Book re6iew 151

strongest possible justication for ensuring that

best practice technologies are available to re-
searchers in the South.
It is important to acknowledge that the chap-
ters in these two parts refer to experiences
which were generated 4 years ago or more. No
doubt the authors thinking has since advanced.
This caveat introduces three inter-related cri-
tiques: scant attention appears to have been
given in the GIS/GPS cases to the meaning
which interpretive terms such as place, terri-
tory, resource might have to different stake-
holders. Secondly, the apparent objectivity of
the data obscures the reality of contested truths
which underlies resource management decision-
making. A plant type, for example, might be a
resource to only one user category, or only in
the years that it bears particular fruit, or in par-
ticular combinations of socio-economic circum-
stance. Thirdly, these tools tend to freeze
boundaries, locations and other dimensions stan-
dardised to some norm in which change is read
as deviation, on the implicit assumption that we
are dealing with equilibrial systems. The word
dynamic is then loosely applied to signal spa-
tial variation and/or temporal change. Much
work remains to be done to investigate their use
as tools on the assumption that we are dealing
with non-equilibiral systems (and the evidence to
hand favours the latter view of people-environ-
ment interactions). As the studies of the use of
participatory mapping suggest, the combination
of GIS/GPS and participatory tools goes some
way at least to meeting the critique of contested
meaning. However, there needs to be more re-
search emphasis on the dialogic function of the
tools, to investigate as yet weakly established
claims to mutual interpretability, equality of
rights to challenge without prior privilege as to
the truth of knowledge claims and the limits to
the inclusiveness of those participating in the
processes of dialogue.
Part 7, with chapters by Varughese et al.,
Thapa and Dixon, concludes the volume in
rather general terms but serves to highlight
the very considerable gains to scholarship and
understanding which can be achieved only by
sustained investment in collaborative, interdisci-
plinary research.
Janice Jiggins
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Uppsala
Sweden
PII S0921-8009(98)00095-0
Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Manage-
ment Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building
Resilience
Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Manage-
ment Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building
Resilience. Eds. Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998.
459 pages. ISBN 0-521-59140-6
Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke brought together
a remarkable group of people and organized their
scholarly work to produce a splendid volume that
marries the best research on social and ecological
systems that exists today. Since I received this
book in April of 1998, I have not only read all of
the chapters in it, but I have drawn heavily on
several of the key chapters in the research papers
I have been writing. Thus, it is a challenge to
know how best to do a short book review of a
volume that is this rich in theoretical and empiri-
cal insights.
Instead of simply bringing brilliant scholars
together for one conference and then publishing a
book that is little more than the proceedings of a
conference, Berkes and Folke prepared a central
framework for the entire effort. Authors partici-
pated in three workshops held at the Beijer Insti-
tute of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to
discuss and improve on the framework and to
improve the linkages between the individual cases
and the framework. Berkes and Folke argue that
to understand how humans affect ecosystems in .
Book re6iew 152
either a sustainable or unsustainable way one
has to understand:
The basic structure of the ecosystem itself;
Who are the people involved and what tech-
nologies are they using;
The type of local knowledge developed and
held by resource users; and
The property rights that local users possess
and can defend.
As a consequence of these four fundamental
components, individuals interact within local, re-
gional, national and global systems to generate
regularized patterns of interaction leading to
outcomes. Among the most important outcomes
they examine are the sustainability of resources
and of the institutions developed to use re-
sources.
The rst part of the volume focuses on how
individuals gain local knowledge through learn-
ing. The importance of creating refugia as a
strategy to increase the resilience of local sys-
tems is addressed by Madhav Gadgil, Natabar
Shyam Hemam and B. Mohan Reddy. While
the sacred forests of India and many other
countries have been ignored as strange remnants
of past religious practices or criticized as a hin-
drance to modern development, they show that
these are creative and effective local manage-
ment strategies that allow restocking of har-
vested areas from those that are protected. Gisli
Palsson addresses how shers learn through
their practical engagement about their local
ecosystems and devise different types of rules
for managing local sheries than are normally
recommended by policy analysts. He also pre-
sents an effective critique of scientic manage-
ment techniques that place all of their emphasis
on the imposition of a quota divorced from the
local knowledge of shers and the strategies
they have used to manage complex multispecies
sheries for long eras. Property ownership in
central Sweden before 1800 is then examined by
Ulf Sporrong. From two in-depth, over-time
case studies he shows that partial inheritance
did not lead, as many scholars presume, to frag-
mentation of land since many families kept par-
cels together even though owned by several
members of the family.
Part two of the volume asks how resource
management adaptations emerge in diverse lo-
calities. Fikret Berkes examines how the Cree
Indians who have inhabited the James Bay re-
gion of Canada for centuries manage caribou,
beaver and local sheries. He nds that the ma-
jor management techniques that are transmitted
by elders from one generation to the next in-
clude spatial rotations, pulse harvesting, harvest-
ing so as to maintain multiple age classes and
renewing over-mature resource systems. By ex-
amining the resilience of neotraditional popula-
tions in two regions of Brazil, Alpina Begossi is
able to explain the more successful strategies of
the caboclos (rubber-tappers) of the Amazon as
contrasted to the caicaros of the Atlantic forests.
The creation of an extractive reserve system and
their ability to form alliances with many diverse
groups has enabled the caboclos to develop a
highly sustainable system over time. Michael
Warren and Jennifer Pinkstons study of the in-
digenous African resource management of the
Yoraba in Nigeria nicely complements the other
chapters in this section. While some are cur-
rently threatened by rapid, external changes, the
traditional system has been remarkably resilient
over a long period of time. How local residents
have learned to manage soft-shell clam sheries
in Maine is then examined by Susan Hanna
within the context of a state regulatory mecha-
nism that species some minimum constraints
but allows considerable variation from one com-
munity to the next.
The success and failure of regional systems is
examined in Part three where Janis B. Alcorn
and Victor M. Toledo provide an overview of
the principles of resource management used by
ejidos and communidades in Mexico, and the im-
portance of nested levels of institutions from the
national to the local. Maryam Niamir-Fuller
then describes pastoral herding practices in the
Sahel and also stresses the nested property sys-
tems and distills some common strategies
adopted across different production systems.
Narpat S. Jodha critiques the results of the ef-
fort to eliminate most community control of
forest resources in India. The substitution of in-
effective macro regulation for lower levels of .
Book re6iew 153
management has increased nonsustainable re-
source use. Christopher Finlayson and Bonnie J.
McCay examine the commercial extinction of
northern cod in Canada after the regional sys-
tem moved from a polycentric system to one
that allocates most authority to national ofcials
who have relied on simple shery recruitment
models and highly aggregated information. The
closure of this industry has had extremely ad-
verse economic impact on the entire region.
The last section includes chapters on new ap-
proaches to resource management. C.S. Holling,
Fikret Berkes and Carl Folke analyze the world-
wide crisis in resource management due to the
current inability to prescribe sustainable out-
comes. They attribute the crisis to the kind of
problems involved in resource management:
Characteristically, these problems tend to be
systems problems, where aspects of behavior
are complex and unpredictable and where
causes, while at times simple (when nally un-
derstood) are always multiple. They are non-
linear in nature, cross-scale in time and in
space and have an evolutionary character. This
is true for both natural and social systems. In
fact, they are one system, with critical feed-
backs across temporal and spatial scales (p.
352).
The whole book illustrates these points very
well. Evelyn Pinkerton also draws on these ideas
to examine the integrated management of a tem-
perate montane forest in British Columbia that
combines the scientic knowledge of profes-
sional foresters with the traditional local knowl-
edge and values of local peoples. James M.
Acheson, James A. Wilson and Robert S. Ste-
neck illustrate many of these principles in their
study of the chaotic lobster sheries in Maine
that combine local management by small-scale
units with a supportive macro-regime that pro-
vides some general rules for the entire state. The
conclusion of the book is a chapter by Carl
Folke, Fikret Berkes and Johan Colding that
draws out key ecological practices and social
mechanisms that help to build the resilience and
sustainability of ecosystems and social systems.
This chapter alone is worth the price of the
book.
Elinor Ostrom
Workshop in Political Theory
and Policy Analysis
Indiana University
513 North Park
Bloomington, IN 47408-3895, USA
PII S0921-8009(98)00096-2
Tradition vs Democracy in the South Pacic: Fiji,
Tonga and Western Samoa
Tradition 6s Democracy in the South Pacic: Fiji,
Tonga and Western Samoa. Stephanie Lawson,
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996,
228 pp.
Dr. Lawsons themes here are that: (1) in-
vented, distorted or selective formulations of tra-
dition are widely used as instruments of political
control, repression and economic gain by indige-
nous Pacic island elites (who are often, ironi-
cally, increasingly out of touch with their own
traditions); (2) in countering criticism that they
are undemocratic, these elites often redene
democracy to suit their own ends. What they
describe as democratization is often used, she
argues, not to liberate common people, but to
subordinate their interests to those in high ofce
by means of the traditional status system.
While acknowledging that democracy is not
easy to dene rigorously, she argues that there are
many examples of practices in the three countries
she examines (Fiji, Tonga and Western Samoa)
that are anti-democraticregardless of how the
word might reasonably be dened. For example,
the act of criticizing ones leaders is often por-
trayed as an attack on tradition, thus an insult to
all citizens, and therefore to be suppressed.
She also supports one indigenous critics de-
scription of Fijis recent constitution as racist, .