Social Ecology of Forest Resources

The book offers a comprehensive analysis of social ecology, environmental sociology and tribal life. No organism does live in isolation, nor is the behaviour of any organism understandable without the reference to other organisms. An ecological deterministic approach has been developed to understand the facets of tribal life and culture. Some questions examined with the help of primary and secondary data are: How far the tribals’ dependency on forests has been affected by deforestation and modernization? Has it disturbed their social and ecological settings? How tribals perceive about nature: Whether they themselves perceive forest as a source of livelihood like foster mother of something else? How far tribals understand the environmental process and in what way they manage their scarce resources? To what extent the environmental degradation and deforestation have impacted on the autonomy of the local people? Are they still dependent on forest? Or are they migrating to the nearest towns? What are the functions of the village institutions in regulating the use of forest? This book studies these aspects of tribal life by utilizing new theoretical developments in the study of social ecology and forest.