Oxford Handbook of Commodities History
Oxford Handbook of Commodities History

Author: Stubbs

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023

Total Pages: 753

ISBN-13: 0197502679

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"Commodities provide a lens through which local and global histories can be understood and written. The study of commodities history follows these goods as they make their way from land and water through processing and trade to eventual consumption. It is a fast-developing field with collaborative, comparative, and interdisciplinary research, with new information technologies becoming increasingly important. Although many individual researchers continue to focus on particular commodities and regions, they often do so in partnership with others working on different areas and employing a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, placing commodities history at the forefront of local and global historical analysis. This Oxford Handbook features contributions from scholars involved in these developments across a range of countries and linguistic regions. They discuss the state of the art in their fields, draw on their own work, and signal lacunae for future research. Each of its 31 chapters focuses on an important thematic area within commodities history: key approaches, global histories, modes of production, people and land, environmental impact, consumption, and new methodologies. Taken together, the Oxford Handbook of Commodities History offers insight into the directions in which commodities history is heading, and the multiple ways in which it can contribute to a better understanding of the world"--

Oil Spaces
Oil Spaces

Author: Carola Hein

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-08-23

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 1000449491

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Oil Spaces traces petroleum’s impact through a range of territories from across the world, showing how industrially drilled petroleum and its refined products have played a major role in transforming the built environment in ways that are often not visible or recognized. Over the past century and a half, industrially drilled petroleum has powered factories, built cities, and sustained nation-states. It has fueled ways of life and visions of progress, modernity, and disaster. In detailed international case studies, the contributors consider petroleum’s role in the built environment and the imagination. They study how petroleum and its infrastructure have served as a source of military conflict and political and economic power, inspiring efforts to create territories and reshape geographies and national boundaries. The authors trace ruptures and continuities between colonial and postcolonial frameworks, in locations as diverse as Sumatra, northeast China, Brazil, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Kuwait as well as heritage sites including former power stations in Italy and the port of Dunkirk, once a prime gateway through which petroleum entered Europe. By revealing petroleum’s role in organizing and imagining space globally, this book takes up a key task in imagining the possibilities of a post-oil future. It will be invaluable reading to scholars and students of architectural and urban history, planning, and geography of sustainable urban environments.

Water in the Arabian Peninsula
Water in the Arabian Peninsula

Author: Kamil A. Mahdi

Publisher: ISBS

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9780863722462

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Water scarcity in this dry region limits development possibilities and reduces the scope for economic diversification. The rapid economic growth of recent decades has increased water requirements beyond naturally sustainable levels. Inappropriate policies and technological solutions have placed the emphasis on meeting demand, instead of harnessing resources and managing water use. Depletion of groundwater is now common to most parts of this region, and there is also a high reliance on costly non-conventional alternatives. The 17 papers contained in this book address different aspects of this acute problem, with emphasis on policy issues and the need for structural change. The papers review policy experiences in several of the countries and analyse supply and resources constraints as well as water-using sectors. The social and economic ramifications of current water policies are considered and issues of policies reform are explored. Water resources planning and policy, environmental considerations, food security issues state subsdidies for argriculture and water, urban supply, regulatory institutions, demand management and development policy abjectives are all themes that run through this multi-disciplinary book. The papers in this book indicate that without a coherent and integrated set of institutional and policy measures, further investment and new technologies may offer more problems than solutions.

Oil for Food
Oil for Food

Author: Eckart Woertz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-04-25

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 0199659486

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"In Oil for Food, Eckart Woertz analyzes the geopolitical implications behind the current investment drive of Arab Gulf countries in food insecure countries like Sudan or Pakistan. Having lived in Dubai for seven years, and drawing on extensive archival sources and interviews, he gives the inside story of how regional food security concerns have developed historically, how domestic agro-lobbies shape policy making, and how the failed attempt to develop Sudan as an Arab bread-basket in the 1970s carries important lessons for today's investments drive." --