More detailed reviews can be found in the abstracts and in the program available at the meeting. The final program is available on the AAA Web page. This is a particularly good opportunity to meet fellow members and discuss issues of interest to environmental anthropologists.
Political ecology illustrates the processes by which power shapes the environment.
If we are to promote sustainable development in every policy domain and realm of application, we not only need methods that give life to the numbers, but must examine critically how the distribution of power illuminates social transformation. The prize will be awarded to Winslow at the 1997 meeting in Seattle. Taking a political ecology perspective, the research explores the linkages between local, national and international processes that have shaped historical and current forest use patterns. Low population density, a relatively homogenous population, the pattern of subsistence agriculture, minimal state interference, and limited interaction with national markets apparently contributed to the viability of common property management and the survival of communal forests into the present. The local context has changed in recent decades with population growth, socioeconomic differentiation related to market penetration, and state policies that encourage privatization of communal property.