A research focus on hazards, risk perception and risk minimizing strategies is relatively new in the social and environmental sciences. This volume by a prominent scholar of East African societies is a powerful example of this growing interest. Earlier theory and research tended to describe social and economic systems in some form of equilibrium. However recent thinking in human ecology, evolutionary biology, not to mention in economic and political theory has come to assign to "risk" a prominent role in predictive modeling of behavior. It turns out that risk minimalization is central to...

Subsistence intensification, innovation and change have long figured prominently in explanations for the development of social complexity among foragers and horticulturalists. This set of global case studies re-examines the subsistence question in light of recent research. It contrasts traditional approaches with recent archaeological research that presents human driven strategies for power, prestige, and status as causes of subsistence intensification."

Landscape studies provide a crucial perspective into the interaction between humans and their environment, shedding insight on social, cultural, and economic topics. The research explores both the way that natural processes have affected the development of culture and society, as well as the ways that natural landscapes themselves are the product of historical and cultural processes.

Most previous studies of the landscape selectively focused on either the natural sciences or the social sciences, but the research presented in African Landscapes bridges that gap. This work is...

The area of eastern Africa, which includes Tanzania and Kenya, is known for its savannas, wildlife and tribal peoples. Alongside these iconic images lie concerns about environmental degradation, declining wildlife populations, and about worsening poverty of pastoral peoples. East Africa presents in microcosm the paradox so widely seen across sub Saharan Africa, where the world s poorest and most vulnerable populations live alongside some of the world s most outstanding biodiversity resources.

Over the last decade or so, community conservation has emerged as a way out of...

Subsistence intensification, innovation and change have long figured prominently in explanations for the development of social complexity among foragers and horticulturalists. This set of global case studies re-examines the 'subsistence question' in light of recent research. It contrasts traditional approaches with recent archaeological research that presents human driven strategies for power, prestige, and status as causes of subsistence intensification.

The area of eastern Africa, which includes Tanzania and Kenya, is known for its savannas, wildlife and tribal peoples. Alongside these iconic images lie concerns about environmental degradation, declining wildlife populations, and about worsening poverty of pastoral peoples. East Africa presents in microcosm the paradox so widely seen across sub Saharan Africa, where the world s poorest and most vulnerable populations live alongside some of the world s most outstanding biodiversity resources.

Over the last decade or so, community conservation has emerged as a way out of...

A research focus on hazards, risk perception and risk minimizing strategies is relatively new in the social and environmental sciences. This volume by a prominent scholar of East African societies is a powerful example of this growing interest. Earlier theory and research tended to describe social and economic systems in some form of equilibrium. However recent thinking in human ecology, evolutionary biology, not to mention in economic and political theory has come to assign to "risk" a prominent role in predictive modeling of behavior. It turns out that risk minimalization is central to...

This book sets the questions of energy and the environment in the North in the global context and further addresses historical developments, views on energy taxation and tariffs, and effects of EU energy policy.

Climate change appears more frequently than ever on the top of global and national policy agendas. In the current situation traditional environmental concern and environmental policy may not suffice in the face of the global challenge as manifested by climate change and the depletion of fossil energy resources. But as new data comes to light, new energy policies and changes...

Up until now, mountain ecosystems have not been closely studies by social scientists as they do not offer a readily defined set of problems for human exploitation as, do for instance, tropical forests or arctic habitats. But the archaeological evidence had shown that humans have been living in this type of habitat for thousands of year.

From this evidence we can also see that mountainous regions are often frontier zones of competing polities and form refuge areas for dissident communities as they often are inherently difficult to control by centralized authorities. As a consequence...