Abstract
This case study focuses on the different concepts of landscapes of different communities making use of the !Khuiseb catchment area (KCA; central Namibia). They conceptualise their environment in different ways due to their different cultural backgrounds and daily experiences with it. It shows how the desert environment of the lower !Khuiseb River is viewed by indigenous Topnaar people and how the more productive highland of the upper !Khuiseb River is valued by farmers of European descent. As we are living in an increasingly globalised world concepts are also imported from foreign environments. These concepts have an impact upon the discourses on the ‘new’ environment. On the basis of the conceptualisation of ‘drought’ and ‘aesthetics of landscape’ by different people this chapter elaborates on how concepts can frame the present use of the environment and the spatial distribution of people within the !Khuiseb catchment area.
The fact that processes take place over space. The fact of distance or closeness of geographical variation between areas, of the individual character and meaning of specific places and regions – all these are essential the operation of social processes themselves.... Nor do any of these processes operate in an environmentally characterless, neutral und undifferentiated world. (Massey in Jackson, 1989, p. 184)
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Notes
- 1.
The Topnaar speak Nama which belongs to the language family of the Khoisan (see Heine, (1976) for further information). Topnaar is the Dutch-Afrikaans translation of the Nama term = Aonin which Budack (1977) translated as ‘“people of a marginal area’”. The term ‘Topnaar’ is used equally with = Aonin by the Topnaar themselves.
- 2.
With the assistance of my translator Deon Sharuru in the Topnaar settlement I called together all present inhabitants while whereas at the farms I completed the investigation with the person running the farm (farm owner or tenant).
- 3.
The KCA is also called the !Khuiseb-Gaub drainage system, because the Gaub is the biggest river, which drains into the !Khuiseb.
- 4.
For more information on the !Khuiseb vegetation see Van den Eynden et al. (1992).
- 5.
The exploitation of the !nara through Khoekhoe has been recorded since 1677 when Captain Wobma landed on the Namibian coast. Pastoralists made use of the resources of the Namib Desert for a long time. The oldest archaeological site in the Namib Desert, the Mirabib shelter, was dated back 8,400 years by Sandelowsky (1977).
- 6.
Some of the farmers do not live the whole year on the farm but plan to retire there.
- 7.
Exemplarily see Harries (1997) on the construction of a south-east African landscape ’“under alpine eyes’”“.
- 8.
This research station has been situated at the !Khuiseb since the 1970s and is run by the non-governmental Desert Research Foundation of Namibia (DRFN) with its head office in the capital Windhoek.< AU: PLEASE CITE FOOTNOTE 8 IN TEXT >
- 9.
On colonial aesthetics of landscape see Rössler, this volume.
- 10.
Luig (1999) shows in a case study of the Matobo national park in Zimbabwe how an African cultural landscape is perceived as “wild’ by Europeans.
- 11.
On the perception of ‘“wilderness’” by indigenous people see also the case study on the Hai||//om in the Etosha National Park by Dieckmann, this volume.
- 12.
See also Widlok (1998).
- 13.
During his missionary work from 1965 to -–1972 at Walvis Bay Moritz noted that Homeb was not inhabited anymore. In 1959 when Köhler visited this place people still lived there. See in Moritz (1997).
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Gruntkowski, N. (2009). Is this a Drought or is this a Drought and what is really Beautiful? Different Conceptualizations of the !Khuiseb Catchment (Central Namibia) and their Consequences. In: Bubenzer, O., Bollig, M. (eds) African Landscapes. Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation, vol 4. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-78682-7_14
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