Soul of the Tiger - Softcover

In Soul of the Tiger, conservationists Jeffrey McNeely and Paul Sochaczewski draw on more than two decades of experience in Southeast Asia to examine the relationship between its people and animals. What, they wonder, has this relationship meant in the past? How is it changing, and what relevance might it have for the future? Combining sound scholarship with an engaging style, their fascinating and often humorous accounts reveal the vital connection between rural people and wildlife: between the Bornean farmer and the yellow wagtail, without whose arrival rice goes unplanted; between the wife in Papua New Guinea and her pigs, whose breeding rate determines when she gets a break from housework and when her husband goes to war; between the guards in Java's Ujung Kulon National Park and the rhinoceros, whose urine they collect as a cure for earaches. The authors identify four major ecocultural revolutions that have significantly altered the relationship between people and nature. They suggest that a fifth revolution, characterized by respect and understanding of the traditional knowledge and insight reflected in myth and memory, will enable modern society to develop nature conservation programs with a chance of lasting success.

Crusades to save the environment often overlook the human factor; conservation projects are oriented more to animals than to people. This provocative and engrossing book focuses on the relationship between people and nature in southeast Asia, where the development of a world marketplace is undermining that relationship and thus the foundations of society. There, conservation is as much a social challenge as a biological one. The authors served in the Peace CorpsMcNeely in Thailand, Wachtel in Borneo; each has experience in rural communities "east of India, south of China, north of Australia." They pinpoint four major events ("eco-cultural revolutions") that have shaped southeast Asia: control of fire, domestication of plants and animals, irrigation and the world marketplace. The latter has now reached into the most remote and primitive societies on earth, affecting both people and wildlife. Among the diverse topics addressed here are Asian medicine; the monkeys of Siberut, Indonesia; headhunting; and ways to continue economic progress without ruining the environment. The book is a solid combination of natural history and anthropology. Nature Book Society main selection; Macmillan Natural Sciences Book Club and Library of Science Book Club selections.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.