Metamorphoses of the Great Island. Ecological and social change in Madagascar: The Betsimisaraka in a glocalized world
Abstract
This professional monograph is the output of project No. P410-12-P860 Ecological change in Madagascar: Betsimisaraka in a glocalized world implemented in 2012-2014.
It is the result of four author's trips to the east coast of Madagascar, where he focused mainly on the transformation of local communities from the arrival of the first Europeans to the present. The main emphasis was on the ecological and social change of rural communities after 1960, when Madagascar's independence was declared.
One of the outputs of the book is a partial ethnographic restudy of he French anthropologist Gérard Althabe, who conducted his field research in the eastern part of Madagascar in the early stages of decolonization. The author concludes that many of Althabe's original theses are now obsolete after more than fifty years, the core of which remains largely unchanged despite various external influences: the people in such rural communities as Fetraomby, Maroseranana and the others continue to live largely in an imaginary world isolated from the outside environment, although some globalization actors seem to have penetrated here in recent years, disrupting this isolation.