This book is a biography based on a qualitative ethnographic study of adaptation to climate by Mr Zephaniah Phiri Maseko, an award-winning smallholder farmer from Zvishavane, rural Zimbabwe. Ethnographic data provides insight and lessons of Mr Phiri Maseko and other farmers’ practices for rethinking existing strategies for adaptation to climate change. The concept of adaptation is probed in relationship to the closely related concepts of vulnerability, resilience and innovation. This study also explores the concept of conviviality and argues that Mr Phiri Maseko’s adaptation to climate hinges on mediating barriers between local and exogenous knowledge systems. The book argues that Mr Phiri Maseko offered tangible adaptive climate strategies through his innovations that “marry water and soil so that it won’t elope and run-off but raise a family” on his plot. His agricultural practices are anchored on the Shona concept of hurudza (an exceptionally productive farmer). This book explores the concept and practices of uhurudza, to suggest that the latter-day hurudza (commercial farmer) as embodied by Mr Phiri Maseko offers an important set of resources for the development of climate adaptation strategies in the region. This study of smallholder farmers’ adoption of innovations to climate highlights the “complex interplay” of multiple factors that act as barriers to uptake. Such interplay of multiple stressors increases the vulnerability of smallholders. The study concludes by arguing that in as much as the skewed colonial land policy impoverished the smallholder farmers, Mr Phiri Maseko nonetheless redefined himself as a latter-day hurudza and thus breaks free from the poverty cycle by conjuring ingenious ways of reducing vulnerability to climate. The book does not suggest that Mr Phiri Maseko’s innovations offer a silver bullet solution to the insecure rural livelihoods of smallholder farmers; nevertheless, they are a source of hope in an environment of uncertainty. His steely tenacity in the face of a multi-stressor environment is to be treasured.
In this book, Chris Mabeza takes the reader through a breath taking journey of the vicissitudes of village life in Zimbabwe from the colonial days to the present. This, at a time when telling African stories is enjoying a Risorgimento. Thus, in essence Mabeza throws his fingers in the wind and catches the zeitgeist of African storytelling. The stories leave the reader spellbound. Dispatches from the village has its finger on the pulse of the people. This gorgeous collection of short stories is a product of immersive thick descriptions of rural life as it intersects with urban life. The author grapples with the effects of what has generally been observed as the brutish and nasty new normal. The rural landscape has not been spared the vagaries of this new normal. However, when overwhelmed by the tsunami of negative news that permeate our media, pick-up Dispatches from the village to soothe yourself.
Nhakanomics: Harvesting Knowledge and Value for Re-generation Through Social Innovation is a radical departure from the commonly held belief that neo-liberal economics from the US and the West is universal, and is the only solution to underdevelopment and poverty throughout the world. Instead, the book teases out and theorises the intellectually rutted terrain of development studies, and neo-liberal economics from a decolonial Pan-Africanist perspective. Following a path of social innovation, with perspectives drawn from social anthropology, economics, and business and management studies Nhakanomics is a unique socio-economic approach applicable in the Global South and in Southern Africa in particular. The study argues that the process and substance of nhakanomics with its pre-emphasis on the relational South provides a robust and holistic approach to social innovation and social transformation grounded in relational networks and meshworks. The central idea is a call to re-GENE-rate society, through local Grounding and Origination, and tapping into local-global Emergent Foundations via a newly global Emancipatory Navigation, while ultimately culminating in global-local transformative Effects in four recursive cycles of re-GENE-rating C(K)umusha, Culture, Communication, and Capital after re-Constituting Africa-the 5Cs. With a novel and radical approach the book is an interrogation of neo-liberal economics in the Global South. As such, this book is remarkably handy to students and practitioners in the fields of economics, development studies, political science, science and technology studies, business management, sociology, transformation studies, and development related non-Governmental Organisations working with grassroots communities.
The Clash of the Titans and Other Short Stories is a sundry, marvellous collection of short stories that reflect and capture diverse life experiences. Mabeza and Mawere offer with great dexterousness a snapshot, richness, and practical potentialities of childhood to adulthood experiences in shaping, inspiring and influencing moral rectitude, industriousness and determination. This is an incisive and invigorating exposé steeped in candour and earnestness. For aficionados of creative writing, cognoscenti, students and instructors of English Literature, this is a collection to enjoy and cherish.
Nemeso - a four eyed man-lived in southeastern Zimbabwe in the mid-17th century. Stories about him are widely known by the Duma in southeastern Zimbabwe as he left a legacy, a delicious dish - of edible stinkbugs locally named harurwa. These insects, believed to be a gift to Nemeso by the ancestors, thrive in a grove (jiri) where no one has been allowed to meddle since the time of Nemeso, the medium through whom the stinkbugs were gifted to the living by the living-dead. The insects are a source of livelihood for the Duma people and for people beyond, and serve as a drive for forest conservation in the area. The wealthy stories of Nemeso's life have been passed on through oral tradition. This book, generated from an ethnographic reconstitution in southeastern Zimbabwe, documents the stories in a lively and fascinating thirst quenching manner.
Humans, Other Beings and the Environment is an ethnographic study of the possibilities for the mutual, symbiotic co-existence of human beings, a unique species of forest insects and natural forests. The result of extensive fieldwork conducted over a period of thirteen months, the book highlights the continuum among humans, wild insects and environmental conservation outcomes in a specific environment of southeastern Norumedzo in rural Zimbabwe. In this respect, it describes interactions and relationships between humans, other beings and the natural forests to demonstrate how some aspects of the emerging body of literature in the posthumanities and relational ontologies can work to grasp the collaborative interactional space for different social actors in the cosmos, through which cognitive and knowledge communities can be extended. Furthermore, the book raises critical questions for conservation sciences, political ecology and environmental anthropology, as it demonstrates the extent of relevance and application of the Norumedzo conservation case study, with particular regard to conservational problems and asymmetrical relations between humans and other beings in other scenarios in Zimbabwe and beyond. Complicating many assumptions about knowledge production, nature and culture, the book offers independent and critical insights into the interpretation of modernist science, posthumanist ideas and indigenous epistemologies, and relates these to existing studies. As such, it will be of interest not only to anthropologists, but also to political scientists, environmentalists and policy makers in Zimbabwe, southern Africa and beyond.
This book is a biography based on a qualitative ethnographic study of adaptation to climate by Mr Zephaniah Phiri Maseko, an award-winning smallholder farmer from Zvishavane, rural Zimbabwe. Ethnographic data provides insight and lessons of Mr Phiri Maseko and other farmers practices for rethinking existing strategies for adaptation to climate change. The concept of adaptation is probed in relationship to the closely related concepts of vulnerability, resilience and innovation. This study also explores the concept of conviviality and argues that Mr Phiri Masekos adaptation to climate hinges on mediating barriers between local and exogenous knowledge systems. The book argues that Mr Phiri Maseko offered tangible adaptive climate strategies through his innovations that marry water and soil so that it wont elope and run-off but raise a family on his plot. His agricultural practices are anchored on the Shona concept ofhurudza(an exceptionally productive farmer). This book explores the concept and practices ofuhurudza,to suggest that the latter-dayhurudza(commercial farmer)as embodied by Mr Phiri Maseko offers an important set of resources for the development of climate adaptation strategies in the region. This study of smallholder farmers adoption of innovations to climate highlights the complex interplay of multiple factors that act as barriers to uptake. Such interplay of multiple stressors increases the vulnerability of smallholders. The study concludes by arguing that in as much as the skewed colonial land policy impoverished the smallholder farmers, Mr Phiri Maseko nonetheless redefined himself as a latter-dayhurudzaand thus breaks free from the poverty cycle by conjuring ingenious ways of reducing vulnerability to climate. The book does not suggest that Mr Phiri Masekos innovations offer a silver bullet solution to the insecure rural livelihoods of smallholder farmers; nevertheless, they are a source of hope in an environment of uncertainty. His steely tenacity in the face of a multi-stressor environment is to be treasured.
The Clash of the Titans and Other Short Stories is a sundry, marvellous collection of short stories that reflect and capture diverse life experiences. Mabeza and Mawere offer with great dexterousness a snapshot, richness, and practical potentialities of childhood to adulthood experiences in shaping, inspiring and influencing moral rectitude, industriousness and determination. This is an incisive and invigorating exposé steeped in candour and earnestness. For aficionados of creative writing, cognoscenti, students and instructors of English Literature, this is a collection to enjoy and cherish.
Nemeso - a four eyed man-lived in southeastern Zimbabwe in the mid-17th century. Stories about him are widely known by the Duma in southeastern Zimbabwe as he left a legacy, a delicious dish - of edible stinkbugs locally named harurwa. These insects, believed to be a gift to Nemeso by the ancestors, thrive in a grove (jiri) where no one has been allowed to meddle since the time of Nemeso, the medium through whom the stinkbugs were gifted to the living by the living-dead. The insects are a source of livelihood for the Duma people and for people beyond, and serve as a drive for forest conservation in the area. The wealthy stories of Nemeso's life have been passed on through oral tradition. This book, generated from an ethnographic reconstitution in southeastern Zimbabwe, documents the stories in a lively and fascinating thirst quenching manner.
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