Reviews

Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa by Brian Titley. McGill‐Queen's University Press, Québec (Canada) and Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, (UK), 1997. xii. plus 5pp. of illustrations (photographs and a map of the Central African Republic) plus 257pp. including notes, bibliography and index. £22.95 hardback.

The Making of a Periphery: Economic Development and Cultural Encounters in Southern Tanzania edited by Pekka Seppala and Bertha Koda. Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Uppsala (Sweden), 1998. 344 pp. including figures, tables, maps, notes, bibliography and index. Paperback.

Farewell to Farms: De‐agrarianization and Employment in Africa edited by D.F. Bryceson and V. Jamal. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Aldershot, 1997. iv plus 265pp. including figures, tables, notes and index.

The World Bank and Nigeria: Cornucopia or Pandora's Box? by Rufai Ahmed Alkali. Kaduna, Baraka Press, 1997. 205pp. including selected references.

Sustaining the Future: Economic, Social and Environmental Change in Sub‐Saharan Africa edited by George Benneh, William B.Morgan and Juha I.Uitto. The United Nations University Press, Tokyo, New York and Paris, 1996.     

Third Parties and Culture

This essay describes the four broad themes that emerged from our discussionabout the role of process in cross-cultural negotiations and considerstheir implications for future research. First, we address the nature of theconflict, in particular whether a negotiation is classified as a dispute or atransactional exchange. Second, we contrast the role of cognition and rapportin negotiations and consider when rapport replaces the centrality ofcognition. We also discuss the extent to which negotiating processes createrelationships based on trust or power, and consider how cultural valuesinfluence the development of these underlying relationships. Finally, weconsider the role of culture in defining what is perceived as an optimal outcomeand raise the possibility that suboptimal outcomes may holdsymbolic value in cross-cultural negotiations.     

Another death due to ingestion of Nicotiana glauca

Deaths attributed to ingestion of Nicotiana glauca are extremely rare. We report here a case where a 43-year-old man was found dead after apparently drinking a water extract of Nicotiana glauca. The primary alkaloid in the plant is anabasine. Toxicological analysis by capillary gas chromatography showed the deceased had a blood anabasine concentration of 2.2 mg/L. Clinically, the features of poisoning are nicotine-like and if death occurs it results from respiratory paralysis. The case further supports the view that, in the human, anabasine is considerably more toxic than nicotine.     

Toward an understanding of the perception of hiv/aids-related risk among prison officers

One consequence of the drug war has been the incarceration of many offenders who pose a health risk to staff. This article presents an analytical framework to examine the factors that influence staffs' perceptions of the threat of infection. Four risk domains influence an officer's self-rated threat of exposure: (1) psychosocial factors, (2) HIV/AIDS-related knowledge, (3) perception of risk in the prison environment, and (4) risk reduction efforts. Officers with lower levels of education, those who worked with medium and maximum custody inmates, and those who had more high-risk encounters with inmates rated their chances for infection as high. Findings are discussed in light of their practical and theoretical applications.     

Green grabs and biochar: Revaluing African soils and farming in the new carbon economy

Biochar currently attracts technological and market optimism, promising multiple wins – for climate change, food security, bioenergy and health – not least for African farmers. This paper examines the political-economic and discursive processes constructing biochar as a novel green commodity, creating new alliances amongst scientists, businesses, venture capital firms and non-governmental organisations. Carbon market logics are not only threatening large-scale land grabs for biochar feedstocks but also other forms of resource, labour and ecological appropriation through driving research and development and shaping small-scale pilot projects. In these, soil carbon is ‘chopped out’ of its ecosystem and social contexts and revalued as exchangeable pieces of carbon nature. Farmers are hailed as green actors and market winners, provided they discipline their practices according to these new technical and market logics. These discourses contrast strongly with the farmers' existing conceptual and practical repertoires; a case study from Liberia illustrates how farmers already manipulate soil carbon in creating locally valued anthropogenic dark earths, but within diverse farming repertoires, ontologies of human–nature interrelationship and historical and political ecologies.