This book addresses two important and related questions: does
participation in a market economy help or hurt indigenous peoples
and how does it affect the conservation of tropical rainforest
flora and fauna? Oddly, there have been few quantitative studies
that have addressed these issues.
Ricardo Godoy's research takes an important step toward
rectifying this oversight by investigating five different lowland
Amerindian societies of tropical Latin America -- all of which are
experiencing deep changes as they modernize. Godoy examines the
effect of markets on a broad range of areas including health,
conservation of flora and fauna, leisure, folk knowledge,
reciprocity, and private time preference. He concludes that,
contrary to considerable anthropological theory, the effect of
markets on the quality of life and the rainforest are often unclear
or benign. Godoy uses multivariate techniques to examine the
changes modernization has had on many indicators of the quality of
life and the environment and concludes that the seeds of
socioeconomic differentiation may already lie dormant in simple
economies.
The impact of modernization on lowland Amerindians is a topic of
great concern to anthropologists, researchers, and policymakers in
developing nations, and this book is a significant contribution to
the debate about the likely future of indigenous people.
eISBN: 978-0-231-50503-1
Subjects: Environmental Science, Economics, Sociology, Business
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