Fire as a management practice in South Africa’s grasslands inflamed heated debate throughout the twentieth century. Imported ecological ideas meshed with homegrown sectoral land management traditions to reinforce a powerful anti-burning narrative among experts. Farmers, however, developed their own theories on burning, and the history of fire research, policy, and management reveals a series of entanglements between ecological theory, management policies and recommendations, and practice that complicate narratives grounded in historiographical traditions focused on critiquing settler and colonial expertise. This article recommends three distinctions to make when thinking about the history of scientific expertise: first, between an individual’s abstract theorizing and his or her “thinking in the field”; second, between the influence of accepted scientific findings and the thinking guiding official policies of land management sectors; and third, between official policies and actual land management practices. This article provides overviews of long-term fire use in the country’s grasslands, the ecology of grasslands and fire in South Africa, of early debates over fire, and scientific fire research and management in the country.
...More
Article
Grace Karskens;
(2019)
Fire in the Forests? Exploring the Human-Ecological History of Australia's First Frontier
(/isis/citation/CBB515062393/)
Book
Derek Wall;
(2014)
The Commons in History: Culture, Conflict, and Ecology
(/isis/citation/CBB621899934/)
Book
Johnson, Christopher;
Govatski, David;
(2013)
Forests for the People: The Story of America's Eastern National Forests
(/isis/citation/CBB001420292/)
Book
Martin S. Shanguhyia;
(2015)
Population, Tradition, and Environmental Control in Colonial Kenya
(/isis/citation/CBB222658128/)
Chapter
Bocking, Stephen;
(2013)
Situated yet Mobile: Examining the Environmental History of Arctic Ecological Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001420347/)
Article
Stambaugh, Michael C.;
Guyette, Richard P.;
Marschall, Joseph;
(2013)
Fire History in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma
(/isis/citation/CBB001421934/)
Article
Fynn Holm;
(2023)
Uniquely Japan, Uniquely Alpine: The Transformation of the Kamikōchi Mountain Valley into an Alpine Landscape, 1892–1938
(/isis/citation/CBB020275656/)
Article
Carruthers, Jane;
(2013)
The Royal Natal National Park, Kwazulu-Natal: Mountaineering, Tourism and Nature Conservation in South Africa's First National Park c.1896 to c.1947
(/isis/citation/CBB001421400/)
Article
Carruthers, Jane;
(2008)
Conservation and Wildlife Management in South African National Parks, 1930s--1960s
(/isis/citation/CBB000774602/)
Book
David Fedman;
(2020)
Seeds of control: Japan's empire of forestry in colonial Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB017349394/)
Chapter
Andrea Bonoldi;
(2016)
La risorsa mutevole. L'Adige nell'economia della regione trentino-tirolese
(/isis/citation/CBB675032851/)
Book
Matthew V. Bender;
(2019)
Water Brings No Harm: Management Knowledge and the Struggle for the Waters of Kilimanjaro
(/isis/citation/CBB408936114/)
Book
Raf De Bont;
(2021)
Nature's Diplomats: Science, Internationalism, and Preservation, 1920-1960
(/isis/citation/CBB462209355/)
Book
Bennett, Judith A.;
(2000)
Pacific Forests: A History of Resource Control and Contest in Solomon Islands, c. 1800-1997
(/isis/citation/CBB000100355/)
Article
Pareti, Germana;
(2020)
Landscape and Biophilia
(/isis/citation/CBB540118213/)
Book
Munira Khayyat;
(2022)
A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon
(/isis/citation/CBB405618303/)
Article
Tina Loo;
(July 2017)
Political Animals: Barren Ground Caribou and the Managers in a “Post-Normal” Age
(/isis/citation/CBB089109057/)
Book
Piper, Liza;
(2009)
The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada
(/isis/citation/CBB001034520/)
Article
Kroll, Gary;
(2015)
An Environmental History of Roadkill: Road Ecology and the Making of the Permeable Highway
(/isis/citation/CBB001422280/)
Article
Sandloss, John;
Keeling, Arn;
(2012)
Claiming the New North: Development and Colonialism at the Pine Point Mine, Northwest Territories, Canada
(/isis/citation/CBB001231329/)
Be the first to comment!