Islands of Rainforest

This text presents a thought-provoking analysis of modern initiatives in the tropical rainforest. While issues such as logging, eco-timber and eco-tourism have been widely analyzed from an outsider's perspective, this book considers them from the local people's viewpoint, in terms of a long history of the rainforest uses. The authors show that the relationship of indigenous people to the tropical forest is not essentially timeless, nor is it primarily spiritual or mystical. It is, in fact, connected to modern realities, while still being rooted in historical beliefs and practices. Standing at the intersection of anthropology, historical geography and rainforest ecology, and also at the interface of the local and the global, this ethnographically-grounded study dispels a number of commonly held assumptions. It reveals how processes of "impact" are actually two-way interactions, as local communities in Melanesia incorporate industries like logging into rapidly evolving post-colonial society and economy.