This book analyzes the social and economic situation of the Shahsevans - mountain nomads in the harsh ecological environment of northwestern Iran. Based on in-depth field work while living with the nomads for a year, the book's author succeeds in offering a vivid insight into the Shahsevans' strategy to cope with both political impacts and the changing environmental conditions of their traditional way of life. At the same time, the book reveals the intensity of climatic change and the nomads' adaptation measures to these ecological threats. It is a well-documented and comprehensive analysis...

Subduing nature and harnessing water resources rose to become the key paradigm of modernization in the Vietnam's Mekong Delta. Over the past 40 years, waterscape engineering turned Vietnam's largest river estuary into one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the world. This book traces water resources development from the time of the socialist-oriented hydraulic mission and Green Revolution, which began in the late 1970s under the economic rationale of central planning, to more recent trends responding to renovation policy, global environmental change, and Vietnam's capitalist...

"Pangasius" is a genus of shark catfishes native to Asia. The term is often used to refer to the commercially important Pangasius bocourti, or basa fish. In Vietnam, water pollution in Pangasius aquaculture endangers its economic success and meaning for rural development in the Mekong Delta. With the help of Bourdieu's theory of practice, this book considers the interplay of subjective and objective structures on the practices in Pangasius cultivation. It shows that economic dependencies in a global commodity production system have led to a transformation process that most aquaculturists...