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Author: Erica Schoenberger Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135051585 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
We are at an environmental impasse. Many blame our personal choices about the things we consume and the way we live. This is only part of the problem. Different forms of social power - political, economic and ideological - structure the choices we have available. This book analyses how we make social and environmental history and why we end up where we do. Using case studies from different environmental domains – earth and water, air and fire – Nature, Choice and Social Power examines the form that social power takes and how it can harm the environment and hinder our efforts to act in our own best interests. The case studies challenge conventional wisdoms about why gold is valuable, why the internal combustion engine triumphed, and when and why suburbs sprawled. The book shows how the power of individuals, the power of classes, the power of the market and the power of the state at different times and in different ways were critical to setting us on a path to environmental degradation. It also challenges conventional wisdoms about what we need to do now. Rather than reducing consumption and shrinking from outcomes we don’t want, it proposes growing towards outcomes we do want. We invested massive resources in creating our problems; it will take equally large investments to fix them. Written in a clear and engaging style, the book is underpinned with a political economy framework and addresses how we should understand our responsibility to the environment and to each other as individuals within a large and impersonal system.
Author: Erica Schoenberger Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135051577 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 395
Book Description
We are at an environmental impasse. Many blame our personal choices about the things we consume and the way we live. This is only part of the problem. Different forms of social power - political, economic and ideological - structure the choices we have available. This book analyses how we make social and environmental history and why we end up where we do. Using case studies from different environmental domains – earth and water, air and fire – Nature, Choice and Social Power examines the form that social power takes and how it can harm the environment and hinder our efforts to act in our own best interests. The case studies challenge conventional wisdoms about why gold is valuable, why the internal combustion engine triumphed, and when and why suburbs sprawled. The book shows how the power of individuals, the power of classes, the power of the market and the power of the state at different times and in different ways were critical to setting us on a path to environmental degradation. It also challenges conventional wisdoms about what we need to do now. Rather than reducing consumption and shrinking from outcomes we don’t want, it proposes growing towards outcomes we do want. We invested massive resources in creating our problems; it will take equally large investments to fix them. Written in a clear and engaging style, the book is underpinned with a political economy framework and addresses how we should understand our responsibility to the environment and to each other as individuals within a large and impersonal system.
Author: Bram Büscher Publisher: University of California Press ISBN: 0520371453 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 254
Book Description
How should we share the truth about the environmental crisis? At a moment when even the most basic facts about ecology and the climate face contestation and contempt, environmental advocates are at an impasse. Many have turned to social media and digital technologies to shift the tide. But what if their strategy is not only flawed, but dangerous? The Truth about Nature follows environmental actors as they turn to the internet to save nature. It documents how conservation efforts are transformed through the political economy of platforms and the algorithmic feeds that have been instrumental to the rise of post-truth politics. Developing a novel account of post-truth as an expression of power under platform capitalism, Bram Büscher shows how environmental actors attempt to mediate between structural forms of platform power and the contingent histories and contexts of particular environmental issues. Bringing efforts at wildlife protection in Southern Africa into dialogue with a sweeping analysis of truth and power in the twenty-first century, Büscher makes the case for a new environmental politics that radically reignites the art of speaking truth to power.
Author: Noel Castree Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134613903 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 397
Book Description
We listen to a cacophony of voices instructing us how to think and feel about nature, including our own bodies. The news media, wildlife documentaries, science magazines, and environmental NGOs are among those clamouring for our attention. But are we empowered by all this knowledge or is our dependence on various communities allowing our thoughts, sentiments and activities to be unduly governed by others? Making Sense of Nature shows that what we call ‘nature’ is made sense of for us in ways that make it central to social order, social change and social dissent. By utilising insights and extended examples from anthropology, cultural studies, human geography, philosophy, politics, sociology, science studies, this interdisciplinary text asks whether we can better make sense of nature for ourselves, and thus participate more meaningfully in momentous decisions about the future of life – human and non-human – on the planet. This book shows how ‘nature’ can be made sense of without presuming its naturalness. The challenge is not so much to rid ourselves of the idea of nature and its ‘collateral concepts’ (such as genes) but instead, we need to be more alert to how, why and with what effects ideas about ‘nature’ get fashioned and deployed in specific situations. Among other things, the book deals with science and scientists, the mass media and journalists, ecotourism, literature and cinema, environmentalists, advertising and big business. This innovative text contains numerous case studies and examples from daily life to put theory and subject matter into context, as well as study tasks, a glossary and suggested further reading. The case studies cover a range of topics, range from forestry in Canada and Guinea, to bestiality in Washington State, to how human genetics is reported in Western newspapers, to participatory science experiments in the UK. Making Sense of Nature will empower readers from a wide range of fields across the social sciences, humanities and physical sciences.
Author: Thomas Dunlap Publisher: University of Washington Press ISBN: 0295989815 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
The human impulse to religion--the drive to explain the world, humans, and humans’ place in the universe – can be seen to encompass environmentalism as an offshoot of the secular, material faith in human reason and power that dominates modern society. Faith in Nature traces the history of environmentalism--and its moral thrust--from its roots in the Enlightenment and Romanticism through the Progressive Era to the present. Drawing astonishing parallels between religion and environmentalism, the book examines the passion of the movement’s adherents and enemies alike, its concern with the moral conduct of daily life, and its attempt to answer fundamental questions about the underlying order of the world and of humanity’s place within it. Thomas Dunlap is among the leading environmental historians and historians of science in the United States. Originally trained as a chemist, he has a rigorous understanding of science and appreciates its vital importance to environmental thought. But he is also a devout Catholic who believes that the insights of religious revelation need not necessarily be at odds with the insights of scientific investigation. This book grew from his own religious journey and his attempts to understand human ethical obligations and spiritual debts to the natural world. CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2005
Author: Peter Dickens Publisher: Temple University Press ISBN: 9780877229681 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
In this wide-ranging effort to theorize about the relationships between society and nature, Peter Dickens attempts to reconstruct social theory in a way that enables it to speak to contemporary environmental issues. After reviewing existing sociological traditions, he draws on the early work of Karl Marx to suggest that processes and relations in the workplace are the main source of people's separation from nature. In addition, people's understanding of "nature" tends to mirror their experience of the social world. Redefining the work of Anthony Giddens in an ecological direction, Dickens analyzes developments in biological thinking that seem consistent with this approach. He considers the role of culture, and he critiques the contemporary "deep green" and "deep ecology" movements. Focusing on the alienation of human begins from the natural world and the place of nature in their "deep mental structures," the author works in part from a Marxist perspective but draws a wide variety of social psychological, and biological theories into the discussion. Society and Nature not only addresses a central debate in contemporary social science regarding this interrelationship but also responds to the intellectual challenge presented by natural scientific concepts of environmental problems that oversimplify or ignore their political or social relational dimensions. Author note: Peter Dickens is Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies and Social Policy at the University of Sussex (UK) and the author of Urban Sociology: Society, Locality and Human Nature.
Author: Bruno Latour Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674013476 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
A major work by one of the more innovative thinkers of our time, Politics of Nature does nothing less than establish the conceptual context for political ecology--transplanting the terms of ecology into more fertile philosophical soil than its proponents have thus far envisioned. Bruno Latour announces his project dramatically: "Political ecology has nothing whatsoever to do with nature, this jumble of Greek philosophy, French Cartesianism and American parks." Nature, he asserts, far from being an obvious domain of reality, is a way of assembling political order without due process. Thus, his book proposes an end to the old dichotomy between nature and society--and the constitution, in its place, of a collective, a community incorporating humans and nonhumans and building on the experiences of the sciences as they are actually practiced. In a critique of the distinction between fact and value, Latour suggests a redescription of the type of political philosophy implicated in such a "commonsense" division--which here reveals itself as distinctly uncommonsensical and in fact fatal to democracy and to a healthy development of the sciences. Moving beyond the modernist institutions of "mononaturalism" and "multiculturalism," Latour develops the idea of "multinaturalism," a complex collectivity determined not by outside experts claiming absolute reason but by "diplomats" who are flexible and open to experimentation. Table of Contents: Introduction: What Is to Be Done with Political Ecology? 1. Why Political Ecology Has to Let Go of Nature First, Get Out of the Cave Ecological Crisis or Crisis of Objectivity? The End of Nature The Pitfall of "Social Representations" of Nature The Fragile Aid of Comparative Anthropology What Successor for the Bicameral Collective? 2. How to Bring the Collective Together Difficulties in Convoking the Collective First Division: Learning to Be Circumspect with Spokespersons Second Division: Associations of Humans and Nonhumans Third Division between Humans and Nonhumans: Reality and Recalcitrance A More or Less Articulated Collective The Return to Civil Peace 3. A New Separation of Powers Some Disadvantages of the Concepts of Fact and Value The Power to Take into Account and the Power to Put in Order The Collective's Two Powers of Representation Verifying That the Essential Guarantees Have Been Maintained A New Exteriority 4. Skills for the Collective The Third Nature and the Quarrel between the Two "Eco" Sciences Contribution of the Professions to the Procedures of the Houses The Work of the Houses The Common Dwelling, the Oikos 5. Exploring Common Worlds Time's Two Arrows The Learning Curve The Third Power and the Question of the State The Exercise of Diplomacy War and Peace for the Sciences Conclusion: What Is to Be Done? Political Ecology! Summary of the Argument (for Readers in a Hurry...) Glossary Notes Bibliography Index From the book: What is to be done with political ecology? Nothing. What is to be done? Political ecology! All those who have hoped that the politics of nature would bring about a renewal of public life have asked the first question, while noting the stagnation of the so-called "green" movements. They would like very much to know why so promising an endeavor has so often come to naught. Appearances notwithstanding, everyone is bound to answer the second question the same way. We have no choice: politics does not fall neatly on one side of a divide and nature on the other. From the time the term "politics" was invented, every type of politics has been defined by its relation to nature, whose every feature, property, and function depends on the polemical will to limit, reform, establish, short-circuit, or enlighten public life. As a result, we cannot choose whether to engage in it surreptitiously, by distinguishing between questions of nature and questions of politics, or explicitly, by treating those two sets of questions as a single issue that arises for all collectives. While the ecology movements tell us that nature is rapidly invading politics, we shall have to imagine - most often aligning ourselves with these movements but sometimes against them - what a politics finally freed from the sword of Damocles we call nature might be like.
Author: Pierre Charbonnier Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1509543732 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.
Author: William Aspray Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 153818382X Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 515
Book Description
This is not a book about the history of computing or the history of information. Instead, it is a meta-historical book about the research and writing of these types of history. The formal presentation of historical research in the form of a publication often hides the process by which the topic was selected, boundaries were drawn, evidence was selected, analytic approach was chosen and applied, results were presented, how this work fits into a larger body of scholarship, the implicit goals and biases of the author, and many other similar issues. This process of learning about the various ways to carry out computer history or information history can be enriched by this collection of reflective essays by experienced scholars, discussing the craft that they practice. This is a book that concerns both computer history and information history. The first scholarship in computer history by professionally trained scholars began to appear in the 1970s, so we are approaching a half century of research and publication in this area. The field has generated numerous pieces of exemplary scholarship from various perspectives such as intellectual history of individual technologies, business histories of firms, economic histories of market sectors, externalist histories of funding and professionalization, and so on. However, the field continues to evolve, especially as computing and communication technologies have drawn together in the form of the Internet and social media; and with them a new set of scholars is participating, drawn not only from the history of science and technology, but also from the communication and media studies fields. Powerful theories, approaches, and frameworks are being increasingly drawn more widely from both the humanities and the social sciences to inform the practice of computer history. The scholars in this volume look at what’s happened, what’s happening now, and where historical scholarship in these disciplines is headed.
Author: Vaclav Smil Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262195658 Category : Bioenergetics Languages : en Pages : 495
Book Description
A comprehensive, systematic, analytically unified, and interdisciplinary treatment of energy in nature and society, from solar radiation and photosynthesis to our fossil fueled civilization and its environmental consequences.
Author: Hagop A. Yacoubian Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030472604 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
This edited volume brings closer two contemporary science education research areas: Nature of Science (NOS) and Social Justice (SJ). It starts a dialogue on the characteristics of NOS for SJ with the purpose of advancing the existing discussion and creating new avenues for research. Using a variety of approaches and perspectives, the authors of the different chapters engage in a dialogue on the construct of NOS for SJ, its characteristics, as well as ways of addressing it in science classrooms. Issues addressed are related to why a school science aiming at SJ should address NOS; what NOS-related content, skills and attitudes form the basis when aiming at SJ; and how school science can address NOS for SJ. Through a set of theoretical and empirical chapters, the authors suggest answers, but they also pose new questions on what NOS for SJ can mean, and what issues need to be taken into consideration in future research and practice. Chapter “Nature of Science for Social Justice: Why, What and How?” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com
Author: Erica Schoenberger
Author: Erica Schoenberger
Author: Bram Büscher
Author: Noel Castree
Author: Thomas Dunlap
Author: Peter Dickens
Author: Bruno Latour
Author: Pierre Charbonnier
Author: William Aspray
Author: Vaclav Smil
Author: Hagop A. Yacoubian