One proposal for preserving rain forests is to promote the adoption of new agricultural technologies, such as improved plant varieties and use of chemical herbicides, which would increase productivity and slow deforestation by reducing demand for new cropland. Studies have shown that farmers in developing countries who have achieved certain levels of education, wealth, and security of land tenure are more likely to adopt such technologies. But these studies have focused on villages with limited land that are tied to a market economy rather than on the relatively isolated, selfsufficient communities with ample land characteristic of rain-forest regions. A recent study of the Tawahka people of the Honduran rain forest found that farmers with some formal education were more likely to adopt improved plant varieties but less likely to use chemical herbicides and that those who spoke Spanish (the language of the market economy) were more likely to adopt both technologies. Nonland wealth was also associated with more adoption of both technologies, but availability of uncultivated land reduced the incentive to employ the productivity-enhancing technologies. Researchers also measured land-tenure security: in Tawahka society, kinship ties are a more important indicator of this than are legal property rights, so researchers measured it by a household's duration of residence in its village. They found that longer residence correlated with more adoption of improved plant varieties but less adoption of chemical herbicides.

Line	Antonia Castañeda has utilized scholarship from
	women’s studies and Mexican-American history to
	examine nineteenth-century literary portrayals of
	Mexican women. As Castañeda notes, scholars of
(5)	women’s history observe that in the United States,
	male novelists of the period—during which, according
	to these scholars, women’s traditional economic role
	in home-based agriculture was threatened by the
	transition to a factory-based industrial economy—
(10)	define women solely in their domestic roles of wife and
	mother. Castañeda finds that during the same period
	that saw non-Hispanic women being economically
	displaced by industrialization, Hispanic law in territorial
	California protected the economic position of
(15)	“Californianas” (the Mexican women of the territory) by
	ensuring them property rights and inheritance rights
	equal to those of males.
	For Castañeda, the laws explain a stereotypical
	plot created primarily by male, non-Hispanic novelists:
(20)	the story of an ambitious non-Hispanic merchant or
	trader desirous of marrying an elite Californiana.
	These novels’ favorable portrayal of such women
	is noteworthy, since Mexican-American historians
	have concluded that unflattering literary depictions
(25)	of Mexicans were vital in rallying the United States
	public’s support for the Mexican-American War
	(1846–1848). The importance of economic alliances
	forged through marriages with Californianas explains
	this apparent contradiction. Because of their real-
(30)	life economic significance, the Californianas were
	portrayed more favorably than were others of the
	same nationality.