The Challenge of Sustainable Forests is a masterful demonstration of how a sociology of sustainability must be anchored in a sociology of ecological science, knowledges, and discourses. It not only involves a creative synthesis between environmental social science and the sociology of science and knowledge, but in addition it includes impressive case material on forest policy in Sarawak and Pahang, Malaysia. .

Professor Frederick H. Buttel, Department of Rural Sociology and Environmental Studies University of Wisconsin

This important book recognises that the conservation and destruction of forests is above all 'a social question'. Dr Cooke's first book makes an effective contribution to the now burgeoning literature on the processes and effects of tropical deforestation in Malaysia, and more widely in Southeast Asia.the reader can see how the dynamics of power, patronage and policy confront local communities. . Professor V.T. King, Pro-Vice Chancellor, University of Hull

The Challenge of Sustainable Forests is an innovative piece of work that provides a range of insights into forest resource use in Malaysia and the power relations behind the working of forest policy at local level. It explores the rich debate on 'development' and 'environment' to cast new light on the social and ecological dimension of forest degradation. Taking politics seriously, the book draws on the micropolitics of scientific knowledge production, sustained yield technology in particular, to examine the institutionalisation of scientific forestry in forest resource management. With insights derived from fieldwork in Pahang and Sarawak, the book argues that sustainable forest management as a movement and a scientific discipline is in danger of speaking a techno-bureaucratic language similar to sustained yield, unless fundamental questions about livelihood protection and access rights to environmental and forest resources are sufficiently addressed. This process is not helped by the greater importance accorded biological and economic imperatives in conservation discourse and practice. By way of exploring this issue, The Challenge of Sustainable Forests takes a detour to the Philippines where issues of livelihood, access rights and social justice have affected management practices more seriously than in Malaysia.

Fadzilah Majid Cooke has published in Europe, Australia, Southeast Asia and Papua New Guinea. She is currently a Research Fellow at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. Her present work examines community approaches to natural resource use in Papua New Guinea and deals with the complex interaction between the politics of conservation, development aid, local subsistence and livelihood.