but depend on other considerations including bilateral aid relationships, volumes of trade, domesticpolitical expediency, electoral cycles etc. Also, developing countries may be circumspect ofdiscussions on IPGs to be efforts by developed nations to legitimise the dilution of sovereigntyof developing countries, to put benefits to global citizens before benefits to their own citizens. Theprovision of IPGs remains an important challenge and this volume makes an interesting contributionto an increasing discussion on this subject.

P. B. ANANDBradford Centre for International Development

University of Bradford, UKPublished online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jid.978

African Wildlife and Livelihoods: The Promise and Performance of Community Con-

servation edited by DAVID HULME and MARSHALL MURPHREE (Oxford: James

Currey, 2001, pp. 336, cloth £40.00, p/bk £12.95).

African Wildlife and Livelihoods is an edited volume reviewing experiences of commu-nity conservation initiatives in Eastern and Southern Africa. Coming some two decades aftercommunity-oriented approaches to conservation started to be established in Africa it is a timelycontribution, which questions what has been achieved and whether intended objectives have beenmet. Introductory chapters set the scene by raising some of the key issues and debates that havedominated the African conservation field since the late 1980s. Very broadly these debates concern therole that conservation can play in relation to development, and the involvement local people can havein conservation processes. The contribution by Adams and Hulme provides a good background to‘changing narratives, policies, and practices in African conservation’, and forms a useful startingpoint for those not already familiar with the debates in this field.

The initial chapters are followed by a series of cases, which examine how community con-servation ideas have been translated into policy and practice. These cases are set around a number ofthemes: conservation policies and institutions; parks and people revisited; devolving management;economics, incentives and institutional change; and measuring and monitoring conservation. Manyof the cases are by individuals who have long-standing experience in the African conservation field,being, in the words of the Editors, practitioner–scholars scholar–practitioners.

The chapters are too many to discuss individually in this short review, but one can give a flavour.For example, in a chapter on how the Tanzania National Parks Authority has adopted communityconservation, Patrick Bergen provides an insightful analysis of how institutional change hasoccurred, with the take up of new ideas involving complex interactions between different actors,as opposed to a one-way transfer of ideas from experts to local implementers or communityorganisers. Refreshingly a glossy picture is avoided, as is often the case in descriptions of con-servation projects given by those involved on the ground. One can also note a chapter by Brian Jones,which traces the influence of particular individuals in promoting community conservation. TheAfrican conservation sphere has for long been dominated by particular personalities, generallywhite, whose long term involvement and commitment to wildlife conservation—as well as valuesand practices—has shaped the course of conservation initiatives in different parts of the continent—all too often this remains an implicit feature of case study discussions.

One chapter that typifies many contributions to the book is Hulme and Infield, which describes acommunity conservation initiative at Lake Mburo National Park in Uganda. Once one has wadedthrough the acronyms, which are many and heavy going for the reader—unfortunately the case inmost chapters—one is provided with an extremely rich account of how a conservation scheme wasbrought into practice. This describes the historical context of conservation around Lake Mburo,charts the rise of community conservation, identifies stakeholders and areas of negotiation with localcommunities, explores the forms that the conservation initiative eventually took, and examines whathas been achieved. A similar approach is taken to the descriptive cases from Namibia, Zimbabwe,Uganda, Tanzania, and Mozambique; each giving detailed historical descriptions of conservationinstitutions and policy processes.

Editors of the volume claim that the study is ‘truly interdisciplinary’ and certainly contributorshave expertise in a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. However, the reader may be struck not

808 Book Reviews

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 15, 805–814 (2003)

by differences and contrasts between texts, but by the many similarities in viewpoint and approach,written as most of the cases are by those engaged in the African wildlife conservation field aspractitioner–scholars. In this respect the cases hold some excellent accounts of conservation projectsand convey well the perspectives of people working in this field. One has to say though that takentogether some limitations are apparent in the contributions.

The first limitation is the absence of a strong analysis of the livelihoods which community-oriented conservation seeks to support and which the title suggests is a key subject of the book. Thusalthough in many places peoples’ livelihoods are mentioned, the character of these livelihoods andthe linkages to conservation have not been adequately explored or captured.

The second limitation is a weak framework for analysis of policy processes. One is presented withvery rich empirical details on policy implementation within many of the case studies. However, littleeffort has been made to stand back from the detail and analyse the character of policy practice incommunity conservation linking it to the wider policy context in different African countries. Such anomission is surprising given a wealth of studies about the policy process in development projects andprogrammes.

The third limitation is the absence of attempts to elicit and draw together good empirical materialon the experiences of different actors associated with conservation initiatives, for instance differentgroups of rural people, civil servants working within conservation institutions, or even theexperiences of actors working within the many international organisations present in the Africanconservation sphere. One implication is that although there are various references to different actorsand to the meanings they give to conservation, there is little attempt to explore knowledge processesand the ways in which different meanings, values, practices, notions of identity, and relationships ofpower and authority, come together to generate specific outcomes and imbue conservation initiativeswith a particular character. These outcomes may conflict with and certainly differ from thoseintended by conservation planners, by implication taking our thinking far beyond the ideal-typicalcommunity characteristics of ‘cohesion, demarcation, legitimacy, and resilience’ said to beimportant for successful community conservation initiatives, as laid out in the third chapter.

These limitations are unfortunate and amount to a missed opportunity for the research programmeon which many of the case studies are based. Nevertheless, the detailed and informed tracing ofhistories of community-oriented conservation projects, drawn together in one volume, willundoubtedly make this a useful text for students conducting research in this field, and also forpractitioners wanting to compare experiences in different country contexts.

ELEANOR FISHERCentre for Development Studies

University of Wales, Swansea, UKPublished online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/jid.979

The Impasse of Modernity: Debating the Future of the Global Market Economy by

CHRISTIAN COMELIAU (London: Zed Books, 2002, pp. 185, p/bk £15.95).

Comeliau argues that it is all very well to look at economic interpretations of development, but inorder to analyse global poverty one must also examine society. The aim of this text is to linkinterdisciplinary reflection with the groundwork for a political debate on global development. This isparticularly timely in the context of increasing calls for the re-politicization of development comingfrom many quarters. In arguing for politicization Comeliau suggests that those exploring societymust recognize the impasses of our current market-obsessed pursuit of profit. In so doing observerscan reinterpret policies and processes within society.

Comeliau offers a set of reflections on the lack of logic in our present economic system and theproblems they give rise to, rather than a polemic of what we should be doing. In so doing he critiquesthe dominant position of market economies in our society, with their accompanying core social valueof profit before all else. He challenges, as have many others, the complacency of thinking the Southagrees with such a value system. He argues that increases in ethnic strife, environmental degradation,stockpiling of weapons and exclusion and inequality bear testimony to the inability of such a systemof values to even alleviate global poverty, let alone eradicate it.

Book Reviews 809

Copyright # 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 15, 805–814 (2003)