
Reviews
Pooley has written a comprehensive account of the Western 'discovery' of the Okapi. His dissection of this conceit is accompanied by an equally impressive account of Okapi research during the Imperial Era. Throughout, he cultivates an intense empathy for an exceptionally beautiful animal—an animal emblem for one of the most complex communities on earth, and one of the communities most threatened by unbridled logging today.
In Discovering the Okapi, Simon Pooley has produced a rich history of one of Africa's most enigmatic and endangered animals. Pooley shows how science, art, economics, and politics made this secretive animal into a powerful symbol both of the global biodiversity crisis and of the perils of colonial conservation efforts intended to stop it.
Book Details
Preface
Introduction
1. Scientific Authority and Metropolitan Knowledge Institutions
2. Discovery of the Okapi
3. Settling Okapi Taxonomy and the First Monograph
4. Possession, Exhibition, Dissemination
5
Preface
Introduction
1. Scientific Authority and Metropolitan Knowledge Institutions
2. Discovery of the Okapi
3. Settling Okapi Taxonomy and the First Monograph
4. Possession, Exhibition, Dissemination
5. Okapis Take Shape in the Western Imagination
6. Okapis in African Art, Ancient and Modern
7. Catching Okapi, 1901 to 1915
8. Pursuing Okapi in the Interwar Years
9. Capture,Transport and Survival of Okapi After 1918
10. Zoo Conservation and the Deadly Journey to the West
11. Nature of the Beast
12. Okapi Science After 1945
13. Indigenous Africans as "Primitive Experts" on Okapi
14. Western Framings of the Peoples and Forests of the Congo
15. Clashing World Views in a Crucible for Wildlife Conservation
Conclusion
Acknowledgements