Paul Richards (born 14 May 1945) is an emeritus professor of technology and agrarian development at Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and adjunct professor at Njala University in central Sierra Leone. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University College London for many years, [1] and previously taught anthropology and geography, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
Richards is an anthropological commentator and researcher on agricultural technology and African farming systems. Initially trained in human geography (BSc Queen Mary University of London, 1963–1966) and African Studies (MA SOAS, 1966–1967), he taught in Ibadan, Nigeria before completing a PhD in geography and specialising in Sierra Leone (PhD London, 1973–1977). He has worked in Sierra Leone for over forty years, conducting ethnographic studies of Mende village rice farming systems and forest conservation on the Liberian border. After the region became affected by the Sierra Leonean civil war (1992-2002), he turned to analysis of that conflict and has written more widely on the anthropology of armed conflicts, and the Ebola crisis.
Richards argues, following Durkheim, that human technique and skill underpins human action and institutional change. He began by examining everyday livelihood activities like farming. He coined the term "agriculture as performance" based on years of observing the reflexivity of African farmers and their responses to stress and risks, and drawing on his own skills and interest in music and musical performance. His populist faith in African farmers to survive and prosper, despite the magnitude of the risks that faced, was set out in Indigenous Agricultural Revolution (1985), a book that generated fierce debate, since it accused agronomic research and international development organisations of missing the "moving target" of peasant farming and failing to see how innovations took place outside the realm of "formal" science and laboratories. The book's ideas were diametrically opposed to those of more pessimistic observers that lacked detailed field knowledge, that had often accused the same farmers of environmental degradation. Richards has proposed the term "technography" to describe the set of detailed research skills needed by anthropologists, and others, to understand how technology is deployed and used. Technographies have been conducted by teams including several Wageningen University research students and collaborators.
Fighting for the Rain Forest (1996) showed how the involvement of youth in Sierra Leonean rebel movements had little to do with widely perceived "barbarism" of rebel groups in resource-rich regions. War is, also, part of a "performance" with its origins in history, social orders, and human agency. Paul Richards witnessed some of the fighting during the war, continuing to visit the country. The widely held "New Barbarism" theories of Robert D. Kaplan and others had suggested abundant natural resources, like Sierra Leone's blood diamonds, were a magnet for human greed and civil conflict. Instead, Richards has argued that the involvement of youth in the Revolutionary United Front rebel movement was a form of social resistance to matriarchal rule in Sierra Leone, did not appear to have a strong underlying motive of greed (for the diamond revenues), and was a considered response rather than a spontaneous, 'barbaric' movement. Grievances were partly responsible for the violence that undoubtedly did afflict Sierra Leone during its civil war and for which the Revolutionary United Front was partly responsible. Richards has advised aid and humanitarian agencies on African post-war reconstruction, demobilization and skills-training.
The economy of Sierra Leone is $4.082 billion by gross domestic product as of 2018. Since the end of the Sierra Leone Civil War in 2002, the economy is gradually recovering with a gross domestic product growth rate between 4 and 7%. In 2008 it in PPP ranked between 147th by World Bank, and 153rd by CIA, largest in the world.
Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
Michael J. Watts is Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley. He retired in 2016. He is a leading critical intellectual figure of the academic left.
Pastoralism is a form of animal husbandry where domesticated animals are released onto large vegetated outdoor lands (pastures) for grazing, historically by nomadic people who moved around with their herds. The animal species involved include cattle, camels, goats, yaks, llamas, reindeer, horses and sheep.
The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted 11 years, enveloping the country. It left over 50,000 dead.
Agriculture began independently in different parts of the globe, and included a diverse range of taxa. At least eleven separate regions of the Old and New World were involved as independent centers of origin. The development of agriculture about 12,000 years ago changed the way humans lived. They switched from nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyles to permanent settlements and farming.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is an examination board established by law to determine the examinations required in the public interest in the English-speaking West African countries, to conduct the examinations and to award certificates comparable to those of equivalent examining authorities internationally. Established in 1952, the council has contributed to education in Anglophone countries of West Africa, with the number of examinations they have coordinated, and certificates they have issued. They also formed an endowment fund, to contribute to the education in West Africa, through lectures, and aid to those who cannot afford education. Since established it continues to be one of the biggest and most globally recognized exams in West Africa.
Njala University (NU) is a public university located in Njala and Bo, Sierra Leone. It is the second largest university in Sierra Leone and is also part of the University of Sierra Leone. The largest and main campus of Njala University is in Njala, Moyamba District; the other campus is Bo, the second largest city in Sierra Leone.
Plant Resources of Tropical Africa, known by its acronym PROTA, is a retired NGO and interdisciplinary documentation programme active between 2000 and 2013. PROTA produced a large database and various publications about Africa's useful plants.
Ester Boserup was a Danish economist. She studied economic and agricultural development, worked at the United Nations as well as other international organizations, and wrote seminal books on agrarian change and the role of women in development.
Olga Francesca Linares was a Panamanian–American academic anthropologist and archaeologist, and senior staff scientist (emerita) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, who have supported much of her research throughout her career. She is well known for her work on the cultural ecology of Panama, and more recently in the Casamance region of Southern Senegal. She is also concerned with the social organization of agrarian systems as well as the relationship between "ecology, political economy, migration and the changing dynamics of food production among rural peoples living in tropical regions".
Agriculture in Sierra Leone is a significant part of the economy of Sierra Leone, with it accounting for 58 percent national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2007. Two-thirds of the population of Sierra Leone are involved in subsistence agriculture.
Michael Mortimore was a British geographer and a prolific researcher of issues in the African drylands. He was an academic in Nigerian universities for over 25 years. He ran a British research consultancy, Drylands Research. He is best known for an anti-Malthusian account of population-environment relationships, More People, Less Erosion, and field-based studies of adaptation to drought.
Harold Chillingworth Brookfield was a British and Australian geographer specialising in the analysis of rural development, small-scale societies, family farming, and the relationship between land use and society in developing countries. He retired from the Australian National University in 1991.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Freetown, Sierra Leone.
The culture, evolution, and history of women who were born in, live in, and are from the continent of Africa reflect the evolution and history of the African continent itself.
Norman Long is a British anthropologist. He conducted important fieldwork and made significant theoretical contributions through his application of insights from social anthropology in development studies. Anthropology was in the wake of decolonisation often seen as tainted by colonialism and not relevant in a development discourse. Long offered another perspective that can not be seen as bound by time and place. He advocated an actor-oriented perspective on development and thus formulated a critique on centralist biases in development theory.
The Sierra Leone Creole people are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.
James Anthony (Tony) Binns is the Ron Lister Professor of Geography at the University of Otago in New Zealand.
Jacqueline Knörr is a German anthropologist. She is Head of a Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and Extraordinary Professor at the Martin Luther University in Halle/Saale, Germany. She also works as (political) advisor, consultant, and expert witness in the fields of asylum procedures, human rights issues and (re-)migration and (re-)integration.
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