Abstract
The Gwembe Tonga live in Zambia’s Southern Province, a region of climatic extremes including severe multiyear droughts over the past century, coupled with periods of flooding and pest infestation. This, together with political fluctuations over the last 50 years, has significantly influenced their livelihood choices and ecological impacts, and they have learned to anticipate difficulties beyond local control. The building of the Kariba Dam on the Middle Zambezi River in the late 1950s, initiated by the colonial government in conjunction with the World Bank, resulted in the forced and very unwelcome relocation of the Gwembe Tonga. Almost 50 years after this forced resettlement, which virtually overnight undermined the local livelihood system and resource base, and drastically altered their social world, we find the Gwembe Tonga voluntarily colonizing “frontier” regions in different ecosystems on the plateau above their original Valley home. It is thus possible to examine a long trajectory of adaptation to new ecosystems and look for patterns over time.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Clark, Sam, et al. 1995 Ten Thousand Thonga: A longitudinal anthropological study from Southern Zambia 1956-1991. Population Studies 49: 91-109.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2000 Social Components of Migration: experiences from Southern Province, Zambia. Human Organization 59(1): 125-135.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2001a Carrying Capacity’s New Guise: Folk Models for Public Debate and Longitudinal Study of Environmental Change. Africa Today 48(1): 3-20.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2001b Survival strategies of the elderly in Gwembe Valley, Zambia: Gender, residence and kin networks. Journal of Cross Cultural Gerontology 16(4): 309-332.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2002 Mulitgenerations and Multidisciplines: Inheriting Fifty Years of Gwembe Tonga Research. In Chronicling Cultures: Long-term Field Research in Anthropology. R. Van Kemper and A.P. Royce, eds. pp. 239-251. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2003a Gift-remitting and Alliance Building in Zambian Modernity: Old Answers to Modern Problems. American Anthropologist. 105(3): 543-552.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2003b Male wealth and claims to motherhood: gendered resource access and intergenerational relations in the Gwembe Valley, Zambia. In Gender at Work in Economic Life. G. Clark, ed. pp. 207-223. Society for Economic Anthropology Monographs, Vol. 20. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press.
Cliggett, Lisa. 2005 Grains from Grass: aging, gender and famine in rural Africa. Ithaca: University of Cornell Press.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1960 Social Organization of the Gwembe Tonga. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1962 Trade and Wealth Among the Tonga. In Markets in Africa. P. Bohanon and G. Dalton, eds. pp. 601-616. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1963 Land Rights and Land Use among Valley Tonga of the Rhodesian Federation: The Background to the Kariba resettlement programme. In African Agrarian Systems. D. Biebuyck, ed. pp. 137-154. London: Oxford University Press.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1964a Land Law and Land Holdings among the Valley Tonga of Zambia. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 22: 1-8.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1964b Social Change and the Gwembe Tonga. Human Problems in British Central Africa/The Rhodes Livingstone Journal 35: 1-13.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1966 The Alien Diviner and Local Politics among the Tonga of Zambia. In Political Anthropology. M. Swartz, V. Turner, and A. Tuden, eds. pp. 221-228. Chicago: Aldine.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1967a Competence and Incompetence in the Context of Independence, and comments. Current Anthropology 8: 92-111.
Colson, Elizabeth 1967b The Intensive Study of Small Scale Communities. In The Craft of Social Anthropology. A. Epstein, ed. pp. 3-15. London: Tavistock.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1969 Spirit Possession among the Tonga of Zambia. In Spirit Mediumship and Society in Africa. J. Beattie and J. Middleton, eds. pp. 69 -103. New York: African Publishing Corportation.
Colson, Elizabeth 1970a The Assimilation of Aliens among the Zambian Tonga. In From Tribe to Nation in Africa. R. Cohen and J. Middleton, eds. pp. 33-54. San Francisco: Chandler.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1970b Converts and Tradition: The impact of Christianity on Valley Tonga religion. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 26(2): 143-156.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1971a Heroism, Martyrdom and Courage. In The Translation of Culture. T. Beidelman, ed. pp. 19-35. London: Tavistock.
Colson, Elizabeth 1971b Social Consequences of Resettlement. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1976 From Chief’s Court to Local Court: the evolution of local courts in Southern Zambia. Political Anthropology 1: 15-29.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1979 In Good Years and Bad: food strategies in self reliant societies. Journal of Anthropological Research 35(1): 18-29.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1980 The Resilience of Matrilineality: Gwembe and Plateau Tonga Adaptations. In The Versatility of Kinship. L. Cordell and S. Beckerman, eds. New York: Academic Press.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1995a The Contentiousness of Disputes. In Understanding Disputes. P. Caplan, ed. pp. 65-82. Oxford: Berg.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1995b War and Domestic Violence. Cultural Survival 19(1): 35-38.
Colson, Elizabeth. 1999 Gendering those uprooted by development. In Engendering Forced Migration: Theory and Practice. N. Indra, ed. pp. 23-39. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Colson, Elizabeth. 2000 The Father as Witch. Africa 70(3): 333-358.
Colson, Elizabeth, and Thayer, Scudder. 1975 New Economic Relationships Between the Gwembe Valley and the Line of Rail. In Town and Country in Central and Eastern Africa. D. Parkin, ed. pp. 190-210. London: Oxford University Press.
Colson, Elizabeth, and Thayer, Scudder. 1981 Old Age in Gwembe District, Zambia. In Other Ways of Growing Old. P. Amoss and S. Harrell, eds. pp. 125-153. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.
Colson, Elizabeth, and Thayer, Scudder. 1988 For Prayer and Profit: the ritual, economic, and Social importance of beer in Gwembe District, Zambia 1950-1982. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Gillett, Rhonda. 1997 Dental Emergence among urban Zambian school children: an assessment of the accuracy of three methods in assigning ages. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 102: 447- 454.
Gillett, Rhonda. 1998 Permanent tooth emergence among Zambian school children: a standard for the assignment of ages. American Journal of Human Biology 10: 45-51.
Gillett, Rhonda M. 1995 Growth and Physical Status: Biocultural Measures of Long-Term Underdevelopment Among the Gwembe Tonga of Zambia. Ph.D Dissertation, Indiana University.
Luig, Ulrich. 1997 Conversion as a Social Process: A history of missionary Christianity among the Valley Tonga, Zambia. Rutgers; Hamburg: Transaction Publishers.
Luig, Ute. 1999 Constructing Local Worlds: Spirit Possession in the Gwembe Valley, Zambia. In Spirit Possession: Modernity and Power in Africa. H. Behrend and U. Luig, eds. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Malasha, Isaac. 2003 Fisheries Co-Management: A Comparative Analysis of the Zambian and Zimbabwean Inshore Fisheries of Lake Kariba. PhD Dissertation, University of Zimbabwe.
Petit, Carine, Thayer, Scudder, and Eric, Lambin. 2001 Quantifying processes of land-cover change by remote sensing:: resettlement and rapid land-cover changes in south-eastern Zambia. International Journal of Remote Sensing 22(17): 3435-3456.
Price, Neil Thomas Neil 1999 Continuity and Change in the Gwembe Tonga Family and Their Relevance to Demography’s Nucleation Thesis. Africa 69(4): 510-535.
Scudder, Thayer 1960 Fishermen of the Zambezi: An appraisal of fishing practice and potential of the Valley Tonga. The Rhodes Livingston Journal/Human Problems in British Central Africa 27: 41- 49.
Scudder, Thayer. 1962 The Ecology of the Gwembe Tonga. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Scudder, Thayer. 1966 Man-made Lakes and Population Resettlement in Africa. In Man-made Lakes. R. Lowe-McConnell, ed. New York: Academic Press.
Scudder, Thayer. 1971 Gathering among African woodland savannah cultivators: A case study - the Gwembe Tonga. Lusaka: Institute for African Studies, UNZA.
Scudder, Thayer. 1972 Ecology and development: the Kariba Lake basin. In The Careless Technology: Ecology and International Development. M.T. Farvar and J. Milton, eds. New York: Natural History Press.
Scudder, Thayer. 1976 Social impacts of river basin development on local populations. United Nations’ Interregional Seminar on River Basin and Inter Basin Development, Budapest, 1976, pp. 45-52. Institute for Hydraulic Documentation and Education.
Scudder, Thayer. 1980 River-basin development and local initiative in African savanna environments. In Human Ecology in Savanna Environments. D.R. Harris, ed. London: Academic Press.
Scudder, Thayer. 1983 Economic Downturn and Community Unraveling. Culture and Agriculture 18: 16-19.
Scudder, Thayer. 1984 Economic Downturn and Community Unraveling, revisited. Culture and Agriculture 23: 6 -10.
Scudder, Thayer. 1985 A History of Development in the Zambian Portion of the Middle Zambezi Valley and Lake Kariba Basin. Binghamton, NY: Institute for Development Anthropology.
Scudder, Thayer. 1993 Development Induced Relocation and Refugee Studies: 37 years of change and continuity among Zambia’s Gwembe Tonga. Journal of Refugee Studies 6(2): 123-152.
Scudder, Thayer, and Elizabeth, Colson. 1981 Secondary Education and the Formation of an Elite: the impact of education on Gwembe District, Zambia. London: Academic Press.
Scudder, Thayer, and Elizabeth, Colson. 1982 From Welfare to Development: a conceptual framework for the analysis of dislocated people. In Involuntary migration and resettlement: the problems and responses of dislocated people. A. Hansen and A. Oliver-Smith, eds. Boulder: Westview Press.
Scudder, Thayer, and Elizabeth, Colson. 1997 Gwembe Tonga farmers and their environment: a century of change and continuity. Unpublished manuscript.
Scudder, Thayer, and Elizabeth, Colson. 2002 Long-term Research in Gwembe Valley, Zambia. In Chronicling Cultures: Long-term Field Research in Anthropology. R. Van Kemper and A.P. Royce, eds. pp. 179-238. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
Scudder, Thayer, and Jonathan, Habarad. 1991 Local Responses to Involuntary Relocation and Development in the Zambian Portion of the Middle Zambezi Valley. In Migrants in Agricultural Development. J.A. Mollett, ed. pp. 178-205. London: Macmillan.
Siamwiza, Bennett, Siamwiinde. 1993 Hunger in the Gwembe Valley: A case study of Mweemba Chieftaincy, 1905-1987. MA Thesis, University of Zambia.
Unruh, Jon, Lisa Cliggett, and Rod, Haynd. Migration, Land Tenure, and Deforestation: Land Rights Reception and ‘Clearing to Claim’ in Southern Zambia. Natural Resources Forum under review Oct 2004.
Wilk, Richard. 1991 Household Ecology: Economic Change and Domestic Life among the Kekchi Maya in Belize. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cliggett, L., Colson, E., Hay, R., Scudder, T., Unruh, J. (2010). Adaptive Responses to Environmental and Sociopolitical Change in Southern Zambia. In: Bates, D., Tucker, J. (eds) Human Ecology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5701-6_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5701-6_15
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-5700-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4419-5701-6
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)