New book: Irrigated Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in the Indo-Pacific: Biological, Social and Historical Perspectives
Dear Colleagues,
The following book has been published and arrived from the printer in Kyoto today. The cover, publication details, and contents pages are attached here [SES78.pdf]
M. Spriggs, D. Addison and P. J. Matthews (eds) (2012) Irrigated Taro (Colocasia esculenta) in the Indo-Pacific: Biological, Social and Historical Perspectives (Senri Ethnological Studies 78). Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. 363 pp., with index.
As a public institution, our museum cannot sell these books. We can only give them away.
Requests for copies (with a postal address included!) can be sent to:
hensyu [at-mark] idc.minpaku.ac.jp
Only a limited number of copies are available for distribution (approx. 100), as most of the print run (1200) will go to a mailing list for all publications by our museum.
Eventually, most of the book chapters are expected to be available for free download from the Minpaku Online Repository at our museum website.
This map from the preface shows main geographical coverage (areas 1 - 10) of the volume (there is also some extension to China and mainland SE Asia)
The following publicity statement was prepared for a monthly meeting between the publisher and journalists, in Osaka, Japan. The subtitles in bold are added here to highlight the structure of this statement. This may serve as a model for others writing similar statements about journals or books being published.
What the book is about
This volume introduces many different aspects of the history of taro (sato-imo) in the Indo-Pacific region, in places ranging from the Austral Islands in Eastern Polynesia to Hawaii, New Caledonia, Vanuatu,Papua New Guinea, East Timor, and the Philippines.
Where the book comes from
The volume is based on papers presented at the 19th Congress of the Indo-Pacific Prehistory Association (IPPA), in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2009, and represents the work of researchers from many countries.
How the book relates to the audience for this publicity statement (readers and researchers in Japan)
In Japan, there is a great diversity of forms of sato-imo, ranging from tropical forms with large corms in Okinawa to temperate forms with many small side-corms (ko-imo) in the north. Sato-imo is not native to Japan. Some areas of origin for sato-imo lie within the region covered by the present volume, other areas of origin may lie to the west in South Asia and the mainland of Southeast Asia.
The present volume demonstrates the deep historical importance of sato-imo in the Indo-Pacific region, introduces a variety of approaches to the study of sato-imo, and suggests many new directions for future research. In Japan, there have been many studies of sato-imo, but most have been focused on practical aspects of crop production and use inside Japan. I hope that the present volume will encourage Japanese readers and researchers to take a broader interest in the history of the crop and its uses, not just for the benefit of people in Japan, but also so that Japan's own expertise with the crop can be more widely disseminated.
General significance of the book
In the modern world, the greatest threat to food supply is large-scale instability in our systems of food production and distribution. Root crops such as sato-imo have very different production requirements and food qualities from cereal crops such as rice and wheat, and can help reduce risk in our international and local food supply systems.
How the book can be used
The present volume also offers historical and social perspective on such matters, and thus may be of interest to agricultural scientists and policy makers as well as scientists working in social, biological, and historical fields related to food supply. A detailed index is provided. This makes the rich content readily accessible for readers with diverse interests.
P. J. Matthews (Co-editor, National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan)