The need to produce food without the destructive chemical horrors of much modern farming, for an intelligent use of dwindling natural resources and for humane forms of production is universal, the practice is limited. This book is an account of one, large, instance of success in practice. Twenty-five years ago, Winin Pereira, a nuclear physicist abandoned academia to start a co-operative farm at Alonde in a tribal area north of Bombay. The group experienced, and finally discarded, all the false hopes and promises of Western originated forms of development: ploughs that ploughed too deep, irrigation systems that lowered water tables, fertilizers and pesticides which managed the earth and became so expensive that poorer farmers were dispossessed. Instead they learnt from the adivasai, or tribal people, who have nurtured or been nurtured by foresets for millennia, ways of applying popular knowledge to contemporary problems. This book is a combination of Pereira's record of achievement of sustainable livelihoods and an account of the farm and its effect on the India around it by a leading British journalist. Originally published in 1991

These 13 workshop-based papers critique ecofeminist assumptions about traditional societies viewing women as closer to nature and more spiritual than men. Following an overview by Low (history, Open U.) and Tremayne (social and cultural anthropology, U. of Oxford), the first contribution frames the debate over gender politics and environmentalism. Next, case studies illustrate sacred landscape (not intrinsically ecologically-oriented) in such societies past and present. Part III treats nature and gender in several major world religions. The final paper discusses contemporary paganism's quest for wholeness. The cover title reads Women as sacred custodians of the earth? Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Contributed articles with reference to selected tribes.

Deals with the modern predicament of the Rabha (or Kocha) people, one of India;s indigenous peoples, traditionally practising shifting cultivation in the jungle tracts situated where the Himalayan mountains meet the plains of Bengal. When the area came under British rule and was converted into tea gardens and reserved forests, Rabhas were forced to become labourers under the forest department. Today, large-scale illegal deforestation and the global interest in wildlife conservation once again jeopardize their survival. Karlsson describes the development of the Rabha people, their ways of coping with the colonial regime of scientific forestry and the depletion of the forest, as well as with present day concerns for wilderness and wildlife restoration and preservation. Central points relate to the construction of identity as a form of subaltern resistance, the Rabha;s ongoing conversion to Christianity and their ethnic mobilisation, and the agency involved in the construction of cultural or ethnic identities.