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Integrating epistemologies: a history lesson for modern ecologists
Book Reviews
Trends in Ecology & Evolution March 2013, Vol. 28, No. 3
Integrating epistemologies: a history lesson for modern ecologists Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950 by Helen Tilley, University of Chicago Press, 2011. US$29.00, pbk (529 pp.) ISBN 978-0-22-680347-0
John M. Heydinger Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, DST/NRF Centre of Excellence, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Imperial governance is tricky business. The necessity of integrating the numerous lifestyles and livelihoods of a population, within a variety of heterogeneous environments, prefigures contemporary concerns of how people manage and interact with social and ecological systems. In Africa as a Living Laboratory, Helen Tilley examines the role that colonial science played in the expansion of empire in British Africa. Rather than succumb to the traditional narrative, that scientists and colonial administrators blindly employed preconceived epistemologies concerning African environmental and development issues, Tilley reveals an intellectual and administrative history in which scientific understandings arising from the colonies were translated back to the Metropole. African indigenous knowledge and colonial–local interactions were to play a formative role in the development of western science. Between the seat of empire and the colonial periphery, a dialogue was taking place: where the power of western knowledge was at its most tenuous, different epistemologies became integrated and novel ways of thinking arose. Tilley uses the creation of An African Survey [1] as a handle to grasp how British scientific and administrative thinking evolved during the early 20th century. Compiled under the direction of Lord Malcolm Hailey, An African Survey provided a sort of ‘state of the colonies’ report. In compiling the work, Hailey relied upon administrators and scientists with extensive on-the-ground experience. Almost to a man, such officials cited the value of African intellectual approaches and practical applications to solving diverse issues such as deforestation, depleted soil fertility, bush clearance, and disease and pest control (to name just a few). Although this reliance upon local knowledge is not always apparent in the final text of the survey, Tilley’s archival research details the extent to which officials paid heed to the integral role of natives in colonial successes. Almost 10 years in the making, An African Survey would dramatically alter the ways in which British scientists and colonial administrators approached governance and management in the African colonies. Such an evolution, Tilley argues, cannot be properly understood without acknowledging the importance of indigenous peoples. Corresponding author: Heydinger, J.M. ([email protected]).
For it was in the colonial hinterlands that imperial power was at its most tenuous. Western endeavour was able to manage environments and landscapes only inasmuch as the bureaucratic rank and file were supported by the empire. With neither the funding nor the infrastructure necessary to apply pre-existing scientific and management concepts practically, colonial officials were forced to rely upon local problem-solving techniques. Colonial scientists would play no small part in remaking foreign landscapes to fit a rational and standardized geography [2]. Yet their ability to manage complex ecosystems remained relatively limited. Awash in a sea of context, colonial officials understood how uncertain the world could be. Tilley writes that ‘tropical Africa [served] as a key site in which to work out a scientific discourse of complexity, interrelations, and interdependence’. Such awareness resonates as strikingly contemporary. How are any of us to apply scientific technical and conceptual developments to address complex and heterogeneous environments? Much as bureaucrats and colonial scientists struggled to balance competing epistemologies during the last century, solutions to modern-day environmental concerns are frequently unable to surmount the barriers surrounding disciplines. Surely a more fulsome understanding of how different epistemologies were integrated in the past, and the resultant successes and failures, can offer lessons to the practitioners and researchers of today. Just as the administration of colonial solutions by needs addressed a host of differing social and environmental concerns, we too face an enmeshed social–ecological world of complex and overlapping difficulties. Helen Tilley has written a wonderfully insightful monograph of environmental and intellectual history. Not only does this work uncover the role of science in the development of a westernized Africa, but it also asks us to consider the role of colonial Africa in the development of modern western science. Surely such an inversion can be grounds for fruitful discussion concerning ways of knowing, localized and universal knowledge, and how the sciences speak, not only to one another, but also to the world at large. References 1 Hailey, M. (1938) An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara, Oxford University Press 2 Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, Yale University Press 0169-5347/$ – see front matter http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2012.10.007 Trends in Ecology & Evolution, March 2013, Vol. 28, No. 3
Trends in Ecology & Evolution March 2013, Vol. 28, No. 3
Integrating epistemologies: a history lesson for modern ecologists Africa as a Living Laboratory: Empire, Development, and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge, 1870–1950 by Helen Tilley, University of Chicago Press, 2011. US$29.00, pbk (529 pp.) ISBN 978-0-22-680347-0
John M. Heydinger Percy FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, DST/NRF Centre of Excellence, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa
Imperial governance is tricky business. The necessity of integrating the numerous lifestyles and livelihoods of a population, within a variety of heterogeneous environments, prefigures contemporary concerns of how people manage and interact with social and ecological systems. In Africa as a Living Laboratory, Helen Tilley examines the role that colonial science played in the expansion of empire in British Africa. Rather than succumb to the traditional narrative, that scientists and colonial administrators blindly employed preconceived epistemologies concerning African environmental and development issues, Tilley reveals an intellectual and administrative history in which scientific understandings arising from the colonies were translated back to the Metropole. African indigenous knowledge and colonial–local interactions were to play a formative role in the development of western science. Between the seat of empire and the colonial periphery, a dialogue was taking place: where the power of western knowledge was at its most tenuous, different epistemologies became integrated and novel ways of thinking arose. Tilley uses the creation of An African Survey [1] as a handle to grasp how British scientific and administrative thinking evolved during the early 20th century. Compiled under the direction of Lord Malcolm Hailey, An African Survey provided a sort of ‘state of the colonies’ report. In compiling the work, Hailey relied upon administrators and scientists with extensive on-the-ground experience. Almost to a man, such officials cited the value of African intellectual approaches and practical applications to solving diverse issues such as deforestation, depleted soil fertility, bush clearance, and disease and pest control (to name just a few). Although this reliance upon local knowledge is not always apparent in the final text of the survey, Tilley’s archival research details the extent to which officials paid heed to the integral role of natives in colonial successes. Almost 10 years in the making, An African Survey would dramatically alter the ways in which British scientists and colonial administrators approached governance and management in the African colonies. Such an evolution, Tilley argues, cannot be properly understood without acknowledging the importance of indigenous peoples. Corresponding author: Heydinger, J.M. ([email protected]).
For it was in the colonial hinterlands that imperial power was at its most tenuous. Western endeavour was able to manage environments and landscapes only inasmuch as the bureaucratic rank and file were supported by the empire. With neither the funding nor the infrastructure necessary to apply pre-existing scientific and management concepts practically, colonial officials were forced to rely upon local problem-solving techniques. Colonial scientists would play no small part in remaking foreign landscapes to fit a rational and standardized geography [2]. Yet their ability to manage complex ecosystems remained relatively limited. Awash in a sea of context, colonial officials understood how uncertain the world could be. Tilley writes that ‘tropical Africa [served] as a key site in which to work out a scientific discourse of complexity, interrelations, and interdependence’. Such awareness resonates as strikingly contemporary. How are any of us to apply scientific technical and conceptual developments to address complex and heterogeneous environments? Much as bureaucrats and colonial scientists struggled to balance competing epistemologies during the last century, solutions to modern-day environmental concerns are frequently unable to surmount the barriers surrounding disciplines. Surely a more fulsome understanding of how different epistemologies were integrated in the past, and the resultant successes and failures, can offer lessons to the practitioners and researchers of today. Just as the administration of colonial solutions by needs addressed a host of differing social and environmental concerns, we too face an enmeshed social–ecological world of complex and overlapping difficulties. Helen Tilley has written a wonderfully insightful monograph of environmental and intellectual history. Not only does this work uncover the role of science in the development of a westernized Africa, but it also asks us to consider the role of colonial Africa in the development of modern western science. Surely such an inversion can be grounds for fruitful discussion concerning ways of knowing, localized and universal knowledge, and how the sciences speak, not only to one another, but also to the world at large. References 1 Hailey, M. (1938) An African Survey: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara, Oxford University Press 2 Scott, J.C. (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed, Yale University Press 0169-5347/$ – see front matter http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2012.10.007 Trends in Ecology & Evolution, March 2013, Vol. 28, No. 3