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Roses from Kenya

Labor, Environment, and the Global Trade in Cut Flowers

By Megan A. Styles. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Kenya supplies more than 35 percent of the fresh-cut roses and other flowers sold annually in the European Union. This industry—which employs at least 90,000 workers, most of whom are women—is lucrative but enduringly controversial....

The Snow Leopard and the Goat

Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas

By Shafqat Hussain. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Following the downgrading of the snow leopard’s status from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2017, debate has renewed about the actual number of snow leopards in the wild...

Working with the Ancestors

Mana and Place in the Marquesas Islands

By Emily C. Donaldson. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Throughout the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, forest spirits share space with ancestral ruins and active agricultural plots, affecting land use and heritage preservation. As Marquesans continue their efforts to establish UNESCO World Heritage status,...

Living with Oil and Coal

Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India

By Dolly Kikon. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

The nineteenth-century discovery of oil in the eastern Himalayan foothills, together with the establishment of tea plantations and other extractive industries, continues to have a profound impact on life in the region. In the Indian...

Caring for Glaciers

Land, Animals, and Humanity in the Himalayas

By Karine Gagné. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Regional geopolitical processes have turned the Himalayan region of Ladakh, in northwest India, into a strategic border area with an increasing military presence that has decentered the traditional agropastoralist economy. This in turn has led...

Organic Sovereignties

Struggles over Farming in an Age of Free Trade

By Guntra A. Aistara

This first sustained ethnographic study of organic agriculture outside the United States traces its meanings, practices, and politics in two nations typically considered worlds apart: Latvia and Costa Rica. Situated on the frontiers of the...

The Nature of Whiteness

Race, Animals, and Nation in Zimbabwe

By Yuka Suzuki

The Nature of Whiteness explores the intertwining of race and nature in postindependence Zimbabwe. Nature and environment have played prominent roles in white Zimbabwean identity, and when the political tide turned against white farmers after...

Forests Are Gold

Trees, People, and Environmental Rule in Vietnam

By Pamela D. McElwee

Forests Are Gold examines the management of Vietnam's forests in the tumultuous twentieth century—from French colonialism to the recent transition to market-oriented economics—as the country united, prospered, and transformed people and landscapes. Forest policy has...

Conjuring Property

Speculation and Environmental Futures in the Brazilian Amazon

By Jeremy M. Campbell

Winner of the 2017 James M. Blaut Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers
Honorable Mention for the 2016 Book Prize from the Association for Political and Legal...

Andean Waterways

Resource Politics in Highland Peru

By Mattias Borg Rasmussen

Andean Waterways explores the politics of natural resource use in the Peruvian Andes in the context of climate change and neoliberal expansion. It does so through careful ethnographic analysis of the constitution of waterways, illustrating...

The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze

India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856

By David John Arnold

The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze considers the European representation and understanding of landscape and nature in early nineteenth-century India. It draws on travel narratives, literary texts, and scientific literature to show the diversity of...

Puer Tea

Ancient Caravans and Urban Chic

By Jinghong Zhang

Puer tea has been grown for centuries in the “Six Great Tea Mountains” of Yunnan Province, and in imperial China it was a prized commodity, traded to Tibet by horse or mule caravan via the...

Ecological Nationalisms

Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia

By Gunnel Cederlöf, K. Sivaramakrishnan

The works presented in this collection take environmental scholarship in South Asia into novel territory by exploring how questions of national identity become entangled with environmental concerns in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and India. The essays...

From Enslavement to Environmentalism

Politics on a Southern African Frontier

By David McDermott Hughes

From Enslavement to Environmentalism takes a challenging ethnographic and historical look at the politics of eco-development in the Zimbabwe-Mozambique border zone. David Hughes argues that European colonization in southern Africa--essentially an unsuccessful effort to turn...

Enclosed

Conservation, Cattle, and Commerce Among the Q’eqchi’ Maya Lowlanders

By Liza Grandia. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

This impassioned and rigorous analysis of the territorial plight of the Q'eqchi Maya of Guatemala highlights an urgent problem for indigenous communities around the world - repeated displacement from their lands. Liza Grandia uses the...

Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers

The Politics of Environmental Knowledge in Northern Thailand

By Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

In this far-reaching examination of environmental problems and politics in northern Thailand, Tim Forsyth and Andrew Walker analyze deforestation, water supply, soil erosion, use of agrochemicals, and biodiversity in order to challenge popularly held notions...

Border Landscapes

The Politics of Akha Land Use in China and Thailand

By Janet C. Sturgeon

In this comparative, interdisciplinary study based on extensive fieldwork as well as historical sources, Janet Sturgeon examines the different trajectories of landscape change and land use among communities who call themselves Akha (known as Hani...

Tahiti Beyond the Postcard

Power, Place, and Everyday Life

By Miriam Kahn

Winner of the 2013 ICAS Book Prize (Social Sciences)

The “Tahiti” that most people imagine - white-sand beaches, turquoise lagoons, and beautiful women - is a product of 18th century European romanticism and persists today as...

Nature Protests

The End of Ecology in Slovakia

By Edward K. Snajdr. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

As societies around the world are challenged to respond to ever growing environmental crises, it has become increasingly important for activists, policy makers, and environmental practitioners to understand the dynamic relationship between environmental movements and...

Property and Politics in Sabah, Malaysia

Native Struggles Over Land Rights

By Amity A. Doolittle

In 1990, shortly after a Malaysian politician announced that the boundaries of Kinabalu Park, a primary tourist destination, were to be expanded to include the species-rich tropical forest known locally as Bukit Hempuen, most of...