Today human ecology has split into many different sub-disciplines such as historical ecology, political ecology or the New Ecological Anthropology. The latter in particular has criticised the predominance of the Western view on different ecosystems, arguing that culture-specific world views and human-environment interactions have been largely neglected. However, these different perspectives only tackle specific facets of a local and global hyper-complex reality. In bringing together a variety of views and theoretical approaches , these especially commissioned essays prove that an interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding of the extreme complexity of the human-environment interface(s) is possible.
Table of Content
List of Maps, Figures and Tables
Preface
The Mutual Dynamics of Cultural and Environmental Change: An Introductory Essay
Michael J. Casimir
PART I: EVALUATING, ATTRIBUTING AND DECIDING
Chapter 1. Antinomies of Environmental Risk Perception: Cognitive Structure and Evaluation
Gisela Böhm and Hans-Rüdiger Pfister
Chapter 2. Risk Management and Morality in Agriculture: Conventional and Organic Farming in a German Region
Thomas Döring, Lutz H. Eckensberger, Annette Huppert and Heiko Breit
Chapter 3. Attributed Causes of Environmental Problems: A Cross-Cultural Study of Coping Strategies
Josef Nerb, Andrea Bender and Hans Spada
Chapter 4. Decision-Making in Times of Disaster: The Acceptance of Wet-Rice Cultivation among the Aeta of Zambales, Philippines
Stefan Seitz
Chapter 5. Drought and ‘Natural’ Stress in the Southern Dra Valley: Varying Perceptions among Nomads and Farmers
Barbara Casciarri
Chapter 6. Local Environmental Crises and Global Sea-Level Rise: The Case of Coastal Zones in Senegal
Anita Engels
Chapter 7. Meshing a Tight Net: A Cultural Response to the Threat of Open Access Fishing Grounds
Andrea Bender
PART II: KNOWLEDGE, MEANING AND DISCOURSE
Chapter 8. Dangers, Experience and Luck: Living with Uncertainty in the Andes
Barbara Göbel
Chapter 9. Transforming Livelihoods: Meanings and Concepts of Drought, Coping and Risk Management in Botswana
Fred Krüger and Andrea Grotzke
Chapter 10. Cultural Politics of Natural Disasters: Discourses on Volcanic Eruptions in Indonesia
Judith Schlehe
Chapter 11. Knowing the Sea in the ‘Time of Progress’: Environmental Change, Parallel Knowledges and the Uses of Metaphor in Kerala (South India)
Götz Hoeppe
Chapter 12. Mass Tourism and Ecological Problems in Seaside Resorts of Southern Thailand: Environmental Perceptions, Assessments and Behaviour Regarding the Problem of Waste
Karl Vorlaufer, Heike Becker-Baumann and Gabriela Schmitt
Chapter 13. Local Experts – Expert Locals: A Comparative Perspective on Biodiversity and Environmental Knowledge Systems in Australia and Namibia
Thomas Widlok
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the author
Michael J. Casimir is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. He has conducted prolonged fieldwork on the ecology, economy, environmental management and nutritional and socialisation patterns among pastoral nomads in west Afghanistan and Kashmir. Together with Aparna Rao he was chairperson of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples of the International Union of Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences (1995–1998), and was until 2004 one of the editors of Nomadic Peoples (Berghahn), the official journal of the Commission. His major publications include Flocks and Food. A Biocultural Approach to the Study of Pastoral Foodways (1991); Mobility and Territoriality (ed. 1992); Nomadism in South Asia (ed. 2003).
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