Takanori oishi is a lecturer at the African Studies Center, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan. He is working with the forest peoples of southeastern Cameroon, especially with the Bakwele, Bantu speaking horticulturalists and the Baka, hunter-gatherers. His major topics of interest include: the ethnoecology of fishing activities, ecological and cultural perceptions of tropical forest landscapes, comparative ethnography of human-animal relationships, the diversification of subsistence economies and the dynamics of local interethnic relationships. For the last decade, he has observed drastic changes in local people’s sociocultural behavior, which might have been brought about by increased interaction with a monetary economy. Since then, he has been focusing on the interactions between local value systems, for example, the norm of so-called “egalitarianism,” and the larger systems operating at national, regional, and global scales.
Contact: takanori@tufs.ac