Extraction, Nutrition, and the Challenges of Environmental Control in Southern Africa.

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

In Southern Africa, extraction conjures up images of mine dumps generated by decades of gold, diamond, copper, and coal mining. Yet, agriculture, was equally extractive. Beef and wool production depended on huge quantities of underground. Large-scale production of tobacco and maize monocrops mined soils. In the settler colonies, these industries were sustained by Africans drawn from reserves, the wretched pieces of land that states assigned indigenous populations to cheapen labor costs. These areas quickly faced production and environmental challenges. There, colonial states intervened, reshaping how Africans lived, farmed, and ate. Across colonial and postcolonial Southern Africa, states also promoted expert commodities. These interventions, pursued in the language of development, were intimately tied to questions of nutrition and health. They either undermined food production, or their justifications rested on the need to improve production and nutrition. They also entailed the use of pesticides that mirrored the use of chemicals in combating insect-borne diseases. The papers in this panel address this connection between extraction, nutrition and the challenges of environmental control in late colonial and postcolonial Southern Africa.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• Pestilences, Techno-Science and the Challenges of Environmental Control in Southern Africa, c. 1970-c.1983 - Admire Mseba, University of Southern California

• ‘The Country has Eaten Wool’: Nutrition, Environment, and Decolonization in Lesotho - Christopher Conz, College of the Holy Cross

• DDT, Malaria and the Post Colony: The Roll Back Malaria (RBM) Programme in Zimbabwe, 2000 to 2015 - Kundai Manamere, University of Zimbabwe

• Seeds of hope’: Modified seeds, fertilizers and the agrarian fallacy among African grain farmers in colonial Zimbabwe, the 1950s to 1979. - Kauma Bryan, Southwestern University

Chair

• Jeff Schauer, University of Nevada, Las Vegas