Indians, markets, and rainforests : theoretical, comparative, and quantitative explorations in the neotropics / Ricardo Godoy.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Godoy, Ricardo, author.

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2001]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This book addresses two important and related questions: does participation in a market economy help or hurt indigenous peoples and how does it affect the conservation of tropical rainforest flora and fauna? Oddly, there have been few quantitative studies that have addressed these issues.Ricardo Godoy's research takes an important step toward rectifying this oversight by investigating five different lowland Amerindian societies of tropical Latin America-all of which are experiencing deep changes as they modernize. Godoy examines the effect of markets on a broad range of areas including health, conservation of flora and fauna, leisure, folk knowledge, reciprocity, and private time preference. He concludes that, contrary to considerable anthropological theory, the effect of markets on the quality of life and the rainforest are often unclear or benign. Godoy uses multivariate techniques to examine the changes modernization has had on many indicators of the quality of life and the environment and concludes that the seeds of socioeconomic differentiation may already lie dormant in simple economies.The impact of modernization on lowland Amerindians is a topic of great concern to anthropologists, researchers, and policymakers in developing nations, and this book is a significant contribution to the debate about the likely future of indigenous people.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Part I. THE QUESTION, THE RESEARCH DESIGN, AND THE PEOPLE

Chapter 1. The Question and Its Significance

Chapter 2. Comparing Approaches

Chapter 3. Research Design

Chapter 4. Ethnographic Sketches

Part II. THE FINDINGS

Chapter 5. Forest Clearance: Income, Technology, and Private Time Preference

Chapter 6. Game Consumption, Income, and Prices: Empirical Estimates and Implications for Conservation

Chapter 7. Chayanov and Netting: When Does Demography Matter?

Chapter 8. Chayanov and Sahlins on Work and Leisure

Chapter 9. Human Health: Does It Worsen with Markets?

Chapter 10. Mishaps, Savings, and Reciprocity

Chapter 11. Trade and Cognition: On the Growth and Loss of Knowledge

Chapter 12. Time Preference, Markets, and the Evolution of Social Inequality

Part III. WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED

Chapter 13. CONCLUSIONS

Appendix: Test of Folk Knowledge

References

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780231505031

0231505035

OCLC:

979720109