Conversations In The Rainforest: Culture, Values, And The Environment In Central Africa [Hardcover]

Richard Peterson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 4, 2000

Can any lessons for long-term environmental sustainability come from Africa, a continent long perceived more as a cauldron of environmental disasters than a cradle of environmental solutions? In Conversations in the Rainforest, Richard B. Peterson answers an emphatic yes. Peterson deftly interweaves the ideas of African and Africanist historians, theologians, anthropologists, philosophers, writers, and ecologists with a series of remarkable conversations he shared with inhabitants of the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yet, rather than remain in the background of his analysis, these conversations—on subjects ranging from traditional interpretations of nature to contemporary indigenous perspectives on modern environmental challenges—constitute the very core of this book.Through this enlightening and frequently mesmerizing narrative approach, Peterson brings the foundations of Central African land ethics into vivid relief. With uncommon empathy and insight, he shows how ecological and social sustainability projects in the region can be based more firmly on these foundations. This book holds invaluable lessons for environmental practitioners, scholars, and anyone interested in long-term environmental sustainability on a global level.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard B. Peterson is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. from the Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is a former National Science Foundation Fellow, and a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow. He has spent seventeen years living and working in Africa.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (May 4, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813337097
• ISBN-13: 978-0813337098
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,877,098 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We are part of nature not set apart from it., April 6, 2002

By 

David Fick "Author: Africa: Continent of Econ... (Overland Park, Kansas USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Conversations In The Rainforest: Culture, Values, And The Environment In Central Africa (Hardcover)

Professor Peterson believes that:
1)The commercialized use, more than indigenous peoples' use of the forest lies at the root of Africa's environmental problems.
2)Central African traditional ecological knowledge suggests that we would do better to try to control the market forces that lead to overexploitation of the environment rather than unjustly restrict the subsistence practices of people who have lived in these forests much longer than ourselves.
3)The environmental wisdom of Central African forest peoples stems from the knowledge and belief that nature and humans are never separate entities but parts of one system.
4)We are part of nature not set apart from it.
5)Nature and culture, humans and environment, social ethics and environmental ethics, ecology and justice go hand in hand.
6)It is not humans or nature that are central; rather it is life that is primary, and that includes the entire community of life, for all of life is important, all of life is bonded, all of life is sacred.