Developing World: Challenges and Opportunities

The complex problem which confronts us in the world's rangelands -is the need to raise living standards, increase economic productivity, and at the same time reduce ecological stress -is approached in this symposium from a number of different disciplinary points of view. The case material presented in the papers shows (in varying degrees) the significance of the accumulated experience and cultural ideals of the different types of people involved -local pastoralists, Western-trained ecologists, planners as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. s as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. The role of human activity in the history of the rangeland ecosystem and the cultural memory of the ecological past are treated as complementary to the potential of social forms and cultural aims and values. Disciplines Anthropology | Social and Behavioral Sciences Comments Includes Developing World Challenges and Opportunities, an introduction to one of the Second International Rangeland Congress convenings, as well Spooner's conference paper, The Meaning of Social Soundness: A Case From Baluchistan. This conference paper is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/73