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Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic
Abstract
Islands of dense forest in the savanna of 'forest' Guinea have long been regarded both by scientists and policy-makers as the last relics of a once more extensive forest cover, degraded and degrading fast due to its inhabitants' land use. In this 1996 text, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach question these entrenched assumptions. They show, on the contrary, how people have created forest islands around their villages, and how they have turned fallow vegetation more woody, so that population growth has implied more forest, not less. They also consider the origins, persistence, and consequences of a century of erroneous policy. Interweaving historical, social anthropological and ecological data, this fascinating study advances a novel theoretical framework for ecological anthropology, encouraging a radical re-examination of some central tenets in each of these disciplines.
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“While it had been widely believed that deforestation and desertification in Guinea were caused by mismanagement of the vegetation, the historical records reveal that the case was quite the opposite.”
From Rethinking resource scarcity: towards ecofeminist decolonial degrowth (2025) · cites this paper as Fairhead & Leach, 1996
In the citing paper
“International development agencies deploying Western expertise in conservation and 'sustainable' development misinterpreted 'slash-andburn' farming method in the region, and wrongly held villagers responsible for land erosion.”
From Rethinking resource scarcity: towards ecofeminist decolonial degrowth (2025) · cites this paper as Fairhead & Leach, 1996
In the citing paper
“Widespread agricultural land use by mid-Holocene is further evidenced by altered fire regimes that may have transformed vegetation structure and species composition across many regions, with woodland ecosystems from the Mediterranean to the Tropics increasingly recognized as the bio-cultural legacies of long histories of prior human use (50, 74, 78–84).”
From Used planet: a global history (2013) · cites this paper as [78]
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Fairhead, J., & Leach, M.
- Affiliations
- University of London (GB)
- University of Sussex (GB)
- ORCID
- Leach, Melissa
- Venue
- Cambridge University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
- Published
- 1996-10-17
- OpenAlex
- W41998397
- Cited by
- 1,037
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 30 · 2023: 32 · 2022: 36 · 2021: 58 · 2020: 40 · 2019: 24 · 2018: 62 · 2017: 33 · 2016: 37 · 2015: 41 · 2014: 47 · 2013: 45 · 2012: 33
- FWCI
- 17.58
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Cambridge University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
- Social Sciences › Development › Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Keywords
- forest islands, savanna forest, Guinea, land use, fallow vegetation, population growth, forest cover change, forest policy, ecological anthropology, deforestation
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