Du calme, Mr. Blaut, du calme:
Surely we can see that different groups have different attitudes to
things, and surely there is nothing abnormal about observing or
commenting on same. As both everday actors and social-scientific
observers... it's something that we quite legitimately do. One may make
mistakes -- but you do not need to impute colonialist attitudes. Low
blow!
All this began with a report of Kenyans marching in FAVOR of forests,
and my saying it was a historic first. I can assure you that notions of
protecting and preserving trees were really uncommon in the past, and
that this does seem something new. Ecological awareness and movements are
definitely growing, but just in the past decade or so. They are being
reinforced by the development of real scarcities -- the dramatic
destruction of waters, fishing, and farm land by petroleum exploitation,
for instance, in the Niger Delta. But deforestation is the more general
problem - and it is usually gradual, irrisistable, and very difficult
to stop.
Of course trees are exploited for economic reasons. Also, certain trees
or forests may be marked for conservation by other social actors
(movements, states, etc.)... and the battle is on. And it is a great
dilemma - between the short-term, immediate needs of users and the
long-term interests of larger groups to preserve forest cover, protect
now-rare ancient stands of trees, or protect/promote the natural beauty
of places. This is the problem throughout the world.
When men were few, we didn't have to worry -- there was always another
mountain or valley ahead; and resources were generally used lightly, in
any case, because many groups (in the absence of very stable food
supplies, as given by marine resources) were relatively mobile. Of
course, West Africa has had no (non-pastoral) nomadic peoples for at
least a millenium or two (I assume Nyerere was talking about some
Tanzanian groups). But it has had the luxury of mobility, and of having
new areas to settle and to farm. But - and it seems very suddenly, in the
past few decades - the region has moved from resource-abundance to
resource-scarcity -- while popular attitudes remain are those of the
'abundance' phase. ( The US also had its period of abundance and carefree
exploitation; we now give lip sevice to conservationist ideas - but
behavior/policy lags way behind. Who will dare raise that gasoline tax?!)
In West Africa there are also, indeed, "deep cultural attitudes"
towards the forests, involving mixtures of awe, fear, and menace - on
which there is an abundant anthropological literature (apart from
plentiful evidence in everyday life). I will try to find some good
sources for you. Apart from Fred Lamp, whom I've alerted to this
discussion, you might also try Opala, "Leprosy among the Limba: Illness
and Healing in the context of world view," Soc. Sci. Med. 42, 1 (1996).
Any of the literature on initiation ceremonies (which are always done in
deep bush) would attest to this. Robin Horton, certainly, could provide
you chapter and verse. Folklore and literature would be other sources...
I will try to look up again what Tutuola says in "Bush of Ghosts"! There
are of course older European parallels to all this -- informing the
treatment of forests in Tolkien, I suspect. Surely, Europeans once
(perhaps still?) feared the forests, too.
I think there are two meanings of "primary" forest -- one is the real
primeval thing, untouched. At some point, I think the term may be used
again for other old forest, that has grown up again to maturity, been
uncut for .... what is it? forty or fifty years, in the tropics? [Please
correct me here.] [There is a wonderful old book, Allen, The African
Husbandman, which would talk more of this -- and the issue of carrying
capacity, population densities, and the fallow periods required for soils
to renew themselves.] Just a generation or two ago, in any case, there
was plenty of the latter; a few centuries ago, there was still great
patches of the former, too. I don't know that it was the real rain forest
as in Central Africa or the Amazon -- with canopies and all that -- but
it was still pretty impressive, ca. 1700, 1800. And since 1900, and
especially since World War II, and even more since the 60s - it is going
fast. This is now reaching crisis proportions in many areas - in terms
of forest cover needed to protect both water supplies and the land
itself (from flooding, erosion, and loss of soil fertility). Once the
fallow falls below five years or so, the farmers are in trouble.
(Firewood, building materials, and game are other problems again.)
I think you may have misinterpreted what I said about "relatively recent
settlement." I did not mean there were NO human populations until
recently; rather that the process of settlement, the filling up of the
land, the emplacement of the major peoples on their distinctive
territories (as seen today, or a hundred years ago), all that is
relatively recent. There was simply a tremendous amount of movement, ca.
1400-1800, creating the settlement patterns that we see today. Before
then, the nuclei of major population concentrations could only be found
here and there, concentrated especially along rivers and the
savannah-edge (including some savannah-like areas down towards the coast,
between southern Ghana and the Niger); much of the forest was only
visited by hunters, if that.
A recent volume that contains excellent detail on population movements
in the early modern period is the UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol.
5. Wondji's article on the Upper Guinea Coast, for instance, synthesizes
what is known on the peopling of the Liberia-to-Casamance hinterlands,
including evidence of very extensive movements since the 16th century and
a splendid map on migratory movements through the 18th c. (p. 376).
Boahen's piece on the Lower Guinea Coast (Ivory Coast to Togo, similarly,
recounts massive movements in the 17th and 18th centuries (and also a
dramatic map, p. 401).
These and many other articles remind us, in fact, that many of the
peoples/ethnic groups of the region (e.g. Temne, Mende, Mina, Kanuri,
Anyi, Baule, etc.) were only coming into existence then; great processes
of cultural and linguistic crystallization and conslidation were
underway. Population movements also interacted strongly with the state
formation that was also occurring throughout the region at the time.
Processes of redistribution, taxation, warfare, conquest, slave
raiding, and (local) enslavement played a fascinating and complex role,
working to settle and concentrate people here, expell or scatter them
there....
Coincidentally, there have been some debates on Leonenet over the past
few days that refer to the successive waves of immigration that occurred
among the Mende (Sierra Leone). I will forward them on, just to give you
a flavor of how well-remembered these movements (ca. 1600-1800) still
are.
Cordially, kpm
On Fri, 5 Feb 1999 22:09:26 -0500 James Blaut <70671.2032@compuserve.com>
writes:
>From: Jim Blaut
>Subject: Africa
>Date: Feb. 5, 1999
>
>Ms. Moseley:
>
>Apart from the fact that in one place I typed "Nkrumah" when I meant
>"Nyerere," I stand by everything I said. In fact, I'm more
>distressed
>(perhaps, yes, even more truculent) than ever, having learned that
>you
>spent some time in West Africa.
>
>1. Do you really believe that you can pronounce upon "the mindset"
>of
>Africans? That was a favorite word-game of old colonial times ("now,
>your
>African, he sees the world..." etc), but I haven't heard this in
>recent
>times. If it was a comment not mmeant to be read seriously, you might
>have
>advised us of that fact.
>
>2. You said "hostile to forests, the site of both physical and ritual
>danger," etc., in your first post, to which I replied with truculence.
>Now
>you talk about poor people cutting down trees for charcoal or wood. I
>don't
>call that "hostile to forests." Moreover, your "hostile" remark
>clearly
>was in reference to deep cultural attitudes, not economic need. How
>can
>shifting agriculturalists, whose livelihood depends on the forests,
>be
>"hostile" to forests? What is there about forests that elicits some
>special
>and unique superstition in tropical Africa? And these forests are
>really
>not "primary," invoking some Green Mansions imagery; they are for the
>most
>part periodically cut secondary forests, in which farmers work every
>year
>throughout much of the year.
>
>3. To talk about "the relatively recent settlement of the West (and
>Central?) African forests" is to betray ignoraNce of African history
>and
>archeology.
>
>4. Finally, you say:
>
> "...the wonderful thing about small groups that use things and
>
>then move on is that vegetation, game, etc., tends to restore itself
>when
>they're gone. People who settle are much worse,, indeed, the
>very
>fact of their settling may reflect the fact that new territory
>is
>getting scarce..."
>
>This word picture simply does not descreibe tropical Africa. Almost
>everybody is settled; including shifting agriculturists who genberally
>do
>not move their villages; including herding people who are at most
>semi-nomadic and move in rather fixed orbits, usually seasonally. The
>notion of "small groups that use things and then move on" applies to
>almost
>no groups in E, W, or Central Africa.
>
>I can't imagine that you heard these things from Horton or Diamond.
>
>Yours, truculently,
>
>Jim Blaut
>