Futures: Imagining Socioecological Transformation

Futures: Imagining Socioecological Transformation

Author: Bruce Braun

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-02-02

Total Pages: 597

ISBN-13: 1317211251

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Futures: Imagining Socioecological Transformation brings together leading scholars to explore how we might know, enact, and struggle for, the conjoined social and ecological transformations we need to achieve just and sustainable futures. The question of transformation, and how it might be achieved, is explored across a variety of topics and geographical sites, and through heterodox analytical and theoretical approaches, in a collective effort to move beyond a form of critique that hands down judgements, to one that brings new ideas and new possibilities to life. Chapters are lively and original engagements with concrete situations that sparkle with creativity. Together, they add up to an impressive study of how to live, and what to struggle for, in the complex socioecological landscapes of the Anthropocene. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.


From the Margins to the Mainstream

From the Margins to the Mainstream

Author: Anna Pigott

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13:

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In light of widespread claims about a lack of imagination in response to socioecological crises, this study explores various projects in Wales in order to critically examine the kinds of imaginaries of socioecological transformation that these projects are generating. The Welsh Government's pioneering Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015) provides the context for the research, and this study presents the first critical analysis of this new legislation, and the imaginaries associated with it. Alongside this analysis, however, the study also takes more marginal projects and practices seriously as forms of "minor theory" that might present alternative ways of doing things. To this end, the study has engaged with a range of projects that are envisioning socioecological transformation, including projects in the arts, alternative agriculture, and renewable energy.The study thus engages with imaginaries of socioecological transformation "from the margins to the mainstream", not by positing these imaginaries as "unimportant" as opposed to "important" (respectively), but by seeking to give equal attention to the political potential of the kinds of ideas that are in play, and what kinds of socioecological futures these ideas make possible. Collective imaginaries of socioecological crises, and the ideas that sustain them, are an important field of struggle with regard to how particular forms of transformation are, or are not, set in motion. The thesis explores three main themes: time and futurity, human-environment relations, and the role of art in socioecological transformation, and shows how notions of complexity, non-linearity, and more-than-human agency emerge as important ideas, and often in unexpected or overlooked places. The research is based on combinations of participant observation, interview, and document analysis, and adopts a standpoint that research does not simply represent how worlds are made, but also participates in their making.


Common Futures

Common Futures

Author: Schismenos Alexandros Schismenos

Publisher: Black Rose Books Ltd.

Published: 2020-02-11

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 155164777X

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What does the future hold? Is the desertification of the planet, driven by state and corporate authority, the final horizon of history? Is the dystopian future implied by the systemic degradation of nature and society inescapable? From marginal activist groups to governments and interstate organizations, all appear to be concerned with what the future of our shared world will look like. Yet even amid the ongoing global crisis caused by capitalism, the potential of a different, radically rooted future has also appeared. Common Futures explores the global emergence of twenty-first-century social movements, opposed to capitalism and state authority. These movements, Yavor Tarinski and Alexandros Schismenos show, transcend traditional political forms of organization and try to form autonomous networks premised on direct democracy and solidarity. The authors identify the importance of grassroots movements, which can bring radical change and create a more democratic and ecological future.Common Futures examines the social and political roots of the environmental crisis and the relationship between ecology and direct democracy. But Tarinski and Schismenos go beyond the analysis of crises, contemporary struggles, and social movements: Common Futures also clarifies the conditions for the re-creation of free public time and space and point to practical steps that we can take to alleviate the problems of our future.


Climate Change

Climate Change

Author: Mike Hulme

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-27

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1000413233

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Written by a leading geographer of climate, this book offers a unique guide to students and general readers alike for making sense of this profound, far-reaching, and contested idea. It presents climate change as an idea with a past, a present, and a future. In ten carefully crafted chapters, Climate Change offers a synoptic and inter-disciplinary understanding of the idea of climate change from its varied historical and cultural origins; to its construction more recently through scientific endeavour; to the multiple ways in which political, social, and cultural movements in today’s world seek to make sense of and act upon it; to the possible futures of climate, however it may be governed and imagined. The central claim of the book is that the full breadth and power of the idea of climate change can only be grasped from a vantage point that embraces the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. This vantage point is what the book offers, written from the perspective of a geographer whose career work on climate change has drawn across the full range of academic disciplines. The book highlights the work of leading geographers in relation to climate change; examples, illustrations, and case study boxes are drawn from different cultures around the world, and questions are posed for use in class discussions. The book is written as a student text, suitable for disciplinary and inter-disciplinary undergraduate and graduate courses that embrace climate change from within social science and humanities disciplines. Science students studying climate change on inter-disciplinary programmes will also benefit from reading it, as too will the general reader looking for a fresh and distinctive account of climate change.


Change Management During Unprecedented Times

Change Management During Unprecedented Times

Author: Tennin, Kyla Latrice

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2023-04-25

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 1668475111

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Conclusively, resilience, education, financial inclusion, digital transformation, strategic partnerships, and particularly change management are needed when crises occur in order to save and advance organizational ecosystems and economies. Therefore, it is crucial to know about the ideation and processes of change management to improve companies’ negative circumstances. Change Management During Unprecedented Times examines organizational change management through the lenses of research and innovative practices contained within the fields of leadership and organizational change. The book enlightens communities through the efforts of a research perspective that amplifies practice-based potential in applying theory, models, and frameworks to real-time issues. Covering topics such as technology, ethics, entrepreneurship, and communication, this reference work is ideal for business owners, managers, researchers, scholars, academicians, practitioners, instructors, and students.


Ecology of Common Care

Ecology of Common Care

Author: Wolf Rainer Wendt

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-02-11

Total Pages: 81

ISBN-13: 3030656993

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This book offers an ecological foundation for social work and for care provision in general. It presents the ecosocial approach according to its origins, distinguishing it from other theoretical social work approaches and applying it to various areas of care for welfare. The ecological anchoring of social welfare and common care is an emerging topic in political, organisational, and person-related development of human services and social work. In an era of crisis, this anchoring is an essential contribution to the study of sustainable social provision. The book embeds the dispositions about it in the ecology of the protection and securing of common life. Ecology of Common Care: The Ecosocial Approach as a Theory of Social Work and Human Service is an essential text that should engage the academic community of educators and researchers in social work and other human services professions, as well as students in bachelor's and master's programmes in these professions.


Routledge Handbook of Social Futures

Routledge Handbook of Social Futures

Author: Carlos López Galviz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-22

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 0429803842

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Featuring chapters from an international range of leading and emerging scholars, this Handbook provides a collection of cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research that sheds new light on contemporary futures studies. Engaging with key defining questions of the early twenty-first century such as climate change, big data, AI, the future of economics, education, mental health, cities and more, the Handbook provides a review and synthesis of futures scholarship, highlighting the role that societies can and should play in their making. While the various chapters demonstrate how futures emerge and take shape in particular places at particular times, the distinctive insight provided by the volume overall is that futures thinking today must be social and contextual. By presenting a range of futures work from contexts around the globe, the Handbook contextualizes techniques – forecasting, backcasting, scenario planning, collaboration and co-production– to ask how different dimensions of the social are created and circulated in the process. Through its thirty chapters, the volume explores and interrogates narratives, anticipations, enactments, ecologies, collaborations, prospections and so on to highlight which versions of the social are legitimized and which are encouraged and foreclosed. This Handbook opens an important conversation about the centrality of the social in futures thinking. By bringing arts, humanities and social sciences scholars and practitioners into conversation with biologists, environmental, climate and computer scientists, this volume seeks to encourage new pathways across, between and within multiple disciplines to interrogate the futures we need and want. The social must be our starting point if we are to steer our planet in a direction that supports good lives for the many, everywhere.


Climate and Culture

Climate and Culture

Author: Giuseppe Feola

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-10-03

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1108422500

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Discusses how culture both facilitates and inhibits our ability to address, live with, and make sense of climate change.


Palm Oil Diaspora

Palm Oil Diaspora

Author: Case Watkins

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-05-20

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 1108787932

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Behind the social and environmental destruction of modern palm oil production lies a long and complex history of landscapes, cultures, and economies linking Africa and its diaspora in the Atlantic World. Case Watkins traces palm oil from its prehistoric emergence in western Africa to biodiverse groves and cultures in Northeast Brazil, and finally the plantation monocultures plundering contemporary rainforest communities. Drawing on ethnography, landscape interpretation, archives, travelers' accounts, and geospatial analysis, Watkins examines human-environmental relations too often overlooked in histories and geographies of the African diaspora, and uncovers a range of formative contributions of people and ecologies of African descent to the societies and environments of the (post)colonial Americas. Bridging literatures on Black geographies, Afro-Brazilian and Atlantic studies, political ecology, and decolonial theory and praxis, this study connects diverse concepts and disciplines to analyze and appreciate the power, complexity, and potentials of Bahia's Afro-Brazilian palm oil economy.


Considerations on Education for Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability

Considerations on Education for Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability

Author: Sart, Gamze

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2023-05-08

Total Pages: 549

ISBN-13: 1668483572

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Considerable increases in economic growth and development, population, and urbanization have been experienced in the world as of the industrial revolution, but significant environmental degradation, climate change, resource depletion, inequality in education and income, gender inequality, and poverty have accompanied these developments. In this context, the joint efforts of the United Nations and countries have led to the emergence of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development consisting of 17 sustainable development goals to overcome these problems. One of the sustainable development goals is quality education. Education can influence the achievement of other sustainable development goals through various channels. Considerations on Education for Economic, Social, and Environmental Sustainability explores the impact of education on the main components of sustainable development consisting of economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Covering topics such as business transformation, transitional innovation, and the professional integration of graduates, this premier reference source is an excellent resource for business leaders, government officials, sociologists, educators of higher and K-12 education, preservice teachers, administrators, policymakers, researchers, and academicians.