How do people know birds? And how is such knowledge circulated between actors of differing race, class and tradition? Nancy Jacobs makes a notable contribution to environmental history in this fine-grained historical study of knowledge production about birds. Conceptually, at the core of this book is the ‘historical development of the asymmetries of science’ in a colonial context (p. 18), specifically anglophone Eastern and Southern Africa. Although Jacobs is acutely aware of imperial hegemony and colonial labour relations, she demonstrates that these asymmetrical relations were not so rigid as to prevent interaction and collaboration between African and European actors. Jacobs’ work masterfully elucidates the associations and knowledge exchanges between her subjects in conditions of rising and falling racial inequality.
Drawing on actor-network theory, the term ‘network’ is used broadly to encompass the associations and interactions between humans who possess or acquire knowledge of birds. Although this study takes birds seriously as a research subject, they are not cast as equal actors in her model; rather, she seeks to present ‘a symmetrical analysis of all forms of bird knowledge’ (p. 8). Jacobs divides birders into a threefold classification: vernacular birders, ornithologists and recreational birders, depending on the kind of facts each group produces. Here she draws on Latourian thought about the ways in which information circulates and gains authority. Vernacular knowledge circulates without concern or credit being paid to the original observer, producing ‘soft facts’, whereas scientific facts go through a ‘regime of hardening’ (p. 102) that enables them to be credited to one author and to be transmitted in a rigid form without alteration.
To explore this knowledge network, Jacobs analyses the development of ornithological science across five centuries of European and African engagement. The book begins with African vernacular birding traditions. Chapters 3 and 4 detail the rise of ornithology in Southern Africa. Jacobs demonstrates how ornithological practices of specimen collection, description and scientific nomenclature differed from vernacular practices. In the early colonial period, the early Europeans studying birds exhibited a high level of dependence on the knowledge and expertise of their African assistants in gathering information about birds and collecting them for specimens. Africans and Europeans worked side by side in producing the knowledge that was the basis of African ornithology. But it was the Europeans who recorded and circulated that knowledge through their transnational scientific networks, where it was synthesized into ‘hard facts’ as new features in ornithology crystallized, such as scientific naming. Simultaneously, the growing racialization of ornithological science placed authority and authorship in the hands of the white actors.
This historical development did not necessarily render Africans invisible in colonial networks of ornithology. Yet, while some Africans were credited, acknowledged and feted for their contributions and skills within the developing ornithological network, this recognition occurred at the discretion of their white counterparts. In the second half of the volume, Jacobs moves to an exploration of what she terms the ‘politics of collaboration’ at work in the lives of specific historical subjects. The lives of her subjects were delineated by their experiences of labour and social relations configured by asymmetries of colonial authority and racial inequality. The careers of three white ornithologists are examined: George Latimer Bates, Reginald Ernest Moreau and Leslie Brown. All worked closely with African collaborators and drew on vernacular expertise throughout their careers. The study aptly displays the varying levels of respect, trust, sociality, attraction and prejudice that characterized their working relationships with their African counterparts.
Jacobs takes on a more difficult task when she turns her biographical focus to three African members of the network – Jali Makawa, Saul Sithole and Njeru Kicho – who were all limited to assistant roles in the colonial labour hierarchy. Unlike the Europeans with whom they collaborated, these men did not leave behind written accounts of their own experiences. Rather, all three were often spoken and written of by their European employers. Jacobs painstakingly traces their career trajectory in colonial ornithology and speculates about their status within their communities. Jacobs also includes interviews conducted with relatives and peers, and accounts of other African assistants with similar skills and careers. Jacobs succeeds in flattening the birding network and exploring the critical contribution of its African participants to ornithology. But perhaps inevitably, despite the clearly intensive research around each man's life, their personal perspectives remain elusive.
The final chapter delineates the unravelling of the explicitly racial exclusions of scientific authority by the end of colonialism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Jacobs finally turns to contemporary recreational birding, but this section is the weakest. It would have been fruitful to consider the consumption networks of international bird tourism. These tour groups usually employ the help of guides in each habitat who possess the deep-rooted local vernacular knowledge so critical to finding rare birds in their specific habitats. As Jacobs notes, recreational birders often keep lifelong lists of observed birds. Clients and companies also often produce trip reports and post them online in a variety of mediums. In these documents, the attention or credit given to vernacular guides for bird tourists’ sightings varies as broadly as it did between the colonial ornithologists examined in the second part of Jacobs’ volume. A closer consideration of these ongoing connections and asymmetries between race, class and acknowledgement in a postcolonial context would have added an intriguing dynamic to this already insightful study.
Birders of Africa is a beautifully written and extensively researched account of ways of knowing. Jacobs’ study is an important contribution to African history and the history of science.
