Environnement et densités de population : le recours à l'histoire.

L. Cambrezy — Environment and Population Density : Resorting to History. In the arduous study of the relationship between Nature and Society, environment must needs be considered as a global whole, since it is perceived and used as such by its occupants. This affirmation is a triviality, y et the implementation of an approach fitting this objective is confronted with a permanent contradiction between an analysis which has to conform strictly to the traditional classification of sciences, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the imperative demand of a quest for relations and interactions which is hardly reconcilable with that division of knowledge. Problems have to be set down under a systemic approach, in order to account for the actual interactions as well as to avoid the danger of a mechanistic interpretation. A recourse to history in the examination of the relations between a society and its environment is no protection against reasoning linearly. The present study is based upon the question of demographie density in Rwanda. Its aim is to show that historical analysis, necessary as it may be, is not sufficient. To become fully convincing, it must also take account of locational data. Space is no longer a concept to be used by geographers only: like history it has become a compulsory access-way into the understanding of the complex Systems with which we are dealing.Cambrezy Luc. Environnement et densités de population : le recours à l'histoire.. In: Cahiers d'études africaines, vol. 26, n°101-102, 1986. Milieux, histoire, historiographie. pp. 63-73