Conservation And Globalization

This book makes current issues in political ecology and the question of globalization accessible to undergraduate students, as well as to non-academic readers. It is also empirically and theoretically rigorous enough to appeal to an academic audience. CONSERVATION AND GLOBALIZATION opens with a discussion of these two broad issues as they relate to the author's fieldwork with Maasai herding communities on the margins of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania. It explores different theoretical perspectives (Neo-Marxist and Foucauldian) on globalization and why both are relevant to the case studies presented. Students are introduced to the practice of multi-sited ethnography and its centrality to the anthropological study of globalization. While drawing on examples from specific Maasai communities, the book is more broadly concerned with the historical and contemporary links between these communities and a global system of institutions, ideas, and money. The ecological incompatibility of Western national park-style conservation with East African savanna ecosystems and Maasai resource management practices, are highlighted. The concept of national parks is traced temporally and geographically from Maasai communities to the enclosure movement in 18th century England and westward expansion in 19th century North America. The relationships of parks to Judeo-Christian assumptions about "man's place in nature," colonial ideologies like Manifest Destiny and the Civilizing Mission, and capitalist notions of private property and "The Tragedy of the Commons," are explored. The book also looks at the latest conservation paradigm of "Community-Based Conservation," and explores its connections to the Soviet Collapse, economic and political liberalization, and the global proliferation of NGOs.

Examining the geographical dimensions of environmental management and conservation activities implemented on landscapes worldwide, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation creates a new framework and collects original case studies to explore recent developments in the interaction of humans and their environment. Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation makes four important arguments about the recent coupling of conservation and globalization that is reshaping the place of nature in human-environmental change. First, it has led to an unprecedented number of spatial arrangements whose environmental management goals and prescribed activities vary along a spectrum from strict biodiversity protection to sustainable utilization involving agriculture, food production, and extractive activities. Conservation and globalization are also leading, by necessity, to new scales of management in these activities that rely on environmental science, thus shifting the spatial patterning of humans and the environment. This interaction results, as well, in the unprecedented importance of boundaries and borders; transnational border issues pose both opportunities and threats to global conservation proposed by organizations and institutions that are themselves international. Lastly, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation argues that the local level has been integral to globalization, while the regional level is often eclipsed at the peril of the successful implementation of conservation and management programs. Bridging the gap between geography and life science, Globalization and New Geographies of Conservation will appeal to a broad range of students of the environment, conservation planning; biodiversity management, and development and globalization studies.

Carrier and his group of international researchers tackle the complex factors affecting people's understandings of their environment-not just the natural environment, but landscapes shaped by humans, and their social contexts. The authors consider the impact of local events, such as tourism or environmental protection regimes, with detailed analyses of local cases. They also evaluate the large-scale political-economic forces that operate at regional and global levels, such as policies and bureaucratic requirements of international agencies and a country's position in global commodity markets. Their approach encourages policy makers and researchers to think about their natural and non-natural environment in novel ways. This book will be an excellent resource for all concerned with social, cultural and political-economic aspects of environmental use and conservation, and researchers in anthropology, geography, and political ecology.

In our technological civilization, the forces of globalization are a threat to both nature and culture. The many and varied cultures of the world are beset by the homogenizing impact of the global media, which represents the triumph of technics. Nature and culture must be protected to preserve a humanly habitable world. Conserving Cultures is the first book to link nature and culture conservation. The threat to nature is now well understood; how it relates to cultures is not. This book both describes and analyzes theoretically the danger to culture and proposes practical remedial measures. Visit our website for sample chapters!

Authored as a result of a remarkable collaboration between indigenous people's own leaders, other social activists and scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this volume explores what is happening today to indigenous peoples as they are enmeshed, almost inevitably, in the remorseless expansion of the modern economy and development, at the behest of the pressures of the market-place and government. It is particularly timely, given the rise in criticism of free market capitalism generally, as well as of development. The volume seeks to capture the complex, power-laden, often contradictory features of indigenous agency and relationships. It shows how peoples do not just resist or react to the pressures of market and state, but also initiate and sustain "life projects" of their own which embody local history and incorporate plans to improve their social and economic ways of living.

A significant amount of natural resources such as lands, waters, biodiversity, ecosystem services etc. are all part of an agricultural system. Modern agriculture significantly affects the state and sustainable exploitation of natural resources being a major factor for environmental degradation such as pollution, destruction, and extortion. In this book, the authors present current research in the study of conservation strategies, globalisation and politics and sustainable uses of natural resources.

Pollution, resource depletion, habitat management, and climate change are all issues that necessarily transcend national boundaries. Accordingly, they and other environmental concerns have been a particular focus for international organizations from before the First World War to the present day. This volume is the first to comprehensively explore the environmental activities of professional communities, NGOs, regional bodies, the United Nations, and other international organizations during the twentieth century. It follows their efforts to shape debates about environmental degradation, develop binding intergovernmental commitments, and—following the seminal 1972 Conference on the Human Environment—implement and enforce actual international policies.

Gezon argues that local events continuously redefine and challenge global processes of land use and land degradation. Her ethnographic study of Antankarana-identifying rice farmers and cattle herders in northern Madagascar weaves together an analysis of remotely sensed images of land cover over time with ethnographies of situated negotiations between human actors. Her book will be particularly valuable to researchers and students in anthropology, geography, sociology, and environmental studies, and those involved in conservation and resource management.