Nature Unbound
Conservation, Capitalism and the Future of Protected Areas
Jim Igoe ,  Dan Brockington ,  Rosaleen Duffy
Hardback: 978 1 84407 441 9
Price: $136.50  

Paperback: 978 1 84407 440 2
Price: $38.95  

Publisher: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
November 2008 , 240 pp., 6 1/8" x 9 1/4"
Named as a 2009 Outstanding Academic Title by Choice

The number of protected areas has risen in recent years to over 110,000 covering over 20 million square kilometres, over 12% per cent of the planet's surface. How has this growth been achieved and why was so much of it undertaken in the last 15 years? What is the relationship between the massive rise in conservation initiatives, our economic system and corporate interests? What are the implications for the millions of people who live in or depend on protected areas? This groundbreaking volume is the first comprehensive examination of the rise of protected areas and their current social and economic position in our world. It examines the social impacts of protected areas, the conflicts that surround them, the alternatives to them and the conceptual categories they impose.

The book explores key debates on devolution, participation and democracy; the role and uniqueness of indigenous peoples and other local communities; institutions and resource management; hegemony, myth and symbolic power in conservation success stories; tourism, poverty and conservation; and the transformation of social and material relations which community conservation entails.

For conservation practitioners and protected area professionals not accustomed to criticisms of their work, or students new to this complex field, the book will provide an understanding of the history and current state of affairs in the rise of protected areas; introduce the concepts, theories and writers on which critiques of conservation have been built and provide the means by which practitioners can understand problems with which they are wrestling. For advanced researchers the book will present a critique of the current debates on protected areas and provide a host of jumping off points for an array of research avenues.


Table of Contents:
List of Figures, Tables and Boxes; Preface; List of Acronyms and Abbreviations; 1) Nature Unbound; 2) Histories and Geograhies of Protected Areas; 3) The Imperatives for Conservation; 4) The Power of Parks; 5) Local Management of Natural Resources; 6) Conservation and Indigenous Peoples; 7) The Spread of Tourist Habitat; 8) International Conservation; 9) Conservation and Capitalism; References; Index


Customers who have this book also purchased these titles:
Share
Reviews & Endorsements:
"With burgeoning global populations and continuing loss of habitat, protected areas become increasingly important for survival of species and the maintenance of biodiversity. In recent times, new parks and other protected areas have increased. The success and failure of these parks to meet their objectives are closely tied to the social and economic conditions that surround them or that they create. Social scientists Brockington and Duffy (both, Manchester Univ., UK) and Igoe (Dartmouth College) critique these relationships relative to their impact on indigenous and local populations. They review the role of ecotourism, governments, corporations, nongovernmental conservation, and financial organizations in the rise of market-based and commodity-oriented conservation. By reviewing the critical literature on parks and protected areas, the book reveals the diverse nature and global extent of the current conservation movement and how it is split by sharp disagreements over ethics, practices, and compromises that overshadow the original goal of maintaining biodiversity. Original in its concept, this work will certainly provoke debate. For that reason alone, all conservation biologists and those associated in any way with the creation and management of parks should read this book. Summing Up: Recommended. ** Lowerdivision undergraduate through professional collections."
- Choice
"Envionmental conservation is prevasive and contentious. Nature Unbound does more than summarize its history and characteristics; it also, crucially, transcends the contention by analysing conservation in terms that will re-shape the debate. The authors ask about the gains and losses of conservation, and how they are distributed. In answering these questions, they offer a persuasive description of the institutions and practices of conservation in an unequal capitalist world."
- James G. Carrier , Oxford Brookes University and Indiana University