Author: Stefano Mancuso
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1635421004
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
In this playful yet informative manifesto, a leading plant neurobiologist presents the eight fundamental pillars on which the life of plants—and by extension, humans—rests. Even if they behave as though they were, humans are not the masters of the Earth, but only one of its most irksome residents. From the moment of their arrival, about three hundred thousand years ago—nothing when compared to the history of life on our planet—humans have succeeded in changing the conditions of the planet so drastically as to make it a dangerous place for their own survival. The causes of this reckless behavior are in part inherent in their predatory nature, but they also depend on our total incomprehension of the rules that govern a community of living beings. We behave like children who wreak havoc, unaware of the significance of the things they are playing with. In The Nation of Plants, the most important, widespread, and powerful nation on Earth finally gets to speak. Like attentive parents, plants, after making it possible for us to live, have come to our aid once again, giving us their rules: the first Universal Declaration of Rights of Living Beings written by the plants. A short charter based on the general principles that regulate the common life of plants, it establishes norms applicable to all living beings. Compared to our constitutions, which place humans at the center of the entire juridical reality, in conformity with an anthropocentricism that reduces to things all that is not human, plants offer us a revolution.
Author: Katherine E. Bishop
Publisher: University of Wales Press
ISBN: 1786835614
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260
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Book Description
This is the first volume of its kind Plants in Science Fiction shows how considerations of plant-life in SF can transform our understanding of institutions and boundaries, erecting – and dismantling – new visions of utopian and dystopian futures. Its original essays argue that plant-life in SF is transforming our attitudes toward morality, politics, economics, and cultural life.
Author: Charles Zerner
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231506694
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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Book Description
In an era of market triumphalism, this book probes the social and environmental consequences of market-linked nature conservation schemes. Rather than supporting a new anti-market orthodoxy, Charles Zerner and colleagues assert that there is no universal entity, "the market." Analysis and remedies must be based on broader considerations of history, culture, and geography in order to establish meaningful and lasting changes in policy and practice. Original case studies from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the South Pacific focus on topics as diverse as ecotourism, bioprospecting, oil extraction, cyanide fishing, timber extraction, and property rights. The cases position concerns about biodiversity conservation and resource management within social justice and legal perspectives, providing new insights for students, scholars, policy professionals and donor/foundations engaged in international conservation and social justice.
Author: Beronda L. Montgomery
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674259394
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
An exploration of how plant behavior and adaptation offer valuable insights for human thriving. We know that plants are important. They maintain the atmosphere by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen. They nourish other living organisms and supply psychological benefits to humans as well, improving our moods and beautifying the landscape around us. But plants don’t just passively provide. They also take action. Beronda L. Montgomery explores the vigorous, creative lives of organisms often treated as static and predictable. In fact, plants are masters of adaptation. They “know” what and who they are, and they use this knowledge to make a way in the world. Plants experience a kind of sensation that does not require eyes or ears. They distinguish kin, friend, and foe, and they are able to respond to ecological competition despite lacking the capacity of fight-or-flight. Plants are even capable of transformative behaviors that allow them to maximize their chances of survival in a dynamic and sometimes unfriendly environment. Lessons from Plants enters into the depth of botanic experience and shows how we might improve human society by better appreciating not just what plants give us but also how they achieve their own purposes. What would it mean to learn from these organisms, to become more aware of our environments and to adapt to our own worlds by calling on perception and awareness? Montgomery’s meditative study puts before us a question with the power to reframe the way we live: What would a plant do?
Author: Monica Gagliano
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452954127
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 395
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Book Description
The eighteenth-century naturalist Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles) argued that plants are animate, living beings and attributed them sensation, movement, and a certain degree of mental activity, emphasizing the continuity between humankind and plant existence. Two centuries later, the understanding of plants as active and communicative organisms has reemerged in such diverse fields as plant neurobiology, philosophical posthumanism, and ecocriticism. The Language of Plants brings together groundbreaking essays from across the disciplines to foster a dialogue between the biological sciences and the humanities and to reconsider our relation to the vegetal world in new ethical and political terms. Viewing plants as sophisticated information-processing organisms with complex communication strategies (they can sense and respond to environmental cues and play an active role in their own survival and reproduction through chemical languages) radically transforms our notion of plants as unresponsive beings, ready to be instrumentally appropriated. By providing multifaceted understandings of plants, informed by the latest developments in evolutionary ecology, the philosophy of biology, and ecocritical theory, The Language of Plants promotes the freedom of imagination necessary for a new ecological awareness and more sustainable interactions with diverse life forms. Contributors: Joni Adamson, Arizona State U; Nancy E. Baker, Sarah Lawrence College; Karen L. F. Houle, U of Guelph; Luce Irigaray, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris; Erin James, U of Idaho; Richard Karban, U of California at Davis; André Kessler, Cornell U; Isabel Kranz, U of Vienna; Michael Marder, U of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU); Timothy Morton, Rice U; Christian Nansen, U of California at Davis; Robert A. Raguso, Cornell U; Catriona Sandilands, York U.
Author: Noel Kingsbury
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226437051
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 510
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Book Description
Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped, Styrofoam-packed state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a more innocent time, to visions of succulent red tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, gleaming orange carrots pulled from loamy brown soil, swirling heads of green lettuce basking in the sun. With Hybrid, Noel Kingsbury reveals that even those imaginary perfect foods are themselves far from anything that could properly be called natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridization. Starting his story at the birth of agriculture, Kingsbury traces the history of human attempts to make plants more reliable, productive, and nutritious—a story that owes as much to accident and error as to innovation and experiment. Drawing on historical and scientific accounts, as well as a rich trove of anecdotes, Kingsbury shows how scientists, amateur breeders, and countless anonymous farmers and gardeners slowly caused the evolutionary pressures of nature to be supplanted by those of human needs—and thus led us from sparse wild grasses to succulent corn cobs, and from mealy, white wild carrots to the juicy vegetables we enjoy today. At the same time, Kingsbury reminds us that contemporary controversies over the Green Revolution and genetically modified crops are not new; plant breeding has always had a political dimension. A powerful reminder of the complicated and ever-evolving relationship between humans and the natural world, Hybrid will give readers a thoughtful new perspective on—and a renewed appreciation of—the cereal crops, vegetables, fruits, and flowers that are central to our way of life.
Author: Londa Schiebinger
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043278
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life yet they are often at the center of high intrigue. In the eighteenth century, epic scientific voyages were sponsored by European imperial powers to explore the natural riches of the New World, and uncover the botanical secrets of its people. Bioprospectors brought back medicines, luxuries, and staples for their king and country. Risking their lives to discover exotic plants, these daredevil explorers joined with their sponsors to create a global culture of botany. But some secrets were unearthed only to be lost again. In this moving account of the abuses of indigenous Caribbean people and African slaves, Schiebinger describes how slave women brewed the "peacock flower" into an abortifacient, to ensure that they would bear no children into oppression. Yet, impeded by trade winds of prevailing opinion, knowledge of West Indian abortifacients never flowed into Europe. A rich history of discovery and loss, Plants and Empire explores the movement, triumph, and extinction of knowledge in the course of encounters between Europeans and the Caribbean populations.
Author: Michael J Balick
Publisher: Garland Science
ISBN: 1000098486
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 496
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Book Description
Is it possible that plants have shaped the very trajectory of human cultures? Using riveting stories of fieldwork in remote villages, two of the world’s leading ethnobotanists argue that our past and our future are deeply intertwined with plants. Creating massive sea craft from plants, indigenous shipwrights spurred the navigation of the world’s oceans. Today, indigenous agricultural innovations continue to feed, clothe, and heal the world’s population. One out of four prescription drugs, for example, were discovered from plants used by traditional healers. Objects as common as baskets for winnowing or wooden boxes to store feathers were ornamented with traditional designs demonstrating the human ability to understand our environment and to perceive the cosmos. Throughout the world, the human body has been used as the ultimate canvas for plant-based adornment as well as indelible design using tattoo inks. Plants also garnered religious significance, both as offerings to the gods and as a doorway into the other world. Indigenous claims that plants themselves are sacred is leading to a startling reformulation of conservation. The authors argue that conservation goals can best be achieved by learning from, rather than opposing, indigenous peoples and their beliefs. KEY FEATURES • An engrossing narrative that invites the reader to personally engage with the relationship between plants, people, and culture • Full-color illustrations throughout—including many original photographs captured by the authors during fieldwork • New to this edition—"Plants That Harm," a chapter that examines the dangers of poisonous plants and the promise that their study holds for novel treatments for some of our most serious diseases, including Alzheimer’s and substance addiction • Additional readings at the end of each chapter to encourage further exploration • Boxed features on selected topics that offer further insight • Provocative questions to facilitate group discussion Designed for the college classroom as well as for lay readers, this update of Plants, People, and Culture entices the reader with firsthand stories of fieldwork, spectacular illustrations, and a deep respect for both indigenous peoples and the earth’s natural heritage.
Author: Monica Gagliano
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1623172438
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
A research scientist’s fascinating study of plant communication reveals how we “have been misunderstanding plants, and ourselves, for all of history” (The Paris Review). “A compelling story of discovery . . . [that] will change the way you see the world”—for fans of The Hidden Life of Trees (Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass) In this “phytobiography”—a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant—research scientist Monica Gagliano shares genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. By transcending the view of plants as the objects of scientific materialism, Gagliano encourages us to rethink plants as people—beings with subjectivity, consciousness, and volition, and hence having the capacity for their own perspectives and voices. The book draws on up-close-and-personal encounters with the plants themselves, as well as plant shamans, indigenous elders, and mystics from around the world and integrates these experiences with an incredible research journey and the groundbreaking scientific discoveries that emerged from it. Gagliano has published numerous peer-reviewed scientific papers on how plants have a Pavlov-like response to stimuli and can learn, remember, and communicate to neighboring plants. She has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, for the first time experimentally demonstrating that plants emit their own 'voices' and, moreover, detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. By demonstrating experimentally that learning is not the exclusive province of animals, Gagliano has re-ignited the discourse on plant subjectivity and ethical and legal standing. This is the story of how she made those discoveries and how the plants helped her along the way.
Author: Shobita Parthasarathy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022643785X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Introduction -- Defining the public interest in the US and European patent systems -- Confronting the questions of life-form patentability -- Commodification, animal dignity, and patent-system publics -- Forging new patent politics through the human embryonic stem cell debates -- Human genes, plants, and the distributive implications of patents -- Conclusion
