Author: Klaus Dodds
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780239475
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 267
Get Book Here
Book Description
In Ice, Klaus Dodds provides a wide-ranging exploration of the cultural, natural, and geopolitical history of this most slippery of subjects. Beyond Earth, ice has been found on other planets, moons, and meteors—and scientists even think that ice-rich asteroids played a pivotal role in bringing water to our blue home. But our outlook need not be cosmic to see ice’s importance. Here today and gone tomorrow in many parts of the temperate world, ice is a perennial feature of polar and mountainous regions, where it has long shaped human culture. But as climates change, ice caps and glaciers melt, and waters rise, more than ever this frozen force touches at the core of who we are. As Dodds reveals, ice has played a prominent role in shaping both the earth’s living communities and its geology. Throughout history, humans have had fun with it, battled over it, struggled with it, and made money from it—and every time we open our refrigerator doors, we’re reminded how ice has transformed our relationship with food. Our connection to ice has been captured in art, literature, movies, and television, as well as made manifest in sport and leisure. In our landscapes and seascapes, too, we find myriad reminders of ice’s chilly power, clues as to how our lakes, mountains, and coastlines have been indelibly shaped by the advance and retreat of ice and snow. Beautifully illustrated throughout, Ice is an informative, thought-provoking guide to a substance both cold and compelling.
Author: Amber Lincoln
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500480664
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
From the origins of the Arctic to its contemporary life, this book is an intriguing survey of human achievement in a place relatively unknown to the rest of the world. For more than 25,000 years, Arctic peoples have made warm and hospitable homes in diverse and innovative ways out of ecosystems of ice. For the first time in their long history, however, Arctic communities are facing the real possibility that the foundations of their way of life—sea ice and permafrost—will soon disappear. Published to coincide with a major exhibition at the British Museum, Arctic: culture and climate presents the history of the Arctic through the lens of climate and weather, and features a variety of fascinating objects, many of which are published here for the first time, including sealskin kayaks, drums used by shamans, traditional costumes, and contemporary art. This remarkable book explores the origins of Arctic peoples, early trade relationships between cultural groups, and relationships with animals, weather and their environments. It examines the strategies that indigenous people have used to deal with rapid transformations brought about by European explorations and colonial governments and sheds light on how these same strategies are being utilized today to mitigate the effects of global climate change. Bringing together indigenous and non-indigenous interdisciplinary scholars, this book is an arresting insight into the ways of life and material culture of Arctic peoples.
Author: Monica Tennberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429614535
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Get Book Here
Book Description
This book focuses on the understudied social and cultural dimensions of sustainability in the Arctic. More specifically, it explores these thematics through paying attention to resources in different definitions and forms and the ways in which they entangle in the realities and expectations of social and cultural sustainability in the region. The book approaches resources as socially and culturally constructed and also draws attention to social, human and cultural capabilities and the roles they have in making and shaping the imaginaries of sustainability. Together, this volume and its case studies contribute to a broadened understanding of the interplay of natural and material resources and social and cultural capabilities as well as their discursive framings. This multidisciplinary text includes contributions from political sciences, sociology, gender studies, regional studies, economics and art research. With its wide range of conceptually informed case studies, the book is relevant for researchers and professionals as well as advanced students and for institutions and organizations offering education in Arctic affairs.
Author: Andy Bruno
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110714471X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 311
Get Book Here
Book Description
This in-depth exploration of five industries in the Kola Peninsula examines Soviet power and its interaction with the natural world.
Author: Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452957177
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
Get Book Here
Book Description
A “courageous and revelatory memoir” (Naomi Klein) chronicling the life of the leading Indigenous climate change, cultural, and human rights advocate For the first ten years of her life, Sheila Watt-Cloutier traveled only by dog team. Today there are more snow machines than dogs in her native Nunavik, a region that is part of the homeland of the Inuit in Canada. In Inuktitut, the language of Inuit, the elders say that the weather is Uggianaqtuq—behaving in strange and unexpected ways. The Right to Be Cold is Watt-Cloutier’s memoir of growing up in the Arctic reaches of Quebec during these unsettling times. It is the story of an Inuk woman finding her place in the world, only to find her native land giving way to the inexorable warming of the planet. She decides to take a stand against its destruction. The Right to Be Cold is the human story of life on the front lines of climate change, told by a woman who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most influential Indigenous environmental, cultural, and human rights advocates in the world. Raised by a single mother and grandmother in the small community of Kuujjuaq, Quebec, Watt-Cloutier describes life in the traditional ice-based hunting culture of an Inuit community and reveals how Indigenous life, human rights, and the threat of climate change are inextricably linked. Colonialism intervened in this world and in her life in often violent ways, and she traces her path from Nunavik to Nova Scotia (where she was sent at the age of ten to live with a family that was not her own); to a residential school in Churchill, Manitoba; and back to her hometown to work as an interpreter and student counselor. The Right to Be Cold is at once the intimate coming-of-age story of a remarkable woman, a deeply informed look at the life and culture of an Indigenous community reeling from a colonial history and now threatened by climate change, and a stirring account of an activist’s powerful efforts to safeguard Inuit culture, the Arctic, and the planet.
Author: Edward Struzik
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610914406
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 214
Get Book Here
Book Description
In one hundred years, or even fifty, the Arctic will look dramatically different than it does today. As polar ice retreats and animals and plants migrate northward, the arctic landscape is morphing into something new and very different from what it once was. While these changes may seem remote, they will have a profound impact on a host of global issues, from international politics to animal migrations. In Future Arctic, journalist and explorer Edward Struzik offers a clear-eyed look at the rapidly shifting dynamics in the Arctic region, a harbinger of changes that will reverberate throughout our entire world. Future Arctic reveals the inside story of how politics and climate change are altering the polar world in a way that will have profound effects on economics, culture, and the environment as we know it. Struzik takes readers up mountains and cliffs, and along for the ride on snowmobiles and helicopters, sailboats and icebreakers. His travel companions, from wildlife scientists to military strategists to indigenous peoples, share diverse insights into the science, culture and geopolitical tensions of this captivating place. With their help, Struzik begins piecing together an environmental puzzle: How might the land’s most iconic species—caribou, polar bears, narwhal—survive? Where will migrating birds flock to? How will ocean currents shift? And what fundamental changes will oil and gas exploration have on economies and ecosystems? How will vast unclaimed regions of the Arctic be divided? A unique combination of extensive on-the-ground research, compelling storytelling, and policy analysis, Future Arctic offers a new look at the changes occurring in this remote, mysterious region and their far-reaching effects.
Author: John McCannon
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780230761
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352
Get Book Here
Book Description
Bitter cold and constant snow. Polar bears, seals, and killer whales. Victor Frankenstein chasing his monstrous creation across icy terrain in a dogsled. The arctic calls to mind a myriad different images. Consisting of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, the United States, Russia, Greenland, Finland, Norway and Sweden, the arctic possesses a unique ecosystem—temperatures average negative 29 degrees Fahrenheit in winter and rarely rise above freezing in summer—and the indigenous peoples and cultures that live in the region have had to adapt to the harsh weather conditions. As global temperatures rise, the arctic is facing an environmental crisis, with melting glaciers causing grave concern around the world. But for all the renown of this frozen region, the arctic remains far from perfectly understood. In A History of the Arctic, award-winning polar historian John McCannon provides an engaging overview of the region that spans from the Stone Age to the present. McCannon discusses polar exploration and science, nation-building, diplomacy, environmental issues, and climate change, and the role indigenous populations have played in the arctic’s story. Chronicling the history of each arctic nation, he details the many failed searches for a Northwest Passage and the territorial claims that hamper use of these waterways. He also explores the resources found in the arctic—oil, natural gas, minerals, fresh water, and fish—and describes the importance they hold as these resources are depleted elsewhere, as well as the challenges we face in extracting them. A timely assessment of current diplomatic and environmental realities, as well as the dire risks the region now faces, A History of the Arctic is a thoroughly engrossing book on the past—and future—of the top of the world.
Author:
Publisher: Nordic Council of Ministers
ISBN: 9789289305860
Category : Environmental policy
Languages : en
Pages : 196
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Aron A. Crowell
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
ISBN: 1588342700
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 314
Get Book Here
Book Description
Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage: The First Peoples of Alaska features more than 200 objects representing the masterful artistry and design traditions of twenty Alaska Native peoples. Based on a collaborative exhibition created by Alaska Native communities, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, and the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, this richly illustrated volume celebrates both the long-awaited return of ancestral treasures to their native homeland and the diverse cultures in which they were created. Despite the North's transformation through globalizing change, the objects shown in these pages are interpretable within ongoing cultural frames, articulated in languges still spoken. They were made for a way of life on the land that is carried on today throughout Alaska. Dialogue with the region's First Peoples evokes past meanings but focuses equally on contemporary values, practices, and identities. Objects and narratives show how each Alaska Native nation is unique—and how all are connected. After introductions to the history of the land and its people, universal themes of “Sea, Land, Rivers,” “Family and Community,” and “Ceremony and Celebration” are explored referencing exquisite masks, parkas, beaded garments, basketry, weapons, and carvings that embody the diverse environments and practices of their makers. Accompanied by traditional stories and personal accounts by Alaska Native elders, artists, and scholars, each piece featured in Living Our Cultures, Sharing Our Heritage evokes both historical and contemporary meaning, and breathes the life of its people.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309371619
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 37
Get Book Here
Book Description
Viewed in satellite images as a jagged white coat draped over the top of the globe, the high Arctic appears distant and isolated. But even if you don't live there, don't do business there, and will never travel there, you are closer to the Arctic than you think. Arctic Matters: The Global Connection to Changes in the Arctic is a new educational resource produced by the Polar Research Board of the National Research Council (NRC). It draws upon a large collection of peer-reviewed NRC reports and other national and international reports to provide a brief, reader-friendly primer on the complex ways in which the changes currently affecting the Arctic and its diverse people, resources, and environment can, in turn, affect the entire globe. Topics in the booklet include how climate changes currently underway in the Arctic are a driver for global sea-level rise, offer new prospects for natural resource extraction, and have rippling effects through the world's weather, climate, food supply and economy.
