The Social Lives of Forests: Past, Present, and Future of Woodland Resurgence

Forests are in decline, and the threats these outposts of nature face-including deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation-are the result of human culture. Or are they? This volume calls these assumptions into question, revealing forests' past, present, and future conditions to be the joint products of a host of natural and cultural forces. Moreover, in many cases the coalescence of these forces-from local ecologies to competing knowledge systems-has masked a significant contemporary tre...