Description: Imagining Serengeti by Jan Bender Shetler Many students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds—as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Long before the creation of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania, the people of the western Serengeti had established settlements and interacted with the environment in ways that created a landscape we now misconstrue as natural. Western Serengeti peoples imagine the environment not as a pristine wilderness, but as a differentiated social landscape that embodies their history and identity. Conservationist literature has ignored these now-displaced peoples and relegated them to the margins of modern society. Their oral traditions, however, provide the means for seeing the landscape from a new perspective. Imagining Serengeti allows us to see the Serengeti landscape as a book of memory that preserves the ways in which western Serengeti peoples have actively transformed their environment and their societies. Moreover, it strengthens the case for involving local communities in conservation efforts that will preserve African environments for the future.Using a new methodology to analyze precolonial oral traditions, Jan Shetler identifies core spatial images, which are then recontextualized into historical time periods through the use of archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic, ecological, and archival evidence. Imagining Serengeti reconstructs a socioenvironmental history of landscape memory of the western Serengeti spanning the last eighteen hundred years. Author Biography Jan Bender Shetler is an associate professor of African and world history at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana. She is the author of Telling Our Own Stories: Local Histories from South Mara, Tanzania. Review "This remarkable work on the Serengeti area in Tanzania will be of great value to Africans and non-Africans alike, including researchers in African history, anthropology, and geography.... Highly recommended." * Choice *"Jan Bender Shetler has written an exceptionally erudite work that contributes in seminal ways to the fields of both African and environmental history and provides an innovative new model for analysing oral histories through an environmental lens… . Highly recommended!" * Journal of Africa *"Imagining Serengeti takes its place in a sophisticated literature on landscape and ecology in Africa.…Shetlers contribution is a particularly distinguished one, not least for the array of approaches she has brought to her project.…(T)his is a landmark volume, and it will be required reading in African and environmental history." * American Historical Review *"Shetlers book provides a completely new analysis of the Serengeti debate by adding the voices of a forgotten population, the peoples of the western Serengeti.... The centrality of the landscape to Serengeti peoples identitites, the complexity of local environmental knowledge, and the deep historical and emotional attachments to place are thus illustrated in vivid detail." * African Studies Review *"Shetler provides a thorough critique of...colonial conservation policy, which, without reference to the regions ecological or social past, redefined the Serengeti as a wilderness, initiating a process of fortress conservation.... The books pronounced spatial perspectives and ecological focus demonstrate how meaningful the history of a place is to the people whose ancestors claimed, measured and manipulated this region." * Journal of African History *"This is an extraordinary book by an historian of uncommon erudition and originality.... For the reader whose primary interest in the Serengeti is its wildlife, the lesson that jumps off the pages is that, far from pristine wilderness, this is profoundly humanized territory, occupied and transformed through human labor and imagination for millennia." * International Journal of African Historical Studies *"This work will come as a welcome reminder of what a fine harvest of historical data can be had from a careful culling of the oral histories of Africas numerous decentralised societies.... Shetler...has offered both environmental and African oral historians a cornucopia." * Environment and History *"The Serengeti ecosystem is a symbol of global conservation efforts, but in conservationist literature the agricultural and agro-pastoral peoples who lived on the western reaches of the ecosystem became little more than poachers who had no legitimate claim to the land or resources of the park. In this fascinating book on a topic of importance to specialists in several different fields, Jan Bender Shetler attempts to provide a corrective to this perception." * coeditor of Custodians of the Land: Ecology & Culture in the History of Tanzania * Promotional Many students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds—as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists. Long Description Many students come to African history with a host of stereotypes that are not always easy to dislodge. One of the most common is that of Africa as safari grounds--as the land of expansive, unpopulated game reserves untouched by civilization and preserved in their original pristine state by the tireless efforts of contemporary conservationists. With prose that is elegant in its simplicity and analysis that is forceful and compelling, Jan Bender Shetler brings the landscape memory of the Serengeti to life. She demonstrates how the social identities of western Serengeti peoples are embedded in specific spaces and in their collective memories of those spaces. Using a new methodology to analyze precolonial oral traditions, Shetler identifies core spatial images and reevaluates them in their historical context through the use of archaeological, linguistic, ethnographic, ecological, and archival evidence. Imagining Serengeti is a lively environmental history that will ensure that we never look at images of the African landscape in quite the same way. Review Quote "This remarkable work on the Serengeti area in Tanzania will be of great value to Africans and non-Africans alike, including researchers in African history, anthropology, and geography.... Highly recommended."-- Choice Details ISBN0821417509 Author Jan Bender Shetler Short Title IMAGINING SERENGETI Publisher Ohio University Press Series New African Histories Language English ISBN-10 0821417509 ISBN-13 9780821417508 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 967.8 Illustrations Yes Year 2007 Edition 1st Imprint Ohio University Press Country of Publication United States Subtitle A History of Landscape Memory in Tanzania from Earliest Times to the Present Place of Publication Athens DOI 10.1604/9780821417508 UK Release Date 2007-06-15 AU Release Date 2007-06-15 NZ Release Date 2007-06-15 US Release Date 2007-06-15 Pages 392 Publication Date 2007-06-15 Alternative 9780821417492 Audience Undergraduate We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:127834764;
Price: 66.88 AUD
Location: Melbourne
End Time: 2024-12-05T16:41:57.000Z
Shipping Cost: 11.45 AUD
Product Images
Item Specifics
Restocking fee: No
Return shipping will be paid by: Buyer
Returns Accepted: Returns Accepted
Item must be returned within: 30 Days
Format: Paperback
Language: English
ISBN-13: 9780821417508
Author: Jan Bender Shetler
Type: Does not apply
Book Title: Imagining Serengeti
