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Wood and wood products are essential to large areas of the world economy, yet until now there has been no single definitive reference source to which those new to or requiring a strategic overview of the industry could turn for a comprehensive picture of the market chain from forest to consumer. The international timber trade remedies this, providing a detailed overview of the entire timber and timber products business in an authoritative and accessible style. Written by a leading expert, The international timber trade is essential reading for a wide range of interested groups including managers in the timber industry and trade, the financial community with interests in the sector, academics and students in forestry management and related studies, government agencies and their advisers in helping to develop policies for the sector and international trade, and finally those working in international development organisations and in national and international non-governmental bodies.

International law, including human rights law, has expanded enormously in the past century. A growing body of anthropological research is investigating its principles and practices. Contemporary international law covers war and the treatment of combatants and noncombatants in wartime; international peace and security; the peaceful settlement of disputes; economic arrangements and trade agreements; the regulation of the global commons such as space, polar regions, and the oceans; environmental issues; the law of the sea; and human rights. This review demonstrates how anthropological theory helps social scientists, activists, and lawyers understand how international law is produced and how it works. It also shows the value of ethnographic studies of specific sites within the complex array of norms, principles, and institutions that constitute international law and legal regulation. These range from high-level commercial dispute settlement systems to grassroots human rights organizations around the world.

AbstractThis article offers a brief review of the forces that have contributed to the contemporary impasse in the formation of new international law and institutions. It identifies areas where development of the law of armed conflict would provide great benefits, yet where current international conditions render formal legal agreements highly unlikely. It then considers how to advance desirable projects nonetheless. In the absence of effective formal international law-making, jurists face a choice. One approach, which I call inspirational, is to propose idealized legal systems based on claims of justice and practicality. Much published work over the last decade seems to take this path. The hope is that the ideas will inspire and thus lead relevant actors to adopt the systems at a time when the obstacles to international agreements recede. The other approach, which I call entrepreneurial and describe here, involves leading States acting as "norm entrepreneurs". They can propound and in practice adhere to norms with the intention of inducing other States to follow. The entrepreneurial approach entails a State engaging in a practice that it hopes others will emulate, while the inspirational involves an appeal to the international community as a whole, including significant non-State actors.