The Fourth Circle

"[The Fourth Circle provides valuable ethnographic and political information about a dangerous area where researchers have found it comparatively difficult to gain access (Aceh). The book's publication now remains timely, given the broad interest in northern Sumatra after the 2004 tsunami." - Journal of Anthropological Research "Eloquent and authoritative." - Bijdragen "This book is a highly commendable study of the dynamics involved in forest destruction, conversion and conservation in South Aceh, an area known by the famous Gunung Leuser National Park. John McCarthy looks at institutional arrangements governing forests, drawing on legal anthropology to uncover the plurality and fluidity of 'rules in use' in natural resource management." - Internationales Asienforum "Approaching resource degradation as an institutional problem embedded in socioeconomic structures and power relations, John McCarthy has written a book of significance well beyond his study area in the remote rainforests of Sumatra. In communities in South Aceh between 1996 and 1999, McCarthy investigated the interplay of state and customary (adat) institutions with other interests in managing local forest resources. This is an important work that generates understanding of the most pressing issues of our time I recommend the book highly. McCarthy intelligently details and discusses cases of global interest, yielding insights into complex interactions of tradition, colonial, state and informal institutions in effecting as area's resource management, and into the implications for conservation projects." - Lene Pederson, American Anthropologist