摘要：Many of the postcolonial nations of Africa have had armed conflicts and civil wars,
which are thought to have their roots in ethnic differentiation and inter ethnic hatred among the native
groups. The present critique uses a political ecological framework to analyze three factors: apartheid,
ethnic distinctiveness and the rigid belief of ethnic immutability, which were used by the colonial
rulers to their advantage in traditional Africa. They justified a colonial administrative system based on
these dogmas, many of which persist and have directly or indirectly contributed to the present
situation in the African continent. The critique illustrates various dogmas in ecological terms and
attempts to show that processes of adaptive change in institutional frameworks have been denied¡ª
to take their normal course of transformation, while economic change from the use of renewable to the
use of nonrenewable recourses was taking place in the Colonial Africa.
关键词：Political ecology; resources; traditional Africa; ethnicity; conflict
