Roy Ellen was educated at the London School of Economics and is Professor of Anthropology and Human Ecology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, where he has taught since 1973. His numerous and varied publications include Environment, Subsistence and System (Cambridge University Press, 1982), The Cultural Relations of Classification (Cambridge University Press, 1993), and most recently, The Categorical Impulse (Berghahn Books, 2005). He convenes the Kent Programme in Ethnobotany and has published widely on indigenous knowledge. In 2003 he was elected to a fellowship of the British Academy.

• List of FiguresList of TablesPrefaceList of ContributorsChapter 1. IntroductionRoy EllenChapter 2. Responses to Medium-term Stability in Climate: El Niño, Droughts and Coping Mechanisms of Foragers and Farmers in BorneoRajindra K. PuriChapter 3. Kasepuhan Rice Landrace Diversity, Risk Management and Agricultural ModernizationRini SoemarwotoChapter 4. Responses to Environmental Stress in the Baduy Swidden System, South Banten, JavaJohan IskandarChaptert 5. Innovation, ‘Hybrid’ Knowledge and the Conservation of Relict Rainforest in Upland BantenJohan Iskandar and Roy EllenChapter 6. A Comparison of Traditional and Innovative Subsistence Strategies on Buano during Periods of Socio-environmental Stress, 1980–2003Hermien L. SoselisaChapter 7. A Tradition of Change in Minahasan Agricultural Strategies, North SulawesiSimon PlattenChapter 8. Cycles of Politics and Cycles of Nature: Permanent Crisis in the Uplands of PalawanDario NovellinoChapter 9. The Tobe and Tara Bandu: a Post-independence Renaissance of Historic Forest Regulation Authorities and Practices in Oecusse, East TimorLaura S. Metzner YoderChapter 10. Perceptions of Local Knowledge and Adaptation on Mount Merapi, Central JavaMichael R. DoveIndex

"Probably more than any other British anthropologist, Roy Ellen is associated with the study of ethnobiology; his has also long ranked among the leading names in the field... Both readers new to Ellen as well as those already familiar with his work will find this collection rewarding."  ·  American Anthropologist