| | ROAPE No.33 carried a critique by Beverly Gartrell ('searching for "The Roots of Famine": The Case of Karamoja' ) in ROAPE No.25. In what follows, I shall refer to the former as 'the critique' and to the latter as 'the article' . Gartrell argued that the article was based on a three-fold 'neglect' : of 'basic information on environmental aspects' , of, accumulated knowledge on the social and economic organisation of the people' , and of 'the historical record' of both the pre-colonial and the colonial period as regards famine. Combined with these empirical deficiencies, argued Gartrell, the author'shares with those earlier British policy makers two erroneous assumptions: that colonial rule penetrated an earlier, stable, status quo: and that pastoralism is a more primitive, less productive, less stable form of subsistence than settled agriculture.' As a result, concluded the critic, 'ironically, Mamdani advocates one of the same 'solutions' that the colonial rulers long advocated: increased dependence on settled agriculture.' |
