CHAPTER 2:

Literary Framework and Review

Throughout the East Africa Region, the geography is consistently complex, made up of a dizzying array of human and environmental interactions. Ecologically, Kenya and Tanzania are blessed with an amazing diversity of ecosystems - ranging from tropical rainforests to savannas to alpine moorlands - and of animal and plant species found nowhere else on earth. East Africa is also rich in cultural groups, including different nomadic, pastoralist, intensive agriculturalist, and hunting-and-gathering communities, which have developed numerous ways of living with and relating to the physical world around them. Beyond the physical, biological, and human diversity in the countries, Kenya and Tanzania are also historically riddled with multiple levels of interpersonal, cross-cultural, socioeconomic, and political interactions between human groups and communities. Within the geography of the East Africa Region, these levels of human interrelationships are played out locally between members of individual communities, nationally between different cultural groups, class interests, political forces and factions, and internationally between various constituencies representing the interests of "Northern" and "Southern" peoples and ideological systems. The geography of the East Africa Region is also characterized by an alarming array of human and environmental problems impoverishing human communities and degrading ecological biodiversity throughout Kenya and Tanzania. The increasing destruction of natural resources, of the self-sustainability of human communities, and of the ability of indigenous peoples to reproduce themselves as cultural groups, represent crisis situations in East Africa and demand immediate attention. These crises reflect human and environmental interrelationships, and dominant sociocultural, political, and economic systems and ideologies, which continue to be profoundly destructive within Kenya and Tanzania. The connections between the complexities of East African geography, and the continuing trends of degradation and impoverishment throughout the region, must be addressed if environmental and human disaster is to be averted in East Africa. My thesis will attempt to make these connections, by focusing on the interaction between power dynamics and the history of conservation and development as they are manifested within the East African geography.

Because of the human and environmental complexities of the East African Region, my study of power dynamics, conservation and development issues, and human and environmental relationships in Kenya and Tanzania is based on material from a wide range of literary sources and texts. Primarily, this literature is divided into three main categories: theoretical considerations of social and environmental justice; historical texts focusing on changing power dynamics and relationships between people and the environment in Africa; and contemporary texts which consider different aspects of "North/South" relationships by focusing on conservation and development projects and strategies, degradation and impoverishment issues in Africa, and concrete examples of social and environmental justice manifested in the East Africa Region. The information from these texts and sources provides a literary framework for the considerations of degradation, impoverishment, development, and conservation addressed throughout the chapters of this thesis. The content of this literary framework - including theoretical, historical, contemporary, and other texts - will be considered below.

Theoretical Texts

Within the context of East African geography, and based on the colonial and imperialist involvement of Britain and the United States within Kenya and Tanzania, the theoretical structure of social and environmental justice necessarily takes into account a number of theoretical positions and perspectives, including: systemic relationships between "Northern" and "Southern" countries; theoretical considerations of self-sustainable vs. self-destructive socioeconomic and ideological systems; and the human and corporate consequences of a globalized, capitalist economy. To effectively deconstruct the complex geography and the contemporary crises of the East Africa Region, such a diverse set of theoretical perspectives considered through the course of this thesis is essential.

To understand the historically oppressive relationships of colonialism and imperialism between "Northern" and "Southern" countries, especially in the context of the "free market" economy, theoretical considerations of the self-destructive and exploitative dynamics of capitalist systems are essential. The work of Karl Marx (taken from excerpts in Thinking About the Environment: 1995 for this thesis) provides an important foundation for deconstructing "North/South" relationships based on capitalist dynamics and tendencies. Many of the conservation and development strategies implemented in Kenya and Tanzania have been historically imposed by Britain and (especially after World War II) the United States. Marx's critical analysis of capitalism provides invaluable insights into capitalist dynamics, the transformation of resources and people into "forms of production," and the self-destructive consequences of the ideological and socioeconomic models of the "free market," as they are played out in "North/South" relationships (in Africa and worldwide) and in conservation and development projects in Kenya and Tanzania. Marx's consideration of the reproduction of the capitalist system (i.e. through expanding and intensifying the exploitation and appropriation of forms of production to avert crisis situations in the short term, contributing to greater, unresolvable crisis situations in the long term) is especially important in connection with the exploitation of East African people and ecosystems during the colonial and postcolonial eras, and the development of human and environmental crises in these eras. Furthermore, Marx's analysis of the profit motive and the inevitable commodification of products and of the environment resulting from capitalist systemic organization, is extremely important in the context of East African degradation and impoverishment; the imposition of capitalist ideological and socioeconomic models upon the East African peoples and environment has been inseparably linked with increasing human and ecological deterioration in Kenya and Tanzania.

Marx's work critiquing capitalism is also important because it has given rise to a number of theoretical perspectives that consider critically the destructive consequences of globalized capitalism. James O'Connor (1994) and John Bellamy Foster (1996) analyze the failure of capitalism to provide a socioeconomic model that is sustainable in the long term - for people or for the environment - because of the unending capitalist drive for economic growth and expansion at the expense of human and ecological diversity. David Korten (1995) argues that the increasing, corporate domination of people and resources, demonstrates clearly that the capitalist drive for economic expansion and growth is profoundly destructive because it demands increased profits even when they contradict the human and ecological interests of sustainability. Allan Schnaiberg and Kenneth Alan Gould (1994) make a similar argument in their analysis of capitalist ideological models of human/environmental relations; Schnaiberg and Gould suggest that the "treadmill" ethic of capitalism demands an unending resource base that is not available on a finite planet, and as a result, the globalization of the capitalist system is proving disastrous to the "South" as well as the "North." Herbert Marcuse and John Rawls (both from Thinking About the Environment: 1995) echo these arguments and suggest that human freedom and relationships necessarily deteriorate within the framework of capitalist ideological and socioeconomic systems, because the commodification and destruction of resources inevitably lead to the destruction of human liberation, connections, and choices for present and future generations. In the context of the East Africa Region considered throughout this thesis, these theoretical perspectives are extremely important in deconstructing capitalist dynamics as they are manifested in degrading resources, human relationships, and the deterioration of sustainable communities, especially because Kenya and (increasingly) Tanzania, are embracing capitalist socioeconomic models for the nations.

Historical Texts

The degradation of the environment and the impoverishment of the people of East Africa cannot be adequately understood and connected to power dynamics and systems of domination between "Northern" and "Southern" countries without a thorough consideration of the history of Kenya and Tanzania. It is essential to study the history of the East Africa Region to reveal the ways in which power dynamics and dominant ideological systems have significantly shaped conservation and development strategies and interactions between people and the environment over time. Throughout this thesis the historical framework of human and environmental relationships is stressed by making use of the theories and ideas of a number of texts and sources.

Walter Rodney's work, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1981), is an especially important Marxist perspective framing the discussion of precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods. Rodney strongly argues that the human and environmental poverty of the African continent is directly attributable to the colonial and postcolonial exploitation and oppression of Western European and U.S. involvement in African countries, and his views form the backbone of the historical discussion in Chapters 3 through 5. Alfred Abioseh Jarrett (1996) echoes Rodney's ideas to present an additional perspective condemning colonial and continuing imperialist involvement of the "North" in African affairs. Jarrett also goes further to discuss U.S. imperialism in Africa during the past 15 years, after Rodney's death in 1980. Together, Rodney's and Jarrett's works provide an important foundation for understanding African history in terms of indigenous practices and beliefs and the ways in which "traditional" and "modern, Western" systems of thought, socioeconomic, and political structure have interacted over time. In Black Man's Burden (1992), Basil Davidson also argues that the colonial legacy - and particularly the formation of Africa ideologically and geographically according to a nation-state model - has been directly responsible for the continuing infrastructural nightmares and environmental problems facing African peoples today. Davidson argues that colonialism in Africa must be acknowledged and deconstructed if African underdevelopment today is to be truly appreciated. Davidson's work reinforces Rodney's and Jarrett's work in suggesting that the ideological and socioeconomic systems imposed upon Africa by Western Europe and the United States were extremely disruptive of sustainable systems of indigenous development and conservation strategies and are directly related to environmental and human crises in Africa today. Several other literary sources - by Garth Owen-Smith (1993), Vandana Shiva (1992), and M.P. Simbotwe (1993) - provide additional historical accounts of "North/South" relationships and the ways in which systems of domination and oppression have manifested in general between "Western" and "developing" nations, and these accounts provide additional support for the theories of African underdevelopment contained within the work of Rodney, Jarrett, and Davidson.

A number of other literary texts and sources provide historical accounts related more specifically to regions and cultural groups in East Africa. David Collett (1987), Michael Korir-Koech (1991), W.K. Lindsay (1987), Njeri Marekia (1991), David Western (1994b), Eric Hecox (1996), and Calestous Juma (1991) discuss specific historical studies of cultural groups (such as the pastoralist Maasai for Collett, Lindsay, and Western) in focused areas in the East Africa Region, that provide case studies reinforcing many of the power dynamics, systems of domination and exploitation, and the "underdevelopment of Africa" contained within Rodney's and Jarrett's work. The degradation of the environment and the impoverishment of cultural groups during colonial and postcolonial periods, are further analyzed in literary texts by authors including D.H.M. Cumming (1993), Krishna Ghimire (1994), Kevin Hill (1991), Robert Hitchcock (1995), and Marshall Murphree (1993). These texts focus on studies of African history in regions and among cultural groups that are not East African, but which nonetheless provide important parallels between the colonial and postcolonial experiences in various regions of Africa, and reinforce Rodney's, Jarrett's, and Davidson's considerations of "underdevelopment," impoverishment, and degradation as dynamics negatively affecting people and the environment throughout Africa. Finally, literary texts considering the history of conservation and development models in the U.S. and in Britain (for example, by Bryn Green (1989) and David Hales (1989)) are included to explain the ways in which conservation and development strategies imposed on African peoples and ecosystems reflect "Northern" ideologies and relationships with the environment that proved disastrous within the sociocultural and ecological frameworks of East Africa.

Contemporary Texts

The majority of the literary information referenced in this thesis addresses specific aspects of human and biological processes and social and environmental justice in East Africa, including: conservation and development strategies; gender issues; traditional knowledge; and case studies of degradation and impoverishment in East Africa. These literary texts and sources are primarily firsthand accounts of the authors that provide important documented studies reinforcing the theoretical and historical texts. Together, these texts provide the framework for my position in this thesis that development and conservation strategies in East Africa are directly related to degradation and impoverishment, historically-based power dynamics between "North" and "South," and the continuing dominance of self-destructive and exploitative systems of capitalist control internationally. Chapters 6 through 9 particularly make use of the contemporary texts, as well as the historical texts dealing with specific regional and cultural studies in East Africa, to frame the discussion of aspects of Kenyan and Tanzanian degradation, impoverishment, and strategies of development and conservation.

Texts focusing on conservation and development strategies - including sources by Susan Joekes et. al. (1994), M. Norton-Griffiths (1995), Scott Perkin (1995), Jessica Vivian (1994), David Collett (1987), W.K. Lindsay (1987), and David Western (1994b) - trace the successes and failures of conservation and development projects in East Africa to colonial and imperialist agendas, the involvement or the alienation of indigenous peoples, and institutionalized oppression of the "South" by the "North," demonstrating concrete ways in which power dynamics and systems of domination are made manifest in East Africa. Texts concentrating on gender issues and on women's inequality in East Africa place enormous importance on women's roles as the primary environmental resource managers in Kenya and Tanzania, and the ways in which colonial and postcolonial processes have increasingly stifled women's rights and abilities to sustain themselves, their communities, and the environmental resources around them. Authors such as Wanjiku Chiuri and Akinyi Nziuki (1992), Tabitha Kanogo (1992), Maria Nzomo (1992), and Susan Joekes et. al. (1994) address these issues directly. Authors including Betty Nafuna Wamalwa (1991), Marshall Murphree (1993), Garth Owen-Smith (1993), M.P. Simbotwe (1993), Calestous Juma (1991), Maria Nzomo (1992), and Wanjiku Chiuri and Akinyi Nziuki (1992) discuss traditional and indigenous knowledge among cultural groups in East Africa. The textual analysis of traditional knowledge of cultural groups in East Africa reinforces the discussion of precolonial systems of knowledge, ideological frameworks, and relationships between people and the environment. The texts also suggest alternatives to the destructive ideological and socioeconomic models of "Northern" countries that could potentially provide a basis for more sustainable human and ecological systems in East Africa and worldwide. Case studies on degradation and impoverishment in East Africa by Stan Braude (1992), Peter Hanneburg (1994), John Kundaeli (1989), Douglas Sheil (1992), Michael Stahl (1993), and others, address contemporary problems and crises in Kenya and Tanzania by focusing narrowly on concrete examples of deforestation, toxic and waste dumping in coastal waters, air pollution, siltation of rivers, poverty, starvation, and species extinction. Taken within the context of other aspects of East African geography, these studies provide definitive examples of social and ecological dysfunction throughout Kenya and Tanzania reinforcing the arguments regarding "Southern" degradation and impoverishment contained within the theoretical and historical frameworks for this thesis.

Several other texts and sources of information that do not fit within the categories of theoretical, historical, or contemporary texts nonetheless deserve mention. Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, edited by Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, was an important text because it helped me to organize this thesis as a series of linked Web documents that clearly demonstrated the interaction between various aspects of East African geography on ecological, socioeconomic, cultural, and political levels. The text was also important in helping me to make some of the connections between power dynamics, conservation and development issues, degradation and impoverishment in East Africa, and changing ideological and social systems in the context of Kenyan and Tanzanian geography. Finally, the text helped me to organize my approach to Chapters 6 and 7, in which I formed "commodity chains" from objects, events, and social structures to greater dynamics of oppression and domination based on colonial and imperialist relationships between "Northern" and "Southern" countries. Another important source of information was my own experiences in East Africa, recorded in the form of journal entries, fieldnotes, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., including my memories of and reactions to my explorations of Kenya and Tanzania. Although this source of information is not "professionally" produced or peer-reviewed, my firsthand experiences of some of the dynamics of East African geography helped me to connect a number of issues together - such as development, conservation, colonization, the physical structure and spacing of East African cities, the dominant GNP earners of ecotourism and cash crops, and imperialism. Furthermore, my personal experiences allowed me to validate some of the authors' case studies and fieldwork based on my own observations in Kenya and Tanzania.

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