I started out as an urban planner but found myself drawn towards the concepts of regions and regional development. The idea of a region varies a lot from one place to another, and it is often easier to grasp as a cultural reality than as an economic or physical entity. It is, of course, a…
If mountains and forests provided my first foray into understanding regions, oceans and trees became the means for my second foray into exploring how regions have formed over time. Just as I’d discovered from my work in the Himalayas that mountains, however high, were never barriers to human movement, I saw the beauty of Fernand…
Almost three decades ago, when I started my doctoral studies, political ecology was emerging as a radical and exciting interdisciplinary field of research. One of the books that I found most compelling, and which later proved to be foundational for defining this field, was Land Degradation and Society. The authors, Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield,…