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¶ … Richard Franke Chapter
why does Franke believe traditional West African cultures have adapted better to their environments than later influences vis-a-vis Western cultures?
First of all, Franke believes that apart from Western influence and outside the influence of ruling power classes, production systems that are environmentally and ecologically sustaining were developed between farmers and herders. They learned from each other, Franke writes on page 259. They were in "intensive contact" and as a result farmers exchanged knowledge about plants that herders needed to know and herders shared knowledge that farmers needed to know. There was no one dictating how things should be developed; it was an evolution of ecology based on communication and interactions. Franke calls this "traditional knowledge," and the fertility of soil was vitally important to sustenance and survival. But when African countries became colonies of European ruling classes, the interlopers introduced "…excessive use of the soils" and exploited "local labor" to increase production at the cost of environmentally responsible practices (Franke, p. 259).
Secondly,...
It was, as Franke explains, a "Herder-Farmer symbiosis": herders exchanged meat and milk with farmers and farmers gave grain to the herders. Moreover, even though there inevitably was tension between herders and farmers, because they needed each other they were able to avoid violence in most cases and they developed "permanent alliances" (Franke, 261). The bottom line to this question is that no European power needed to come in and show the herders and farmers why cooperation made sense for them; they evolved organically and their alliances -- though contentious on occasion -- were developed through pragmatism and the need for sustainability.
Question two: How can modern science today utilize the traditional "non-western knowledge"?
Certainly the case studies that Franke presents provide sensible, solid information that could translate into environmentally responsible policies. For example, farmers and cattle ranchers can cooperate and co-exist on the same land. In rainy seasons, the animal dung that is left on productive lands during the…
Works Cited'
Franke, Richard W. (1987). Power, Class, and Traditional Knowledge in Sahel Food Production,
In Studies in Power and Class in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press.
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