ABSTRACT
The rediscovery of the magic and mystery of the tropical rainforest takes people back to an earlier and more innocent phase of globalisation. Indeed, the processes are part of the cultural baggage of pre-conceptions and stereotypes that any Westerner must jettison before attempting the task of understanding the forest through the eyes of its inhabitants rather than through the optic of global discourse. However it also has a number of aims beyond filling out the ethnographic, historical and cultural-ecological information on the Marovo Lagoon and its people. The additional dimensions are not limited to the views of conventional political economy on colonial subjugation of the peripheral, nor to the more recent ones of globalisation theory. The "logging scene" in Marovo in many ways is the core organisational focus of local politics in the 1990s. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
