Changing forests: collective action, common property, and coffee in Honduras

Drawing on ethnographic and archival research, ‘Changing Forests’ explores how the indigenous Lenca community of La Campa, Honduras, has conserved and transformed their communal forests through the experiences of colonialism, opposition to state-controlled logging, and the recent adoption of export-oriented coffee production. It merges political ecology, collective-action theories, and institutional analysis to study how the people and forests have changed through socioeconomic and political transitions encompassed in three broad phases: (1) the premodern period, which considers historic perturbations in western Honduras from the period of colonialism into the middle of the twentieth century;(2) the period of state-led logging and intervention in La Campa, which caused major degradation in forest cover; and (3) the recent period in which exportcoffee production transformed property rights, and people’s perceptions of the forest gained new conservationist and economic dimensions. Reveals that dynamism in forest-cover use can be a component of resilience for people and forests. Examines how coffee producers in one community survived the coffee crisis through diversification, organized groups, and use of social networks. Explores how an indigenous community has conserved forest cover despite rapid social and economic change, and the unanticipated consequences INDICE: From the contents 1. Introduction. 2. People and Forests in Historical Perspective. 3. Governing the Commons and Making a Living. 4. Logging Comes to La Campa: State Intervention, Forest Transformation, and Collective Action. 5. Common-Property Transformations and Market Integration. 6. Coffee Culture, Crisis, and Adaptation. 7. Changing Lives, Changing Forests: Many Ways to Build a Future?- Summary.

• ISBN: 978-1-4020-6976-5
• Editorial: Springer
• Encuadernacion: Cartoné
• Páginas: 250
• Fecha Publicación: 01/02/2008
• Nº Volúmenes: 1
• Idioma: Inglés