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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Valuing Water: Variability And The Lake Eyre Basin, Central Australia, Leah Gibbs
Valuing Water: Variability And The Lake Eyre Basin, Central Australia, Leah Gibbs
Leah Maree Gibbs
'Environmental values' form an increasingly important component of natural resource management, but use of the term 'value' is dominated by a narrow and limiting utility-based definition. In this paper I consider theories of value and practices of valuing water in the arid and semi-arid Lake Eyre Basin, central Australia. While value is the subject of diverse meanings - both within a range of academic disciplines and as understood by people in specific places - methods of valuing water in natural resource management are limited by reductionism, anthropocentrism and cultural specificity. This conceptualisation of value does not adequately capture what people …
Water Places: Cultural, Social And More-Than-Human Geographies Of Nature, Leah Gibbs
Water Places: Cultural, Social And More-Than-Human Geographies Of Nature, Leah Gibbs
Leah Maree Gibbs
Cultural, social and more-than-human approaches to nature research are largely held apart in the discipline of human geography. In this paper I argue that these three approaches can be brought together to good effect. The paper presents a situated account of 'water places' in inland Australia-namely the artesian bores, boredrains and boredrain wetlands of the Birdsville Track-in order to demonstrate that together, these three approaches can reveal the complex interactions that form particular places, and comprise a more-than-human world. This account explores the layers of interaction that have formed these water places, including their insertion into the landscape through drilling, …
Learning From The South: Common Challenges And Solutions For Small-Scale Farming, L C Stringer, C Twyman, Leah Gibbs
Learning From The South: Common Challenges And Solutions For Small-Scale Farming, L C Stringer, C Twyman, Leah Gibbs
Leah Maree Gibbs
Small-scale farmers all over the world face a number of common biophysical and socio-economic challenges. In this paper we draw on data from a workshop held in the UK in 2005, to assess whether experiences in addressing these challenges, as gained in the global South, may be used to inform solutions to similar challenges in the UK. In doing so, we contribute to a growing body of literature that seeks to challenge predominantly North-South flows of knowledge and resources. We first identify specific common challenges faced by small-scale farmers in the global North and South. We then compare the different …
Book Review: "Resurrecting The Granary Of Rome: Environmental History And French Colonial Expansion In North Africa" By Diana K. Davis, Leah Gibbs
Leah Maree Gibbs
In this rigorously researched book, Davis argues that French colonisation of the Maghreb (the three North African countries of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia) was motivated and rationalised by a ‘declensionist environmental narrative’; a narrative that attributed environmental decline to the land use practices of the ‘native’ people of North Africa. Davis begins by questioning the often unquestioned environmental history of North Africa: the ‘sad tale of deforestation and desertification that has spanned much of the past two millennia’. She asserts that this environmental history has been constructed and reworked over time by ‘French colonial scientists, administrators, military men and settlers’.