This highly illustrated and definitive dictionary, by two renowned biologists - one Kenyan, one Canadian - contains extensive coverage of the flora, fauna and animals of the Lake Victoria region of East Africa occupied by the Luo community, and is based on ten years of research by the authors. It is an expansion of the 1972 publication Luo-English Botanical Dictionary of Plant Names and Their Uses and now provides more botanical entries and an additional section consisting of a zoological dictionary. The individual entry comprises Luo terminology, its botanical/zoological equivalent, common name (when applicable), physical description, its prevalence, and its respective economic use.

Classification of East African Crops is a revised modern version of a book first published in 1979. It is a handbooks grouping the crops, timber, and common ornamental plants found in East Africa into 26 classes. The plants are discussed under two broad categories, namely, usage and commercial classifications. the Type A group of plants, based on usage classification, has 19 classes including the famous categories such as cereals, fruits, vegetables, legumes, oil crops, fiber crops, and forage and fodder plants amongst others. The Type B group, based on commercial use of the plants, covers food crops, cash crops, commercial horticultural crops, forbidden crops (drug plants), and bee forage or useful plants for honey bees. Each class has a full or brief discussion of the crops or useful plants grown in modern East Africa covering Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. The most important part of the handbooks is the list of all major and minor crops and useful plants in each class containing the English or trade names, the botanical names, and the families to which they belong. The book has over 70 selected colour plates illustrating different crops and other useful plants. It is an excellent handbook for university and college scholars, students, and researchers in agriculture, forestry, environment, and animal husbandry.

Discover neglected wild food sourcesthat can also be used as medicine! The long-standing notion of food as medicine, medicine as food, can be traced back to Hippocrates. Eating and Healing: Traditional Food As Medicine is a global overview of wild and semi-domesticated foods and their use as medicine in traditional s

The Gospel Sounds Like the Witch's Spell is a highly detailed ethnography about how the Jopadhola in eastern Uganda talk about, interpret and cope with death, illness and other misfortunes. The book presents a provocative discussion that critiques the idea of the revival of witchcraft in the neo-liberalised contemporary world, as represented by the 'modernity model of witchcraft', and attempts to formulate a 'spiderweb model' that connects witchcraft to contemporary society in a more complex manner. The book is a unique ethnography of the collective memory of indigenous knowledge and local historicity. The author moves the reader from curse to misfortune to fortune as he plots the notion of 'curse' as deeply embedded in the Adhola way of life. He weaves between culture, religion, state and modernity with lived experience. Did the concept of witchcraft unwittingly endear the Adhola to the Christian way of life because of the presence of the notion of 'curse' in the Bible or make them less susceptible to the vagaries of modernity compared to their neighbours? These are some of the questions that the author puts on the table in a deeply reflective manner. The phenomenon of witchcraft is given an intriguing angle that invites the reader to reexamine earlier anthropological writings on the subject among African peoples.

Legacies of Departed African Women Writers: Matrix of Creativity and Power proffers varied perspectives of the invaluable contributions of ten deceased African writers from all across Africa who have cleared the path to a vibrant African feminist arena. The dynamics of change gleaned from both their textual and contextual concerns unarguably set the pace for contemporary African women writers who have striven to follow in the footsteps of their literary mothers as well as their oral foremothers. This book, edited by Helen Chukwuma and Chioma Carol Opara, shows the collective testament of ample creativity and power generated by these departed heroes: Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Grace Ogot, Zulu Sofola, Bessie Head, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Yvonne Vera, and Nadine Gordimer. These chapters revolve around the positive impact of the celebrated writers on creative writing, theoretical formulations, and socio-cultural change. The contributors argue that these corpuses of works have illuminated creativity rooted in power, vision, and freedom.

The Historical Dictionary of Science and Technology in Modern China provides the most up-to-date information on science and technology in China from the late nineteenth century to the present. Special attention is given to the historical factors, scientists, and historical figures behind each scientific development. In particular, this book pays attention to the scientists who were persecuted to death or tortured during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and whose scientific research was therefore tragically cut short. The historical dictionary provides information on science and technology in China from the late nineteenth century to the present including: a chronology; introduction; extensive bibliography; over 700 cross-referenced dictionary entries on major scientific and technological fields and sub-fields; entries on western scholars and educators who also impacted scientific achievements in China. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the science and technology in China.

People have long used wild plants as food and medicine, and for a myriad of other important cultural applications. While these plants and the foraging activities associated with them have been dismissed by some observers as secondary or supplementary—or even backward—their contributions to human survival and well-being are more significant than is often realized. Eating on the Wild Side spans the history of human-plant interactions to examine how wild plants are used to meet medicinal, nutritional, and other human needs. Drawing on nonhuman primate studies, evidence from prehistoric human populations, and field research among contemporary peoples practicing a range of subsistence strategies, the book focuses on the processes and human ecological implications of gathering, semidomestication, and cultivation of plants that are unfamiliar to most of us. Contributions by distinguished cultural and biological anthropologists, paleobotanists, primatologists, and ethnobiologists explore a number of issues such as the consumption of unpalatable and famine foods, the comparative assessment of aboriginal diets with those of colonists and later arrivals, and the apparent self-treatment by sick chimpanzees with leaves shown to be pharmacologically active. Collectively, these articles offer a theoretical framework emphasizing the cultural evolutionary processes that transform plants from wild to domesticated—with many steps in between—while placing wild plant use within current discussions surrounding biodiversity and its conservation. Eating on the Wild Side makes an important contribution to our understanding of the links between biology and culture, describing the interface between diet, medicine, and natural products. By showing how various societies have successfully utilized wild plants, it underscores the growing concern for preserving genetic diversity as it reveals a fascinating chapter in the human ecology. CONTENTS 1. The Cull of the Wild, Nina L. Etkin 2. Agriculture and the Acquisition of Medicinal Plant Knowledge, Michael H. Logan & Anna R. Dixon 3. Ambivalence to the Palatability Factors in Wild Food Plants, Timothy Johns 4. Wild Plants as Cultural Adaptations to Food Stress, Rebecca Huss-Ashmore & Susan L. Johnston Physiologic Implications of Wild Plant Consumption 5. Pharmacologic Implications of "Wild" Plants in Hausa Diet, Nina L. Etkin & Paul J. Ross 6. Wild Plants as Food and Medicine in Polynesia, Paul Alan Cox 7. Characteristics of "Wild" Plant Foods Used by Indigenous Populations in Amazonia, Darna L. Dufour & Warren M. Wilson 8. The Health Significance of Wild Plants for the Siona and Secoya, William T. Vickers 9. North American Food and Drug Plants, Daniel M. Moerman Wild Plants in Prehistory 10. Interpreting Wild Plant Foods in the Archaeological Record, Frances B. King 11. Coprolite Evidence for Prehistoric Foodstuffs, Condiments, and Medicines, Heather B. Trigg, Richard I. Ford, John G. Moore & Louise D. Jessop Plants and Nonhuman Primates 12. Nonhuman Primate Self-Medication with Wild Plant Foods, Kenneth E. Glander 13. Wild Plant Use by Pregnant and Lactating Ringtail Lemurs, with Implications for Early Hominid Foraging, Michelle L. Sauther Epilogue 14. In Search of Keystone Societies, Brien A. Meilleur

This series in medical anthropology publishes monographs and edited volumes on indigenous (so-called traditional) medical knowledge and practice, alternative and complementary medicine, and ethnobiological studies that relate to health and illness. The emphasis of the series is on the way indigenous epistemologies inform healing, against a background of comparison with other practices, and in recognition of the fluidity between them. --