Clark University

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Kent Mathewson
Reviewed work(s):
Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Resource Management in Mexico and Central
America by Gene C. Wilken
Source: Economic Geography, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Jul., 1988), pp. 292-295
Published by: Clark University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/144082
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292 ECONoMIc GEOGRAPHY
tive statics. Finally the glossary of terms and
notation is a useful component of the book.
Due to the interdependence of the book's
material, it is perhaps most appropriate to
consider the merit of Thrall's overall contribu-
tions. First, it is important to weigh the value
of the CTLR model in contrast to traditional
mathematical land rent theory. Thrall argues
that the CTLR is superior to the mathematical
approach, and four advantages of the model
are detailed in the Preface. These include: (1)
the CTLR provides clear explanations of the
mechanics in urban systems; (2) the CTLR is
able to explain and solve many problems that
mathematical modeling cannot; (3) due to the
simplicity of the CTLR, it is accessible to a
wide audience; (4) the CTLR can produce
solutions comparable to mathematical model-
ing while maintaining simplicity.
One cannot argue that in many ways com-
prehending and manipulating the CTLR
model requires less rigorous training than the
mathematical approach used in the new urban
economics. In this regard the CTLR model
has a certain appeal. Yet it is important to
distinguish models that are designed to simu-
late the comparative statics of urban systems
from those that are used to build and extend
theory. The CTLR model clearly falls within
the first category. The CTLR is most valuable
as a pedagogic tool since it provides students
with an understanding of how urban change
occurs. At a higher level of education the
model can also be used to explain and demon-
strate the linkages between macroeconomic
theory and urban dynamics.
However, mathematical land rent theory
offers a vehicle through which urban theory
can be formulated and extended. It is linked to
a long and established tradition of thought,
and it fosters the exchange and birth of ideas
since it is accessible to scholars from several
disciplines. Thrall's own work demonstrates
this since the CTLR is rooted in microeco-
nomic theory. Thus, while the CTLR deserves
our attention, it is perhaps too heroic to
assume that the CTLR model should be used
in place of traditional mathematical theory. It
is most fitting to view the CTLR as a compli-
mentary paradigm but not as a substitute for
the NUE.
Second, Thrall has tailored his model to
deal specifically with transportation and gov-
ernment policy impacts. While these concerns
may be valid from a purely public policy
perspective, in practice we witness a broader
range of activities that shape urban form.
Moreover, one may argue that in many cities
public institutions, and especially planning
organizations, contribute relatively little to the
dynamics of urban systems. Thus, demon-
strating how the CTLR model may be used to
simulate the impacts of non-governmental
activities would add another dimension to the
text.
Lastly, in the Postscript Thrall associates the
concepts of the CTLR with the urban struc-
tures of Guadalajara, Mexico, Vienna, Austria,
and Hamilton, Canada. This discussion is
supposed to further our understanding of how
particular urban landscapes take form, but
Thrall falls far short of this task.
Indeed, beyond general descriptions and
loose associations, no substantive empirical
testing of the CTLR is provided. Thrall states
that, "It is beyond the scope of this book to
detail empirically the existing and changing
conditions of the urban form..." (pp. 230-31).
Despite his proclamations, the book would
benefit from an empirical application of the
model. Moreover, an empirical application
would add credence to Thrall's contention
that the CTLR model may be used for policy
impact simulations with relative ease. As is,
the Postscript draws even more attention to
scant empirical analyses. In effect, the Post-
script could be dropped from the book with-
out detracting from the overall objectives.
Land Use and Urban Form provides a use-
ful approach to assessing the impacts of public
policy on urban form, and students of urban
and economic geography should find the text
valuable.
Adrian Esparza
Northern Illinois University
Good Farmers: Traditional Agricultural Re-
source Management in Mexico and Central
America. By Gene C. Wilken. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987.
Good Farmers is not only a sympathetic and
scientific study of Mesoamerican resource
husbandry but also a celebration of traditional
ways of doing economic and cultural geogra-
phic field work. Wilken gives us a wealth of
discrete empirical accounts of farming practi-
ces and behaviors. Whether viewed singly or
taken collectively, they evoke universalities of
commonsense and sensible land stewardship.
The author demonstrates how "mere" des-
cription can put us in the farmer's huaraches,
 BOOKS
glimpsing theory forged and tested over cen-
turies within the crucible of practical prob-
lems and inscribed in the landscape, more
often than not, with great artistry. Lamentably,
it is an uncommon volume. Few scholars have
committed themselves so persistently and
perceptively to the task of recording these
kinds of practices. Wilken has closely observed
and interacted with the farmers and their
fields at various times for more than two
decades.
Three objectives inform this study. Fore-
most, Wilken seeks to document strategies
traditional farmers use to manage agricultural
resources within constraints involving energy,
technology, and scale. Documentation in-
cludes some one-hundred well chosen and
executed photographs and line drawings. Most
of his examples are from highland Mexico and
Guatemala. Despite the antiquity of intensive
agriculture in these regions, his focus is syn-
chronic not diachronic.
A second objective is to formulate princi-
ples of traditional resource management.
Again, keying on constraints, Wilken identifies
solutions Mesoamerican farmers have deve-
loped. While specific practices may vary from
place to place or region to region, their suc-
cesses or failures in overcoming constraints
can be compared globally. Almost all of the
discussion is grounded in his Mesoamerican
data. However, for researchers working in
other nonindustrial agricultural regions, Wil-
ken's data offers ample opportunities for
comparative analysis. More than two-dozen
tables on labor investments, land use catego-
ries, and soil compositions, among other data
sets, should lend themselves to cognate
efforts elsewhere.
His third concern is to bridge conceptual
gaps between traditional and modern agricul-
tural practices. Wilken argues that the chal-
lenges of managing agricultural resources
such as soil, water, slope, climate, and space to
produce better crop plant environments are
the same for both modern and traditional
farmers. This should constitute a commensu-
rable basis upon which to compare the practi-
ces of these two very different sets of agricul-
turalists.
The data and discussion are presented in a
logical and straightforward manner. Practices
or techniques are subsumed in resource cate-
gories: management of soil, slope, water, cli-
mate, and space. This risks redundancy as
most traditional techniques are multipurpose
and cannot be relegated to a single resource
293
category. Wilken is generally successful in lim-
iting descriptive repetition though some repe-
tition cannot be avoided.
Chapter 1 offers an overview of the study of
traditional resource management. Wilken
speculates that there have been so few studies
because "these practices are so familiar that
they have escaped the systematic investiga-
tions that normally accompany a body of
technology." This may be overly charitable.
The old adage linking contempt with familiar-
ity also could be invoked. Modernization,
either as theory or actuality, almost by defini-
tion fails to lend a sympathetic hand or hear-
ing to traditional forms of resource manage-
ment. Therefore, it would seem that the
subject has been doubly benighted for being
too familiar and too exotic.
In theoretical or programmatic terms, Wil-
ken places his work within the managerial
approach advocated earlier by Brookfield.
Wilken sees this approach as distinct from the
agroecosystems research which has blos-
somed in the past decade or so. This latter
approach stresses ecosystem relationships and
modifications, whereas the managerial ap-
proach focuses on "the production of goods
that have value." Thus, the economic and cul-
tural variables of these farming systems are
not overshadowed by efforts to explicate their
biophysical workings. Wilken argues that "the
notion of production and value create a basis
for system comparison and evaluation."
The managerial approach also differs from
the way most economic and especially cultu-
ral geographers have studied traditional agri-
culture. Sauer among other, pursued ques-
tions of agricultural origins and dispersals
following cultural historical paths. In a broad
sense, their approach is evolutionary. Other
cultural geographers, many inspired by Sauer,
have investigated the material culture aspects
of traditional farming. While Wilken avoids
evolutionary questions, his description of
agro-infrastructural features represents an
important contribution to our knowledge of
Mesoamerican material culture. But this is
more a by-product of his emphasis on resource
management than a primary objective.
Of contextual interest, Wilken's training
was at Berkeley with an undergraduate degree
in foreign trade followed later with graduate
degrees in geography. J.J. Parsons, his gradu-
ate advisor, followed a similar course with a
firstdegree in economics and graduate degrees
in geography at Berkeley. Parsons continues
to identify "descriptive economic geography"
294 ECONoMIc GEOGRAPHY
as one of his subfields. The stock image of
"Berkeley School" geographers being poles
apart from economic geographers needs some
revision. The work of Wilken, Parsons, and
other like-minded cultural geographers sug-
gests links to an older economic geography
that sought its data in direct field observation.
Their work also brings to mind the "human
scale," ecologically informed economics of
E.F. Schumaker or Herman Daley.
Wilken turns to energy needs, sources, and
strategies in the next chapter. This raises ques-
tions about comparing energy efficiencies in
agriculture. Viewing traditional agriculture
strictly in terms of energetic or efficiency
equivalencies reduces it to mere performativ-
ity. As Wilken notes, with subsistence farming
"efficiency has never been the sole individual
or societal goal." Unfortunately, he makes
only a few comments regarding the notion of
efficiency. The concept and its implications
deserve an extended critique.
In the next three chapters Wilken examines
the ways various farmers classify soils and
modify soils using organic and inorganic
amendments. As keen observers, these farmers
logically derive soil categories from direct
experience. He discusses their soil classifica-
tions according to different landscape types:
hill slopes, valley floors, saline environments,
and so on. Standard analyses of properties of
the local soil types are presented in several
tables.
The two chapters on soil amendments are
among the best. Manures, mulches, ashes, and
nitrogenous-fixing plant interventions are dis-
cussed in detail. Inorganic additions, includ-
ing silts, sands, and chemical fertilizers, are
also well described. Muck, an admix that fits
both the organic and inorganic categories, is
perhaps the most strikingly evocative soil
amendment. Muck is drawn from canals asso-
ciated with the drained fields of Tlaxcala and
the famous chinampas in the Basin of Mexico
to serve as the matrix for seed bed preparation
or for general field dressings. As Wilken notes,
"Mucking is at the heart of the system that has
maintained farming in this region for centur-
ies." However, its bulk presents problems for
transport. Neither beasts of burden nor many
devices for lift or transport were developed
by pre-Hispanic peoples. This tradition per-
sists. Human carriage or simple water and/or
gravity-born methods continue to move most
of the amendments used to restructure soil for
farming.
Aspects of surface geometry involved in
slope and field surface management are taken
up in chapters 6 and 7. As with anthrosols,
human muscle power along with water and
gravity are used to create diverse agricultural
landscape features. In managing slopes, check
dams, sloping terraces, flat terraces, raised
beds (tablones), and hillside pits or depres-
sions are employed. Field surface manage-
ment involves micro-topographic adjustments
and results in a wide variety of distinctive
features attuned to highly local conditions.
Forms include raised beds, mounds, ridges-
and-beds, and seed beds. Both chapters are
complemented with tables giving calculations
of the labor investments involved in the var-
ious features.
Chapters 9 and 10 deal with water man-
agement techniques involving both surface
and subsurface systems. Features associated
with water sources are discussed first. These
include simple arrangements for catching
runoff waters, springs, rivers, lakes, swamps,
and underground water tables. One normally
thinks first of rivers as prime sources of water
for irrigation, but Wilken reminds us that lakes
and swamps have played perhaps a larger role
in Middle American history. Wilken presents
good discussions of an array of irrigation
techniques from the "pot" or cantaro system
of Oaxaca to the splash irrigators of Guatem-
ala. He also gives a lucid account of the galeria
(horizontal well) systems of Puebla, Mexico
and their associated water market where
water rights are bid for. Like the previous two
chapters, Wilken provides new and useful
data on labor requirements.
Two final chapters covering climate and
space management round out the empirical
picture that Wilken so painstakingly assem-
bles for us. Microclimate modifications are
accomplished through techniques designed to
reduce or increase radiation, heat, and mois-
ture and involve tillage and mulches, along
with obvious features such as plants used as
shields. Conceptualizing space as a resource
may be even more unfamiliar to most geo-
graphers than the array of techniques Wilken
discusses in the previous chapters. As he
points out, space is normally seen as an obsta-
cle in agriculture, implying increased cost for
transport of materials and crops. But viewed
from the perspective of traditional farmers,
space becomes a resource to be creatively
managed. Crop spacing (both vertical and
horizontal) and scheduling constitute key var-
iables through which intensification of these
systems can be carried out.
 BOOKS
In summarizing the implications of his study,
Wilken offers a few observations on the future
of traditional resource management. Wilken
briefly assesses some of the claims of the near-
sighted and dismissive modern agronomists as
well as those of visionary traditionalists with
their uncritical faith in premodern practices.
However, the reader seeking sustained en-
gagement with these or other theoretical issues
must look elsewhere. Wilken rests his case
with a call for expanded studies of traditional
farming as it is actually practiced. For this
course, as Wilken notes, there should be no
dearth of teachers and no lack of classrooms.
Kent Mathewson
Louisiana State University
The Atlas of Georgia. Edited by Thomas W.
Hodler and Howard A. Schretter. Institute
of Community and Area Development,
University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia,
1986.
The state atlas is now sufficiently a stable
item in U.S. cartography to have warranted
the issue of several bibliographies chronicling
its various forms. This corpus of work pro-
vides a generous general background against
which to gauge any new product, and, in the
specific case of Georgia, there are at least two
earlier, albeit somewhat specialized/skeletal,
products available for comparison.
It is clear, however, from even a brief exam-
ination of The Atlas of Georgia, that this work
is considerably more ambitious than the norm
in both its comprehensiveness of coverage
and the sheer size of the cartographic labor
involved in its undertaking. According to this
reviewer's count there are something like 750
graphics contained in its 247 illustrational
pages; an exact count being difficult since
there are a number of combinations and
arrangements of map/photograph, map/dia-
gram, insets and outsets, and so on.
The range and nature of the graphic work
employed seems to have left no illustrational
possibility unplundered-not only "regular"
maps and graphs but a panoply of imagery of
various kinds and scales taken from differing
platforms, angles, and locations, accompan-
ied by an almost complete menu of standard
cartographic and diagrammatic techniques.
Thus, monochrome, color, infrared, and
Landsat bands are all utilized, and the por-
trayals run the gamut from satellite images,
295
vertical and high/low oblique air-photos, and
landscape photography to portraiture and
close range material from both historical and
contemporary sources.
In a similar way, there is a corresponding
variety in the handling of the maps and dia-
grams. General chorographic cartography is
accompanied by a number of key, inset, loca-
tor, sketch, and interpretational maps (the lat-
ter including Erwin Raisz's familiar landforms)
as well as facsimiles of regional historical
maps.
The thematic material covers mostly com-
mon subjects and is copiously portrayed by
choropleth, isopleth and dot-maps, flow-maps
and flow-diagrams, pie-graphs, demographic
columns, age-sex pyramids, block-diagrams,
and geological and forest-elevation profiles, in
a continuously changing array.
The maps, images, and diagrams are ar-
ranged, as indicated above, at an average
intensity level of three per page, although
there is considerable variation throughout,
some standing alone, while others are juxta-
posed or combined. This sounds somewhat
like a graphic blitz, but fortunately, a number
being small or ancillary in function, the effect
is not overwhelming. On the contrary, much
thought has clearly been given to effective
page layout with all its attendant significant
factors of balance, clarity, legibility, and im-
pact, and, in this graphically pivotal concern,
there is not doubt that the editors have suc-
ceeded in an adroit, cogent (indeed, in some
cases, almost delicate) handling of a difficult
task.
Despite the profusion of information, var-
iety of subjects, and range of the data, the
result is that the overall "look" of the atlas is
one of exceptional care in presentation with-
out resorting to graphical gimmickry; no small
achievement in a large work of this sort, as any
atlas-maker can verify.
It should be added that this inventiveness
and sensitivity of overall composition is ac-
complished without any real innovation in
composing the individual graphics. Most of
the techniques listed above are well-tried and
reliable. The virtue of this work, from the
purely cartographic point of view, is to have
assembled the illustrational material, along
with some judicious and mercifully limited
accompanying text, in such a way that the
all-too-familiar pie-graphs, dot-maps, etc. do
not cause the eyes to glaze over as they do in so
many similar publications. Typographic cho-
ice, sharp line-work, and good registration aid