Description
Book SynopsisCollects essays that offer important reflections on the image and rhetoric of the rain forest. Attentive to such complexities, this title focuses on specific portrayals of rain forests and the consequences of these representations for both forest inhabitants and outsiders.
Trade Review“
In Search of the Rain Forest dissects the multiple meanings and the iconography of tropical nature in a very interesting way. It moves ‘rain forest studies’ into the realm of cultural critique in a manner that serves important scholarly as well as consciousness-raising ends.”—Susanna B. Hecht, coauthor of
The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers, and Defenders of the Amazon“This is an immensely thought-provoking and entertaining book. It makes a compelling case for an approach to the rain forest that eschews environmental fundamentalism in favor of a rich and multilayered understanding of the social complexities of rain forest practice and representation.”—Raymond L. Bryant, author of
The Political Ecology of Forestry in Burma, 1824–1994Table of ContentsAbout the Series vii
Acknowledgments ix
Mapping Out The Quest
In Search of the Rain Forest / Candace Slater 3
Rain Forest Icons
Fire in El Dorado, or Images of Tropical Nature and Their Practical Effects / Candace Slater 41
Subterranean Techniques: Corporate Environmentalism, Oil Operations, and Social Injustice in the Ecuadorian Rain Forest / Suzana Sawyer 69
The Voice of Ix Chel: Fashioning Maya Tradition in the Belizean Rain Forest / Alex Greene 101
Rain Forest and Jungle
In Search of the Maya Forest / Scott Fedick 133
Spectacles of Wildness
Bio-Ironies of the Fractured Forest: India's Tiger Reserves / Paul Greenough 167
Weapons of the Wild: Strategic Uses of Violence and Wildness in the Rain Forests of Indonesian Borneo / Nancy Lee Peluso 204
The Viral Forest in Motion: Ebola, African Forests, and Emerging Cartographies of Environmental Danger / Charles Zerner 246
Afterword: The Ongoing Search 285
Contributors 305
Index 309
