as Kisimani Mafia and Kwale-Kisuju developed important trade functions of their own.     

Extracting sovereignty: Capital, territory, and gold mining in Tanzania

In contemporary discussions of “resource nationalism,” sovereignty is often imagined as the exclusive control of national states over internal resources in opposition to external foreign capital. In this paper, we seek to draw attention to the specifically national territorial forms of sovereignty that - rather than hindering the flow of capital - become constitutive to the accumulation of resource wealth by states and capital alike. Drawing from political geographical theorizations of sovereignty, we argue that resource sovereignty cannot be territorially circumscribed within national space and institutionally circumscribed within the state apparatus. Rather, sovereignty must be understood in relational terms to take into account the global geography of non-state actors that shape access to and control over natural resources. Specifically, we engage national-scale state sovereignty over subterranean mineral resources in the form of legal property regimes and examine the mutually constitutive set of interdependencies between mining capital and landlord states in the accumulation of resource wealth. Using Tanzania as a case study, we argue that national-scale ownership of subterranean mineral resources has been critical to attracting global flows of mining capital from colonial to contemporary times. We first examine the history of the colonial state in Tanganyika to illustrate how land and mineral rights were adjudicated through the power of the colonial state with the hopes of attracting foreign capital investment in the mining sector. We then examine contemporary efforts on the part of the independent United Republic of Tanzania to again enact legislation meant to attract foreign mining companies - and the consequences for local populations living near sites of extraction.     

Inter-Tidal Causeways and Platforms of the 13th- to 16th-Century City-State of Kilwa Kisiwani, Tanzania

Survey of the coastal and inter-tidal zone at Kilwa in Tanzania resulted in the discovery of a series of artificial causeways and platforms at the entrance to the harbour of Kilwa Kisiwani, an important port trading with East Africa and southern Asia from around the 13th century. These appear to be part of a phase of monumental stone building at Kilwa in the 13th to 16th centuries, and represent a prosperous, confident Kilwa, impressing foreigners arriving by sea. Although necessarily speculative, several possible interpretations of their functions are advanced including navigation, protective breakwaters, access to marine resources, or ceremonial use.
© 2007 The Author     

The maritime landscape of Kilwa Kisiwani and its region,Tanzania, 11th to 15th century AD

East African coastal archaeological research has traditionally concentrated on the stone towns. In contrast, this study adopts a maritime cultural landscape approach by examining one of those towns, Kilwa, in its wider setting towards the peak of its economic success. Using archaeological evidence derived from coastal and inter-tidal survey and excavation, it identifies the environmental advantages of Kilwa′s estuarine location and resources that are exploited by a series of settlements providing marine produce and construction materials. The maritime approaches to the town also provide the context for a cultural display of religious allegiance and power through the symbolism of conspicuously sited mosques and a more perplexing series of causeways. Knowledge of the wider integrated coastal environment is seen as key to understanding the culture and economy of the region.     

Hunting and Foraging in the Eyasi Basin, Northern Tanzania: Past, Present and Future Prospects

In this paper I document the history of hunting and foraging in the Eyasi Basin, northern Tanzania, from about 130,000 bp to contemporary times, by reviewing the available archaeological, palaeontological, historical and ethnographic data. The review reveals a complex co-existence and interactions between hunter-foragers and herders and farmers from about 3,000 bp until the present. In addition, the review exposes intricate opportunities and at the same time risks/constraints that face extant Hadzabe hunter-foragers in the 21st century. The Hadzabe are a group of about 800–1,000 people who live in the Eyasi Basin. Traditionally, they are viewed as hunter-foragers—people who acquire nearly all of their food by hunting wild animals and foraging wild plant foods and honey. Although Hadzabe have been closely surrounded by other ethnic and cultural groups with whom they have interacted, for at least the last 100 years, their existence as a cultural group in the 21st century is in doubt. Mitigation measures are required in order to enhance the existence of this important cultural group.

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Résumé Cet article est une présentation de l’histoire de chasse et d’affourragement au Bassin Eyasi dans le nord de la Tanzanie, dès les environs de 130.000 ans avant présent, aux périodes contemporaines. On fait une revue des données archéologiques, anthropologiques, paléonthologiques, historiques ainsi que éthnographiques disponibles. La revue indique qu’il y a une coexistence et interaction complexes entre les chasseurs-fourrageurs, bouviers, et cultivateurs il y a 3.000 ans jusqu’au présent. En outre, la revue présente des occasions et en même temps des risques et contraintes complexes qui se posent aux Hadzabé: un groupe d’environ 800–1000 personnes (chasseurs-fourrageurs) qui vivent dans le bassin Eyassi. Traditionnellement, les Hadzabé sont regardés comme, les personnes qui obtiennent présque toutes leurs nourritures de la chair des animaux sauvages, des aliments végétaux sauvage et du miel. Bien que les Hadzabé aient été étroitement environnés et qu’ils aient interagis avec d’autres groupes éthniques et culturels au cours de 100 années passées leur existence au 20ème siècle en tant que groupe culturel est incertaine. Donc, des mesures sont exigées pour soutenir l’existence de ce groupe culturel important.

     

关于中国古代高利贷资本的历史作用——读《资本论》第三卷第五编

马克思在《资本论》第三卷中正确估价了高利贷资本的保守性,谴责了高利贷资本对小生产方式的冲击和破坏。中国学术界受这一观点影响,对中国古代高利贷资本的历史作用多加否定。但是从中国古代经济运行及高利贷资本的实际情况看,它对小农再生产及工商业运行既有残酷的一面,也发挥了一定的积极作用,尤其是因为高利贷资本对手工业、商业、矿业等资本性经营放贷的增加,更是促进了封建社会后期商业资本规模的扩大和总量的增加。     

中国主要省区人力资本利用效率及流动方向研究

经济资源的空间分布是经济地理学常见的研究课题。但如何评价经济资源空间分布的合理性,经济地理学还缺少有效的工具。本文利用经济学的基础理论和分析工具,对我国人力资本空间分布的合理性进行了研究,证明目前的空间分布没有使人力资本利用效率达到最优,由此造成的GDP损失在13%。提高人力资本利用效率的简单途径是充分的人口流动。论文基于数量分析的结果给出了初等人力资本、中等人力资本和高等人力资本各自的合理流动方向。这也证明经济学的理论可以用于经济地理学的空间研究,用于空间分布合理性的论证。     

社会资本理论对开拓农村市场的启示

社会资本是建立在人们之间的关系网络基础上的情感、信任与规范等,它能够通过推动人们之间的行动来提高共同体的工作效率。本文运用社会资本理论,分析企业应该怎样利用社会资本来开拓农村市场。农村市场有不同于城市市场的特点不能把城市中的营销手段简单地移植到农村市场。企业开拓农村市场要做到:与农村社团建立好关系;企业文化要与农村文化融合起来;与农村的联系要制度化。