T K Rudel
Biographic Data
| ID | 1689 |
|---|---|
| NAME | T K Rudel |
| GIVEN NAMES | T K |
| FAMILY NAME | Rudel |
| SIGNATURE | RUDEL T K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8892-3106 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 778 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 76 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Natural Climate Solutions, Indigenous Peoples, Mestizos, and the Legacies of Conflict Over Land in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Over the past two decades as global alarm over disruptive climate change has grown, coalitions of high‐ranking government officials and prominent activists have launched campaigns to protect and restore greenhouse gas absorbing rain forests. The initial results from these campaigns have varied dramatically across racial and ethnic landholding groups. A case study of environmental initiatives in the Ecuadorian Amazon, presented here, begins to exp…
The Social Contexts for Forest Expansions: A Review
Regional contexts appear to have shaped reforestation processes in six distinctive ways around the world. Two have predominated in wealthy regions and have entailed the spontaneous regeneration of relatively biodiverse secondary forests on former agricultural lands. Another one, featuring planted forests, has occurred close to cities in both the Global North and the Global South. Three additional reforestation dynamics involving smallholders and …
Combating climate change through sustainable cattle ranching in the global south: The role of societal corporatism
The contours of the collective action necessary to limit climate change remain difficult to discern. In this context, societal corporatist political processes, fueled by crisis narratives, have shown some promise as political devices for mobilizing people. Corporatist processes have, historically, brought political competitors like employers and labor unions together to negotiate compacts that have advanced collective goods during times of crisis…
Uneven Ambitions: Explaining National Differences in Proposed Emissions Reductions
Large-scale commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have been difficult to achieve, in part because we do not understand the social conditions that encourage mitigation. An analysis of variations across countries' emissions reduction plans, submitted for the United Nations' 2015 Paris conference, provides a way to identify the conditions that make societies more likely to commit to emissions reductions. A metric created from a country's pl…
Indigenous-Driven Sustainability Initiatives in Mountainous Regions: The Shuar in the Tropical Andes of Ecuador
Land use change in tropical places with variable topography followed an elevation-sensitive pattern during the last 3 decades of the 20th century. Deforestation, driven by farmers, was concentrated in accessible, lowland settings, while sustainability initiatives, promoted by natural scientists, occurred in remote, upland settings. This lowland deforestation–upland sustainability pattern persists, but the drivers of sustainability initiatives hav…
Response to “Withering the coloniality of the forest transition?”
Influence of land tenure interventions on human well-being and environmental outcomes
Whither the forest transition? Climate change, policy responses, and redistributed forests in the twenty-first century
Shocks, states, and societal corporatism: A shorter path to sustainability
The forest transformation: Planted tree cover and regional dynamics of tree gains and losses
The Extractive Imperative in Populous Indigenous Territories: The Shuar, Copper Mining, and Environmental Injustices in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Did Growing Rural Poverty and a Disruptive Climate Spur an Expansion in Rural Sociology? A Comparative Historical Analysis
Rural sociology first gained wide recognition during the 1930s when the intersection of economic depression and environmental crisis underlined the suffering of rural peoples. The historical conjuncture of growing rural poverty and environmental crisis has reappeared in the twenty-first century. What does this recurring combination of circumstances portend for rural sociology? Does it imply a revival of the policy-oriented sociological analyses o…
The drivers of tree cover expansion: Global, temperate, and tropical zone analyses
Metatheorizing Structural Human Ecology at the Dawn of the Third Millennium
While its processes have been unfolding for centuries, some aspects of human interaction with the natural environment are unprecedented. In recent centuries, the world has experienced unparalleled technological change, wealth accumulation and population growth and concentration; these have led to extraordinary levels of other problems, particularly environmental degradation. Focusing on mismatches between the adaptive cycle and the organization o…
LivestockPlus: Forages, sustainable intensification, and food security in the tropics
Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world
Preliminary questions for prospective meta-analysts of global environmental change: A research note
Case studies of global environmental change have become the focus of an increasing number of meta-analyses during the past decade. In this context preliminary questions about the feasibility and desirability of conducting meta-analyses have become more salient. Here we address three questions that researchers would want to answer before embarking on a meta-analysis of research on global environmental change. (1) What are the comparative advantage…
Natural Resource Use and Global Change: New Interdisciplinary Perspectives in Social Ecology
The national determinants of deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa
For decades, the dynamics of tropical deforestation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have defied easy explanation. The rates of deforestation have been lower than elsewhere in the tropics, and the driving forces evident in other places, government new land settlement schemes and industrialized agriculture, have largely been absent in SSA. The context and causes for African deforestation become clearer through an analysis of new, national-level data on…
Estimating the world's potentially available cropland using a bottom-up approach
Food Versus Fuel: Extractive Industries, Insecure Land Tenure, and Gaps in World Food Production
Amerindian Livelihoods, Outside Interventions, and Poverty Traps in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Recent efforts to explain the persistence of rural poverty have made frequent use of the concept of poverty traps, understood as self-reinforcing poverty. The dynamic dimension of the poverty trap concept makes it a potentially useful tool for understanding conditions of persistent poverty, especially in circumstances where outside interventions 'shock' the system with the intention of ending poverty and disadvantage. This article describes one s…
Toward a More Eventful Environmental Sociology
and the subtleness, of contemporary religion and in doing so also elucidate the encrusted and emergent character of more general societal and institutional processes. I invite all sociologists to take a look at the books noted here; the result of that effort should make readers think differently about religion, and perhaps prompt some to encompass it as a relevant dimension to their own analytical digging
The commons and development: Unanswered sociological questions
Do processes of political and economic development hinder or promote the creation of common property institutions (CPIs) to govern common pool resources? Despite the seeming importance of this question, development sociologists have never really tried to answer it. This paper explores the intersection of development processes, the commons, and common property institutions and concludes that development has countervailing influences that both impe…
The commons and development: Unanswered sociological questions
Do processes of political and economic development hinder or promote the creation of common property institutions (CPIs) to govern common pool resources? Despite the seeming importance of this question, development sociologists have never really tried to answer it. This paper explores the intersection of development processes, the commons, and common property institutions and concludes that development has countervailing influences that both impe…
Forest transitions: Towards a global understanding of land use change
Is There a Forest Transition? Deforestation, Reforestation, and Development1
Environmental social scientists have recently begun to use the term 'forest transition' to describe how forest cover changes as economic development occurs in nations. The hypothesized transition occurs as follows. An initial surge in economic activity in impoverished societies spurs deforestation, but as economic activity continues to intensify and cities grow larger, a 'turnaround' occurs, and deforestation gives way to reforestation. This pape…
A Tropical Forest Transition? Agricultural Change, Out-migration, and Secondary Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Could old colonization zones in the urbanizing and industrializing countries of Latin America become sites for a tropical forest transition in which reforestation becomes more prevalent than deforestation? We try to answer this question through a case study of land-use change and migration since 1985 in a long-settled region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Data from remote sensing analyses, household surveys, and land-use maps of individual farms revea…
Political Economy of the Environment
Sociological theories about the political economy of the environment have appeared in two waves. The first wave has a productivist orientation, showing how the normal workings of industrial production damage the environment. It includes impact theories (IPAT and STIRPAT), the treadmill of production, growth machine theories, and resource extraction/ecologically unequal exchange theories. A second wave of theories focuses on environmental destruct…
Changing agents of deforestation: From state-initiated to enterprise driven processes, 1970-2000
Meta-analyses of case studies: A method for studying regional and global environmental change
Estimating the world's potentially available cropland using a bottom-up approach
Forest transitions: An introduction
Paths of Destruction and Regeneration: Globalization and Forests in the Tropics
Globalization has spatially and temporally varied effects on forest cover in the tropics. It destroys primary forests (first nature) in some places at the same time that it creates secondary and scrub growth (second nature) in other places. In any one region, globalization first destroys forest and then induces some regrowth. It also contributes to the emergence of persistent rural poverty in tropical regions. Although forest destruction and rege…
How Do People Transform Landscapes? A Sociological Perspective on Suburban Sprawl and Tropical Deforestation
Humans transformed landscapes at an unprecedented scale and pace during the 20th century, creating sprawling urban areas in affluent countries and large-scale agricultural expanses in tropics. To date, attempts to explain these processes in other disciplines have had a disembodied, a historical quality to them. A sociological account of these changes emphasizes the role of strategic actions by states and coalitions of interested parties in transf…
The Context for Political Corruption: A Cross‐National Analysis
Objective. How do we explain variations across nations in the incidence of political corruption? Recent theoretical work locates the causes for corruption in a combination of institutional conditions: monopoly power, little accountability, and wide discretion. This focus on the form of political institutions clarifies the micro‐scale causes of political corruption, but it leaves unanswered questions about the macro‐scale causes of corruption. Met…
Whither the forest transition? Climate change, policy responses, and redistributed forests in the twenty-first century
Organizing anarchy: The food security–biodiversity–climate crisis and the genesis of rural land use planning in the developing world
From Middle to Upper Class Sprawl? Land Use Controls and Changing Patterns of Real Estate Development in Northern New Jersey
During the past twenty-five years the land use controls that shape residential real estate development in the United States have changed in potentially significant ways. From the 1950s to the 1980s, land use laws promoted middle-class sprawl by reserving extensive tracts of land for the construction of moderately priced, single-family homes on lots of less than one acre. More recently, suburbs have adopted land use controls that promote upper cla…
Tree farms: Driving forces and regional patterns in the global expansion of forest plantations
Housing Price Inflation, Family Growth, and the Move from Rented to Owner Occupied Housing
This paper uses data from Annual Housing Surveys to investigate the relationship between growth in family size and the move from rented to owner occupied housing in the mid and late 1970s. A series of studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s established that growth in the size of the family triggered moves from rented to owner occupied housing. Changes in house price inflation during the 1970s may have altered the social and economic conditions a…
Influence of land tenure interventions on human well-being and environmental outcomes
Amerindian Livelihoods, Outside Interventions, and Poverty Traps in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Recent efforts to explain the persistence of rural poverty have made frequent use of the concept of poverty traps, understood as self-reinforcing poverty. The dynamic dimension of the poverty trap concept makes it a potentially useful tool for understanding conditions of persistent poverty, especially in circumstances where outside interventions 'shock' the system with the intention of ending poverty and disadvantage. This article describes one s…
Communities and Forests: Where People Meet the Land
Climbing the 'Agricultural Ladder: Social Mobility and Motivations for Migration in an Ecuadorian Colonist Community
During the early decades of the 20th century in the American Midwest young farming families achieved social mobility by moving up an 'agricultural ladder' through a series of rungs, from unpaid family work, to wage labor, to tenant farming, to a mortgaged farm, and, finally, to full ownership of a farm. In this paper we use the concept of an agricultural ladder to understand processes of social mobility in a Third World setting. A case study of a…
The forest transformation: Planted tree cover and regional dynamics of tree gains and losses
The drivers of tree cover expansion: Global, temperate, and tropical zone analyses
Can Real-Estate Developers Be “Green”: Sprawl, Environmental Rhetoric, and Land Use Planning in a New Jersey Community
Despite their immense influence in shaping landscapes and determining environmental impacts, American real-estate developers have rarely been a focus for study. This article tries to remedy this oversight, at least in part, through an ethnographic study of real-estate developers in an affluent New Jersey suburb. It focuses in particular on the environmental practices of real-estate developers who build for environmentally interested customers in …
Scale mismatches and their ecological and economic effects on landscapes: A spatially explicit model
Sequestering Carbon in Tropical Forests: Experiments, Policy Implications, and Climatic Change
This article outlines the contribution of tropical deforestation to global warming and assesses the prospects for changes in tropical forest cover trends that would slow climate change. Deforestation releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and reforestation removes them by sequestering carbon. An end to deforestation, coupled with reforestation, could become an important component in near-term strategies for mitigating climate change. To a…
Social responses to commodity shortages: The 1973–1974 gasoline crisis
Roads, speculators, and colonization in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Inflation, New Homeowners and Downgrading in the 1970s
This paper uses data from four successive Annual Housing Surveys, 1974 to 1977, to assess the degree to which households moving from rented to owner occupied housing responded to housing price inflation by purchasing smaller, more delapidated units in less choice locations. The data indicate that, while the size of the structures acquired by new homeowners declined, the quality of these structures and the surrounding neighborhoods did not change.…
Environmental stress
Crowds and Strategies for Avoiding Them in a Densely Settled Region
In this paper, data from interviews with residents of the New York metropolitan area are used to examine the relationship between crowding and the adoption of strategies for avoiding crowds. The analyses reveal major differences between recreational and maintenance activities in the frequency with which participants experience crowding and plan to avoid it. Stage in the life cycle and the population density of the place of residence predict the f…
Housing Price Inflation, Family Growth, and the Move from Rented to Owner Occupied Housing
This paper uses data from Annual Housing Surveys to investigate the relationship between growth in family size and the move from rented to owner occupied housing in the mid and late 1970s. A series of studies conducted in the 1950s and 1960s established that growth in the size of the family triggered moves from rented to owner occupied housing. Changes in house price inflation during the 1970s may have altered the social and economic conditions a…
Drought and Hunger in Africa
Situations and Strategies in American Land-Use Planning
Introductions - local governments and land-use planning situations and strategies in local land-use control suburban development and land-use planning in Western Connecticut a rural community a rural-urban fringe community urban communities assessments and applications. Appendices: Changes in land-use controls - multivariate analyses Survey methods
Urbanization, roads, and rural population change in the Ecuadorian Andes
Tropical Deforestation: Small Farmers and Land Clearing in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Did TVA make a difference: An organizational dilemma and reforestation in the southern appalachians
In his well‐known study of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Selznick (1966) outlined an organizational dilemma in which leaders who embrace grass‐roots administration run the risk of sponsoring ineffective or incoherent programs. According to Selznick, TVA's leaders turned the administration of its land use programs over to local elites who were indifferent to the programs’ goals, thereby preventing TVA from becoming “a first line, committed…
Kicking off the Bootstraps: Environment, Development, and Community Power in Puerto Rico
While small communities in Third World countries usually seem at the mercy of central governments and foreign capitalists, local activists can help exploited peoples correct environmental abuses and social injustices and seize control of their own destinies. Kicking Off the Bootstraps is a powerful case history of such an effort. It describes a grassroots activist movement that emerged in the Puerto Rican community of Salinas to counter the pover…
Is There a Forest Transition? Deforestation, Reforestation, and Development1
Environmental social scientists have recently begun to use the term 'forest transition' to describe how forest cover changes as economic development occurs in nations. The hypothesized transition occurs as follows. An initial surge in economic activity in impoverished societies spurs deforestation, but as economic activity continues to intensify and cities grow larger, a 'turnaround' occurs, and deforestation gives way to reforestation. This pape…
Critical Regions, Ecosystem Management, and Human Ecosystem Research
(1999). Critical Regions, Ecosystem Management, and Human Ecosystem Research. Society & Natural Resources: Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 257-260
Continuities in Sociological Human Ecology
Organizing for Sustainable Development: Conservation Organizations and the Struggle to Protect Tropical Rain Forests in Esmeraldas, Ecuador
Specialists in tropical rain forest conservation have recently begun to suggest that forests facing imminent destruction in deforestation ‘hot spots’ can not be saved, and that conservation organizations would use their resources more effectively if they focused on preserving ‘cold spots’, remote places with intact rain forests. The advocates of the cold spot strategy contend that sustainable development efforts in deforestation ‘hot spots’ are i…
Organizing for Sustainable Development: Conservation Organizations and the Struggle to Protect Tropical Rain Forests in Esmeraldas, Ecuador
Specialists in tropical rain forest conservation have recently begun to suggest that forests facing imminent destruction in deforestation ‘hot spots’ can not be saved, and that conservation organizations would use their resources more effectively if they focused on preserving ‘cold spots’, remote places with intact rain forests. The advocates of the cold spot strategy contend that sustainable development efforts in deforestation ‘hot spots’ are i…
Sequestering Carbon in Tropical Forests: Experiments, Policy Implications, and Climatic Change
Sequestering Carbon in Tropical Forests: Experiments, Policy Implications, and Climatic Change
This article outlines the contribution of tropical deforestation to global warming and assesses the prospects for changes in tropical forest cover trends that would slow climate change. Deforestation releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and reforestation removes them by sequestering carbon. An end to deforestation, coupled with reforestation, could become an important component in near-term strategies for mitigating climate change. To a…
Introduction to Controlling Climate Change: Sociological Perspectives
Introduction to Controlling Climate Change: Sociological Perspectives
Introduction to Controlling Climate Change: Sociological Perspectives." Society & Natural Resources, 14(6), p. 489
Ecologically Noble Amerindians: Cattle Ranching and Cash Cropping among Shuar and Colonists in Ecuador
Observers have argued that as indigenous peoples become more acculturated and their reserves more populous, they begin to exploit tropical rain forests much as colonists and other outsiders do. The history of changes in land use between 1950 and 1980 among the Shuar, an indigenous group in the Ecuadorian Amazon, would appear to support this convergence thesis. The Shuar began to clear land, plant pastures, and acquire cattle, much like their mest…
Sociologists in the Service of Sustainable Development: NGOs and Environment-Society Studies in the Developing World
In the course of implementing plans for sustainable development, sociologists in developing countries use ideas from natural resource sociology rather than from environmental sociology. They draw upon these ideas as employees of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who manage integrated conservation and development programs (ICDPs). Beginning in the 1980s, donors provided funds for ICDPs, so scientists created NGOs to carry out the projects and h…
A Tropical Forest Transition? Agricultural Change, Out-migration, and Secondary Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Could old colonization zones in the urbanizing and industrializing countries of Latin America become sites for a tropical forest transition in which reforestation becomes more prevalent than deforestation? We try to answer this question through a case study of land-use change and migration since 1985 in a long-settled region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Data from remote sensing analyses, household surveys, and land-use maps of individual farms revea…
Paths of Destruction and Regeneration: Globalization and Forests in the Tropics
Globalization has spatially and temporally varied effects on forest cover in the tropics. It destroys primary forests (first nature) in some places at the same time that it creates secondary and scrub growth (second nature) in other places. In any one region, globalization first destroys forest and then induces some regrowth. It also contributes to the emergence of persistent rural poverty in tropical regions. Although forest destruction and rege…
Geography (57 works) · Economics (44 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (41 works) · Ecology (34 works) · Political science (33 works) · Environmental Science (29 works) · Biology (23 works) · Agroforestry (22 works) · Business (22 works) · Economic growth (20 works)