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Book Review
| In Search of the Rain Forest. Edited by Candace Slater. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. × + 318 pp. Index. Cloth $79.95, paper $22.
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| Nature in the Global South: Environmental Projects in South and Southeast Asia. Edited by Paul Greenough and Anna Lowenhaupt. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003. xii + 428 pp. Notes, bibliography, list of contributors, index. Cloth $89.95, paper $24.95.
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| These two edited volumes extend critiques of nature and development raised in past works such as Uncommon Ground: Toward Reinventing Nature (W.W. Norton, 1996) to the discursive terrain of rain forests and South and Southeast Asia. |
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In Search of the Rain Forest, like Uncommon Ground, is a product of a seminar held at the University of California, Irvine, where an interdisciplinary group including political ecologists, anthropologists, a historian, a forester, a literary theorist, and others explored rain forests as cultural places where science, tourism, and conservation practice are tied to changing ideas of nature both among locals and more globally. In the book's introduction, Slater explains the terms "icon" and "spectacle" as organizing principles for this dialogue. The chapters that follow are loosely organized around these concepts; the first part of the book deals with problems of representation and the second more with human projects to create, preserve, or rehabilitate rain forests as spectacles of wilderness. |
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Slater initiates this study on ideas of the rain forest by comparing media coverage of two devastating fires in a slash pine forest in Florida and the Amazon forest in Brazil. She shows how this common icon of forest life can be interpreted very differently and argues that the resulting southern bioscript to "save the rain forest" legitimizes calls for outside intervention and continuing antagonism against those who live and work in these places. This sets up a recurring theme in the book that points to contradictions, or "bio ironies" as Greenough terms them, in his essay on tiger conservation in Indian forests. One of the most globally poignant ironies in his essay is the connection between the creation of core zones in biosphere reserves and the subsequent rise in lawless activity—poaching, criminal gangs, narcotics trafficking, and illicit logging—in these centers. Alex Greene focuses on a form of cultural bio-irony where a native Chicagoan follows a Mayan healer and then claims to be his only protégé, opening a gift shop, consulting business, and tourist center to spread his medicines. Sawyer's essay on oil drilling addresses the more familiar northern grounds of subterranean appropriation (oil); but she shows how industry strategies such as "invisible pipelines" mask deeper social and economic injustices. |
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The final three essays in the volume read as an interesting twist on Cronon's now-classic critique of wilderness in Uncommon Ground. Greenough transposes the "problem of wilderness" to the core zones of biospheres, showing how the removal of people has led to increases in illicit activity within—narcotics trafficking, poaching, and evasion. Peluso's essay turns the notion of wilderness external to humans on its head by showing how the Indonesian state under Suharto reinvested colonial ideas of "wildness" into Dayak people to incite racial violence and ultimately lay claim to the island's rich forests. Similarly, Charles Zerner considers how popular media portrayals of viral outbreaks such as Ebola and AIDS create a more threatening interpretation of wilderness where African rain forest threatens to invade human bodies, especially in the United States. |
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