Bøger af William Balee

"William Balâee has studied Amazonian societies and their tropical rainforests over his forty-year career. He is a world-renowned expert on the cultural and historical ecology of the Amazon basin. His 2013 book with The University of Alabama Press, Cultural Forests of the Amazon: A Historical Ecology of People and Their Landscapes, framed a number of his previously published articles (some from what he termed "obscure" journals) with new chapter contributions to present a powerful account of how indigenous people of the Amazon intentionally and rationally transformed the landscapes and managed the resources of the rainforests before Europeans arrived. Sowing the Forest is a companion volume in this model, combining refashioned, previously published articles with new material. It is a work of historical ecology and delves heavily into linguistics. It deals with how, over centuries, Amazonian people and their cultures have interacted with rainforests, making the landscapes of palm forests and other kinds of forests, and how these and related forests have fed back into the vocabulary and behavior of current indigenous occupants of the remotest parts of the vast Amazonian hinterlands. The book describes specific interrelationships between tropical peoples and those landscapes in terms of the forests they live in and manage (rather than adapt to). In general, the volume describes how their language and vocabulary are reflected in the landscape transformations that their ancestors and other past peoples have effected, and in some cases vocabulary has been completely lost because of colonialism. The book is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Substrate of Intentionality," comprises chapters on historical ecology, indigenous palm forests, plant names in Amazonia, origins of the Amazonian plantain, and unknown "Dark Earth People" of thousands of years ago and their landscaping. Balâee notes that these chapters "reflect how the feedback between culture and environment ends up as a complete, coherent, explicable phenomenon in and of itself." In part 2, "Scope of Transformation," Balâee lays out his theory of landscape transformation, which he terms "primary" and "secondary." Primary landscape transformation involves humans effecting complete species turnover, and secondary landscape transformation involves humans effecting partial species turnover. He provides examples of both kinds of landscape transformation and various specific effects. He also compares environmental and social interrelationships, for example, in an Orang Asli group in Malaysia and the Ka'apor people of eastern Amazonian Brazil. Another chapter covers loss of language and culture resulting from primary landscape transformation in the Bolivian Amazon. A final chapter addresses the controversial topic of monumentality (does it exist?) in the rainforest. His on-the-ground research has shown that monumentality indeed exists in great numbers (e.g., Bolivian mounds, the Brazil nut groves of the Xingu Basin, and the Acre geoglyphs), with more examples being discovered apace with deforestation. Balâee ends by emphasizing the common thread in Amazonian historical ecology: the long-term phenomenon of encouraging diversity for its own sake, not just for economic reasons"--

This book primarily examines human-animal and human-plant interactions in Asian forests (Southeast Asiäand Japan) and inland waters (China). For comparison, cases from the Americas (whales in the Arctic, sea turtles in the Caribbean, and plants in the Amazon) and Central Asia are also included. The relationship between plants, animals, and humans in Asia is quite unique from a global perspective. For example, "satoyama" in Japan means ecotone area, or the boundary between a village and a forest. There, as the number of inhabitants declines, bears, wild boars, and other animals increasingly ravage crops, sometimes attacking humans as well.By showing the regional nature of human-animal and human-plant interactions in Asia, this book provides for the first time a framework for understanding the world's animal and plant-human relationships. It is assumed that the relationships between humans and animals and plants during this period were diverse, including hunting, taming, semi-domestication, and full domestication. At the same time, for regions outside of Asia, the extent to which these diverse relationships were adapted and how diversity was formed is explained from the perspective of historical ecology.Customers can expect to derive perspectives on the coexistence of human-animal and plant-animal relationships from this book in the near future.The conservation of rare species, diverse habitats, and biodiversity is a central theme in considering the relationship between modern civilization and the global environment. In post-industrial Japan, one focus has been the protection of iconic animals such as storks, crested ibis, dugongs, and sea turtles, while damage to crops and humans by deer, wild boars, monkeys, bears, and other common animals has become an important social issue. How can the world's 7.7 billion-plus people live in harmony with other species? We would like to get some hints on how to solve the problems we are facing.

This collection of studies by anthropologists, botanists, ecologists, and biologists is an important contribution to the emerging field of historical ecology. The book combines cutting-edge research with new perspectives to emphasize the close relationship between humans and their natural environment.Contributors examine how alterations in the natural world mirror human cultures, societies, and languages. Treating the landscape like a text, these researchers decipher patterns and meaning in the Ecuadorian Andes, Amazonia, the desert coast of Peru, and other regions in the neotropics. They show how local peoples have changed the landscape over time to fit their needs by managing and modifying species diversity, enhancing landscape heterogeneity, and controlling ecological disturbance. In turn, the environment itself becomes a form of architecture rich with historical and archaeological significance. Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology explores thousands of years of ecological history while also addressing important contemporary issues, such as biodiversity and genetic variation and change. Engagingly written and expertly researched, this book introduces and exemplifies a unique method for better understanding the link between humans and the biosphere.