Democracy In The Woods

'Democracy in the Woods' examines the trajectories of forest and land rights in India, Tanzania, and Mexico to explain how societies negotiate the tensions between environmental protection and social justice. It shows that the social consequences of environmental protection depend, almost entirely, on political intermediation of competing claims to environmental resources.

How do societies negotiate the apparently competing agendas of environmental protection and social justice? Why do some countries perform much better than others on this front? Democracy in the Woods addresses these question by examining land rights conflicts-and the fate of forest-dependent peasants-in the context of the different forest property regimes in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. These three countries are prominent in the scholarship and policy debates about national forest policies and land conflicts associated with international support for nature conservation. This unique comparative study of national forestland regimes challenges the received wisdom that redistributive policies necessarily undermine the goals of environmental protection. It shows instead that the form that national environmental protection efforts take - either inclusive (as in Mexico) or exclusive (as in Tanzania and, for the most part, in India) - depends on whether dominant political parties are compelled to create structures of political intermediation that channel peasant demands for forest and land rights into the policy process. This book offers three different tests of this theory of political origins of forestland regimes. First, it explains why it took the Indian political elites nearly sixty years to introduce meaningful reforms of the colonial-era forestland regimes. Second, it successfully explains the rather counterintuitive local outcomes of the programs for formalization of land rights in India, Tanzania, and Mexico. Third, it provides a coherent explanation of why each of these three countries proposes a significantly different distribution of the benefits of forest-based climate change mitigation programs being developed under the auspices of the United Nations. In its political analysis of the control over and the use of nature, this book opens up new avenues for reflecting on how legacies of the past and international interventions interject into domestic political processes to produce specific configurations of environmental protection and social justice. Democracy in the Woods offers a theoretically rigorous argument about why and in what specific ways politics determine the prospects of a socially just and environmentally secure world. *Included in the Studies in Comparative Energy and Environmental Politics Series

Historian and political thinker Ellen Meiksins Wood argues that theories of “postmodern” fragmentation, “difference,” and con-tingency can barely accommodate the idea of capitalism, let alone subject it to critique. In this book she sets out to renew the critical program of historical materialism by redefining its basic concepts and its theory of history in original and imaginative ways, using them to identify the specificity of capitalism as a system of social relations and political power. She goes on to explore the concept of democracy in both the ancient and modern world, examining its relation to capitalism, and raising questions about how democracy might go beyond the limits imposed on it.

`This is an important book for anyone who is serious about introducing or sustaining democratic leadership in schools. Busy practitioners will get much from it by going straight to the chapters about how democratic leadership could be made to work`- Kate Myers, Times Educational Supplement `I found this an interesting and stimulating book. The book's ideas are a useful counterpoint to some of the daft notions of macho leadership and management being peddled in education and indeed the public sector more widely. Woods' book has the merits that, though radical, it seeks to base its recommendations in the real world and to argue that there are possibilities for change that can bring about real improvements in everyone's experience and outcomes. Matching the rhetoric of democracy with reality - or at least making them closer - might also improve the quality of our political process, and hence increase interest and reduce cynicism about politics, something which surely should be welcomed. Woods' agenda is significant and his book certainly worth reading' - ESCalate `Philip Woods productively refocuses our attention, not on heroes and visions but on how we understand and practise within educational institutions in ways that are social and relational. He provides a realistic and yet challenging analysis of democratic leadership in ways that speak to practitioners, policy makers and researchers. We deal everyday with issues of social justice, and Philip Woods shows us how we might think differently about it, and so work for a better system of learning and schooling' - Professor Helen Gunter, School of Education, University of Manchester 'Not another bunny, but a welcome academic fox' - Kevin Avison, Steiner Waldorf Schools' Fellowship 'The theory and practice of democracy and democratic leadership have implications for how we understand what ought to be counted as `improving schools' In this book the author focuses on the idea of democratic leadership. He examines what is meant by democratic leadership, and what forms it can take, and shows how it is relevant to school education and learning. The author shows how the ideals and theories of democratic leadership can translate into practice, and sets out some of the challenges that democratic leadership poses in the context of contemporary education . This book challenges many of the assumptions inherent in educational policy and conventional approaches to leadership. It is about understanding and exploring both the idea of democratic leadership and its practical relevance through examples drawn from practice and research. This book is for practitioners and students on professional development and academic courses. It will be essential reading for all policy-makers, academics and others (such as inspectors) who critically examine leadership and management of educational institutions. 'Every now and then a book is written in the field of leadership that stands out, says something different, is coherent, original and makes us really ponder and think. This is such a book - it will provoke policy-makers, academics, experienced practitioners and advanced students' - Camridge Journal & Education

In Rainbow Nation Revisited, Donald Woods, now recognized as being an instrumental figure in the emergence of the new South Africa, revisits the country of his birth for the first time since he fled with his wife and children in 1977. He returns to the places of his past, where he reflects on the extraordinary figures he befriended, including Nelson Mandela, Steve Biko, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. A skillful and affectionate attempt to unpick the social fabric of a country that was once a pariah state.

The day after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, civic leaders began to organize four coalitions that aimed to give ordinary citizens a chance to meet, to heal, and to be heard in rebuilding decisions. This book tells the inside story of the civic renewal movement they founded.

In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. In The Democracy of Species Robin Wall Kimmerer guides us towards a more reciprocal, grateful and joyful relationship with our animate earth, from the wild leeks in the field to the deer in the woods. Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.

The controversial thesis at the center of this study is that, despite the importance of slavery in Athenian society, the most distinctive characteristic of Athenian democracy was the unprecedented prominence it gave to free labor. Wood argues that the emergence of the peasant as citizen, juridically and politically independent, accounts for much that is remarkable in Athenian political institutions and culture. From a survey of historical writings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus of which distorted later debates, Wood goes on to take issue with influential arguments, such as those of G.E.M. de Ste Croix, about the importance of slavery in agricultural production. The social, political and cultural influence of the peasant-citizen is explored in a way which questions some of the most cherished conventions of Marxist and non-Marxist historiography.