Annotation. Six essays by Finnish scholars (which accounts for some of the notes being in Finnish) discuss the "new" science of environmental history, issues and case studies of change over time in forested Northern Hemisphere zones due to natural and human forces, and Western conceptions of wilderness. The editors are with the U. of Helsinki, whose press first published the book in 1999. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, Monte Verde, Costa Rica has emerged as one of the most renowned sites of nature conservation and ecotourism in Costa Rica, and some would argue, Latin America. It has received substantial attention in literature and media on tropical conservation, sustainable development, and tourism. Yet most of that analysis has uncritically evaluated the Monte Verde phenomenon, using celebratory language and barely scratching the surface of the many-faceted socio-cultural transformations provoked by and accompanying environmentalism. Because of its stature, Monte Verde represents an ideal case study to examine the socio-cultural and political complexities and dilemmas of practicing environmentalism in rural Costa Rica. Based on many years of close observation, this book offers rich and original material on the ongoing struggles between environmental activists and of collective and oppositional politics to Monte Verde’s new “culture of nature.”
Chinese food is one of the most recognizable and widely consumed cuisines in the world. Almost no town on earth is without a Chinese restaurant of some kind, and Chinese canned, frozen, and preserved foods are available in shops from Nairobi to Quito. But the particulars of Chinese cuisine vary widely from place to place as its major ingredients and techniques have been adapted to local agriculture and taste profiles. To trace the roots of Chinese foodways, one must look back to traditional food systems before the early days of globalization. Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China traces the development of the food systems that coincided with China's emergence as an empire. Before extensive trade and cultural exchange with Europe was established, Chinese farmers and agriculturalists developed systems that used resources in sustainable and efficient ways, permitting intensive and productive techniques to survive over millennia. Fields, gardens, semiwild lands, managed forests, and specialized agricultural landscapes all became part of an integrated network that produced maximum nutrients with minimal input—though not without some environmental cost. E. N. Anderson examines premodern China's vast, active network of trade and contact, such as the routes from Central Asia to Eurasia and the slow introduction of Western foods and medicines under the Mongol Empire. Bringing together a number of new findings from archaeology, history, and field studies of environmental management, Food and Environment in Early and Medieval China provides an updated picture of language relationships, cultural innovations, and intercultural exchanges.
Sources and methods -- Rulers and rivers -- Female feck -- Dietary entanglements -- Resisting luxury -- After the encounter -- Transformation in the natural history museum.
Rupert Darwall’s Green Tyranny traces the alarming origins of the green agenda, revealing how environmental scares have been deployed by our global rivals as a political instrument to contest American power around the world. Drawing on extensive historical and policy analysis, this timely and provocative book offers a lucid history of environmental alarmism and failed policies, explaining how “scientific consensus” is manufactured and abused by politicians with duplicitous motives and totalitarian tendencies.
This book argues that an attentive encounter with nature is of key importance for the development of an environmentally appropriate culture. The fundamental idea is that the environmental degradation that we are increasingly experiencing is best conceived as the consequence of a cultural mismatch: our cultures seem not to be appropriate to the natural environment in which we move and on which we depend in thoroughgoing ways. In addressing this problem, Thomas Heyd weaves together a rich tapestry of perspectives on human interactions with the natural world, ranging from traditional modes of managing human communities that include the natural environment, to the consideration of poetic travelogues, ecological restoration and botanic gardens. The volume is divided into three parts, which respectively consider the relation of human beings to nature in terms of ethics, aesthetics and culture. It engages the current literature in each of these areas with the help of inter-disciplinary approaches, as well as on the basis of personal encounters with natural spaces and processes. The ultimate aim of this book is to make a contribution to the development of a cultural fabric that is suitable to the natural spaces and processes in which we may thrive, and on which we all depend as individuals and as a species.
One day, Matthew Eaton was walking through an impromptu animal shelter display at his local pet store when suddenly an eight-month-old kitten dug his claws into Eaton’s flesh. Eaton recognized that the “eyes of this cat and the curve of his claw” compelled a response analogous to those found in the writings of Buber, Levinas, and Derrida. And not just Eaton but a whole community of theologians have found themselves in an encounter with particular places and animals that demands rich theological reflection. Eaton enlisted fellow editors Harvie and Bechtel to collect the essays in this volume, in which theologians listen to horses, rats, snakes, cats, dogs, and the earth itself, who become new theological voices demanding a response. In this volume, the voice of the more-than-human world is heard as making theology possible. These essays suggest that what we say theologically represents not simply ideas of our own making subsequently superimposed onto the natural world through our own discovery, but rather flow from an expressive Earth. With additional contributions from: Kimberly Carfore Lisa E. Dahill Celia Deane-Drummond Heather Eaton Nathan Kowalsky Abigail Lofte Jame Schaefer Cristina D. Vanin Mark Wallace Grace Y. Kao Chris Carter John Berkman Laura Hobgood
Seeing Nature is a series of true stories or parables that offer tools for understanding relationships in the natural world. Many of the stories take the reader to wild landscapes, including canyons, tundra, and mountain ridges, while others contemplate the human-made world: water-diversion trenches and supermarket check-out lines. At one point, Krafel discovers a world in a one-inch-square patch of ordinary ground. Inspiring for parents and teachers seeking to encourage excitement about the positive role of people in nature, Krafel's work harkens to St. Exupery's The Little Prince, Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and Jean Giono's The Man Who Planted Trees. As Barbara Damrosch has noted: [This book] is a gift.... With curiosity, wit, and a spare and graceful style, Krafel notes why birds in flocks land as they do, how islands can move upstream in a river, how kelp forests, swaying gently, break the force of the sea's power, how tundra plants create whole ecosystems on bare rock from mere specks of life. Yet there are no long-winded sermons about the woods, or cute anthropomorphizations of animals. The book's economical, unsentimental style is part of its originality. Paul Krafel's years as a park ranger afforded him time to walk and think--his job was to observe the world around him. He is now a teacher, creating a curriculum for young people that is built on a startlingly simple truth: The world around us is an extended conversation between "upward spirals"--nature in regenerative, procreative modes--and downward spirals toward entropy and disintegration. As nature refreshes and rebuilds, the downward spirals are overcome. Nature's process becomes the process of replenishing hope.
"Over 15 chapters, Dunaway transforms what we know about icons and events. Seeing Green is the first history of ads, films, political posters, and magazine photography in the postwar American environmental movement. From fear of radioactive fallout during the Cold War to anxieties about global warming today, images have helped to produce what Dunaway calls "ecological citizenship, " telling us that "we are all to blame." Dunaway heightens our awareness of how depictions of environmental catastrophes are constructed, manipulated, and fought over" -- Publisher information.
“Groundbreaking in its call to reconsider our approach to the slow rhythm of time in the very concrete realms of environmental health and social justice.” —Wold Literature Today The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
