Nancy J. Jacobs – författare

Few animals have fascinated people like the grey parrot, celebrated for its intelligence, mimicry, and uncanny ability to speak. The Global Grey Parrot traces the remarkable history of this intriguing bird from West and Central African forests to markets and homes around the world.For centuries, grey parrots lived as social and political beings within complex forest communities, sharing landscapes with African peoples who understood their calls, behaviors, and ecological roles. That relationship changed dramatically with the expansion of Atlantic trade and European empire. As markets expanded, the birds themselves became commodities—captured, transported, and sold across continents as curiosities, pets, and research subjects.Drawing on documentary research, fieldwork in Africa, and insights from ethology and environmental history, Nancy J. Jacobs reconstructs a five-century story of entanglement between humans and parrots. She reveals how colonial extraction, global capitalism, and the international pet trade transformed a wild forest animal into an endangered species that now primarily reproduces and exists in captivity. The Global Grey Parrot offers a striking new perspective on how human desires reshaped the lives of animals and the world they inhabit.

This book presents the socio-environmental history of black people around Kuruman, on the edge of the Kalahari in South Africa. Considering successive periods - Tswana agropastoral chiefdoms before colonial contact, the Cape frontier, British colonial rule, Apartheid, and the homeland of Bophuthatswana in the 1980s - Environment, Power and Injustice shows how the human relationship with the environment corresponded to differences of class, gender, and race. While exploring biological, geological, and climatological forces in history, this book argues that the challenges of existence in a semidesert arose more from human injustice than from deficiencies in the natural environment. In fact, powerful people drew strength from and exercised their power over others through the environment. At the same time, the natural world provided marginal peoples with some relief from human injustice.

This book presents the socio-environmental history of black people around Kuruman, on the edge of the Kalahari in South Africa. Considering successive periods - Tswana agropastoral chiefdoms before colonial contact, the Cape frontier, British colonial rule, Apartheid, and the homeland of Bophuthatswana in the 1980s - Environment, Power and Injustice shows how the human relationship with the environment corresponded to differences of class, gender, and race. While exploring biological, geological, and climatological forces in history, this book argues that the challenges of existence in a semidesert arose more from human injustice than from deficiencies in the natural environment. In fact, powerful people drew strength from and exercised their power over others through the environment. At the same time, the natural world provided marginal peoples with some relief from human injustice.

Spanning the colonial, postcolonial, and postapartheid eras, these historical and locally specific case studies analyze and engage vernacular, activist, and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity.This book highlights the ways poor and vulnerable people in South Africa, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe have mobilized against the structural and political forces that deny them a healthy and sustainable environment. Spanning the colonial, postcolonial, and postapartheid eras, these studies engage vernacular, activist, and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity. Some chapters track the genealogies of contemporary activism, while others introduce positions, actors, and thinkers not previously identified with environmental justice. Addressing health, economic opportunity, agricultural policy, and food security, the chapters in this book explore a range of issues and ways of thinking about harm to people and their ecologies.Because environmental justice is often understood as a contemporary phenomenon framed around North American examples, these fresh case studies will enrich both southern African history and global environmental studies. Environment, Power, and Justice expands conceptions of environmental justice and reveals discourses and dynamics that advance both scholarship and social change.Contributors: Christopher ConzMarc EpprechtMary GalvinSarah IvesAdmire MsebaMuchaparara MusemwaMatthew A. SchnurrCherryl Walker

Spanning the colonial, postcolonial, and postapartheid eras, these historical and locally specific case studies analyze and engage vernacular, activist, and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity.This book highlights the ways poor and vulnerable people in South Africa, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe have mobilized against the structural and political forces that deny them a healthy and sustainable environment. Spanning the colonial, postcolonial, and postapartheid eras, these studies engage vernacular, activist, and scholarly efforts to mitigate social-environmental inequity. Some chapters track the genealogies of contemporary activism, while others introduce positions, actors, and thinkers not previously identified with environmental justice. Addressing health, economic opportunity, agricultural policy, and food security, the chapters in this book explore a range of issues and ways of thinking about harm to people and their ecologies.Because environmental justice is often understood as a contemporary phenomenon framed around North American examples, these fresh case studies will enrich both southern African history and global environmental studies. Environment, Power, and Justice expands conceptions of environmental justice and reveals discourses and dynamics that advance both scholarship and social change.Contributors: Christopher ConzMarc EpprechtMary GalvinSarah IvesAdmire MsebaMuchaparara MusemwaMatthew A. SchnurrCherryl Walker

African History through Sources recounts the history of colonial Africa through more than 100 primary sources produced by a variety of actors: ordinary men and women, the educated elite, and colonial officials. Including official documents, as well as interviews, memoirs, lyrics, and photographs, the book balances coverage of the state and economy with attention to daily life, family life, and cultural change. Entries are drawn from all around sub-Saharan Africa, and many have been translated into English for the first time. Introductions to each source and chapter provide context and identify themes. African History through Sources allows readers to analyze change, understand perspectives, and imagine everyday life during an extraordinary time.