Wilhelm Östberg

Kerio Valley, 1973-2013: a case study of Kenyan smallholder agriculture

ABSTRACT This article examines changes during the last 40 years in a smallholder irrigation-farming community in Elgeyo-Marakwet County, Kenya. Agricultural productivity has increased thanks to improved seeds and the practice of adding manure and crop residues to fields, a very rare occurrence in the 1970s. People’s range of assets, housing conditions and communications have also improved. Development agencies have had limited impact on these developments, particularly in comparison with their ambitious plans for a radical transformation of the study area. Increased yields and improved living conditions are attributed to local initiatives rather than to external interventions.

Losing faith in the land: changing environmental perceptions in Burunge country, Tanzania.

Abstract Two studies carried out among Burunge small-scale farmers disclosed a striking difference in their relation to the areas natural resources over a period of less than fifteen years. The paper outlines how the Burunge had come to develop essentially trustful attitudes to the world they inhabit. Dramatic changes in official land policies in the 1970s had not changed this by the early 1990s. However, this was also a time when a new mode of farming became dominant in the area, which caused Burunge farmers to move from a view of nature as a reliable provider to become concerned over increased drought, diminishing soil fertility and accelerated soil erosion. Rainfall records did not tally with the perceived increased severity of drought and therefore it is concluded that the Burunge did not relate drought only to meteorological events but also understand drought as a function of a diminishing resource base.

Karl Eric Knutsson 1932-2002 in memoriam

Karl Eric Knutsson became professor of social anthropology at Stockholm University in 1970. This was at the height of the student rebellion. Students crowded into what they saw as a centre for solidarity with the Third World countries and for studies thought to contribute towards a new world in the making. An enthusiastic group of graduate students formed around Karl Eric who had very much been their active choice for the chair. While undergoing their own training they simultaneously also became unqualified but dedicated teachers at the rapidly expanding department. A series of visiting professors were brought in to add competence and new ideas to the budding department. Gerald Berreman, Maurice Bloch, Lincoln Kaiser and Sandra Wallman were among those who made lasting impressions on Stockholm anthropology. Karl Eric also joined the editorial committee of Ethnos and contributed towards modernising the journal, which went through a process of change that paralleled developments at the department: from comparative ethnography to social anthropology. Karl Eric had a solid academic background with degrees in both anthropology and comparative religion. With his dissertation, presented at the Göteborg University, Authority and Change: A Study of the Kallu Institution among the Macha Galla of Ethiopia (1967) Karl Eric made a lasting contribution to Ethiopian studies. In this monograph he explored the role of the Kallu, a ritual specialist among the Oromo, and the relationships between people and land. Karl Eric’s experiences among the Oromo of Ethiopia were to stay with him throughout his life. Here he had met wisdom, common sense and oratory skills that engraved in him a profound conviction that people everywhere can usefully and wisely contribute towards solving problems. In his installation lecture at Stockholm University he described anthropology as the art of seeing from within and from below. This lesson from rural Ethiopia continued to guide his work later in life when he became an actor on the world scene. His experiences from fieldwork in rural Africa and from applied anthropology, in