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Book reviewsPaul K. Gellert a , J. Baird Callicott b & Ivette Perfecto ca Department of Sociology , University of Wisconsin‐Madison ,Madison, Wisconsin, USAb Department of Philosophy , University of North Texas ,Denton, Texas, USAc School of Natural Resources and Environment , University ofMichigan , Ann Arbor, Michigan, USAPublished online: 21 Nov 2008.

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Book Reviews

Bevis, William W. Borneo Log: The Struggle for Sarawak's Forests. Seat-tle: University of Washington Press, 1995. 245 pp. $19.95 (hardcover).ISBN 0-29597-416-8.

Reviewed by Paul K. GellertDepartment of SociologyUniversity of Wisconsin-MadisonMadison, Wisconsin, USA

Borneo, the third largest island on Earth, is about as far away as one can get from theUnited States, both physically and culturally. Yet, William Bevis notes, he could take youthere in 20 hours for about $1,000. If you do not have the time, money, and perseveranceof an adventurer, Bevis's prose is a superb guide to help one travel from the cold plainsand mountains of his native Montana to the hot, tropical rain forests of the Malaysianstate of Sarawak in the northern part of Borneo.

Borneo Log is not just a travelogue, though. It is an insightful drama about the strugglefor access to tropical timber and, ultimately, over the fate of Sarawak's forests. Based on ayear spent as an exchange professor in Tokyo, followed by 6 months traveling up and downSarawak's Baram River in 1990-91, Borneo Log is "not so much about the native resis-tance to the logging as a series of stories from inside that struggle" (p. 7). Bevis brings his-torical depth and ecological sensitivity to these stories to build an analysis of the present-day struggles and changes occurring in Sarawak. It will be fascinating reading for thoseinterested in the plight of tropical forests, indigenous peoples, and, especially, the politicalconflicts around the fate of both. I could envision using it in either graduate or undergradu-ate course work to elicit discussions of what "modernization," "development," and"progress" mean. For the academic audience, it may prove a bit frustrating to find "data" asthere is no index and the book's sections do not neatly divide topics. The book includes 12black-and-white photos, two maps, and endnotes that usefully annotate some of the bibliog-raphy. For the concerned citizen or activist, there is a short list of recommended nongovern-mental organizations (NGOs) in Malaysia, Japan, the United States, and Switzerland.

The main protagonists of Borneo Log are the corporations, especially in Japan, thathave been profiting from the large-scale extraction of tropical logs since World War II,and the native peoples who have lived in the forests for centuries. Supporting roles areplayed by corrupt and greedy local and national government officials and companies, andby compassionate but weak (and sometimes naive) outside individuals and NGOs. Thetragedies are dual. First, in Japan, the wood is being turned into plywood that is used forcheap furniture and, most notoriously, for disposable concrete construction forms, whichin turn are assembled by immigrant Asian workers. Second, in Sarawak, while a few peo-ple are getting extremely rich, most local people benefit little. Moreover, the forest—theirsource of wood for canoes and housing, rattan and canes for mats and furniture, animalsand fish for protein, and fruits and nuts, some of which (e.g., illipi nuts) can be sold forcash—is being destroyed by the illusion of sustained yield logging.

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Society & Natural Resources, 10:507-514, 1997Copyright © 1997 Taylor & Francis

0894-1920/97 $12.00 + .00

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Bevis is at his best getting inside the heads to analyze the relative power and differ-ing motivations of the timber interests, environmental and indigenous rights activists, andnative peoples. The myth of sustainable logging in Sarawak, for example, is revealed bythe timber interests themselves. Mitsubishi timber traders in Tokyo admit that their activ-ities are not sustainable, but blame the short, 5- or 10-year, concessions from the govern-ment. They argue that, if they did not work with the Sarawak officials who benefit fromthe trade, "someone else would do it." James Wong, whose biography Bevis reviews asthe son of a poor Chinese immigrant businessman, rose to become both minister of envi-ronment in Sarawak and one of the richest timber tycoons. He, too, admits that sustainedyield is not being practiced. If it were, only half of the present 16 million board feet couldbe harvested, "but the state government needs the money." Over half of the state's rev-enue is from timber, and announced logging reductions are not followed. Finally, Bevismeets the likable Fujino, the Japanese camp manager of Samling Timber Company, whohas been logging in Southeast Asian countries since 1964 and knows that the best woodis already gone. He allows perhaps 10 more years of logging in Sarawak.

The central issue of the struggle is native land rights, as Bevis persuasively argues.Despite constitutional guarantees of native rights, timber concessions are handed out bythe state government in back rooms with total disregard for such rights. The state's posi-tion is summarized by James Wong: "There are no native land rights." Japanese compa-nies like Mitsubishi hold the government responsible for taking care of "internal" prob-lems, such as native protests and roadblocks of logging roads that have receivedinternational press coverage. Of all those Bevis meets, only Fujino expresses shame onlearning of (or being confronted with) the loss of land by the natives. (In fact, timber in-terests prefer to blame the natives for destroying the forest through shifting cultivation.This is a "hot nondebate," Bevis notes, because logging's spatial scale of operation is somuch more vast and its damage to the forests and streams is on so much longer a tempo-ral scale than shifting cultivation.)

Despite the overwhelming wealth and power of the timber companies and theirSarawak official allies, they still find the need to negotiate with the natives. In the cli-max of Borneo Log, Bevis reveals how such negotiations work. He learns from theKenyan and other natives of the Middle Baram River longhouses about how they cameto agree to Samling's offers. It was the result of a combination of secret monthly bribesto the headmen, trickery (a list of residents attached as "signatories" without theirknowledge), and some compensatory payments to landowners (called "gifts" becausethe company prefers not to acknowledge ownership). The total value Bevis calculates at$3,000 a month for the whole Middle Baram. This is a tremendous, but temporary, cashinflux in a largely subsistence economy, but it is less than one-tenth of 1% of Samling'sgross earnings.

So what alternatives exist and what can, or should, outsiders do? Bevis is convincingin his rejection of the romantic primitivism of First World environmentalists who wish topreserve "nature" and "traditional" or "unspoiled" native life. Although sympathetic tothe genuine desire of Bruno Manser, the Swiss adventurer, to live amidst the Penan, henotes the danger of white outsiders who get all the press and are blamed by the Sarawakgovernment for "creating" long-existent struggles. What is more, attention is divertedfrom the land rights struggles of other, nonnomadic indigenous groups in Sarawak.Rather, Bevis favors local environmental organizations like Sahabat Alam Malaysia(SAM) for its concern with local economy and rights. In brief, Bevis argues for locallycontrolled timber exploitation.

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Yet, given his understanding of political economy, Bevis is at times unrealisticabout what local control would mean and how it might be achieved. For example, incontrast to the clearly neocolonial pattern in Sarawak, he praises the Indonesian policyof banning log exports and creating domestic processing and jobs. That achievement,however, has not been accompanied by improved indigenous land rights on the Indone-sian side of Borneo. In fact, it may be more difficult to organize resistance against log-ging, since it is done by Indonesian companies. Truly local control is vulnerable to thekind of selling out that Bevis found amongst the Middle Baram headmen, as well as thebroader pressures of global timber markets for continued supply. Finally, the struggle toachieve local control is not making much progress in Sarawak either. Bevis accompa-nied SAM to the negotiations between Samling and the Upper Baram River longhouses,which rejected initial offers. But, he notes in an epilogue, Samling proceeded without anagreement in 1992 and, after facing blockades for 9 months, was supported by police inriot gear to break up the blockades in 1993. The real question, which is raised by Bevis'ssparse, but evocative, comparison with the plight of buffalo and indigenous land rightsin North America in the past century, may be what kind of rights can be (re)assertedafter the big logs are gone.

Kellert, Stephen R. The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and HumanSociety. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996. xix + 263 pp. $24.95(hardcover), $16.95 (paper). ISBN 1-55913-317-4, 1-55963-318-2.

Reviewed by J. Baird CallicottDepartment of PhilosophyUniversity of North TexasDenton, Texas, USA

Steve Kellert is a most unusual sociologist. He began his distinguished career by inves-tigating empirically the "human dimensions" of wildlife management. That, and hisacademic appointment at the Yale University School of Forestry and Natural Re-sources, facilitated and fostered Kellert's interdisciplinary bent. When conservation bi-ology emerged in the mid-1980s, Kellert's brand of sociology fit quite handily into themix of disciplines comprised by this new, so-called transdiscipline. Collaboration withecologists and conservation biologists, particularly with Edward O. Wilson, led Kellertto embrace the "biophilia hypothesis," the idea that people have a certain need—notunlike the need for love or self-expression—for interaction with a biologically rich anddiverse environment; "an inherent human need to value life and natural process," inKellert's words. Positing any species-wide higher appetite suggests the existence of abiologically given, genetically bestowed "human nature." The biophilia hypothesistherefore is at odds with the mainstream of sociological thought, in which there hasbeen a decided preference for thinking that human tastes are acquired by socializationor enculturation. Hence, one would not expect a social scientist to espouse the biophiliahypothesis, but to assume that nurture, not nature, is responsible for biophilia amongthose who feel it.

The inherent tension, and the inherent potential for complementarity, between a so-ciological and a sociobiological approach to the way people value their natural environ-ments make this book very interesting indeed. Is biophilia—love of life, in plain Eng-

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lish—something that we acquire by nature or by nurture? Kellert suggests that one-or-the-other thinking has tended to obfuscate the interaction between the two. Both ourgenes and our memes are at play in the way that we value the living world around us.One could, for example, safely say, I think, that a compulsion to eat is a biologicalgiven. But, what foods we regard as particularly delectable and salubrious, or particu-larly loathsome and sickening, is determined by socialization. As everyone knows, inAfrican American culture, pork is a preferred food, while in Jewish American culture,pork is shunned. Analogously, Kellert the sociobiologist thinks that a compulsion to en-gage the natural world is a biological given (universal human nature). But, to what de-gree our innate capacity for biophilia is expressed, and what aspect of the natural worldwe find particularly attractive, according to Kellert the sociologist, are a matter of encul-turation (variable human nurture). Kellert's point is nicely illustrated by the empiricalcomparison of Japanese and North American natural values that he and his associatescarried out. The Japanese have a venerable tradition of nature appreciation, manifestedin such diverse forms as haiku and waka nature poetry, landscape painting, cherry blos-som festivals, and medieval forest conservation laws. Therefore, an earlier generation ofAmerican environmentalists looked—in vain, as it proved—to the Japanese to lead theworld out of the contemporary environmental crisis. It is not that the Japanese do notshare in biophilia. If they did not, doubt would be cast, either on their humanity, or morelikely, on the biophilia hypothesis. It is rather that, on average, Japanese tastes in naturerun to small-scale conventionalized landscapes, like a tea garden, not to the "big, fierce"wilderness loved and respected by North American preservationists (now holding con-servation biology in thrall).

Kellert is at his scientific best and most persuasive in detailing the results of hiscross-cultural, Japanese-North American study of natural values. He is at his philosophi-cal worst in interpreting the results of a similar study of the natural values of Botswanansby a Nigerian social scientist, Richard Mordi, who found that

most Botswanans expressed profound negativistic values toward wildlife andthe natural environment. Botswanans tend to view most wild animals with in-difference and often fear and hostility. Only a small minority revealed signifi-cant naturalistic interest in wildlife and natural habitats, and even a smallernumber manifested much ecologistic concern, scientific interest, or factualknowledge of the natural world. (Kellert 1996, p. 149)

Philosophers, such as myself, would regard this as a "counter-example" to the sociobi-ological biophilia hypothesis which posits species-wide, genetically based, positivistic(or whatever the correct antonym of "negativistic" may be) values toward wildlife andthe natural environment. The more so because the full development of natural bio-philia in human beings is supposed to be inhibited when they "remove themselvesfrom the natural environment," and the Botswanans studied by Mordi are primarilyagrarian Bantus who live quite close to nature. Further, that the "small minority" reg-istering "greater intellectual and emotional concern for nature and living diversity"were the "better-educated and urban Botswanans" suggests that biophilia is a purelycultural artifact of affluence, education, and urbanity. And, one might plausibly sug-gest further that it is felt so strongly by those at the top of the affluence, education,and urban living index—Ivy League academics—that they unself-critically supposethat it must be in their genes (and thus in everyone else's). Either the biophilia hypoth-esis is trivial: Some people (E. O. Wilson, for example) develop a passionate love of

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nature, thus it must be the actualization of a human emotional potentiality. Or, the bio-philia hypothesis is unfalsifiable and thus beyond the pale of science. Far fromsquarely facing it, Kellert does not indicate that he is even aware that Mordi's studypresents any theoretical problem for the biophilia hypothesis, only a "formidable bar-rier" to any conservation biologists who might wish to impose "biological conserva-tion in Botswana."

Apparently unwilling to leave the Botswanan case on a depressing "negativistic"note, Kellert turns to speculate about the Botswanan hunter-gatherer "Bushmen valuesof living diversity." Yes, speculate! That is necessary, Kellert claims—however, inap-propriate in a book that otherwise aspires to social science—because good informationabout the way "Bushmen" (a derogatory term that has been long out of favor) value na-ture is hard to come by. The speculation that follows is not even grounded on the scant,but excellent, information that does exist (such as Richard B. Lee and Irven Devore,eds., Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers: Studies of the .'Kung San and their Neighbors andRichard B. Lee, The Dobe !Kung). Rather, Kellert lumps together hunter-gathers aroundthe globe and draws conclusions about how these subtropical Botswanan "Bushmen"must value nature based on studies, such as that by anthropologist Richard Nelson, ofhow boreal American Indian hunter-gatherers value nature. I know it is hard to believe,but that is what we get.

The material in this book evidently is of mixed quality. The writing also is disap-pointing. As even the brief quotations above document, Kellert's style does not measureup to the standard of elegance and precision set by Wilson in such works as The Diver-sity of Life, though Kellert's title suggests that he is putting his book forward as a peerof, and companion to, this one of Wilson's. I think that Kellert is at his best doing fo-cused, empirical studies, such as the one mentioned above comparing Japanese andNorth American natural values which was reported in full in Conservation Biology (S.R. Kellert, Japanese perceptions of wildlife, Conservation Biology 5:297-308 (1991)).This book is centered on such rigorous work and then fleshed out to give the appearanceof more comprehensive coverage, sometimes, as in the case just noted, in an uncon-scionably casual way.

In its proper place, on the other hand, a casual approach has much to recommend it.For example, Kellert develops a typology of "nine basic values of nature," which, in ef-fect, organize the book. They are the "utilitarian, naturalistic, ecologistic, ecologistic-sci-entific, aesthetic, symbolic, dominionistic, humanistic, moralistic, and negativistic" typesof natural value (p. 10). After introducing them, Kellert candidly notes that "[t]hese termsare just labels of convenience . . . not terminological straitjackets" (p. 10). Other writers,such as Holmes Rolston IJJ, with other purposes, might parse out the value of nature in aquite different way. Kellert magnanimously resists the temptation to reify his preferredvalue categories and, by implication, to suggest that any other typology is not groundedin empirical social science, and therefore would be less factual or objective. And, for that,I think he is to be congratulated.

The fleshing out process wraps up with an eclectic review of various conservationconcerns—endangered species (illustrated with such hackneyed examples as the snaildarter and the black-footed ferret), the etiology (e.g., resource extraction, habitat de-struction, trade in ivory and horn) of the biodiversity crisis, and a brief chapter on en-vironmental education and ethics. At times, Kellert slides from a discussion of "con-serving biological diversity" to "conserving wildlife," as if they were the samething—reverting, as it were, from his more recent academic niche of sociological con-servation biologist to his old one of a specialist in the human dimensions of wildlife

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management. Doubtless, this concluding discussion is informative to the broad audi-ence for which this book appears to be written. For readers more deeply involved inconservation, there is little new to be learned from it or, for that matter, from the bookas a whole.

Conroy, Michael E., Douglas L. Murray, and Peter M. Rosset. A Caution-ary Tale: Failed U.S. Development Policy in Central America. Boulder,CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996. 200 pp. $40.00 (hardcover). ISBN 1-55587-6301-7.

Thrupp, Lori Ann. Bittersweet Harvests for Global Supermarkets: Chal-lenges in Latin America's Agricultural Export Boom. Washington, D.C.:World Resources Institute, 1995. 202 pp. $16.95 (paper). ISBN 1-51973-029-6.

Reviewed by Ivette PerfectoSchool of Natural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of MichiganAnn Arbor, Michigan, USA

The New World Order seems to have become a refined version of the old one. Nowhereis this more painfully obvious than with new agricultural development policies imposedby the United States on several Central and South American countries. In these twobooks, Lori Ann Thrupp and Michael E. Conroy et al. examine the boom in nontradi-tional agroexport crops (NTAE) in Latin America. The new development trend is drivenprimarily by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank,and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as part of the structural adjustment programswhich are the cornerstone of neoliberal economics. As detailed by Thrupp and Conroy etal., the promotion of NTAE came as an attempt to revamp export and trade in general inLatin America, after many of their traditional exports, such as coffee, cotton, sugarcane,and bananas, began declining.

The NTAE primarily consist of fresh and processed high-value commodities, such asflowers, fresh and processed fruits (particularly melons, mangoes, pineapples, passionfruit), and vegetables (broccoli, snow peas, asparagus, miniature squash). Although theproduction arrangements vary widely, from small independent farmers with less than 1hectare of land to multinational corporations like Del Monte with thousands of hectaresproduced in typical enclave fashion, one thing that is consistent is that these crops areproduced using capital- and chemical-intensive technology and are all directed to the ex-port market.

Both of these books present a critical analysis of NTAE in Latin America and pointout the high social and environmental cost of such production. However, the tone in thesetwo informative books is dramatically different. While both maintain a critical stance to-ward NTAE, Thrupp's tone is more conciliatory toward NTAE, while Conroy et al. fo-cuses on the fundamental contradictions between these programs and the well-being ofthe rural poor of Latin America.

The bulk of Thrupp's book analyzes the economic, socioeconomic, and environmen-tal impacts of NTAE in Latin America. She points out that the promoters of NTAE haveargued the benefits of these programs in mainly economic terms. Although at a superfi-

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cial level it may seem as though NTAE have the potential to stimulate economic growthin these countries, and therefore benefit the rural poor, when examined more carefully asThrupp does, and especially when particular case studies are considered, it becomes ap-parent that these benefits are often short lived and rarely reach the poorer farmers.Thrupp points out that factors such as market saturation and economic uncertainty are re-sponsible. Although the net revenue and returns per hectare are remarkably high forNTAE, Thrupp notes that these may be deceiving, since average returns have been de-clining in recent years. Furthermore, for some crops, farmers experienced very low returnrates and even losses due to high input costs and import detentions (because of pesticideresidues). Thrupp's analysis also suggests that the economic processes behind NTAE leadto an inequitable distribution of the impacts, with large capitalized producers survivingand small poor farmers often being squeezed out of the market and production altogether.The environmental cost of NTAE also is very high, since most of these crops are pro-duced with large agrochemical inputs. Even when examining the environmental andhealth impacts of NTAE, it is obvious that the poor are disproportionately affected. Aclearer view of the overall consequences of these programs emerges when Thrupp asks,Who has benefited from the boom in NTAE in Latin America? The answer is straightfor-ward: (1) multinational corporations that are able to capture new markets and, because oftheir economies of scale, can resist fluctuations and uncertainties better than small pro-ducers; (2) large national companies, foreign entrepreneurs, and industrialists who havebenefited from the USAID promotion programs and used NTAE to diversify their portfo-lios; and (3) large producers who have accumulated more land in agroexports, effectivelypushing poor fanners into marginal lands. Sound familiar?

As for the benefits of NTAE for small producers and the rural poor of Latin Amer-ica, reading Thrupp's book made me feel like I was looking for the proverbial needle inthe haystack. Even the few examples of benefits that she points out turned out to disap-pear, either with time or with a deeper examination of the issue. At the end, I was leftwith the impression that there was not a needle after all. Surprisingly, in the last chapter,Thrupp maintains that there is no inherent problem with NTAE but with the way thatthese programs have been implemented. This appeasing chapter is less convincing thanthe rest of the book where, example after example, the negative impacts of NTAE aredocumented. Because of the clear documentation of the negative impacts of NTAE forthe rural poor of Latin America and the vague and dubious examples of "successes," Iwas left with a question about the appropriateness of the title of the book, Bittersweet. . .While the bitter is painfully obvious, the sweet appears to be conspicuously absent fromthe NTAE strategy.

Conroy et al., on the other hand, skillfully articulate the underlying problem with theNTAE strategy. Starting with a moving statement made by a Guatemalan peasant farmerin which he explains how NTAE have affected not only him and his family, but also thevery fabric of his community, this book goes to the core of the problem of the new devel-opment model: that poverty in itself is an obstacle for development. The authors go togreat lengths to demonstrate that the new development strategy cannot lead to develop-ment in the broader sense of the word without deep structural economic changes. One ofthe greater barriers for development that Conroy et al. examined in depth is the lack ofsovereignty. In an excellent chapter, and one that would be of interest to anyone inter-ested in Third World development issues, they document the role of USAID in directingthe NTAE strategy in Latin America. With direct quotes from USAID reports that willgive pause to anyone concerned with old imperialistic attitudes, they provide a historicalbackground on USAID policy changes since World War II and describe how the agency

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turned around, from seeing the state as a catalyst for development, to seeing it as the mainobstacle. The logical outcome of this analysis was a plan to dismantle the state and createparallel private institutions that would efficiently undertake the implementation of thenew export strategy. Conroy et al. describe in detailed how this happened in Costa Rica.They also evaluate the result of this implementation plan and conclude that the newly cre-ated institutions lack the transparency that one expects from public institutions, lack de-mocratic control and political checks and balances, and above all, are an infringement onnational sovereignty.

In another revealing chapter, they analyze the vertical chain of the NTAE, dissectingand examining each component. The conclusion from this analysis is similar to Thrupp'sconclusion about the main beneficiaries of the strategy: transnational and larger nationalpacking operations, brokers, and shippers. And, they similarly note that these benefitshave come at the expense of small farmers who lack mobility and are forced to competewith larger, more robust producers.

Both of these books offer a series of recommendations for minimizing the negativeeffects of the NTAE strategy. While there is agreement on some of the recommendations,there seems to be a major philosophical disagreement between these two books. Thruppsees various niches in which NTAE can enter in the future, to possibly produce the suc-cess thus far, that has been so elusive, while Conroy et al. see the need for major struc-tural changes before this or any agricultural policy can have the hoped-for successes.Thrupp clearly is more sanguine than Conroy et al.

Whether or not there is hope that in the future this strategy can genuinely lead toeven development in Latin America, it is clear that, as it stands today, it is a major fail-ure, as both of these books carefully and clearly document. From dramatic increases inpesticide use, which affect both human health and the environment, to further land con-centration that has resulted in some cases to the loss of sovereignty, the NTAE strategyseems to be a bad reenactment of the traditional agricultural exports play.

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