The complex problem which confronts us in the world's rangelands -- is the need to raise living standards, increase economic productivity, and at the same time reduce ecological stress -- is approached in this symposium from a number of different disciplinary points of view. The case material presented in the papers shows (in varying degrees) the significance of the accumulated experience and cultural ideals of the different types of people involved -- local pastoralists, Western-trained ecologists, planners - as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. s - as well as the constraints and opportunities that derive from fluctuation in climate and political economy. The role of human activity in the history of the rangeland ecosystem and the cultural memory of the ecological past are treated as complementary to the potential of social forms and cultural aims and values.