Geography Of Africa Research Articles

Perspectives in Rural Geography

Geographers have spent a great deal of time in recent years attempting to identify the limits and principal concerns of their subject.' Disputes and debates rage as to just what 'geography' is and researchers are often both sensitive and defensive about their discipline. However, in the field of rural geography in Africa there is neither time nor need for 'intellectual contemplation of one's navel.'

Selected Bibliography on African Rural Geography

Selected Bibliography on African Rural Geography

Research Directions and Needs in African Rural Geography

Research Directions and Needs in African Rural Geography

Research Directions and Needs in African Rural Geography

Obviously everything needs to be done immediately. This is the first desperate thought one has in contemplating the undone tasks which litter the geographical research landscape of Africa. The urgency of the tasks, their intellectual allure, and the tiny band of geographers which lightly peoples this landscape make for a kind of permanent agony of the mind. A first priority would seem to lie in helping more Africans to become professional geographers; more than anything, we need colleagues. Given more colleagues, the research needs would come increasingly to be met and the research directions would move along new and vital paths. While we work toward this longed-for estate, it is appropriate to take stock of what has been going on in geographical research in Africa, more especially, rural Africa, which is the particular focus of this publication. Other contributors to this issue have their say on specific subfields of rural geography, or on specific research strategies. My comments deal with: 1) the questions geographers are now asking in rural research, and 2) the means at our disposal to answer these questions. The Questions

Selected Bibliography on African Rural Geography

The coverage of this bibliography is almost completely limited to articles appearing in the geographical journals or studies carried out by geographers. There is such a vast general literature on agricultural development and traditional land use that any attempt to glean selections for this listing would be arbitrary and would duplicate bibliographies already available. No attempt is made to cover the work of Portuguese or French geographers. Similarly, the survey is confined to the tropics, omitting North and South Africa. The emphasis of the bibliography is on the period 1960-1968, but significant itemps published before these dates are also included. These references should be useful in demonstrating the scope of work done by geographers with reference to rural Africa. As might be expected the bulk of the studies are ecological in their focus, concerned generally with land use and settlement patterns. However, some studies with a new emphasis should emerge from two current trends in geography. One is the investigation of the theme of environmental perception as exemplified by Philip Porter and several of his former students at the University of Minnesota and by Robert Kates, Clark University. The second trend, towards greater quantification in geography, is illustrated by the articles by Peter Gould and the book by Edward Soja. As the statistics available for each African country improve, more studies of this type should be forthcoming. Abbreviations used in the Bibliography: Annals AAG Annals of the Association of American Geographers Cahiers I.S.E.A. Cahiers de l'institut de science economique appliqu6e EAISR East African Institute of Social Research

Environment and Spatial Perception: An Approach to Research in African Rural Geography

Environment and Spatial Perception: An Approach to Research in African Rural Geography

The Performance of East African Students on an Experimental Test Battery

In this article an issue currently perplexing the educational systems of most African countries is addressed. Basically the question is to what extent Africans should be required to learn about their own culture. Heretofore there has beeni such little emphasis on the student's mastering the knowledge of his own culture that students, governmental officials and employing agencies did not see ignorance of African culture and geography as a disadvantage.

アフリカに関する政治地理学的一, 二の論考

アフリカに関する政治地理学的一, 二の論考

African Studies in the United States

This listing of programs of African studies offered at American universities continues previous listings in this Bulletin , most recently in March 1962. Listings of programs have been standardized to include the following: a general outline of the program, degrees offered, staff and course offerings for 1963-64, and present enrollment in the program. The editor welcomes additional information and will be happy to include it in a subsequent issue of the Bulletin . The African Area Studies Program of American University is built around a core program of courses and seminars in The School of International Service, and is coordinated with specialized courses in the departments of international relations and organizations, sociology and anthropology, earth sciences, economics, history, languages and linguistics, and the school of government and public administration. Other cooperating groups include the Center of Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, the Business Council in International Understanding, the Church Mission and the International Labor Program. An integrated Seminar on Africa headed by Darrell Randall, director of the program, includes a program in history, cultural analysis, and social, economic and political development. Courses on Africa offered include Introduction to Africa, Economic Problems, Geography of Africa, History of Africa, Problems of Contemporary Africa, Labor in Africa, Government and Politics in Modern Africa, Culture Area Analysis: Africa South of the Sahara, and Seminar in Population Studies. A United Nations Seminar on African Affairs is scheduled as part of the integrated seminar, and an advanced seminar is offered for students who have done research in Africa.

Turkish Archival Sources for West African History

About 1960, the study of West African history took a new turn as historians became aware of the interest and value of Islamic sources for their work, particularly manuscript materials in Arabic. To be sure, the use of Arabic sources for the history of West Africa is nothing new: in 1841, W. Des-borough Cooley published his The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained; or, an Inquiry into the Early History and Geography of Central Africa. But Cooley's pioneering book was discounted by later British and American writers on Africa as the work of an eccentric. In the 1880's and 1890's, many of these writers were spellbound by their vision of what Christianity might do for the African, while others were preoccupied by what they deemed to be the morally indefensible activities of the Muslims as slave-raiders and traders in West and East Africa. As late as the 1930's, the well-known British anthropologist C. K. Meek indicted Islam in northern Nigeria when he wrote: “The institution of slavery is a pivotal feature of Islamic society, and we are justified with charging Muhammadanism with the devastation and desolation in which Northern Nigeria was found at the beginning of this century.” Other writers, like Sir A.C. Burns for Nigeria, and A. W. Cardinall and W. E. F. Ward for Ghana, dismissed the Islamic side of West African history in few words, or gave it no mention at all. There were other reasons for this lack of emphasis. In northern Nigeria, for example, many British officials were apprehensive of an outbreak of “Mahdism” among the Muslims; and very frequently, French officials looked on Islam as a rival political system, dangerous and potentially subversive.

The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained; or, an Inquiry into the Early History and Geography of Central Africa. 2nd edition. By William D. Cooley. Bibliographical introduction by J. R. Willis. Pp. xii + 143. London: Frank Cass and Co., 1966. 35s.

The Negroland of the Arabs Examined and Explained; or, an Inquiry into the Early History and Geography of Central Africa. 2nd edition. By William D. Cooley. Bibliographical introduction by J. R. Willis. Pp. xii + 143. London: Frank Cass and Co., 1966. 35s. - Volume 7 Issue 3

The Beginnings of African Studies in Japan

Historically, Japan has had neither political nor cultural contacts with Africa. During the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, Japanese scholars took some interest in the European ‘scramble for Africa’, and some works by explorers and administrators in Africa were translated; the emphasis was placed upon colonial policy, rather than upon Africans themselves. The first Japanese report of a visit to Africa was Afurika isshu by Naokichi Nakamura and Shunro Oshikawa, published in 1910. Soon afterwards, economic development in Japan stimulated the search for new markets, and many fact-finding missions, both official and unofficial, were sent to South and East Africa. A Japanese consulate was opened in Cape Town in 1917; a shipping service to East Africa was inaugurated in 1926, and others to West and North Africa in 1933. During the 1930's further translations were made of European works on African arts, sociology, anthropology, and geography. By this time, there was a professional chair of colonial policy in most Japanese universities.

Principles of the treatment of trauma; basic principles, plastic and orthopaedic aspects of trauma.

The authors of this book discuss the surgical problems encountered in the management of common injuries sustained by inhabitants of the African tropical countries. After a lucid discussion of the basic principles, which includes tissue repair, fluid and electrolyte balance, and chemotherapy, they discuss the fundamental precepts in the treatment of burns and common fractures of the skeletal system. The purpose of the authors is to help and orient the physician in a lonely nowhere of the African jungle, away from the facilities of modern hospitals, with primitive lines of communications, and amidst prehistoric traditions of first aid to the injured tribesman. Due credit

African Studies in the United States

This listing of programs of African studies offered at American universities continues previous listings in this Bulletin, most recently in March 1962. Listings of programs have been standardized to include the following: a general outline of the program, degrees offered, staff and course offerings for 1963-64, and present enrollment in the program. The editor welcomes additional information and will be happy to include it in a subsequent issue of the Bulletin. The African Area Studies Program of American University is built around a core program of courses and seminars in The School of International Service, and is coordinated with specialized courses in the departments of international relations and organizations, sociology and anthropology, earth sciences, economics, history, languages and linguistics, and the school of government and public administration. Other cooperating groups include the Center of Diplomacy and Foreign Policy, the Business Council in International Understanding, the Church Mission and the International Labor Program. An integrated Seminar on Africa headed by Darrell Randall, director of the program, includes a program in history, cultural analysis, and social, economic and political development. Courses on Africa offered include Introduction to Africa, Economic Problems, Geography of Africa, History of Africa, Problems of Contemporary Africa, Labor in Africa, Government and Politics in Modern Africa, Culture Area Analysis: Africa South of the Sahara, and Seminar in Population Studies. A United Nations Seminar on African Affairs is scheduled as part of the integrated seminar, and an advanced seminar is offered for students who have done research in Africa.

An Outline Geography of Africa

An Outline Geography of Africa

A Tribute to Hemingway

Abstract Sad news comes to us from far-off Sun Valley, USA. Ernest Hemingway is gone. He was not one of those who die in bed. Yet it is still hard to believe that the torero, the boxer, the soldier and big-game hunter, but first of all the great writer is no longer among the living. How many times has the telegraph brought us news of his death: a plane in which he was flying had crashed; he had vanished in the remote African jungle. The rumors always turned out to be just rumors. We were almost ready to believe that death would always pass him by. And now this news….

The Search for Identity in the Novels of John Dos Passos

Literature reflects a fascination with the enigma of man's identity. Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going?—these questions recur, are answered, and yet require always re-asking and new illumination. Contemporary fiction projects man's quest for identity against the background of a fragmented and confusing world where the need for self-definition grows urgent because the social supports of the past are weakened and the opportunities for new and strange definitions in the present are enlarged. In a world that exhibits instability as a norm and social fluidity as an ideal, no clearcut self-image can emerge and receive assuring consent. The search for identity in modern literature takes on the form of a pursuit—a curious pursuit, because the object is often undefined and unvisualized. Joyce's Bloom wandering the maze of Dublin streets, Camus' Meursault arrested in the blaze of Algerian sun, Saul Bellow's Henderson invading untrampled African jungle, crying “I want, I want,” but unable to articulate a predicate—these characters are impelled by a sense of inner void to pursue their identity as whole and self-conscious beings. Undefined to themselves they are all “strangers” seeking the touchstone of some objective reality that can validate their existence or of some assertive self-knowledge that can acquaint and unite them with themselves. The image of man as divided and a stranger recurs in the looming novels of the century, in the works of Proust, Kafka, Camus, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf; it is beautifully crystallized in the recognition scene at the end of Proust's Remembrance of Things Past as the hero's revelatory self-encounter. The failure of Proust's narrator to recognize his image in the mirror, his sense of masquerade and strangeness, the jading of his sensibilities as all seems degraded and lost, and then the unexpected swift revelation which unifies and gives meaning to his life—these have become recurrent experiences in contemporary fiction as it tries to illuminate the jagged course of man's search for identity in the modern world.

Beachcombers of the African Jungle.

Beachcombers of the African Jungle.

A Trans-Saharan Caravan Route in Herodotus

KOWoL XO'yoLL). The promise is kept toward the end of Book Four, with the closing sixty devoted to Libya. But since the author's chief center of interest here was the foundation and early history of Cyrene, only thirty chapters-and these of less than average length-refer to the more general topic of North African geography and ethnology. Even this much-abbreviated survey is uneven in quality, reflecting discrepancies in the sources of information. Greek ships, probably based on Cyrene, had evidently been coasting as far west as the Tunisian border; but beyond that point the Punic curtain seems to have been dropped against the Hellenic trader. This would explain the detailed listing of the coastal inhabitants of Cyrenaica and Tripolitana as far as the island of Jerba and the Shatt-el-Jerid (with which Lake Tritonis may be identified), in contrast to the highly sketchy and unsystematic treatment of the long stretch of Africa Minor through Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. This regrettable lack of information was due, of course, to the rigorous Carthaginian domination of the western Mediterranean and the inimical character of Punic and Greek relations during Herodotus' lifetime. But it is neither the very concise description of the inhabitants of the shoreland between Egypt and Tunisia (in chs. i68-i8o of Book Four) nor the highly inadequate glimpse of the great western world beyond (in chs. 187-196), but the brief interlude of five (181-185) inserted between them, with which the present study is concerned. It is in these that there is to be found-unmistakably clear, yet hitherto overlooked--our earliest account of the great equatorial trade-route across the Sahara. This Saharan interlude in Herodotus' Libyan chapters is introduced by a remarkable and, if accepted literally, quite impossible bit of geography, which runs as follows: These, then, who have been listed are the pastoral Libyans of the coast; behind them in the interior is Wildbeast Libya; and beyond this there runs a ridge of sand, extending from Egyptian Thebes to the Stelae of Herakles. In this ridge at roughly tenday intervals there are mounds of salt in coarse lumps and from the summit of each of these from the midst of the salt there spurts cold sweet water. Around about there dwell men, the last inhabitants desertward beyond the region of wild animals.

African Jungle Doctor: Ten Years in Liberia

African Jungle Doctor: Ten Years in Liberia