An incisive look at the intersection between environment, culture and politics, and their role in shaping the lives, health and culture of the people of Madagascar. ( )

I am copying here tentatively, for non-commercial consumption, the summary of my reading notes (which should have given more attention not to my thoughts precipitated by reading the book but to the author's considerable "thick description" on what is happening to the forest people and how they cope, brought home after over a year of exposure to perilous field conditions):
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The book stirs up enormous complexities and subtleties. The technology risk assessment paradigm as discussed by Shrader-Frechette is apparently not applicable to streamline, standardize and unify the deliberations, because one is up against the full variety of history, not just some one-dimensional technological bandwagon. But what advice can be offered, assuming that there are advantages in Western science, that should be shared?
The book can be seen as part of a chorus of voices faulting the prescriptions of the World Bank in terms of the outcomes. Conservation itself may have to be seen as a class-based notion against the background of evolutionary biology, which sees species disappearing constantly, keeping in mind that Western "progress" made the problem acute, and that in its absence no deliberate intervention might be necessary to conserve the human species for a reasonable time. Parallel with Manitoba aboriginals: What is to be done? Slower, less violent diffusion of European culture might have produced better results with less collateral damage.
The book presents a complex composite of opportunistic adaptations and rigid loyalties: while ethnicity is found to be not very important in explaining behaviour, and Western medicines are described as readily accepted into the native health system, the power of the ancestors remains at least a rationality of last resort. ( )