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This book faces the challenges and possibilities of conducting cultural and environmental history research today. Disciplinary commitments certainly influence the questions scholars ask and the ways they seek out answers, but some methodological challenges go beyond the boundaries of any one discipline. The book examines: how to account for the fact that humans are not the only actors in history yet dominate archival records; how to attend to the non-visual senses when traditional sources offer only a two-dimensional, non-sensory version of the past; and how effectively to use sources and means of communication made available in the digital age.

In this edited volume, leading and emerging scholars investigate for the first time the ways in which the size of an animal population impacts how they are viewed by humans and, conversely, how human perceptions of populations impact on animals.

While our world is characterized by mobility, global interactions, and increasing knowledge, we are facing serious challenges regarding the knowledge of the places around us. We understand and navigate our surroundings by relying on advanced technologies. Yet, a truly knowledgeable relationship to the places where we live and visit is lacking.

Reflecting on waste in the context of sustainability, materiality, social practices, subjectivity, and environmental challenges, the book covers settings from the municipal garbage crisis in Beirut, to food rescue campaigns in Hong Kong, and the toxic by-products of computer chip production in Silicon Valley.

Following the industrial revolution and post- war exponential increase in human population and consumption, conservation in myriad forms has been one particularly visible way in which the government and its agencies have tried to control, manage or produce nature for reasons other than raw exploitation. Using an interdisciplinary approach and including case studies from across the globe, this edited collection brings together geographers, sociologists, anthropologists and historians in order to examine the degree to which socio- political regimes facilitate and shape the emergence and development of nature states.

Humanities for the Environment, or HfE, is an ambitious project that from 2013-2015 was funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project networked universities and researchers internationally through a system of "Observatories." This book collects the work of contributors networked through the North American, Asia-Pacific, and Australia-Pacific Observatories. Humanities for the Environment showcases how humanists are working to "integrate knowledges" from diverse cultures and ontologies and pilot new "constellations of practice" that are moving beyond traditional contemplative or reflective outcomes (the book, the essay) towards solutions to the greatest social and environmental challenges of our time. With the still controversial concept of the "Anthropocene" as a starting point for a widening conversation, contributors range across geographies, ecosystems, climates and weather regimes; moving from icy, melting Arctic landscapes to the bleaching Australian Great Barrier Reef, and from an urban pedagogical "laboratory" in Phoenix, Arizona to Vatican City in Rome. Chapters explore the ways in which humanists, in collaboration with local communities, NGOs, nonprofits, international science research platforms and disciplines across academia, are responding to warming oceans, disappearing islands, collapsing fisheries, evaporating reservoirs of water, exploding bushfires, and spreading radioactive contamination.This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences interested in interdisciplinary questions of environment and culture.

This book brings together perspectives on food security and related environmental concerns from experts in the disciplines of literary studies, history, science, and social sciences.

This publication brings together for the first time, and in an interdisciplinary spirit, contemporary approaches to the study of plants provided by international scholars of established reputation, from both philosophy and relevant sustainability fields. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of Philosophy; Environmental and Sustainability studies.

Bringing together ecofeminism and ecological literary criticism (ecocriticism), this book presents diverse ways of understanding and responding to the tangled relationships between the personal, social, and environmental dimensions of human experience and expression.

This book recovers complex histories that continue to shape both how we understand climate and what we understand by it. It also examines how climate change compels us to rethink many of our existing traditional means of historical understanding. This book examines It addresses these questions climate change from transdisciplinary perspectives across the environmental humanities, including oral history, museum studies, history of religion, literary history, philosophy and critical legal studies..

The keyword of this book's title, "Perma/Culture," alludes to and plays on "permaculture," an international movement that can provide a framework for navigating the multiple "other worlds" within a broader environmental ethic. In an effort to introduce the concept of 'Perma/Culture' as a viable protocol for designing agricultural systems that mimic their natural counterparts, this edited collection brings together essays from an international team of scholars, activists and artists in which to provide a critical introduction to the ethicopolitical and cultural elements around the concept of 'Perma/Culture'. These multidisciplinary essays include a varied landscape of sites and practices, from postcolonial bioregionalism among coffee farmers in India to African American back-to-the-land movements; from an account of the rewards and difficulties of building community in Transition Towns to a description of the ad hoc infrastructure of a fracking protest camp.

This book explores the notion of endangerment which stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. It looks at some of the fundamental ways in which this process involves science, but also more than science: not only data and knowledge and institutions, but also affects and values. With a focus on endangerment sensibility, it encapsulates tensions between the normative and the utilitarian, the natural and the cultural.

This textbook provides an overview of different ways of conceptualising nature in epistemological terms, reflecting the tensions between the polarities of humans as masters or protectors of nature, or as part of or outside of nature.

In the age of climate change, the possibility that dramatic environmental transformations might cause the dislocation of millions of people has become not only a matter for scientific speculations or science-fiction narratives, but the object of strategic plans and military analysis. Environmental History of Modern Migrations offers a worldwide perspective on the history of migrations throughout the 19th and 20th century and provides an opportunity to reflect on the global ecological transformations and developments which have occurred throughout the last few centuries. With a primary focus on the environment/migration nexus, this book advocates that global environmental changes are not distinct from the global social transformations. Instead, it offers a progressive method of combining environmental and social history, which manages to both encompass and transcend current approaches to environmental justice issues.This edited collection will be of great interest to students and practitioners of environmental history and migration studies as well as those with an interest in history and sociology.

Throughout the early modern period, scientific debate and governmental action became increasingly preoccupied with the environment, generating discussion across Europe and the wider world as to how to improve land and climate for human benefit. This discourse eventually promoted the reconsideration of long-held beliefs about the role of climate in upholding the social order, driving economies and affecting public health. Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World explores the relationship between cultural perceptions of the environment and practical attempts at environmental regulation and change between 1500 and 1800. Taking a cultural and intellectual approach to early modern environmental governance, this edited collection combines an interpretative perspective with new insights into a period largely unfamiliar to environmental historians. Using a rich and multifaceted narrative, this book offers an understanding as to how efforts to enhance productive aspects of the environment were both led by and contributed to new conceptualisations of the role of `nature¿ in human society. This book offers a cultural and intellectual approach to early modern environmental history and will be of special interest to environmental, cultural and intellectual historians, as well as anyone with an interest in the culture and politics of environmental governance.

In recent decades science has experienced a revolutionary shift. The development and extensive application of computer modelling and simulation has transformed the knowledge¿making practices of scientific fields as diverse as aströphysics, genetics, robotics and demography. This epistemic transformation has brought with it a simultaneous heightening of political relevance and a renewal of international policy agendas, raising crucial questions about the nature and application of simulation knowledges throughout public policy. Through a diverse range of case studies spanning over a century of theoretical and practical developments in the atmospheric and environmental sciences, this book argues that computer modelling and simulation have substantially changed scientific and cultural practices and shaped the emergence of novel `cultures of prediction¿.Making an innovative, interdisciplinary contribution to understanding the impact of computer modelling on research practice, institutional configurations and broader cultures, this volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of climate change and the environmental sciences.

This book examines Brazil's position in the global ecological crisis and how social, political, ethical, scientific and economic issues affect its environmental performance.

Humanities for the Environment, or HfE, is an ambitious project that from 2013-2015 was funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project networked universities and researchers internationally through a system of "Observatories." This book collects the work of contributors networked through the North American, Asia-Pacific, and Australia-Pacific Observatories. Humanities for the Environment showcases how humanists are working to "integrate knowledges" from diverse cultures and ontologies and pilot new "constellations of practice" that are moving beyond traditional contemplative or reflective outcomes (the book, the essay) towards solutions to the greatest social and environmental challenges of our time. With the still controversial concept of the "Anthropocene" as a starting point for a widening conversation, contributors range across geographies, ecosystems, climates and weather regimes; moving from icy, melting Arctic landscapes to the bleaching Australian Great Barrier Reef, and from an urban pedagogical "laboratory" in Phoenix, Arizona to Vatican City in Rome. Chapters explore the ways in which humanists, in collaboration with local communities, NGOs, nonprofits, international science research platforms and disciplines across academia, are responding to warming oceans, disappearing islands, collapsing fisheries, evaporating reservoirs of water, exploding bushfires, and spreading radioactive contamination.This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences interested in interdisciplinary questions of environment and culture.

The museum sector has a moral obligation to use its collections and exhibitions and other events to explore some of the inequalities wrought by global warming. The book tackles the broad global issue of climate change through specific collections and in local places. It reflects the Pacific community at its core, but also embraces many other communities who will experience the adverse effects of climate change sooner or later. The book is rich with practical museum experience and detail, as well as critical, analytical and philosophical about where a museum can intervene to speak to this great conundrum of our times.