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This book primarily examines human-animal and human-plant interactions in Asian forests (Southeast Asia and Japan) and inland waters (China). For comparison, cases from the Americas (whales in the Arctic, sea turtles in the Caribbean, and plants in the Amazon) and Central Asia are also included. The relationship between plants, animals, and humans in Asia is quite unique from a global perspective. For example, "satoyama" in Japan means ecotone area, or the boundary between a village and a forest. There, as the number of inhabitants declines, bears, wild boars, and other animals increasingly ravage crops, sometimes attacking humans as well.
By showing the regional nature of human-animal and human-plant interactions in Asia, this book provides for the first time a framework for understanding the world's animal and plant-human relationships. It is assumed that the relationships between humans and animals and plants during this period were diverse, including hunting, taming, semi-domestication, and full domestication. At the same time, for regions outside of Asia, the extent to which these diverse relationships were adapted and how diversity was formed is explained from the perspective of historical ecology.
The conservation of rare species, diverse habitats, and biodiversity is a central theme in considering the relationship between modern civilization and the global environment. In post-industrial Japan, one focus has been the protection of iconic animals such as storks, crested ibis, dugongs, and sea turtles, while damage to crops and humans by deer, wild boars, monkeys, bears, and other common animals has become an important social issue.
Chapter 1. Comparison of Landscape Transformations in the Japanese Archipelago and the Brazilian Amazon
Chapter 2. Trends for Ethnoecology in the French-Speaking Tropics and Beyond: Origins and Evolution
Chapter 3. "Back to the Trees!": Historical Ecology in Amazonia
Chapter 4. The Changing Mountain Landscapes in Japan: Wild Bear-Human Interactions in the Short Term
Chapter 5. Undoing Monkey Attraction to the Village: A Food-and-Threat Response to Wildlife Crop-Raiding in Rural Japan
Chapter 6. Rearing Wild Boar in Okinawa: Thinking About Their Domestication
Chapter 7. Adaptive Strategies of Cormorant Fishers in Response to Decreased Fishing Area: A case study of Poyang Lake, Jiangxi Province, China
Chapter 8. Gayal-Human Relationships in the Forests of Bangladesh
Chapter 9. Bamboo Culture in Monsoon Asia: A Study of the Hmong Farmer in Northern Thailand
Chapter 10. Use and Knowledge of Sago Palms in Borneo: A Case of the Penan Hunter-Gatherers
Chapter 11. Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in Asia and the Pacific: Models for Domestication as a Food and Fodder Crop
Chapter 12. Historical Changes in Human Relationships with Whales: Historical Ecology of Inupiat and Bowhead Whales in Alaska, USA
Chapter 13. Historical Ecology of Sea Turtle Fishing by the Indigenous Lowland Peoples of Eastern Nicaragua: a 40-Year Record
Chapter 14. Sweet Cassava and Bananas in the Peruvian Amazon: Shipibo Cultivation Methods on the Floodplains
Chapter 15: Constructed Biodiversity, Forest Management, and Use of Fire in Ancient Amazonia: Archaeological Testimony to the Last 14,000 Years of Indigenous History
Chapter 16: Relations between People, Water, and Domestic Animals in an Ancient Oasis City
