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Farm, trees and farmers; Responses to agricultural intensification
Book deficient in essential resources and hazardous because of blizzards, flash floods, tornadoes, hailstorms, and fire. The 1850 Swamp Land Act granted states wetlands to encourage draining for health protection and cultivation. Prince details the importance of railroads to settlement and the growth of large-scale farming, farm tenancy, and land speculation. Throughout, however, one feels there are two studies, one of the wet prairies, which became the famed grassland corn belt, and another of the bogs of the northern forests that became more important for lumber and recreation. This duality is never resolved. Subsequent chapters informatively tell the story of changing perception of wetlands along with the changing actions that followed. Drainage was necessary to intensively cultivate much of the wet prairie and public works programs began as early as 1837 in Illinois. State drainage laws gradually came into being to promote health, and underground tile systems resulted in carrying out drainage more generally. Prince makes an important observation: ‘draining in the prairies produced a remarkable uniformity in landscapes and land use’ (p. 231). The homogeneity that exists is based on drainage. Events differed in the northern bogs and swamps of the Lake States. Swamp Land Act grants supported railroad construction, and the railroads carried out drainage in the 1880s. Lumber companies logged the forests, but afterwards it proved difficult to attract settlers to the poorly drained cutover lands. Even with the ‘drainage fever’ around 1900, many farms failed in central Wisconsin, with the land returning to public ownership. Aldo Leopold called for wilderness values to inform policy, but preservation and conservation efforts gave way to summer cottages and other recreational pursuits. Timber cutting continues. In an attempt to provide a complete picture of what was happening in various eras, Prince frequently includes material not relevant to wetlands. In the 1960s there was increasing external pressure from the federal government and environmental groups to Although federal protect the remaining wetlands. programs frequently gave priority to the planting of all lands, farm bills in the 1980s and 1990s encouraged protection of waterfowl habitat and wetlands restoration. Major floods in 1993 showed the benefit of wetlands in retaining excess water. Mitigative efforts to compensate for lost wetlands became especially active in the prairie pothole region of southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. As the book comes to a close in 1995, wetlands were viewed as a valuable resource to be preserved and enhanced. Hugh Prince has written a book that is particularly useful and informative in an era when wetlands are seen in a highly positive light. DAVID E. KROMM Department of Geography Kansas State University Manhattan KS 66506, U.S.A. PII: SO743-0167(98)00040-O
Farm, Trees and Farmers; Responses to Agricultural Intensification, J. E. Michael Arnold and Peter A. Dewes, (eds.), 292 pp., 1995, Earthscan, London, f16.95 pbk. This volume, first published under a different title and publisher (Tree Management in Farmer Strategies: Responses
Reviews to Agricultural Intensification, Oxford University Press, 1995) comprises of 10 chapters split into 4 sections, two of these being an opening overview chapter and a concluding chapter. The purpose of the two main sections, and the conclusion are set out below. The eight contributors, (including the editors), are predominantly managers/ directors or staff of either national, or international organisaenvironment/development/agriculture/forestry tions, working in relation to the developing world. This book claims that in most parts of the developing world, there are only ‘a few farming systems today which do not incorporate managed trees in some fashion or another’. Such trees play dual, multi-faceted, roles, both in protecting and even enhancing the environmental viability of the landscape for agricultural production, and in providing various crop products, (food, fuel, construction material) for both the household and local agricultural economy. The claim is that this category of tree, although playing such crucial roles, had attracted little attention in terms of study, initially not falling within the focus of either forest or agriculture oriented studies and initiatives. Consequently, as concern grew over the environmental, economic and social consequences of removal of tree cover of this kind, (prompted in part by growing need for fuelwood), and some initiatives were taken to slow and reverse this process, both the causes of tree clearance, and the effectiveness, failures and even unanticipated side effects of the programmes to support tree management, were only poorly understood. Not enough was known about the local dynamic of these processes, or how these local processes interconnected with wider economic patterns. The, book thus looks at, in Part II - ‘Trends within farmer tree growing’, within the physical, socioeconomic and institutional circumstances of particular regional/national settings. Those being; the Middle Hills of Nepal; the arid region of western Rajasthan; Pakistan; and eastern Africa; (in chapters 3-5). In Part III ‘Factors influencing farmer decisions’, two chapters consider, western Kenya, and case studies from Kenya and India, while the other two chapters are more thematic, looking at, tree scarcity and woodfuel; and wood product markets as incentives for tree growing. This book declares itself to be aimed at ‘those studying or engaged in the management of trees in farming systems in developing countries’, and this is where it will be of greatest interest. But the book, particularly in the concluding section, attempts to tie the emerging themes into wider considerations of rural change in the developing world, by considering ‘trees and the dynamics of rural change’. Within this is considered; ‘the shift of tree resources from public to private property’; ‘changes in tenure and control’; ‘agrarian transition and the growth of markets’; and ‘balancing household need and market opportunity’. As such it touches on a number of wider issues in rural studies literature, (and for that matter, particularly the issues, environmental/development complexity underlying notions of ‘sustainability’), and thus could be used to provide specific grounded examples which either support or question more generalised theoretical considerations of rural/environmental change in the developing world. Given the quite healthy trend, coming from some quarters at least, to embed theorisation in the local, the specific, and the material, this book may provide a useful resource for such, as well as for its more obvious audience. OWAIN
JONES
Book School of Geographical Sciences University of Bristol PII: SO743-0167(98)00041-2
Food for Thought: Philosophy and Food, Elizabeth Telfer, 128 pp., 1996, Routledge, London, X11.99 paperback In recent years there have been several areas of academic and public debate, perhaps most notably medical ethics, to which philosophers have made major contributions. It is not hard to identify prominent issues relating to food, a major growth area across the social sciences and humanities in recent years, where informed philosophical perspectives would be both welcome and worthwhile. In no particular order, a brief list might include: the ethics of biotechnology and the genetic engineering of plants and animals; the concept of patenting genetic material; the implications of rights to food for international relations and the world economy; the regulation of international corporations; state sovereignty regarding food safety and public health; the ethics of food labelling and consumers’ ‘right to know’; and the gendering of experiences of food among, and within, societies and households. This is a strikingly eclectic list, but these themes have at least one thing in common. None of them are discussed in this disappointingly slight book. A very brief introduction and conclusion frame six short chapters. After the opening ‘Feeding the Hungry’, which unfortunately confines itself solely to food aid in relation to a ‘human right to subsistence’, rather than with broader issues of First World-Third World responsibilities, the rest of the chapters are little concerned with social dimensions, respectively discussing ‘The pleasures of food’, ‘Food as art’, ‘Food duties’, ‘Hospitableness’ and ‘Temperance’. Versions of chapters 2, 5 and 6, have been published before. A mis-match between ambitions of publisher and author can perhaps be gauged from the massive disjuncture between the declared aims of the former (‘the implications of [food’s] importance to our culture’) and that in the author’s preface (‘the role in life of food and eating’). The philosophy in the book almost entirely concerns what might be called ‘the moral philosophy of the individual’. That this perspective is characterised as ‘traditional’, ‘Western’ philosophy nicely instances one longstanding criticism of English philosophy as compared with many strands of European philosophy, namely its reluctance to engage with theorising in the social sciences. It certainly cannot be denied that the philosophers informing this book are traditional: Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. There are brief references to Locke, Kant and Mill, and mention of Singer, Rawls and Nozick, but no sustained discussion of political philosophical themes. It is a perennial complaint against reviewers that they discuss the book they would like to have read, rather than the book the author tried to write, and against publishers that their publicity bears little relation to the product. Both complaints are relevant here, and I acknowledge that this may be unfair to Telfer’s book. However, they are far from the only sources of my disappointment. I found Telfer’s approach problematic or unhelpful in several other ways, too, of which I will note
Reviews four. First, the book is seriously out-of-touch with the broader food literature. The discussion is virtually selfcontained within a narrow conception of traditional and individualistic moral philosophy. The thematic chapters contain little or no linkage to historical, geographical, anthropological or sociological work on food consumption, diet, attitudes to nature (including food plants and animals), or on manners and sociability. The last seems particularly surprising since several authors have sought to connect notions and forms of civility, many revolving around eating and/or drinking, to contemporary writings about moral conduct. Not only is the bibliography dated (it includes only three items that have appeared in the last decade), but the text conveys little sense that some topics have been areas of lively debate during the 1990s. Second, on several occasions, arguments are based on simple assertions rather than an elaboration of philosophical underpinnings, or on the use of descriptive categories as universals of human conduct. For example, gluttony may come in several forms but always involves ‘caring too much for the pleasures of eating and drinking’ (page 107). Is this a satisfactory category to apply across all human societies? The so-called ‘cultural turn’ within the humanities may as well not have happened, to judge from Telfer’s willingness to describe feelings - feelings towards animals for example - as ‘natural’, or to use phrases like ‘this kind of feeling comes naturally’, without asking what ‘natural’ means, or considering how categories like ‘nature’ are culturally constituted. Third, I was worried by Telfer’s treatment of consumption as a largely self-contained realm of human activity. She writes about consumption defined quite narrowly, which can be paraphrased along the lines of ‘acts of resourceconstrained choice, subject to moral reflection about conduct’. What is missing here is a sense of consumption as necessarily linked to the technologies or relations of production, or to supply networks and retailing, or to public policy. And fourth, the disregard of gender in this book is extraordinary (if unwittingly effective testimony to the influence of ‘traditional’ philosophers). Considerable volumes of feminist work have examined women’s experiences of food, ranging across production, procurement, preparation and consumption. None is engaged with here, rather it is dismissed as ‘psychoanalytical or even mystical, rather than philosophical’. It seems peculiar, even perverse, given the book’s focus on individuals and food, to discuss global rights and responsibilities, but not those within the household. So I would trace only part of my disappointment to unfulfilled expectations. On its own terms, the book could develop very much closer links with several disciplinary and inter-disciplinary literatures on food, that it does. It already appears dated rather than timely. While there remains considerable scope for a book with this title to make a significant impact across the field of food studies, this book misses that target by a considerable distance. Telfer is not unaware of the book that might have been written under this title, but in the end her book’s brevity and the previous appearance of half its chapters create an impression of other pressures to publish. PAUL GLENNIE School of Geographical Science
Farm, Trees and Farmers; Responses to Agricultural Intensification, J. E. Michael Arnold and Peter A. Dewes, (eds.), 292 pp., 1995, Earthscan, London, f16.95 pbk. This volume, first published under a different title and publisher (Tree Management in Farmer Strategies: Responses
Reviews to Agricultural Intensification, Oxford University Press, 1995) comprises of 10 chapters split into 4 sections, two of these being an opening overview chapter and a concluding chapter. The purpose of the two main sections, and the conclusion are set out below. The eight contributors, (including the editors), are predominantly managers/ directors or staff of either national, or international organisaenvironment/development/agriculture/forestry tions, working in relation to the developing world. This book claims that in most parts of the developing world, there are only ‘a few farming systems today which do not incorporate managed trees in some fashion or another’. Such trees play dual, multi-faceted, roles, both in protecting and even enhancing the environmental viability of the landscape for agricultural production, and in providing various crop products, (food, fuel, construction material) for both the household and local agricultural economy. The claim is that this category of tree, although playing such crucial roles, had attracted little attention in terms of study, initially not falling within the focus of either forest or agriculture oriented studies and initiatives. Consequently, as concern grew over the environmental, economic and social consequences of removal of tree cover of this kind, (prompted in part by growing need for fuelwood), and some initiatives were taken to slow and reverse this process, both the causes of tree clearance, and the effectiveness, failures and even unanticipated side effects of the programmes to support tree management, were only poorly understood. Not enough was known about the local dynamic of these processes, or how these local processes interconnected with wider economic patterns. The, book thus looks at, in Part II - ‘Trends within farmer tree growing’, within the physical, socioeconomic and institutional circumstances of particular regional/national settings. Those being; the Middle Hills of Nepal; the arid region of western Rajasthan; Pakistan; and eastern Africa; (in chapters 3-5). In Part III ‘Factors influencing farmer decisions’, two chapters consider, western Kenya, and case studies from Kenya and India, while the other two chapters are more thematic, looking at, tree scarcity and woodfuel; and wood product markets as incentives for tree growing. This book declares itself to be aimed at ‘those studying or engaged in the management of trees in farming systems in developing countries’, and this is where it will be of greatest interest. But the book, particularly in the concluding section, attempts to tie the emerging themes into wider considerations of rural change in the developing world, by considering ‘trees and the dynamics of rural change’. Within this is considered; ‘the shift of tree resources from public to private property’; ‘changes in tenure and control’; ‘agrarian transition and the growth of markets’; and ‘balancing household need and market opportunity’. As such it touches on a number of wider issues in rural studies literature, (and for that matter, particularly the issues, environmental/development complexity underlying notions of ‘sustainability’), and thus could be used to provide specific grounded examples which either support or question more generalised theoretical considerations of rural/environmental change in the developing world. Given the quite healthy trend, coming from some quarters at least, to embed theorisation in the local, the specific, and the material, this book may provide a useful resource for such, as well as for its more obvious audience. OWAIN
JONES
Book School of Geographical Sciences University of Bristol PII: SO743-0167(98)00041-2
Food for Thought: Philosophy and Food, Elizabeth Telfer, 128 pp., 1996, Routledge, London, X11.99 paperback In recent years there have been several areas of academic and public debate, perhaps most notably medical ethics, to which philosophers have made major contributions. It is not hard to identify prominent issues relating to food, a major growth area across the social sciences and humanities in recent years, where informed philosophical perspectives would be both welcome and worthwhile. In no particular order, a brief list might include: the ethics of biotechnology and the genetic engineering of plants and animals; the concept of patenting genetic material; the implications of rights to food for international relations and the world economy; the regulation of international corporations; state sovereignty regarding food safety and public health; the ethics of food labelling and consumers’ ‘right to know’; and the gendering of experiences of food among, and within, societies and households. This is a strikingly eclectic list, but these themes have at least one thing in common. None of them are discussed in this disappointingly slight book. A very brief introduction and conclusion frame six short chapters. After the opening ‘Feeding the Hungry’, which unfortunately confines itself solely to food aid in relation to a ‘human right to subsistence’, rather than with broader issues of First World-Third World responsibilities, the rest of the chapters are little concerned with social dimensions, respectively discussing ‘The pleasures of food’, ‘Food as art’, ‘Food duties’, ‘Hospitableness’ and ‘Temperance’. Versions of chapters 2, 5 and 6, have been published before. A mis-match between ambitions of publisher and author can perhaps be gauged from the massive disjuncture between the declared aims of the former (‘the implications of [food’s] importance to our culture’) and that in the author’s preface (‘the role in life of food and eating’). The philosophy in the book almost entirely concerns what might be called ‘the moral philosophy of the individual’. That this perspective is characterised as ‘traditional’, ‘Western’ philosophy nicely instances one longstanding criticism of English philosophy as compared with many strands of European philosophy, namely its reluctance to engage with theorising in the social sciences. It certainly cannot be denied that the philosophers informing this book are traditional: Socrates, Aristotle and Plato. There are brief references to Locke, Kant and Mill, and mention of Singer, Rawls and Nozick, but no sustained discussion of political philosophical themes. It is a perennial complaint against reviewers that they discuss the book they would like to have read, rather than the book the author tried to write, and against publishers that their publicity bears little relation to the product. Both complaints are relevant here, and I acknowledge that this may be unfair to Telfer’s book. However, they are far from the only sources of my disappointment. I found Telfer’s approach problematic or unhelpful in several other ways, too, of which I will note
Reviews four. First, the book is seriously out-of-touch with the broader food literature. The discussion is virtually selfcontained within a narrow conception of traditional and individualistic moral philosophy. The thematic chapters contain little or no linkage to historical, geographical, anthropological or sociological work on food consumption, diet, attitudes to nature (including food plants and animals), or on manners and sociability. The last seems particularly surprising since several authors have sought to connect notions and forms of civility, many revolving around eating and/or drinking, to contemporary writings about moral conduct. Not only is the bibliography dated (it includes only three items that have appeared in the last decade), but the text conveys little sense that some topics have been areas of lively debate during the 1990s. Second, on several occasions, arguments are based on simple assertions rather than an elaboration of philosophical underpinnings, or on the use of descriptive categories as universals of human conduct. For example, gluttony may come in several forms but always involves ‘caring too much for the pleasures of eating and drinking’ (page 107). Is this a satisfactory category to apply across all human societies? The so-called ‘cultural turn’ within the humanities may as well not have happened, to judge from Telfer’s willingness to describe feelings - feelings towards animals for example - as ‘natural’, or to use phrases like ‘this kind of feeling comes naturally’, without asking what ‘natural’ means, or considering how categories like ‘nature’ are culturally constituted. Third, I was worried by Telfer’s treatment of consumption as a largely self-contained realm of human activity. She writes about consumption defined quite narrowly, which can be paraphrased along the lines of ‘acts of resourceconstrained choice, subject to moral reflection about conduct’. What is missing here is a sense of consumption as necessarily linked to the technologies or relations of production, or to supply networks and retailing, or to public policy. And fourth, the disregard of gender in this book is extraordinary (if unwittingly effective testimony to the influence of ‘traditional’ philosophers). Considerable volumes of feminist work have examined women’s experiences of food, ranging across production, procurement, preparation and consumption. None is engaged with here, rather it is dismissed as ‘psychoanalytical or even mystical, rather than philosophical’. It seems peculiar, even perverse, given the book’s focus on individuals and food, to discuss global rights and responsibilities, but not those within the household. So I would trace only part of my disappointment to unfulfilled expectations. On its own terms, the book could develop very much closer links with several disciplinary and inter-disciplinary literatures on food, that it does. It already appears dated rather than timely. While there remains considerable scope for a book with this title to make a significant impact across the field of food studies, this book misses that target by a considerable distance. Telfer is not unaware of the book that might have been written under this title, but in the end her book’s brevity and the previous appearance of half its chapters create an impression of other pressures to publish. PAUL GLENNIE School of Geographical Science