This two-volume book offers a panoramic explanatory narrative of Soqotra Island's rediscovery based on the global significance of its endemic biodiversity. The first volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra: A Mesography of an Indigenous Polity in Yemen initiated the analytical inventory of the four key vectors of Soqotra's transition process through a discussion of the first two: economic disarticulation and political incorporation. This volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra: Cultural & Environmental Annexation of an Indigenous Community completes the analytical inventory by exploring the other two pivotal vectors of transition: cultural modernization and environmental annexation. These two vectors encompass the critical sociocultural spheres and environmental domains in which Soqotra's transformation process is unfolding. The origin of these vectors is situated within Soqotra's long history of exogenous mediations by external actors and their symbolic appropriation of the island into an imaginative geography. The legacy is a "symbolic curse," which has made Soqotra into an ideal playground for fantasist cultural or environmental experiments. Accordingly, this volume undertakes, first, a systematic inventory of the communal effects engendered within the domains of cultural modernization: dissonant linguistic attitudes, alienating consumption practices, divergent religious affiliations, and differentiating economic aspirations. Second, it anatomizes the process of environmental annexation through the reconstruction of the formulation and implementation process of a biodiversity conservation and sustainable development experiment in which the island and its residents are appropriated into an anachronistic paradigm - a pastoral ecotopia - as a blueprint of their future.

This two-volume book offers a panoramic explanatory narrative of Soqotra Island's rediscovery based on the global significance of its endemic biodiversity. This rediscovery not only engendered Soqotra's protective environmental supervision by United Nations agencies, but also the intensification of its bureaucratic incorporation and political subordination by Yemen's mainland national government. Together, the two volumes provide a "total" community study based on an historically contextualized and analytically detailed portrait of the Soqotran community via a multi-layered narrative the author terms a "mesography." The first volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra, Volume I: A Mesography of an Indigenous Polity in Yemen, situates the author's study within the emergent configuration of the structures of knowledge production in the social sciences before moving onto a systematic identification of the constitutive aspects, pivotal vectors, and historical contexts of Soqotra's transitioning polity. The second volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra, Volume II: Cultural and Environmental Annexation of an Indigenous Community, explores how cultural modernization in the light of environmental annexation transforms communal possibilities, development models, environmental values, conservation priorities, cultural practices, economic aspirations, language preferences, livelihood choices, and other key social norms. The two volumes lay the social scientific foundations for the study of Soqotrans as an island-based indigenous community.

This two-volume book offers a panoramic explanatory narrative of Soqotra Island's rediscovery based on the global significance of its endemic biodiversity. The first volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra: A Mesography of an Indigenous Polity in Yemen initiated the analytical inventory of the four key vectors of Soqotra's transition process through a discussion of the first two: economic disarticulation and political incorporation. This volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra: Cultural & Environmental Annexation of an Indigenous Community completes the analytical inventory by exploring the other two pivotal vectors of transition: cultural modernization and environmental annexation. These two vectors encompass the critical sociocultural spheres and environmental domains in which Soqotra's transformation process is unfolding. The origin of these vectors is situated within Soqotra's long history of exogenous mediations by external actors and their symbolic appropriation of the island into an imaginative geography. The legacy is a "symbolic curse," which has made Soqotra into an ideal playground for fantasist cultural or environmental experiments. Accordingly, this volume undertakes, first, a systematic inventory of the communal effects engendered within the domains of cultural modernization: dissonant linguistic attitudes, alienating consumption practices, divergent religious affiliations, and differentiating economic aspirations. Second, it anatomizes the process of environmental annexation through the reconstruction of the formulation and implementation process of a biodiversity conservation and sustainable development experiment in which the island and its residents are appropriated into an anachronistic paradigm - a pastoral ecotopia - as a blueprint of their future.

This two-volume book offers a panoramic explanatory narrative of Soqotra Island's rediscovery based on the global significance of its endemic biodiversity. This rediscovery not only engendered Soqotra's protective environmental supervision by United Nations agencies, but also the intensification of its bureaucratic incorporation and political subordination by Yemen's mainland national government. Together, the two volumes provide a "total" community study based on an historically contextualized and analytically detailed portrait of the Soqotran community via a multi-layered narrative the author terms a "mesography." The first volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra, Volume I: A Mesography of an Indigenous Polity in Yemen, situates the author's study within the emergent configuration of the structures of knowledge production in the social sciences before moving onto a systematic identification of the constitutive aspects, pivotal vectors, and historical contexts of Soqotra's transitioning polity. The second volume, A Post-Exotic Anthropology of Soqotra, Volume II: Cultural and Environmental Annexation of an Indigenous Community, explores how cultural modernization in the light of environmental annexation transforms communal possibilities, development models, environmental values, conservation priorities, cultural practices, economic aspirations, language preferences, livelihood choices, and other key social norms. The two volumes lay the social scientific foundations for the study of Soqotrans as an island-based indigenous community.