Review: [untitled] Author(s): Philip Stott Source: The Geographical Journal, Vol. 148, No. 1 (Mar., 1982), pp.

134-135 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/634310 . Accessed: 07/05/2011 17:53
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utilitarian maps, as well as survey instruments, selected from the museums and libraries of the world. Most are sufficiently well reproduced to convey the flavour of the original although in many instances the scale is not large enough to allow more than the largest print to be read. The detailed description and analyses in the third part help to overcome this inevitable deficiency and whet the reader's appetite for a view of the original. Taken as a whole, this is a pleasing book. I hope that Mr Kish, a Hungarian-born geographer at an American University, can persuade his publishers to allow the P. R. T. Newby production of an English version at a reasonable price.

ETHNOGRAPHIC ATLAS OF IFUGAO: A STUDY OF ENVIRONMENT, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY IN NORTHERN LUZON. By Harold C. Conklin. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980. viii, 116 p. Maps, tab., diagr., ill, bibliogr., ind. 48.5 x 40.5 cm. ?47.00. ISBN 0 300 02529 7. This monumental work, which is the product of nearly two decades of dedicated research, comes as a timely rebuke to the intellectual activities of many modern geographers. At its heart is the painstaking analysis, here beautifully expressed in cartographic form, of the man-land relationships obtaining in the famous terraced landscapes of Ifugao, which have been constructed out of the Central Cordillera of northern Luzon in the Philippines. The Atlas has been described as a 'landmark in anthropology'. Somewhat wryly, it must be said that it is also a landmark in geography, for Conklin, Professor of Anthropology at Yale University and Curator of Anthropology at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, has achieved a synthesis of 'Vespace social' and Tespace geographique' that has been rarely attained in recent geographical writing. In short, through map, word and picture, he has done what few modern geographers are now capable even of contemplating?he has documented a landscape, a pays, a unique and regional expression of man in the land. Here is the geography of Vidal de la Blache and of Demangeon; we are being shown a true genre de vie. The particular genre de vie in question is, of course, of exceptional interest in itself. The Ifugao agricultural system represents an extremely complex and yet basically traditional pattern of adaptation to the ecology of a humid tropical mountain environment, with steep forested slopes, turbulent water courses, and drier ridges of sandstone. The ethnoecological and economic response of the inhabitants to this environment has been to create an intricate mosaic of ponded terraces growing wet rice, of dry clearings (swiddens) producing sweet potatoes, and of private forest areas (woodlots), valued both for their forest products and as an in-built protection against accelerated soil erosion on ridges and slopes. It is this mosaic?this ecological, social and cultural expression of man's use of a complicated terrain?which is portrayed and analysed with such loving care by Conklin. The variety of landscape is recognized by the Ifugao themselves, who distinguish hundreds of minor terrain variations 'relating not only to forms and combinations of rock, soil, water, and vegetation, but also to agronomic activity' (p. 7). However, eight basic landform categories must form the core of any classification of Ifugao land use and these cpmprise open grassland, public forest, caneland, woodlot (private forest), swidden, house terrace, drained field, and pond field. Accordingly, it is these fundamental classes which are surveyed in enormous detail on the series of land-use maps comprising Section II of the Atlas. The decision to present this wealth of material in the form of an atlas was taken in the latter part of the 1960s after discussions with the late O. M. Miller at The American Geographical Society of New York, with whose cooperation the present work has been published. All in all, there are 153 maps ranging from very small-scale regional maps to a large-scale coverage of specific divisions of agricultural land in a single district. The main ethnographic maps are of scales from 1:125 000 up to 1:1500. The cartographer was Miklos Pinther and the quality of the finished products is unquestionably high. There is also an extremely valuable collection (Section V) of historical materials and maps relating to northern and central Luzon, beginning with part of the 1659 map of

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Marcos de Orozco. It is further worth noting that the Atlas would not have been possible without the extensive use of aerial photography and photogrammetry, and satellite imagery is included. However, this survey is far more than just an atlas. The maps, central in importance though they are, are illumined and explained by 170 black-and-white photographs and a succinct, if anthropologically orientated, text dealing with the environment, the people of Ifugao, the agricultural systems and the integrated agricultural cycles of swidden, woodlot and pond-field cultivation. A full bibliography is appended. Undoubtedly then, this is a massive work worthy of the 20 000 kilometres of terraced embankments built in Ifugao. Obviously criticisms can be made, but, if one accepts the essential approach behind such detailed and painstaking scholarship, they are truly minor in relation to the whole. I was, for example, a little disappointed with the rather cursory classification of vegetation employed and I should have liked more on the flora and general ethnobotany of the region. I would guess also that many librarians will be somewhat dismayed by the fairly unwieldy proportions of the Atlas. However, these small points cannot detract from the great achievement represented by this study, which is a splendid contribution to our understanding of agricultural systems in the tropics, to South-east Asian studies in particular, and to detailed regional ethnography and geography. What is a trifle worrying is that it has taken a distinguished Philip Stott anthropologist to produce it.

OF MAPS. EVALUATION PROBLEMS OF THE GEOGRAPHIC Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Armin Huttermann. Buchgesellschaft, 455 p. Maps, plans, tab., diagr., bibliogr. 19 cm. ISBN 3 534 07977 9

Edited by 1981. vii,

The 24 essays and papers by mainly German authors, some very well known, others not so well known, have been collected and edited by Professor Dr Armin Huttermann. Born in 1944, Armin Huttermann studied Geography, English, Philosophy and Pedagogy at Gottingen and Tubingen; he spent a year as assistant teacher at Bromsgrove High School between studies, and also taught at Tubingen University. Since April 1979, he has been Professor of Geography at the Pedagogic High School in His most important publications are Investigations of Industrial Ludwigsburg. Geography, New Zealand, Tubingen (1974); Keywords to Map Interpretation, Parts I and II, Hirt Verlag, Kiel (1975 and 1979); The Topographic Map as a Geographie Working Medium, Klett Verlag (1978); Irish Industrial Estates, Steiner Verlag (1978); and he has published numerous articles in the more important German geographie and cartographic journals. In his introduction, Professor Dr Huttermann explains the purposes and theme of this collection and its arrangement with some care. Traditionally', he writes, 'working and with maps is a part of geography, but under the stress of differentiation specialization geography, cartography and geodesy have grown more apart. Initially all the separate disciplines brought numerous specific requirements to the area of mapping. From this earlier mutuality, especially between geography and cartography, there followed a strong, separate development. Cartography was busy disengaging itself from "the lap of Geography" (Arnsberg, 1970), strengthened by its new scientific foundation in Theoretical Cartography (Kretschner, 1977) while geography had to master its own problems of the "New Geography".' In this phase of the separation, it is suggested that both sciences have dedicated themselves in a different measure to mapping. Cartography, in its scientific theoretical approach, has not neglected the evaluation and use of the map as an information source or carrier. Geography, in which maps assisted in only part of their problems, is reproved for neglecting maps in its involvement with mathematical data-processing, states Professor Dr accumulation, storage. 'Scarcely a younger Geographer', Huttermann, 'is occupied with the consideration of maps as source information and carriers of geographical information. In his book, he advocates that: 1. Geography in its use of data processing, with references to data available from mapping, can and must learn from cartography.