1st Edition

Environmental Movements in Asia

By Arne Kalland, Gerard Persoon Copyright 1999
    312 Pages
    by Routledge

    by Routledge

    This volume paints a general picture of the environmental situation in Asia, backing it up with several case studies.
    Two major points are made in this general picture. The first is that environmental campaigns in Asia tend to have a local focus; they react to very concrete problems in the immediate neighbourhood and as such usually people are engaged in a cause for practical rather than idealistic reasons. Such can be seen in case studies from the volume dealing with campaigns against logging and tree plantations, tourist facilities and factories and in support or defence of nature reserves. This pattern is in marked contrast to the profile of the most successful Western movements (in terms of fund-raising at least) for whom the focus is on perceived problems in distant parts of the world.
    The second point is evidence in several of the case studies in the volume, namely that environmental campaigns cannot be understood in terms of environmental issues alone. Rather, they should be regarded as a form of cultural critique and frequently are a form of political resistance in situations where open political action is too risky.

    1: An Anthropological Perspective on Environmental Movements; 2: Local Dimensions of ‘Global' Environmental Debates; 3: Mahatma Gandhi and the Environmental Movement in India; 4: Culture, Gender and Community in Taiwan's Environmental Movement; 5: The Forest Grant Movement in Japan; 6: The Anti-Tropical Timber Campaign in Japan; 7: Local Environmentalism in Northeast Thailand; 8: Symbols and Displacement; 9: Local Resource Dependency and Utilization on Timpaus; 10: Asna Women: Empowered or Merely Enlisted?; 11: Divergent Approaches to the Environment in Kerala; 12: Perspectives on Waste in Urban India

    Biography

    Arne Kalland, Gerard Persoon