Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy in West Africa and the Caribbean - Hardcover

Fairhead, James; Leach, Melissa

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521828740 ISBN 13: 9780521828741

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2003

Synopsis

In this book, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach bring science to the heart of debates about globalisation, exploring transformations in global science and contrasting effects in Guinea, one of the world's poorest countries, and Trinidad, a more prosperous, industrialised and urbanised island. The book focuses on environment, forestry and conservation sciences that are central to these countries and involve resources that many depend upon for their livelihoods. It examines the relationships between policies, bureaucracies and particular types of scientific enquiry and explores how ordinary people, the media and educational practices engage with this. In particular it shows how science becomes part of struggles over power, resources and legitimacy. The authors take a unique ethnographic perspective, linking approaches in anthropology, development and science studies. They address critically prominent debates in each, and explore opportunities for new forms of participation, public engagement and transformation in the social relations of science.

About this title

About the Authors

James Fairhead is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex. He has jointly authored, with Melissa Leach, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (CUP, 1996) and Reframing Deforestation: Global Analyses and Local Realities - Studies in West Africa (1998).

Melissa Leach is Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. She has jointly authored, with James Fairhead, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic (CUP, 1996) and Reframing Deforestation: Global Analyses and Local Realities - Studies in West Africa (1998).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521828740
• ISBN 13: 9780521828741
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 284