The Epistemology of Sustainable Resource Use: Managing Forest Products, Swiddens, and High-Yielding Variety Crops

Human Organization 56(1): 91-101, 1997

11 Pages Posted: 30 Jan 2014

See all articles by Michael R Dove

Michael R Dove

Yale University

Daniel M. Kammen

University of California, Berkeley - The Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy

Date Written: 1997

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the “moral ecology” of resource use, through a comparison of the ideological bases of three systems of resource use in Southeast Asia: gathering forest products (viz., forest fruit), swidden agriculture, and the cultivation of high-yielding variety, “green revolution” crops. A trade-off between the magnitude of return and the frequency of return is accepted in the first two systems, but this is denied in the third system in which there is instead insistence on the possibility of continuous, high-magnitude returns. In the fruit-gathering and swidden cultivation systems, there is recognition of linkages to the wider temporal and spatial processes in which they are embedded, but in the green revolution system there is only a very narrow view of these linkages; and whereas the necessity of reciprocal exchange with their wider social and natural environments is accepted in the first two systems, such exchanges are minimized in the green revolution system. This study contributes to current debates about sustainable resource use, the conception of nature and culture, and the epistemology of science and the contemporary role of anthropology.

Keywords: Sustainable Resource Use, Swidden Agriculture, HYV/Green Revolution Agriculture, Abundance and Scarcity, Exchange, Nature and Culture, Epistemology

Suggested Citation

Dove, Michael R and Kammen, Daniel M., The Epistemology of Sustainable Resource Use: Managing Forest Products, Swiddens, and High-Yielding Variety Crops (1997). Human Organization 56(1): 91-101, 1997, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2387176

Michael R Dove (Contact Author)

Yale University ( email )

Kroon Hall
195 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06511
United States
203-432-3463 (Phone)

Daniel M. Kammen

University of California, Berkeley - The Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy ( email )

2607 Hearst Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94720-7320
United States

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