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This book addresses two important and related questions: does participation in a market economy help or hurt indigenous peoples and how does it affect the conservation of tropical rainforest flora and fauna? Oddly, there have been few quantitative studies that have addressed these issues.Ricardo Godoy's research takes an important step toward rectifying this oversight by investigating five different lowland Amerindian societies of tropical Latin America?all of which are experiencing deep changes as they modernize. Godoy examines the effect of markets on a broad range of areas including health

Godoy investigates five lowland Amerindian societies of tropical Latin America--all of which are experiencing deep changes as they modernize--to discover the results of a market economy on both indigenous peoples and the conservation of tropical rainforest flora and fauna

Similar forms of subsistence and social organization have emerged in different parts of the world in response to similar ecological, technological, and demographic factors. For example, moldboard plow agriculture evolved in many places as the result of high population density, availability of large domesticable animals, presence of wet and heavy soils, and such staples as wheat, barley, rye, and buckwheat, which required extensive land preparation and "considerable surface area to produce the food calories necessary to feed a family" (Pryor 1985:732). Wolf long ago (1957) noted that the colonial experience had helped to promote the development of closed, corporate communities in rural societies of Mesoamerica and Indonesia.

The causal complexities and rationality of high-grading are examined in the small-scale antimony mines of the Jukumani indians of Northern Potosi, Bolivia. Taxes and piece rate systems of payment provide incentives for selected removal of ore. The effect of piece rate work on high-grading and its role in the accumulation of wealth within Jukumani society are also discussed