"This remarkable anthology of 13 essays is a cross-cultural study
on ecological anthropology, which examines the cultural
construction of nature, human evaluation of environmental risks,
and human action to mitigate such risks. The anthology persuasively
critiques the privileging of Western rationality over
culture-specific perspectives of environmental change... It] stands
alone for the geographical sweep of its contributions - from
Europe, Asia, and Africa - and its disciplinary eclecticism, which
draws deeply on anthropology, geography, psychology, ethnography,
ethnology, and sociology... Essential." . Choice
Today human ecology has split into many different
sub-disciplines such as historical ecology, political ecology or
the New Ecological Anthropology. The latter in particular has
criticised the predominance of the Western view on different
ecosystems, arguing that culture-specific world views and
human-environment interactions have been largely neglected.
However, these different perspectives only tackle specific facets
of a local and global hyper-complex reality. In bringing together a
variety of views and theoretical approaches, these especially
commissioned essays prove that an interdisciplinary collaboration
and understanding of the extreme complexity of the
human-environment interface(s) is possible.
Michael J. Casimir is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the
University of Cologne. He has conducted prolonged fieldwork on the
ecology, economy, environmental management and nutritional and
socialisation patterns among pastoral nomads in west Afghanistan
and Kashmir. Together with Aparna Rao he was chairperson of the
Commission on Nomadic Peoples of the International Union of
Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences (1995-1998), and was
until 2004 one of the editors of Nomadic Peoples (Berghahn), the
official journal of the Commission. His major publications include
Flocks and Food. A Biocultural Approach to the Study of Pastoral
Foodways (1991); Mobility and Territoriality (ed. 1992); Nomadism
in South Asia (ed. 2003).
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