Transnational dimensions to environmental resource dynamics: modes of governance and local resource management in Eastern DRC

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Changing Perspectives on Forests: Science/Policy Processes in Wider Society

This Bulletin attempts to link two sets of pressing contemporary concerns. On the one hand, it addresses changing relationships between science, policy and society in the context of internationalisation and public challenges to formal expertise; concerns currently under hot debate in European settings as much as in developing countries. On the other hand, it engages with issues around rural landscape and livelihoods in low‑income countries, particularly in West Africa and the Caribbean. Tropical forests provide a linking focus, strongly implicated as they are both in local livelihoods and struggles for resource control, and in scientific and policy debates extending from local settings to highly charged global arenas – not least in the lead-up to the ‘Rio Plus 10’ Conference on Environment and Development in Johannesburg, 2002. The Bulletin reviews important advances in the science of forest dynamics, which in turn suggest ways that forest policies could become more ‘pro-poor’. At the same time, it analyses the science/policy processes and power/knowledge relations, which must be addressed if such changes are to come about. We hope that this Bulletin will be of interest not only to researchers, policy-makers and practitioners working in the forestry, environment and development fields, but also to those interested in science and policy more broadly, illustrating how issues often examined in ‘northern’, hi-tech industrial settings, could work out in very different contexts in the ‘south’

Childhood vaccination and society in The Gambia : public engagement with science and delivery

This paper examines public engagement with routine vaccination delivery, and vaccine trials and related medical research, in The Gambia. Its approach is rooted in social and medical anthropology and ethnographic methods, but combines insights from the sociology of scientific knowledge, and ‘actor-oriented” sociology in development. Current analysis and professional reflection on public engagement with vaccination reflects the concepts and imperatives of health-providing and research institutions. In contrast Gambian parents’ perspectives are couched in very different conceptual and experiential terms, linked to the wider dilemmas of raising infants in a hazardous world. In this context the paper traces parents’ experiences of routine infant welfare clinics and then how they narrate their experiences with two vaccine related studies orchestrated by the Medical Research Council laboratories. A range of contrasts emerges. Whereas health professionals tend to attribute vaccination acceptance to the acquisition of modern scientific attitudes, and talk of “defaulters” as misinformed, parents understand vaccination as a complement to other forms of infant therapy and protection and miss vaccinations through a combination of contingent circumstances and specific worries about vaccination delivery practices. Most parents consider medical research studies less as a separate “scientific” activity than as part of the nexus of normal health practices, and their longer-term experiences and perceptions of MRC as an institution matter more than the aims of any particular study. Whereas medical research staff often perceive public engagement as a matter of understanding or misunderstanding aims and procedures, or of trust and distrust, parental narratives reveal research engagement as a balance of danger and benefit. Study participation depends more on how people’s particular calculus is shaped by social and gender relations, than on issues of knowledge or trust

The Mande creation myth, by Germaine Dieterlen – a story of Marcel Griaule’s laboratory boat and Kangaba’s intellectual elite

This article proposes a new reading for Germaine Dieterlen's classic text “The Mande Creation Myth,” and presents it as evidence for Kangaba's prominent military role as ruler of the Niger and defender of the gold mines that for centuries provided the wealth of the Mali Empire. It is demonstrated that, although Dieterlen was in search of a unified cosmology, her informants in Kangaba provided answers that voiced Kangaba's military concerns and claims as political heir of the medieval Mali Empire and ruler of the River Niger. The starting point of the analysis are new insights on how creation is envisioned in the West African savannah, with an emphasis on termite mounds, earth, and blacksmiths. These insights are compared to the fieldwork data that Dieterlen collected in 1953-55, which she used in 1955 for a publication on the Kamabolon ceremony in Kangaba and, under strikingly different personal circumstances, in 1957 in the article “The Mande Creation Myth.” The article explains why Dieterlen herself nor other researchers have never been able to reproduce neither her 1953-55 findings nor her 1957 findings by pointing to Kangaba's raised prestige as a major historical site for a new Republic of Mali, which had acquired independence in 1960. Kangaba's new position replaced the earlier focus on military rule on the Niger and defense of gold mines (in what had become the Republic of Guinée in 1958). This argument is substantiated by a recently discovered contemporary report of the 1961 Kamabolon ceremony, written by a leading contemporary intellectual, Mambi Sidibé

Comparison of social resistance to Ebola response in Sierra Leone and Guinea suggests explanations lie in political configurations not culture

Sierra Leone and Guinea share broadly similar cultural worlds, straddling the societies of the Upper Guinea Coast with Islamic West Africa. There was, however, a notable difference in their reactions to the Ebola epidemic. As the epidemic spread in Guinea, acts of violent or everyday resistance to outbreak control measures repeatedly followed, undermining public health attempts to contain the crisis. In Sierra Leone, defiant resistance was rarer. Instead of looking to ‘culture’ to explain patterns of social resistance (as was common in the media and in the discourse of responding public health authorities) a comparison between Sierra Leone and Guinea suggests that explanations lie in divergent political practice and lived experiences of the state. In particular, the structures of authority in which the government-sanctioned epidemic response was channeled relate very differently to communities of trust in each country. Predicting and addressing social responses to epidemic control measures should assess such political-trust configurations when planning interventions

Gravity Data Interpretation in the Northern Edge of the Congo Craton, South-Cameroon

Gravity data in the southern Cameroon are interpreted to better understand the organization of underlying structuresthroughout the northern edge of the Congo craton. The Bouguer anomaly maps of the region are characterized by an elongated trending trending negative gravity anomaly which correspond to a collapsed structure associated with a granitic intrusion beneath the cente center of the region r of the region of the region and limited by fault systems. �e applied 3�D gravity modelling and inversion in order to obtain the 3D density structure of the area. Our result demonstrated that observed gravity anomalies in the region are associated to tectonic structures in the subsurface. The resulting model agrees with the hypothesis of the existence of a major continental collision zone between the Congo Craton and the Pan�African belt. The presence of deep granulites structures in the northern part of the region expresses a continental collision

Interpretação gravimétrica na Borda Norte do Cráton do Congo, Sul de Camarões

Gravity data in the southern Cameroon are interpreted to better understand the organization of underlying structures throughout the northern edge of the Congo craton. The Bouguer anomaly maps of the region are characterized by an elongated SW-NE trending negative gravity anomaly which correspond to a collapsed structure associated with a granitic intrusion beneath the center of the region and limited by fault systems. We applied 3-D gravity modelling and inversion in order to obtain the 3-D density structure of the area. Our result demonstrated that observed gravity anomalies in the region are associated to tectonic structures in the subsurface. The resulting model agrees with the hypothesis of the existence of a major continental collision zone between the Congo Craton and the Pan-African belt. The presence of deep granulites structures in the northern part of the region expresses a continental collision.Um conjunto de dados gravimétricos, provenientes do sul de Camarões, foram interpretados para o melhor entendimento das estruturas em sub superfície na borda norte do Cráton do Congo. Os mapas de anomalia Bouguer desta região foram caracterizados por uma anomalia gravimétrica negativa de direção SW-NE, que corresponde a uma estrutura de colapso associada com uma intrusão granítica, abaixo do centro desta região, e que está limitada por um sistema de falhas. Foram utilizados métodos de modelagem gravimétrica 3 D e inversão, para se obter uma estrutura densa 3-D desta área. Os resultados demonstraram que as anomalias gravimétricas observadas na região estão associadas com estruturas tectônicas em sub superfície. O modelo resultado está em consonância com a hipótese de existência de uma zona de colisão continental principal entre o Cráton do Congo e o Cinturão Pan-Africano. A presença de estruturas granulíticas profundas na borda norte desta área indica uma colisão continental

[Commentary] Spillover or endemic? Reconsidering the origins of Ebola virus disease outbreaks by revisiting local accounts in light of new evidence from Guinea

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