Transcript What is Africa to me? - Gvsu - Grand Valley State University

What is Africa to me?
The regional representation of Africa in undergraduate Geography of
Africa textbooks, 1953 to 2004
Paper presented at the annual meeting of
the Ghana Geographical Association, 7-10 September, 2005
Akosombo International School, Akosombo, Ghana
Roy Cole
Visiting faculty
Department of Geography and Tourism
University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Associate Professor
Department of Geography and Planning
Grand Valley State University, USA
Purpose and method

Purpose:
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To understand how and why geographers have regionalized Africa
in the past.
To create a better regionalization for use in Cole and de Blij (2006)
Survey of Africa: A Regional Geography, Oxford University Press.
Method:
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Forty-two English-language texts were examined.
All regionalizations were mapped.
The rationale for regionalization was found in the text or inferred if
not made explicit by the author.
Regionalization
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Process of dividing the earth or an area of the earth’s surface
into smaller, more homogeneous, units for close analysis
(breaking down).
Process of grouping like units into larger units (building up).
The character and uniformity of subsequent regions depend on
what criteria are used for the grouping.
Results
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Thirteen “systematic” texts treated Africa without
regionalization.
One systematic text mentioned 4 regions but neither put
forward any rationale for the regions nor used the regions in
any way to organize the text.
Twenty-eight texts regionalized the continent.
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Number of regions ranged from 4 to 12.
The mean number of regions was 7.5.
The geographic extent of regions was highly variable.
Rationales for each regionalization scheme were equally variable.
To a limited extent almost every “regional” text treated the entire
continent is a “systematic” way.
14 Texts that contained no regionalization
Author
Title
Publication date
O'Connor
The Geography of Tropical African Development.
1971
Barbour and Prothero
Essays on African Population
1961
Prothero
People and Land in Africa South of the Sahara: Readings in Social Geography
1972
Clarke et al.
An Advanced Geography of Africa
1975
Knight & Newman
Contemporary Africa: Geography and Change
1976
Buckle
Landforms in Africa: An Introduction to Geomorphology
1978
Grove & Klein
Rural Africa
1979
Christopher
Colonial Africa
1984
Grove
The Changing Geography of Africa
1989
Gleave
Tropical African Development: Geographical Perspectives
1992
Binns
Tropical Africa
1994
Stock
Africa South of the Sahara: A Geographical Interpretation
Adams, Goudie, & Orme
The Physical Geography of Africa
1996
Aryteetey-Attoh*
Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa
1997, 2003
* An entirely systematic text that merely mentioned that Africa has 4 “regions.”
1995, 2004
28 Texts that regionalized Africa
Author
Stamp
Suggate
Hance
Kimble
Sillery
Kingsnorth
de Blij
Harrison-Church
Fordham
Hance
Fitzgerald
Grove
Hodder & Harris
Mountjoy & Embleton
Pollock
Prothero
Pritchard
Stamp & Morgan
Coysh & Tomlinson
Hance
Best & de Blij
Harrison-Church
Boateng
Udo
Mountjoy & Hilling
Hickman
Chapman & Baker
Newman
Title
Africa: A Study in Tropical Development
Africa
African Economic Development
Tropical Africa
Africa: A Social Geography
Africa South of the Sahara
Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa
Africa and the Islands
The Geography of African Affairs
The Geography of Modern Africa
Africa: A Social, Economic, and Political Geography of its Major Regions
Africa South of the Sahara
Africa in Transition: Geographical Essays
Africa: A New Geographical Survey
Africa: A Systematic Regional Geography
A Geography of Africa: Regional Essays on Fundamental Characteristics, Issues and Problems
Africa: The Geography of a Changing Continent
Africa: A Study in Tropical Development
Africa
The Geography of Modern Africa
African Survey
Africa and the Islands
A Political Geography of Africa
The Human Geography of Tropical Africa
Africa: Geography and Development
The New Africa
The Changing Geography of Africa and the Middle East
The Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Interpretation
Date
1953
1957
1958
1960
1961
1962
1964
1964
1965
1965
1967
1967
1967
1967
1968
1969
1969
1972
1974
1975
1977
1977
1978
1982
1988
1990
1994
1995
Number of regions
11
8
7
6
9
5
4
8
4
7
8
9
6
10
8
8
8
11
12
7
6
8
7
4
8
7
9
6
Authors represented Africa as a world region
(realm) in one of three ways
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Continental Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Tropical Africa.
The continent, Subsaharan Africa, and authors
The African Tropics and authors
The regional geographies
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A total of 60 different names were used to identify the
regions of Africa.
Three basic concepts were identifiable from the region
names.
The authors employed a wide variety of regionalization
schemes as well.
Three regionalization concepts were observable in
the names of the 60 regions
Concept
Physical
Physical and political
Political
Political and physical
Relative location
Relative location and physical
Total:
Frequency
Percent
19
31.7%
2
3.3%
16
26.7%
3
5.0%
15
25.0%
5
8.3%
60
100.0%
Frequently-used names for regions
Region name
Type
Frequency
Percent
of
authors
Closelyrelated
terms
Percent of
authors
Total
percent of
authors
West
Relative location
24
88.9%
Western
11.1%
100.0%
East
Relative location
20
74.1%
Eastern
11.1%
85.2%
Southern
Relative location
17
63.0%
63.0%
Central
Relative location
13
48.1%
48.1%
Equatorial
Physical
11
40.7%
40.7%
Northeast
Relative location
7
25.9%
25.9%
South Africa
Political
7
25.9%
25.9%
Nile Valley (or Basin, or Lands)
Physical
5
18.5%
18.5%
Sahara
Physical
5
18.5%
18.5%
Islands of the Indian Ocean
Physical
4
14.8%
14.8%
North
Relative location
4
14.8%
Northern
14.8%
29.6%
Regions identified by <10% of authors
Region name
Central Africa and Southern Savanna Lands
Egypt and the Nile
Ethiopia and Somalia
Ethiopia and the Red Sea Margins
Horn
Horn and Sudan
Islands
Madagascar
Malagasy (or Malagasy Republic)
Nile Valley (or Basin) and the Horn
Southwest
West Central
Zambezi and Limpopo Lands
Angola and Mozambique
Barbary States
Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland
Central African Customs Union
Chad
Congo Basin
Congo Basin and Cameroon
Region name
Congo Basin and Margins
Congo, Angola, and Mozambique
East and Islands
Eastern Islands
Ethiopia and the Horn
Abyssinia and its Borderlands
Former Belgian Africa
Egypt and Sudan
Small Islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
Libya
Madagascar and Indian Ocean Isles
Maghreb
Lower Nile
North and the Sahara
Northwest and Sahara
Portuguese Angola and Mozambique
South Africa and South-West Africa
Southern Central
Southern Sahara
Southern Sahara and its Borderlands
Southern Tropical
Regionalizations 1953-1964
Regionalizations 1964-1967
Regionalizations 1967-1972
Regionalizations 1974-1988
Regionalizations 1990-2003
The regionalization concepts over time
Overview of regional texts
Stamp 1953
Suggate 1957
Kimble 1960
Sillery 1961
Kingsnorth 1962
de Blij 1964
Harrison-Church 1964
21.4% agreed with this
definition of West Africa
Fordham 1965
Hance 1965
25% agreed with
Hance this
1967 definition
Grove 1967
of Southern Africa
Fitzgerald 1967
Hodder & Harris 1967
Mountjoy &
Embleton 1967
32% agreed with this
definition of East Africa
Pollock 1968
Prothero 1969
Pritchard 1971
Stamp & Morgan 1972 Coysh Tomlinson 1974 Best & de Blij 1977 Harrison-Church 1977
10.7% agreed with this
definition of West Africa
Boateng 1978
Udo 1982
Mountjoy &
Hilling 1988
42.9% agreed with this
definition of East Africa
Hickman 1990
Chapman & Baker 1994 Newman 1995
17.8% identified this group as a
21.4% identified this group as region
a
but called it Central, Equatorial,
region but called it Central, Equatorial,
Equatoria, or Congo Basin and
or West Central Africa
Cameroon
Aryeetey -Attoh 2003
Conclusion
Heritage (1925) by Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
What is Africa to me:
Copper sun or scarlet sea,
Jungle star or jungle track,
Strong bronzed men, or regal black
Women from whose loins I sprang
When the birds of Eden sang?
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his fathers loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
Africa? A book one thumbs
Listlessly, till slumber comes.
Unremembered are her bats
Circling through the night, her cats
Crouching in the river reeds,
Stalking gentle flesh that feeds
By the river brink....
What is last year’s snow to me,
Last year’s anything? The tree
Budding yearly must forget
How its past arose or set Bough and blossom, flower, fruit,
Even what shy bird with mute
Wonder at her travail there,
Meekly labored in its hair.
One three centuries removed
From the scenes his father loved,
Spicy grove, cinnamon tree,
What is Africa to me?
Conclusion
In the texts examined, four criteria, alone or in combination, seem
to have been used to define regions.
1.
2.
3.
4.
Physical features and climate.
Human cultural geography.
The colonial legacy.
Relative location.
Conclusion
At the small scale, the regionalization of Africa has little empirical
integrity especially when the country is used as the unit of
regionalization.
The almost bewildering array of regionalization schemes, rationales,
and changing components suggests that the complex physical,
environmental, and cultural geographies of Africa make any
regionalization of the continent inadequate – even ideosyncratic –
using the country as the grouping unit.
At the small scale, regionalization should be used as a device to get us
closer to the ground – and nothing more.
Relative location might be the best way to define the regions of Africa.
An improved, singleassumption
regionalization
based on relative
location