© 2002 Blackwell Science Ltd. http://www.blackwell-science.com/geb

LIBRARY LETTERS

Global Ecology & Biogeography (2002) 11, 349–352

Blackwell Science, LtdOxford, UKGEBGlobal Ecology and Biogeography1466-822XBlackwell Science, 200211LIBRARY LETTERSLibrary LettersLibrary LettersTHE WORLD AND THE WILD AND MUCH, MUCH MORE

Rothenberg, D. & Ulvaeus, M. (eds) (2001) The worldand the wild. University of Arizona Press, Tucson, AZ.xxiii + 231 pp, figs, index. Paperback: Price US$19.95.ISBN 0-8165-2063-1.

In August 2001 I began reading The world and the wild.On 11 September terrorism changed the course of history.On 29 September, returning to Dulles Airport (home of theflight that breached the Pentagon) and finishing The worldand the wild, I read, ‘The dream of many now is to goabroad, run after money. Get rich fast! Become somebodyfast! But look what is happening all over the country. Theeducated can’t find jobs. They loiter around in towns andcities, frustrated, undisciplined. They become lawbreakersand create a safety problem everywhere … Today’s situationis like a time bomb.’ (p. 217). These prophetic words werepenned by one Damien Arabagali, a Huli leader of PapuaNew Guinea.

The world and the wild originated as a collection ofessays from the 6th World Wilderness Congress. Sixteenchapters, some remarkable, none worthless, constitute anoutstanding display of authoring and editing. The goal is‘to reinvigorate the effort to understand, reveal, and savewilderness beyond the usual futile polarities’ (p. xx). Theconceptual and artistic breadth of the effort has somethingto offer all concerned with wilderness, but the chaptersby Philip Cafaro and Monish Verma, Pramod Parajuli,Sahotra Sarkar, William Bevis, Antonio Carlos Diegues andDamien Arabagali were particularly interesting to me.Collectively, these authors provide a globally and historic-ally informed taxonomy of wilderness concepts, summarizethe field of social ecology with its Indian origins, explore therelevance of the western concept of wilderness to othernations, indict corporate libertarianism as a force of environ-mental and cultural destruction, and identify economic growthas an anachronistic goal in a world full of human economy.

I found the carefully deduced yet bold effort of Cafaro& Verma (Chapter 4) particularly refreshing. For starters,they go beyond the ubiquitous but hollow identification of‘human activities’ as the major challenge to biodiversity.The challenge, much more precisely, is ‘human economicactivities’ (p. 57, emphasis added). What do they advocate?‘… development for the poor and decreased consumptionamong the rich worldwide’ (p. 58). As for ‘the wasteful and

extravagant lifestyles of average Americans and the UnitedStates government’s successful attempt to undermine effortsto combat global warming’, American dialogue on sustain-ability ‘usually focuses on sustaining resources to facilitatemore “development” to satisfy ever-increasing “needs” ’(p. 61). It behoves Americans to consider this observationin the introspective aftermath of 11 September.

A unique and enjoyable chapter is Ian Player’s ‘ZuluHistory’ (Chapter 8), a fascinating account of Player’s trekwith Magqubu, a Zulu in legendary tune with the earth.Player’s description of Magqubu brought back fond memoriesof an expressive Apache game ranger I worked with inArizona, and other readers may have their own Magqubuto recall. This Magqubu was special indeed and he had aprofound effect on Player’s being. Adding to the breadth ofstyle in The world and the wild, Player helps us to hear andfeel ‘a drumbeat of the earth that permeated my entire psychicbeing. This was for me a religious experience’ (p. 105).

Player’s chapter is quite a stylistic shift on the heels ofJohn Terborgh’s cut-and-dried account of conservation inthe tropics (Chapter 6). Terborgh casts a well-deserved pallof cynicism over ‘the wispy notion of sustainable develop-ment’ (p. 83). His perspective provides a more generalizedversion of David Western’s preceding, Kenyan-based observa-tions (Chapter 5), although the two disagree somewhaton solutions (Chapter 7).

Edward Whitesell (Chapter 14) summarizes things well:‘To make a long-term impact on the survival of wild land-scapes, it will be necessary to promote social, political, andeconomic changes that will lead to that end’ (p. 196).Unfortunately, one of the key forces for positive change isglaring in its absence. As I described in Shoveling fuel fora runaway train (Czech, 2000), the practitioners of ecologicaleconomics have probably identified the requisite ‘social,political, and economic changes’ better than anyone. HermanDaly’s work on the steady state economy (e.g. Daly, 1993)is particularly relevant. Yet the ecological economics move-ment is never mentioned in The world and the wild; thisis a serious oversight in my opinion.

Of dubious merit is the chapter ‘Volcano Dreams’ byTom Vanderbilt (Chapter 11). His garrulous observationson Mexican history, culture, and volcanism seem largelyirrelevant. One can almost hear the voice of RichardRodriguez from the American programme Jim Lehrer New-shour. If you appreciate the rhapsodic rambling of RichardRodriquez, though, perhaps you will like ‘Volcano Dreams’.

Overall, I highly recommend The world and the wild. Itwill serve as an excellent text for courses in internationalconservation, environmental ethics, and any others withCorrespondence: Rob Whittaker & Richard Field.

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significant wilderness components. Were it possible, I’d makeit required reading for international conservation organiza-tions and, especially, international development agencies.

Some big-name authors grace the table of contents, yetit seems appropriate to conclude, as the book does, withDamien Arabagali, the Huli visionary (Chapter 16). If onehad time for just one chapter, Arabagali’s would be myrecommendation. Arabagali has reached a verdict on thecorporate violators of ecological integrity, and he didn’treach it carelessly. ‘Oh yes’, he acknowledged, ‘it’s true,hospitals are being built, and jobs are created. These arepositive elements for sure. But if you take a closer look, thenyou see cheap labour and exploitation. The price we payfor a damaged environment is too high. We sacrifice ournature for quick money.’ Arabagali is no quitter. He thinkswe still have a chance, and the preconceived spirits of ourgrandchildren must hope we heed: ‘The world should cometogether for the just cause. We must fight for the survivalof our human society. We must fight together.’ (p. 220).

Brian CzechArlington, Virginia U.S.A.

REFERENCES

Czech, B. (2000) Shoveling fuel for a runaway train: errant econ-omists, shameful spenders, and a plan to stop them all. Univer-sity of California Press, Berkeley.

Daly, H.E. (1993) Introduction to essays toward a steady-stateeconomy. Valuing the earth: economics, ecology, ethics (ed. byH.E. Daly and K.N. Townsend), pp. 11–47. MIT Press, Cam-bridge, Massachusetts.

11LIBRARY LETTERSLibrary LettersLibrary Letters

NATURE AND CULTURE IN FRENCH GUIANA

Redfield, P. (2000) Space in the tropics: from convicts torockets in French Guiana. University of California Press,Berkeley, CA. xvi + 345 pp, 21 black & white photographs,4 maps, 4 tables, index. Hardback: Price £35.00, US$55.00. ISBN 0-520-21984-8. Paperback: Price £14.50.ISBN 0-520-21985-6.

Space in the tropics sets itself an ambitious mission: toexplore the changes in ‘our experience of nature betweenan era of high imperialism and one of global technology’through re-telling the story of two European projects inFrench Guiana — the penal colony of the colonial period,and the space centre of the postcolonial period. The topicis tantalizing: as noted on the jacket, French Guiana is theplace where ‘rockets roar into space — bearing roughly

half the world’s commercial satellites — from the sameSouth American coastal rain forest where convicts once didtime on Devil’s Island.’ An anthropologist by training, PeterRedfield eschews ethnography. This is not a story about thetribe of space-centre workers or the penal colony adminis-trators that preceded them, but rather an attempt to weavetogether — via clever cultural history and rather offhandpolitical economy — ideas about the intersections ofnature and culture. The result, as promised on the jacket,is ‘anthropology for a new millennium’.

This ‘new’ anthropology actively seeks to disrupt con-ventional academic modes of writing and analysis, positingthe book as the work of a ‘bricoleur’ (amateur handyman).As a result, Redfield’s analysis is poetically disjointed andtheoretically elusive. The first chapter opens with a musingsoliloquy on Robinson Crusoe as a means of introducing thecentral themes of the work: ‘technology, nature and develop-ment, amid the human experience of space and place’ (p. 8).Redfield then presents us with a brief (less than four pages)explanation of a series of concepts — space, colonialism,nature, tropics, technology, modernity, place and people —that are meant to serve as a do-it-yourself theoretical toolkitfor the reader. These concepts lie dormant throughout muchof the rest of the analysis, and herein lies one shortcomingof the book, in which these critical concepts become reducedto a series of unarticulated, condensed code words.

The book then presents case studies of the (French) penalcolony and the space centre, before finishing with a com-parison of the two, with the goal of analysing the ‘ecologyof modern expertise’, arguing that ‘modern categories ofnature and technology can only be understood in relationto each other, and that neither can be adequately under-stood without recourse to spatial terms’. An exciting claim— yet one that is not always borne out in the substantiveanalysis, in part because of rather thin empirical material,and a rather anaemic comparison between the penal colonyand space centre in the final section.

Space in the Tropics is an inventive, carefully crafted andwonderfully written book, delightful to read but — given theweaknesses of the empirical analysis — ultimately unsatisfying.

Karen BakkerJesus College and School of Geography University of Oxford U.K.11LIBRARY LETTERSLibrary LettersLibrary Letters

UGLY BEAUTIFUL

Stott, P. & Sullivan, S. (eds) (2000) Political ecology: science,myth and power. Arnold, London. xii + 276 pp, figs,tables, index. Hardback: Price £50.00. ISBN 0340 761652. Paperback: Price £17.99. ISBN 0340 761660.

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‘The great tragedy of science — the slaying of a beautifulhypothesis by an ugly fact’. If readers of this journal areinclined to nod and sigh at T.H. Huxley’s aphorism theywould do well to avoid Stott and Sullivan’s edited collectionon political ecology — but only to a point. The subtitle ofthis collection ‘science, myth and power’ is an index of thecontrolling idea at stake, and one of which any self respect-ing biogeographer should be aware; namely that, when itcomes to nailing issues of environment and sustainabilitythe ‘Big Talk’ of a reified ‘science’ (p. 1) does not, accord-ing to the editors, bear much scrutiny. Herein lies the rub:the ugly fact that narratives of desertification in Namibia,though highly contestable, have taken on an air of truth asthey have become woven into the politics and economy ofsustainability operating at the national and internationalscale; the ugly fact that in Zimbabwe the legitimacy ofscientific narratives is inextricably defined by the widerpolitics of land reform; the ugly fact that global narrativesof environmental change, superimposed onto that exemplarpar excellence Bangladesh, ignores the tenuous nature ofscientific evidence supporting and defining them, and soforth. Suffice to say here that this is a grotesque worldindeed, where that beautiful hypothesis of science itself —a template for bringing about more just interventions in theworld — is shown up by a rather dirtier empirical reality.

How the different authors handle this state of affairs isheld together in a baggy sort of way. The political ecologyenvisaged is broadly a counterpoint to what Sullivan calls‘an ethically nihilistic doctrine of non-engagement’ (p. 34)(that’s code for relativism by the way), a phrase thatbetrays the volume’s rather thin postmodern gloss, andreveals what I would broadly define as an ethic of truthtelling in which science still holds a seat at the table. It istelling, for instance, that many contributors use terms suchas ‘science’ and ‘scientific’, a linguistic bluff by which con-taminated concepts reassert themselves whilst being simul-taneously distanced. This is important because at least oneof the strategies they develop is to attempt to operational-ize science in spite of itself. When for instance, Bradnockand Saunders explore competing scientific assessments ofthe Bengal Delta and argue that to use this region as a localsignifier of global environmental crisis is ‘completely with-out contemporary empirical foundation’ (p. 85) theirsuggestion is, in the main, to call forth alternative, moreregionally embedded scientific narratives, steamrolleredover by the more dominant global ones. Business as usualthen for the critical rationalists out there.

Others, such as Sullivan, develop a different sort of tack,in one sense lamenting the fragile basis of dominant scientificdiscourses, but also, and I feel that this is fundamental,attempting to recast science in new terms. In the best con-tribution to this volume, the author gestures at a trajectoryof science that elevates the authority of local-lay accounts,

and detects the possibility for a kind of transdisciplinaryfocus to environmental decision-making by highlighting someinteresting connections between the science of complexityand poststructural thought. This sensitivity to local, indigen-ous knowledge is also developed in Kortal’s chapter on bio-diversity, but taken much further analytically in Jewitt andKunjay’s head-on examination of social-spatial relations ofgender in forest management. All of this makes great reading,although some of the later chapters strike the wrong note.While Crouch and Azuma’s discussion of allotments is afascinating cultural politics of the urban north, I just couldn’tsee its place in this volume. and while Saunders’ contribu-tion may indeed be a ‘fine pioneering study’ (p. 9) into theconcept of environmental refugees, I must be missing atrick, for I did not get how this chapter fitted into the earlierdiscussion at all.

This is a curious book, full of interesting material and goodscholarship. Precisely what I am left with in the light of itsmany insights, I am less clear. It certainly isn’t a clear manifestofor action. Perhaps I am drawing on far too modernist animpulse when I say I wanted a much clearer alternative criticalprogramme to bubble back up to the surface. Perhaps in thispost ‘Big Talk’ era the editors wanted to resist some sortof closure on their own narrative. But I think that wouldbe theoretical camouflage for what, to my mind at least, isa less than beautiful fact of this academic genre of writing:that after the introduction editors become gradually invisible.By the end I felt cut a bit adrift, a small voice at the marginsshouting to the big talk of the text: where now for politicalecology? What now for science?

Robert Fish School of Geography University of NottinghamU.K.11LIBRARY LETTERSLibrary LettersLibrary Letters

UNPICKING THE PATCHWORK

Turner, M.G., Gardner, R.H. & O’Neill, R.V. (2001)Landscape ecology in theory and practice: pattern andprocess. Springer-Verlag New York, xii + 401pp, figs,tables, index, CD-ROM. Hardback: Price US$119. ISBN0-387-95122-9. Paperback: Price US$59.95. ISBN 0-387-95123-7.

The subtitle of this text encapsulates the ambitions of land-scape ecologists as they strive to explain the links betweenkey ecological processes and the spatial patterns of theland-use systems in which they occur.

The authors have set themselves the task of providing asource text appropriate both for those new to the disciplineand for those actively researching in it. To a great extent

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they have succeeded. One of the strengths of the book isthe clear account of the origins of landscape ecology and thelinks (and overlap) with other disciplines, although bio-geography is credited only with reference to the influentialtheory of island biogeography. The authors also gloss overthe increasing divide between the holistic, human-centred,systems approach of European landscape ecologists such asNaveh and the more quantitative, analytical approach ofthe North American school.

This is reflected in the landscape examples within thebook. Many are extensive both in area and managementand are afforded protection, perhaps as national parks.This contrasts sharply with intensively managed Europeanlandscapes, for example in the Netherlands, where the ten-ets of landscape ecology are already received wisdom formany land-use planners.

That said, the quantitative approach — and its limitations— are very well explained in this book. The thorny problemof landscape scale is tackled in detail at the start and con-siderations of scale continue throughout. A general sectionon models is also very welcome in a text of this sort as itallows their strengths and pitfalls to be evaluated before aconsideration of specific landscape models. The followingsection on random maps is particularly strong, as all threeauthors have carried out research in this area. Randomlygenerated maps are used as neutral landscape modelsagainst which to compare a landscape of interest, allowinga ‘null hypothesis’ approach to be used in the search forcritical thresholds in changes in landscape pattern.

The metrics used in the quantification of landscape patternare clearly constructed, and issues such as correlation ofmetrics and sources of error are sufficiently emphasized toinspire caution in their use and interpretation. At severalpoints in the book the authors make important observa-tions about the limitations of data and the difficulties ofdeveloping truly integrated models that reflect the complexity

and uncertainty of the real world. I would have consideredthe first point sufficiently important to warrant a longer sec-tion on sources of data, perhaps to include a more extensivediscussion on the use of remotely sensed datasets.

Disturbance dynamics are illustrated with dramatic eventssuch as hurricanes or fire, but the subtler, time-dependentchanges could have been discussed more fully. Ecosystemprocesses in the landscape are well covered, in contrast tothe chapter on organisms and landscape pattern, where thelack of data for more than a handful of species is veryobvious. The final section on ‘applied landscape ecology’covers a rather eclectic set of scenarios ranging from theAustralian wheat-belt to the forests of Ontario. Unfortunately,tropical examples are limited to a brief consideration ofslash and burn agriculture in Brazil. The text as a wholewould have been strengthened by more geographicallydiverse examples.

Overall, this is an extremely engaging book. It can bedipped into, or read as a narrative — although I advisereaders to take the time to consider some of the discussionquestions in order to develop their understanding of themore complex material. In terms of ‘learning support’ thereare recommended readings following each chapter and avery comprehensive bibliography. The accompanying CD islimited to colour images of the illustrations within thebook. Given the dynamic nature of the landscape examples,this medium could possibly have been used to greatereffect. Nonetheless, the authors’ express wish is that thematerial be used in teaching, making the book a very usefulresource for undergraduate and postgraduate courses rang-ing from conservation biology to geography and landscapeplanning and management.

Eunice Simmons Imperial College at Wye U.K.