Carole L. Crumley has brought together top scholars from across anthropology in a benchmark volume that displays the range of exciting new work on the complex relationship between humans and the environment. Continually pursuing anthropology's persistent claim that both the physical and the mental world matter, these environmental scholars proceed from the holistic assumption that the physical world and human societies are always inextricably linked. As they incorporate diverse forms of knowledge, their work reaches beyond anthropology to bridge the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, and to forge working relationships with non-academic communities and professionals. Theoretical issues such as the cultural dimensions of context, knowledge, and power are articulated alongside practical discussions of building partnerships, research methods and ethics, and strategies for implementing policy. New Directions in Environment and Anthropology will be important for all scholars and non-academics interested in the relation between our species and its biotic and built environments. It is also designed for classroom use in and beyond anthropology, and students will be greatly assisted by suggested reading lists for their further exploration of general concepts and specific research. Learn more about the author at the University of North Carolina Anthropology Department web pages.

The "Hikayat Banjar," a native court chronicle from Borneo, characterizes the irresistibility of natural resource wealth to outsiders as "the banana tree at the gate." Michael R. Dove employs this phrase as a root metaphor to frame the history of resource relations between the indigenous peoples of Borneo and the world system. In analyzing production and trade in forest products, pepper, and especially natural rubber, Dove shows that the involvement of Borneo's native peoples in commodity production for global markets is ancient and highly successful and that processes of globalization began millennia ago. Dove's analysis replaces the image of the isolated tropical forest community that needs to be helped into the global system with the reality of communities that have been so successful and competitive that they have had to fight political elites to keep from being forced out.

Indigenous Knowledge (IK) reviews cutting-edge research and links theory with practice to further our understanding of this important approach's contribution to natural resource management. It addresses IK's potential in solving issues such as coping with change, ensuring global food supply for a growing population, reversing environmental degradation and promoting sustainable practices. It is increasingly recognised that IK, which has featured centrally in resource management for millennia, should play a significant part in today's programmes that seek to increase land productivity and food security while ensuring environmental conservation. By drawing together strands of biocultural diversity research into natural resources management, this book: - Provides an overview of conceptual issues around IK and its contributions to sustainable agriculture and environmental conservation; - Addresses key themes via case studies from bioculturally diverse regions of the world; - Displays a wide range of methodologies and outlines a possible agenda to guide future work. An invaluable resource for researchers and postgraduate students in environmental science and natural resources management, this book is also an informative read for development practitioners and undergraduates in agriculture, forestry, geography, anthropology and environmental studies.

Two pioneering anthropologists reveal how complexity science can help us better understand how societies change over time Over the past two decades, anthropologist J. Stephen Lansing and geneticist Murray Cox have explored dozens of villages on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, combining ethnographic research with research into genetic and linguistic markers to shed light on how these societies change over time. Islands of Order draws on their pioneering fieldwork to show how the science of complexity can be used to better understand unstable dynamics in culture, language, cooperation, and the emergence of hierarchies. Complexity science has opened exciting new vistas in physics and biology, but poses challenges for social scientists. What triggers fundamental, discontinuous social change? And what brings stable patterns-islands of order-into existence? Lansing and Cox begin with an incisive and accessible introduction to models of change, from simple random drift to coupled interactions, phase transitions, co-phylogenies, and adaptive landscapes. Then they take readers on a series of journeys to the islands of the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate how social scientists can harness these powerful tools to discover out-of-equilibrium social dynamics. Lansing and Cox address empirical questions surrounding the colonization of the Pacific, the relationship of language to culture, the emergence and disappearance of male and female hierarchies, and more. Unlocking new possibilities for the social sciences, Islands of Order is accompanied by an interactive companion website that enables readers to explore the models described in the book.

Two pioneering anthropologists reveal how complexity science can help us better understand how societies change over time Over the past two decades, anthropologist J. Stephen Lansing and geneticist Murray Cox have explored dozens of villages on the islands of the Malay Archipelago, combining ethnographic research with research into genetic and linguistic markers to shed light on how these societies change over time. Islands of Order draws on their pioneering fieldwork to show how the science of complexity can be used to better understand unstable dynamics in culture, language, cooperation, and the emergence of hierarchies. Complexity science has opened exciting new vistas in physics and biology, but poses challenges for social scientists. What triggers fundamental, discontinuous social change? And what brings stable patterns-islands of order-into existence? Lansing and Cox begin with an incisive and accessible introduction to models of change, from simple random drift to coupled interactions, phase transitions, co-phylogenies, and adaptive landscapes. Then they take readers on a series of journeys to the islands of the Indo-Pacific to demonstrate how social scientists can harness these powerful tools to discover out-of-equilibrium social dynamics. Lansing and Cox address empirical questions surrounding the colonization of the Pacific, the relationship of language to culture, the emergence and disappearance of male and female hierarchies, and more. Unlocking new possibilities for the social sciences, Islands of Order is accompanied by an interactive companion website that enables readers to explore the models described in the book.

A seminal anthropological work on the paradoxical relationship between human consciousness and the environment This book asks an age-old question about the relationship between human consciousness and the environment: How do we think about our own thoughts and actions? How can we transcend the exigencies of daily life? How can we achieve sufficient distance from our own everyday realities to think and act more sustainably? To address these questions, Michael R. Dove draws on the results of decades of research in South and Southeast Asia on how local cultures have circumvented the "curse of consciousness"-the paradox that we cannot completely comprehend the ecosystem of which we are part. He distills from his ethnographic, ecological, and historical research three principles: perspectivism (seeing oneself from outside oneself), metamorphosis (becoming something that one is not), and mimesis (copying something that one is not), which help a society to transcend the hubris and myopia of everyday existence and achieve greater insight into its ecosystem.

Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our times, yet also seemingly intractable. This book offers novel insights on this contemporary challenge, drawing together the state-of-the-art thinking in anthropology. Approaching climate change as a nexus of nature, culture, science, politics, and belief, the book reveals nuanced ways of understanding the relationships between society and climate, science and the state, certainty and uncertainty, global and local that are manifested in climate change debates. The contributors address three major areas of inquiry: how climate change issues have been framed in previous times compared to the present; how knowledge about climate change and its impacts is produced and interpreted by different groups; and how imagination plays a role in shaping conceptions of climate change.

Reflecting new thinking about conservation in Southeast Asia, "Beyond the Sacred Forest" is the product of a unique, decade-long, interdisciplinary collaboration involving research in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Scholars from these countries and the United States rethink the translation of environmental concepts between East and West, particularly ideas of "nature" and "culture"; the meaning of "conservation"; and the ways that conservation policy is applied and transformed in the everyday landscapes of Southeast Asia. The contributors focus more on folk, community, and vernacular conservation discourses than on those of formal institutions and the state. They reject the notion that conservation only takes place in bounded, static, otherworldly spaces such as protected areas or sacred forests. Thick with ethnographic detail, their essays move beyond the forest to agriculture and other land uses, leave behind orthodox notions of the sacred, discard outdated ideas of environmental harmony and stasis, and reject views of the environment that seek to avoid or escape politics. Natural-resource managers and policymakers who work with this more complicated vision of nature and culture are likely to enjoy more enduring success than those who simply seek to remove the influence and impact of humans from conserved landscapes. As many of the essays suggest, this requires the ability to manage contradictions, to relinquish orthodox ideas of what conservation looks like, and to practice continuously adaptive management techniques.

"Contributors." Upik Djalins, Amity A. Doolittle, Michael R. Dove, Levita Duhaylungsod, Emily E. Harwell, Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells, Lye Tuck-Po, Percy E. Sajise, Endah Sulistyawati, Yunita T. Winarto