COMMUNITY AND CONSERVATION
Like more general works on community, the
history of community in conservation is also a
history of revisionism. Images of pristine ecosystems
and innocent primitives yielded over
time to views of despoiling communities out of
balance with nature, mostly due to the doublepronged
intrusion of the state and market. A
recuperative project on behalf of the indigenous
and the local (community) has attempted to
rescue community. But the rescue project has
itself come under attack by new anthropological
and historical research which suggests
communities may not, after all, be as friendly to
the environment. The practical and policy implications
that accompany these changing images
are immense.