‘Black Settlers’: Hybridity, Neoliberalism and Ecosystemic Change Among Tonga Farmers of Southern Zambia, 1964-2008

This dissertation examines a process of indigenous accumulation among Tonga farmers in Zambia’s Southern Province. In the 1970s multiple authors concluded that capitalist farmers had emerged among Tonga agro-pastoralists, predominantly within private titled holdings. Relying on archival research, newspapers, secondary sources and extensive oral testimony this thesis fills a 35-year gap on the topic, providing insights into the social and environmental impacts of neoliberal policy among African peasants and capitalist farmers. In contrast to dominant narratives of the post-independence period, this study argues that Zambia did experience a developmental process post-independence, which saw significant achievements made in the agricultural sector, including the doubling of national cattle stocks. The data reveals a painful process of disarticulation beginning in the late 1980s. Following neoliberal adjustment, we observe significant heterogeneity in production systems, some regional specialization, and processes of migration. Most importantly, the thesis uncovers processes of overwhelming ecosystemic change that contributed to livestock epidemics of severe scale and scope. Amazingly, this went largely undocumented because of the simultaneous crisis of the state, which left the national statistics office and other state bodies incapable of functioning from the late 1980s into the 2000s. In response, the Zambian state has introduced a number of neodevelopmental initiatives in the sector, yet the lack of animal traction remained up to 2008 and agricultural production declined, while more capitalized farmers (largely white, and/or with foreign direct investment) have become more significant players in the country. This thesis provides compelling evidence to challenge dominant economic thinking of the Washington institutions as well as many of the common Marxian formulations.

The Significance of the Disputed Territory in Bechuanaland 1887-1893

British Imperial policy in Southern Africa in the last three decades of the nineteenth century oscillated between two extremes. It began in the early 1870's with Lord Kimberley's attempt to effect confederation as a means of devolving Imperial responsibility and expenditure. It ended in 1899 with Britain's active intervention against the Boers. For most of the remaining years of those decades a middle course was adopted while the British Government struggled to reconcile its diverse political interests. Strategy, supremacy, economy, humanitarianism, and recognition of colonial aspirations were all at one time or another, in varying degrees, motivating forces behind Imperial policy. Many historians have pointed out how incompatible many of these ends were and how the attempt to pursue them all at once almost inevitably ended in at least one of them being sacrificed on the way. This study focusses on a relatively minor problem over a period of about seven years. It attempts to show how the British Government tried to reconcile, in this case, the predominant motives of economy and supremacy. The problem of the Disputed Territory now seems like a small fish in a big ocean because non the great hopes and fears that it raised were ever realized. But the anticlimactic nature of the outcome of events should not be allowed to conceal two important points: first, that the problem loomed large at the time in the eyes of the Imperial Government; and second, that in the case of its policy towards the Disputed Territory, the Government gained a greater degree of success in trying to reconcile seemingly incompatible ends than it did in many other instances.

Small Town Downtown Revitalization: Applying the Main Street Approach to the towns of Perth and Carleton Place, Ontario

The downtown main street of small towns is traditionally the economic, cultural, and social heart of the community, thereby requiring particular attention from planners and researchers alike. Considering modern threats to main streets including suburban sprawl and "big box" development, revitalization strategies are essential to ensuring longevity and vitality of small towns’ cores, in terms of economy, built environment, heritage, and identity. The Main Street Approach was established to mitigate challenges by providing a revitalization tool-kit for small Canadian towns, focusing on organization, marketing and promotion, economic and commercial development, and design and physical improvements. To better understand existing municipal tools for downtown revitalization in Ontario, a comparative analysis of the towns of Carleton Place and Perth's policies was conducted using the four pillars of the Main Street Approach as benchmark for best practice, and recommendations for other small towns to better incorporate revitalization policies were suggested.

WAKING (TO) THINKING BEING: A STUDY OF EDUCATION, METAPHYSICS, MIND, AND LANGUAGE

This dissertation articulates the basic aims and achievements of education. It recognizes language as central to thinking, and philosophy and education as belonging profoundly to one another. The first step is to show that although philosophy can no longer claim to dictate the foundations of knowledge or of disciplines of inquiry, it still offers an exceptionally general level of self-understanding. Education is equally general and faces a similar crisis of self-identity, of coming to terms with reality. Language is the medium of thought and the repository of historical mind; so a child’s acquisition of language is her acquisition of rational freedom. This marks a metaphysical change: no longer merely an animal, she comes to exercise her powers of rationality, transcending her environment by seeking and expressing reasons for thinking and doing. She can think about herself in relation to the universe, hence philosophize and educate others in turn. The discussion then turns to the historical nature of language. The thinking already embedded in language always anticipates further questioning. Etymology serves as a model for philosophical understanding, and demonstrates how philosophy can continue to yield insights that are fundamental, but not foundational, to human life. The etymologies of some basic educational concepts disclose education as a leading out and into the midst of Being. The philosophical approach developed in previous chapters applies to the very idea of an educational aim. Discussion concerning the substantiality of educational ideals results in an impasse: one side recommends an open-­ended understanding of education’s aims; the other insists on a definitive account. However, educational ideals exhibit a conceptual duality: the fundamental achievements of education, such as rational freedom, are real; but how we should understand them remains an open question. The penultimate chapter investigates philosophical thinking as the fulfillment of rational freedom, whose creative insights can profoundly transform our everyday activities. That this transformative self-understanding is without end suggests the basic aims of education are unheimlich. The dissertation concludes with speculative reflection on the shape and nature of language, and with the suggestion that through education reality awakens to itself.