Ecocultures

Ecocultures PDF Author: Steffen Böhm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135083037
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The world faces a ‘perfect storm’ of social and ecological stresses, including climate change, habitat loss, resource degradation and social, economic and cultural change. In order to cope with these, communities are struggling to transition to sustainable ways of living that improve well-being and increase resilience. This book demonstrates how communities in both developed and developing countries are already taking action to maintain or build resilient and sustainable lifestyles. These communities, here designated as ‘Ecocultures’, are exemplars of the art and science of sustainable living. Though they form a diverse group, they organise themselves around several common organising principles including an ethic of care for nature, a respect for community, high ecological knowledge, and a desire to maintain and improve personal and social wellbeing. Case studies from both developed and developing countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, Greenland, India, Indonesia, South Africa, UK and USA, show how, based on these principles, communities have been able to increase social, ecological and personal wellbeing and resilience. They also address how other more mainstream communities are beginning to transition to more sustainable, resilient alternatives. Some examples also illustrate the decline of ecocultures in the face of economic pressures, globalisation and climate change. Theoretical chapters examine the barriers and bridges to wider application of these examples. Overall, the volume describes how ecocultures can provide the global community with important lessons for a wider transition to sustainability and will show how we can redefine our personal and collective futures around these principles.

Ecocultures

Ecocultures PDF Author: Steffen Böhm
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135083037
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
The world faces a ‘perfect storm’ of social and ecological stresses, including climate change, habitat loss, resource degradation and social, economic and cultural change. In order to cope with these, communities are struggling to transition to sustainable ways of living that improve well-being and increase resilience. This book demonstrates how communities in both developed and developing countries are already taking action to maintain or build resilient and sustainable lifestyles. These communities, here designated as ‘Ecocultures’, are exemplars of the art and science of sustainable living. Though they form a diverse group, they organise themselves around several common organising principles including an ethic of care for nature, a respect for community, high ecological knowledge, and a desire to maintain and improve personal and social wellbeing. Case studies from both developed and developing countries including Australia, Brazil, Finland, Greenland, India, Indonesia, South Africa, UK and USA, show how, based on these principles, communities have been able to increase social, ecological and personal wellbeing and resilience. They also address how other more mainstream communities are beginning to transition to more sustainable, resilient alternatives. Some examples also illustrate the decline of ecocultures in the face of economic pressures, globalisation and climate change. Theoretical chapters examine the barriers and bridges to wider application of these examples. Overall, the volume describes how ecocultures can provide the global community with important lessons for a wider transition to sustainability and will show how we can redefine our personal and collective futures around these principles.

SIKU: Knowing Our Ice

SIKU: Knowing Our Ice PDF Author: Igor Krupnik
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048185866
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 527

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Book Description
By exploring indigenous people’s knowledge and use of sea ice, the SIKU project has demonstrated the power of multiple perspectives and introduced a new field of interdisciplinary research, the study of social (socio-cultural) aspects of the natural world, or what we call the social life of sea ice. It incorporates local terminologies and classifications, place names, personal stories, teachings, safety rules, historic narratives, and explanations of the empirical and spiritual connections that people create with the natural world. In opening the social life of sea ice and the value of indigenous perspectives we make a novel contribution to IPY, to science, and to the public

The Edge of Extinction

The Edge of Extinction PDF Author: Jules Pretty
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801455030
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In The Edge of Extinction, Jules Pretty explores life and change in a dozen environments and cultures across the world, taking us on a series of remarkable journeys through deserts, coasts, mountains, steppes, snowscapes, marshes, and farms to show that there are many different ways to live in cooperation with nature. From these accounts of people living close to the land and close to the edge emerge a larger story about sustainability and the future of the planet. Pretty addresses not only current threats to natural and cultural diversity but also the unsustainability of modern lifestyles typical of industrialized countries. In a very real sense, Pretty discovers, what we manage to preserve now may well save us later.Jules Pretty's travels take him among the Maori people along the coasts of the Pacific, into the mountains of China, and across petroglyph-rich deserts of Australia. He treks with nomads over the continent-wide steppes of Tuva in southern Siberia, walks and boats in the wildlife-rich inland swamps of southern Africa, and experiences the Arctic with ice fishermen in Finland. He explores the coasts and inland marshes of eastern England and Northern Ireland and accompanies Innu people across the taiga’s snowy forests and the lakes of the Labrador interior. Pretty concludes his global journey immersed in the discrete cultures and landscapes embedded within the American landscape: the small farms of the Amish, the swamps of the Cajuns in the deep South, and the deserts of California.The diverse people Pretty meets in The Edge of Extinction display deep pride in their relationships with the land and are only willing to join with the modern world on their own terms. By the examples they set, they offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking to find harmony in a world cracking under the pressures of apparently insatiable consumption patterns of the affluent.

Ice and Snow in the Cold War

Ice and Snow in the Cold War PDF Author: Julia Herzberg
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785339877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
The history of the Cold War has focused overwhelmingly on statecraft and military power, an approach that has naturally placed Moscow and Washington center stage. Meanwhile, regions such as Alaska, the polar landscapes, and the cold areas of the Soviet periphery have received little attention. However, such environments were of no small importance during the Cold War: in addition to their symbolic significance, they also had direct implications for everything from military strategy to natural resource management. Through histories of these extremely cold environments, this volume makes a novel intervention in Cold War historiography, one whose global and transnational approach undermines the simple opposition of “East” and “West.”

Beyond Belief

Beyond Belief PDF Author: Johannes M. Luetz
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030676021
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
This interdisciplinary book explores the science and spirituality nexus in the Pacific Islands Region and as such makes a critical contribution to sustainable climate change adaptation in Oceania. In addition to presenting case studies, literary analyses, field projects, and empirical research, the book describes faith-engaged approaches through the prism of: • Context: past, present, and future prospects• Theory: concepts, narratives, and theoretical frameworks• Practice: empirical research and praxis-informed case examples• Doctrine: scriptural contributions and perspectives• Engagement: enlisting religious stakeholders and constituencies Comprising peer-reviewed works by scholars, professionals, and practitioners from across Oceania, the book closes a critical gap in the literature and represents a groundbreaking contribution to holistic climate change adaptation in the Pacific Islands Region that is scientifically sound, spiritually attuned, locally meaningful, and contextually compelling.

Being Alive

Being Alive PDF Author: Tim Ingold
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000489469
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Anthropology is a disciplined inquiry into the conditions and potentials of human life. Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern. Being Alive ranges over such themes as the vitality of materials; what it means to make things; the perception and formation of the ground; the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world; the experiences of light, sound and feeling; the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge; and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description. Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there. This edition includes a new preface by the author.

Snowscapes, Dreamscapes

Snowscapes, Dreamscapes PDF Author: Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789525264289
Category : Climatic changes
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description


Environment and Belief Systems

Environment and Belief Systems PDF Author: G. N. Devy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000721868
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Part of the series Key Concepts in Indigenous Studies, this book focuses on the concepts that recur in any discussion of nature, culture and society among the indigenous. The book, the first in a five-volume series, deals with the two crucial concepts of environment and belief systems of indigenous peoples from all the continents of the world. With contributions from renowned scholars, activists and experts from around the globe, it presents a salient picture of the environments of indigenous peoples and discusses the essential features of their belief systems. It explores indigenous perspectives related to religion, ritual and cultural practice, art and design, and natural resources, as well as climate change impacts among such communities in Latin and North America, Oceania (Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific Islands), India, Brazil, Southeast Asia and Africa. Bringing together academic insights and experiences from the ground, this unique book's wide coverage will serve as a comprehensive guide for students, teachers and scholars of indigenous studies. It will be essential reading for those in anthropology, social anthropology, sociology and social exclusion studies, religion and theology, and cultural studies, as well as activists working with indigenous communities.

Su’esu’e Manogi: In Search of Fragrance

Su’esu’e Manogi: In Search of Fragrance PDF Author: Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi
Publisher: Huia Publishers
ISBN: 1775503585
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
This book is a celebration of His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi’s intellectual and cultural legacy to Samoa, providing Tui Atua’s writings and thoughts on Samoan indigenous knowledge. It was first compiled and published as a festschrift in commemoration of his seventieth birthday. Tui Atua is Samoa’s Head of State and is currently the only holder of one of Samoa’s four pāpā (aristocratic chiefly) titles – Tui Atua. The book also contains responses from fourteen of Samoa’s leading and emerging scholars (including two Rhodes Scholars), based within and outside Samoa. The book searches for the best of what His Highness terms ‘the Samoan indigenous reference’ and enlarges our contemporary understandings of indigenous knowledge.

Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions

Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions PDF Author: Grete K. Hovelsrud
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9048191742
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
The ‘Year’ That Changed How We View the North This book is about a new theoretical approach that transformed the field of Arctic social studies and about a program called International Polar Year 2007–2008 (IPY) that altered the position of social research within the broader polar science. The concept for IPY was developed in 2003–2005; its vision was for researchers from many nations to work together to gain cro- disciplinary insight into planetary processes, to explore and increase our understanding of the polar regions, the Arctic and Antarctica, and of their roles in the global system. IPY 2007–2008, the fourth program of its kind, followed in the footsteps of its predecessors, the first IPY in 1882–1883, the second IPY in 1932–1933, and the third IPY (later renamed to ‘International Geophysical Year’ or IGY) in 1957–1958. All earlier IPY/IGY have been primarily geophysical initiatives, with their focus on meteorology, atmospheric and geomagnetic observations, and with additional emphasis on glaciology and sea ice circulation. As such, they excluded socio-economic disciplines and polar indigenous people, often deliberately, except for limited ethnographic and natural history collection work conducted by some expeditions of the first IPY. That once dominant vision biased heavily towards geophysics, oceanography, and ice-sheets, left little if any place for people, that is, the social sciences and the humanities, in what has been commonly viewed as the ‘hard-core’ polar research.