Sustainable Modernity
Sustainable Modernity

Author: Nina Witoszek

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1351765639

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The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351765633, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. In the 21st century, Norway, Denmark and Sweden remain the icons of fair societies, with high economic productivity and quality of life. But they are also an enigma in a cultural-evolutionary sense: though by no means following the same socio-economic formula, they are all cases of a "non-hubristic", socially sustainable modernity that puzzles outside observers. Using Nordic welfare states as its laboratory, Sustainable Modernity combines evolutionary and socio-cultural perspectives to illuminate the mainsprings of what the authors call the "well-being society". The main contention is that the Nordic uniqueness is not merely the outcome of one particular set of historical institutional or political arrangements, or sheer historical luck; rather, the high welfare creation inherent in the Nordic model has been predicated on a long and durable tradition of social cooperation, which has interacted with global competitive forces. Hence the socially sustainable Nordic modernity should be approached as an integrated and tightly orchestrated ecosystem based on a complex interplay of cooperative and competitive strategies within and across several domains: normative-cultural, socio-political and redistributive. The key question is: Can the Nordic countries uphold the balance of competition and cooperation and reproduce their resilience in the age of globalization, cultural collisions, the digital economy, the fragmentation of the work/life division, and often intrusive EU regulation? With contributors providing insights from the humanities, the social sciences and evolutionary science, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, sociology, history, institutional economics, Nordic studies and human evolution studies.

Sustainable Modernity
Sustainable Modernity

Author: Nina Witoszek

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-17

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 1351765620

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The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351765633, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. In the 21st century, Norway, Denmark and Sweden remain the icons of fair societies, with high economic productivity and quality of life. But they are also an enigma in a cultural-evolutionary sense: though by no means following the same socio-economic formula, they are all cases of a "non-hubristic", socially sustainable modernity that puzzles outside observers. Using Nordic welfare states as its laboratory, Sustainable Modernity combines evolutionary and socio-cultural perspectives to illuminate the mainsprings of what the authors call the "well-being society". The main contention is that the Nordic uniqueness is not merely the outcome of one particular set of historical institutional or political arrangements, or sheer historical luck; rather, the high welfare creation inherent in the Nordic model has been predicated on a long and durable tradition of social cooperation, which has interacted with global competitive forces. Hence the socially sustainable Nordic modernity should be approached as an integrated and tightly orchestrated ecosystem based on a complex interplay of cooperative and competitive strategies within and across several domains: normative-cultural, socio-political and redistributive. The key question is: Can the Nordic countries uphold the balance of competition and cooperation and reproduce their resilience in the age of globalization, cultural collisions, the digital economy, the fragmentation of the work/life division, and often intrusive EU regulation? With contributors providing insights from the humanities, the social sciences and evolutionary science, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of political science, sociology, history, institutional economics, Nordic studies and human evolution studies.

The Crisis of Global Modernity
The Crisis of Global Modernity

Author: Prasenjit Duara

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1107082250

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Drawing on historical sociology, transnational histories and Asian traditions, Duara seeks answers to the pressing global issue of environmental sustainability.

Wasted Lives
Wasted Lives

Author: Zygmunt Bauman

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-26

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 0745637159

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The production of ‘human waste’ – or more precisely, wasted lives, the ‘superfluous’ populations of migrants, refugees and other outcasts – is an inevitable outcome of modernization. It is an unavoidable side-effect of economic progress and the quest for order which is characteristic of modernity. As long as large parts of the world remained wholly or partly unaffected by modernization, they were treated by modernizing societies as lands that were able to absorb the excess of population in the ‘developed countries’. Global solutions were sought, and temporarily found, to locally produced overpopulation problems. But as modernization has reached the furthest lands of the planet, ‘redundant population’ is produced everywhere and all localities have to bear the consequences of modernity’s global triumph. They are now confronted with the need to seek – in vain, it seems – local solutions to globally produced problems. The global spread of the modernity has given rise to growing quantities of human beings who are deprived of adequate means of survival, but the planet is fast running out of places to put them. Hence the new anxieties about ‘immigrants’ and ‘asylum seekers’ and the growing role played by diffuse ‘security fears’ on the contemporary political agenda. With characteristic brilliance, this new book by Zygmunt Bauman unravels the impact of this transformation on our contemporary culture and politics and shows that the problem of coping with ‘human waste’ provides a key for understanding some otherwise baffling features of our shared life, from the strategies of global domination to the most intimate aspects of human relationships.

The Light-Green Society
The Light-Green Society

Author: Michael Bess

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2003-11-15

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780226044170

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The accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in postwar France, argues Michael Bess in this penetrating new history. On one hand, a preoccupation with natural qualities and equilibrium has increasingly infused France's economic and cultural life. On the other, human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment, whether through the intrusion of agriculture, industry, and urban growth, or through the much subtler and more well-intentioned efforts of ecological management. The Light-Green Society limns sharply these trends over the last fifty years. The rise of environmentalism in the 1960s stemmed from a fervent desire to "save" wild nature-nature conceived as a qualitatively distinct domain, wholly separate from human designs and endeavors. And yet, Bess shows, after forty years of environmentalist agitation, much of it remarkably successful in achieving its aims, the old conception of nature as a "separate sphere" has become largely untenable. In the light-green society, where ecology and technological modernity continually flow together, a new hybrid vision of intermingled nature-culture has increasingly taken its place.

Heritage Tourism in China
Heritage Tourism in China

Author: Hongliang Yan

Publisher: Channel View Publications

Published: 2017-01-25

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1845415957

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This book offers new approaches and insights into the relationships between heritage tourism and notions of modernity, identity building and sustainable development in China. It demonstrates that the role of the state, politics, institutional arrangements and tradition have a considerable impact on perceptions of these notions. The volume contributes to current debates on tradition and modernity; the study of heritage tourism; the negotiated power between stakeholders in tourism planning and policy-making and the study of China’s society. The approach and findings of the book are of value to those interested in the continuities and changes in Chinese society and to graduate students and researchers in tourism, cultural studies and China studies.

Environment and Global Modernity
Environment and Global Modernity

Author: Gert Spaargaren

Publisher: SAGE

Published: 2000-06-02

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1446264904

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This accomplished book argues that we can only make sense of environmental issues if we consider them as part of a more encompassing process of social transformation. It asks whether there is an emerging consensus between social scientists on the central issues in the debate on environmental change, and if concerns about the environment constitute a major prop to the process of globalization? The book provides a thorough discussion of the central themes in environmental sociology, identifying two traditions: ecological modernization theory and risk society theory.

Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture
Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture

Author: C. A. Bowers

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1995-01-01

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780791424971

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Exposes the faulty assumptions that underlie modern education in the areas of moral education, creativity, and intelligence, showing how these assumptions must be changed in order to produce an ecologically sustainable culture.

China's Green Religion
China's Green Religion

Author: James Miller

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2017-05-16

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0231544537

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How can Daoism, China's indigenous religion, give us the aesthetic, ethical, political, and spiritual tools to address the root causes of our ecological crisis and construct a sustainable future? In China's Green Religion, James Miller shows how Daoism orients individuals toward a holistic understanding of religion and nature. Explicitly connecting human flourishing to the thriving of nature, Daoism fosters a "green" subjectivity and agency that transforms what it means to live a flourishing life on earth. Through a groundbreaking reconstruction of Daoist philosophy and religion, Miller argues for four key, green insights: a vision of nature as a subjective power that informs human life; an anthropological idea of the porous body based on a sense of qi flowing through landscapes and human beings; a tradition of knowing founded on the experience of transformative power in specific landscapes and topographies; and an aesthetic and moral sensibility based on an affective sensitivity to how the world pervades the body and the body pervades the world. Environmentalists struggle to raise consciousness for their cause, Miller argues, because their activism relies on a quasi-Christian concept of "saving the earth." Instead, environmentalists should integrate nature and culture more seamlessly, cultivating through a contemporary intellectual vocabulary a compelling vision of how the earth materially and spiritually supports human flourishing.

Sustainable Urban Development and Globalization
Sustainable Urban Development and Globalization

Author: Agostino Petrillo

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-24

Total Pages: 489

ISBN-13: 3319619888

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This book equips readers with a deeper understanding of the challenges posed by radical socioeconomic, environmental, and cultural changes due to globalization and describes effective, sustainable solutions to these challenges. The focus is especially on the rapid urbanization processes in countries of the Global South, which are giving rise to dramatic new problems of spatial and social inequality and difficult environmental challenges in relation to climate change. Readers will gain skills and knowledge that will help them to develop an integrated, multidisciplinary approach to planning, design, and management of urban settlements and territories in contexts with a high level of social, economic, territorial, and landscape vulnerability. The coverage includes, for example, strategies to promote social inclusion, improve housing quality, ensure adequate education, protect cultural heritage, enhance risk management, and address issues in the food-energy-water nexus. Among the authors are leading experts from the Polytechnic University of Milan, where a multidisciplinary set of studies and research projects in the field have been undertaken in recent years.