Knowledge and Colonialism

Huigen, Siegfried

doi:10.1163/ej.9789004177437.i-314

Cited by 44 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…as in Boshoff et al, 2016) and to develop tools to derive historical species distribution from these written historical records. Additionally, these historical sources contain descriptions on the fauna, vegetation, climate and inhabitants of the country (Rookmaaker 1989, Hoffman et al 1995, Nash and Endfield 2002, Huigen 2009, Skead 2009). Thus, the study of sampling bias can be informative across disciplines for data extracted from these sources.…”

Section: Biases In South African Historical Written Records Of Mammalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accessibility maps as a tool to predict sampling bias in historical biodiversity occurrence records

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Historical biodiversity occurrence records are often discarded in spatial modeling analyses because of a lack of a method to quantify their sampling bias. Here we propose a new approach for predicting sampling bias in historical written records of occurrence, using a South African example as proof of concept. We modelled and mapped accessibility of the study area as the mean of proximity to freshwater and European settlements. We tested the model's ability to predict the location of historical biodiversity records from a dataset of 2612 large mammal occurrence records collected from historical written sources in South Africa in the period 1497–1920. We investigated temporal, spatial and environmental biases in these historical records and examined if the model prediction and occurrence dataset share similar environmental bias. We find a good agreement between the accessibility map and the distribution of sampling effort in the early historical period in South Africa. Environmental biases in the empirical data are identified, showing a preference for lower maximum temperature of the warmest month, higher mean monthly precipitation, higher net primary productivity and less arid biomes than expected by a uniform use of the study area. We find that the model prediction shares similar environmental bias as the empirical data. Accessibility maps, built with very simple statistical rules and in the absence of empirical data, can thus predict the spatial and environmental biases observed in historical biodiversity occurrence records. We recommend that this approach be used as a tool to estimate sampling bias in small datasets of occurrence and to improve the use of these data in spatial analyses in ecological and conservation studies.

show abstract

Section: Biases In South African Historical Written Records Of Mammalmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accessibility maps as a tool to predict sampling bias in historical biodiversity occurrence records

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…29 For the first c. 150 years, cf. Huigen (2009). Of the six main humanities disciplines that came into being during the nineteenth century, 'Politics', 'Economics', and 'Sociology' were the most prominent.…”

Section: The Beginnings Of Colonisation In South Africa and The Decolmentioning

confidence: 99%

#Decolonial E nlightenment and Education

Smit¹

2017

Alternation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article provides a few brief, historicisable perspectives on what we may call the Truth, or Knowledge, of the Decolonial in the history of thought in South Africa. It explores what we may mean when we talk of the Colonial and the Decolonial, their Truth(s) and Knowledge(s), as well as how we could contribute to the continuous developing of the Decolonial through research, and research-led teaching and learning. Referencing Scott's notion of 'hidden transcript', I provide a few pointers as to how to engage such references to the beginnings, and roots of the Decolonial in our context. I also provide a few conceptual perspectives on how to view history in Africa, from the vantage point of this approach, how to focus our research especially on thought-asresistance, and the imperative to engage the digitally globalizing world. Finally, I provide a few perspectives on my notion of #decolonialenlightenment, and the significance of the quotation at the beginning of this article. Originally a paper that was invited to the plenary on 'Conceptualising Decolonisation and Africanisation' at the Zululand Humanities and Social Sciences Conference, 18-20 October 2017, the article intends to open up (further), and contribute to the continuous developing intellectual space for decolonial thought and knowledge production in the Arts and Humanities. These must be positioned within the broader framework of the educational transformation processes South Africa has engaged and gone through, since the first education White Papers and related educational decisions and directives were released and implemented since 1995/ 1996. I shall therefore front my argument with a brief overview focused on this matter.

show abstract

“…They saw at least some Africans as having reached the maximum level of advancement possible by a "barbaric" people and considered the Boers as having degenerated to the lowest level of European civilization, particularly in terms of agricultural industriousness. 61 These naturalists promoted an expertly managed environment and disapproved of colonial governments that left farmers to their own devices. Rather than invoking the sedate if patronizing tone used to describe African producers, they sternly admonished wealthy Dutch planters, who ostensibly should have known better, emphasizing in particular their imprudent disregard for the conservation of soil nutrients.…”

Section: Agrarian Ambitions and The Fodder Fixmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fleets of Fodder: The Ecological Orchestration of Agrarian Improvement in New South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope, 1780–1830

Capps¹

2017

J. Br. Stud.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article challenges the dominant historical paradigms used to analyze imperial plant and animal transfers by examining the role of fodder crops in early colonial development in New South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope. In Alfred Crosby's enduring formulation of ecological imperialism—that is, the ecological transformation of temperate colonies of settlement by European plants, animals, and pathogens—was a largely independent process. To Crosby's critics, his grand narrative fails to acknowledge the technocratic management of plant and animal transfers on the part of increasingly long-armed colonial states from the mid-nineteenth century. Yet neither approach can adequately explain the period between the decline of Britain's Atlantic empire in the 1780s and the rise of its global empire in the 1830s, a period dominated by an aggressive ethos of agrarian improvement but lacking the institutional teeth of a more evolved imperial state. Traveling fodder crops link these embryonic antipodean colonies to the luminaries of the Agricultural Revolution in Britain. The attempt to transfer fodder-centric mixed husbandry to these colonies points to an emerging coalition of imperial ambition and scientific expertise in the late eighteenth-century British Empire.

show abstract

Knowledge and Colonialism

Cited by 44 publications

References 1 publication

Accessibility maps as a tool to predict sampling bias in historical biodiversity occurrence records

Accessibility maps as a tool to predict sampling bias in historical biodiversity occurrence records

#Decolonial E nlightenment and Education

Fleets of Fodder: The Ecological Orchestration of Agrarian Improvement in New South Wales and the Cape of Good Hope, 1780–1830

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About