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Farmers in the Forest: Economic Development and Marginal Agriculture in Northern Thailand . Edited by Peter Kunstadter, E. C. Chapman and Sanga Sabhasri. University Press of Hawaii for the East-West Center: Honolulu, 1978. Pp. xii, 402.

This lavishly-produced and well-illustrated book, an East-West Centre publication from the East-West Population Institute, brings together 'some detailed accounts showing the range of variation in types of shifting cultivation', as well as considering 'the implications of swiddening for the future of the people and the environment of Thailand' (p. ix). It grew out of a conference held at Chiang Mai University in 1970; and incorporates papers by Thai, American and Australian workers. Much of the material is of considerable interest, for it shows, inter alia, that shifting cultivation is practised both by 'tribal' hill and Thai valley dwellers; that the peoples involved differ significantly in their appreciation of the ecological basis of their agricultural practices (the Lua, for example, are much more careful than the Karen to conserve their hillsides): that, as so often, there is something to be said both for Malthus and Boserup; that, again as so often, commercial cultivation introduces many complications into 'subsistence' swiddening; and that, generally speaking, the forest slopes of northern Thailand are under great pressure. As in so many collections of conference papers, the quality is highly variable. Some contributions are terse and to the point, and introduce interesting thoughts and ideas; others are long-winded and highly factual, crying out for more drastic editing and the replacement of acres of text by a few square inches of maps and diagrams. And there is some avoidable repetition between some of the papers. But, for those who have the time, this is a useful addition to the interdisciplinary literature on rapidly changing land use and social patterns.