Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems

Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems PDF Author: Tetsu Sato
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811323275
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Through this book, readers will gain a comprehensive overview of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production in local contexts as an issue-driven and solution-oriented process, and will come to understand its relationship to societal transformation processes toward sustainability. In a single volume, the theory, approaches and academic implications of this novel type of knowledge production are addressed, together with its societal impacts. In the midst of global anthropogenic impacts that affect various environments, over the past few decades we have observed autonomous initiatives in local communities around the world to tackle these environmental challenges. It is vital that such local actions be scaled up to achieve sustainable societies, which requires societal transformation on larger scales. Thanks to numerous collaborative actions in local communities, transdisciplinary knowledge co-production among diverse stakeholders has successfully been mobilized, resulting in the development of Integrated Local Environmental Knowledge (ILEK); knowledge that can inform and support decisions and actions promoting the sustainable transformation of society. This book uses comparative case studies in communities around the world to illuminate and clarify processes and factors promoting the co-production and utilization of ILEK to facilitate decision-making. In addition, readers will gain deeper insights into the science-society interactions that can contribute to finding collaborative solutions to a wide range of critical environmental problems. Though the book is ideally suited for researchers and students, it also offers a valuable resource for practitioners, government agencies, and stakeholder agencies.

Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems

Transformations of Social-Ecological Systems PDF Author: Tetsu Sato
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9811323275
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 422

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through this book, readers will gain a comprehensive overview of transdisciplinary knowledge co-production in local contexts as an issue-driven and solution-oriented process, and will come to understand its relationship to societal transformation processes toward sustainability. In a single volume, the theory, approaches and academic implications of this novel type of knowledge production are addressed, together with its societal impacts. In the midst of global anthropogenic impacts that affect various environments, over the past few decades we have observed autonomous initiatives in local communities around the world to tackle these environmental challenges. It is vital that such local actions be scaled up to achieve sustainable societies, which requires societal transformation on larger scales. Thanks to numerous collaborative actions in local communities, transdisciplinary knowledge co-production among diverse stakeholders has successfully been mobilized, resulting in the development of Integrated Local Environmental Knowledge (ILEK); knowledge that can inform and support decisions and actions promoting the sustainable transformation of society. This book uses comparative case studies in communities around the world to illuminate and clarify processes and factors promoting the co-production and utilization of ILEK to facilitate decision-making. In addition, readers will gain deeper insights into the science-society interactions that can contribute to finding collaborative solutions to a wide range of critical environmental problems. Though the book is ideally suited for researchers and students, it also offers a valuable resource for practitioners, government agencies, and stakeholder agencies.

The Social Metabolism

The Social Metabolism PDF Author: Manuel González de Molina
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319063588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
Over this last decade, the concept of Social Metabolism has gained prestige as a theoretical instrument for the required analysis, to such an extent that there are now dozens of researchers, hundreds of articles and several books that have adopted and use this concept. However, there is a great deal of variety in terms of definitions and interpretations, as well as different methodologies around this concept, which prevents the consolidation of a unified field of new knowledge. The fundamental aim of the book is to conduct a review of the past and present usage of the concept of social metabolism, its origins and history, as well as the main currents or schools that exist around this concept. At the same time, the reviews and discussions included are used by the authors as starting points to draw conclusions and propose a theory of socio-ecological transformations. The theoretical and methodological innovations of this book include a distinction of two types of metabolic processes: tangible and intangible; the analysis of the social metabolism at different scales (in space and time) and a theory of socio-ecological change overcoming the merely “systemic” or “cybernetic” nature of conventional approaches, giving special protagonism to collective action.

Economics and Sustainability

Economics and Sustainability PDF Author: Karl Bruckmeier
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030566277
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
This textbook provides an overview of economic perspectives on sustainability. It synthesises economic, ecological and interdisciplinary sustainability research and by applying an integrated social-ecological and economic framework, demonstrates how this research can be improved and implemented in practice. Split into three parts, the book begins by introducing a range of topics forming the basis of knowledge needed to understand the varying sustainability discourses in economics, ecology and interdisciplinary sustainability research. Chapters cover the political context of sustainability; the history of sustainability in European environmental discourses dating back to the seventeenth century; as well as various problems and forms of interdisciplinary knowledge integration and synthesis in the sustainability process. Part II reviews the core economic themes relevant to sustainable development including natural resource management, environmental economics and ecological economics. Also highlighted are often neglected issues such as conflicts, disasters and interrelated crises on the way towards sustainability. The chapters in Part III discuss the future of the sustainability process. They argue for the necessity of overhauling the relationship between science and practice; explore failures and the unforeseen difficulties of sustainability transformation; and discuss how to enable a long term sustainability process that reaches into the distant future. An innovative resource for a broad range of interdisciplinary programmes on sustainability. The book will be an invaluable reference for master and PhD students, instructors, researchers and practitioners in sustainability governance.

Adaptive Co-Management

Adaptive Co-Management PDF Author: Derek Armitage
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774859725
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
In Canada and around the world, new concerns with adaptive processes, feedback learning, and flexible partnerships are reshaping environmental governance. Meanwhile, ideas about collaboration and learning are converging around the idea of adaptive co-management. This book provides a comprehensive synthesis of the core concepts, strategies, and tools in this emerging field, informed by a diverse group of researchers and practitioners with over two decades of experience. It also offers a diverse set of case studies that reveal the challenges and implications of adaptive co-management thinking.

Creating an Ecological Society

Creating an Ecological Society PDF Author: Fred Magdoff
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583676309
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Aiming squarely at replacing capitalism with an ecologically sound and socially just society, Magdoff and Williams provide accounts of how a new world can be created from the ashes of the old. They show that it is possible to envision and create a society that is genuinely democratic, equitable, and ecologically sustainable. And possible--not one moment too soon--for society to change fundamentally and be brought into harmony with nature. --From publisher description.

Transformation Design

Transformation Design PDF Author: Wolfgang Jonas
Publisher: Birkhäuser
ISBN: 3035606536
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
“Transformation design” is looking for new ways to change our behavior and society through new forms of innovation. The existing user-oriented approach of design must therefore be extended to one that is society-oriented. The concept of transformation is based on the anthropologist Karl Paul Polanyi and his book The Great Transformation (1944), which described the emergence of the now almost undisputed and globally widespread western market logic: the transformation of societies with markets into market societies, which he calls “dislodgment of the markets”. Meanwhile, leading think tanks are referring to Polanyi. They are calling for a new social contract and the “re-embedding” of the market into society. What are the possible instruments and contributions of design for this new “Great Transformation”? The variety of the above questions, answers, theories, methods, ideas, and projects suggests that “transformation design” is not in fact a discipline in itself, but that it will lead to a fruitful discourse. The book attempts to form an initial position in terms of this ambitious and ethical design perspective. It also seeks to inspire the international debate to push for a project of responsible design.

The Imperial Mode of Living

The Imperial Mode of Living PDF Author: Ulrich Brand
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788739124
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Our Unsustainable Life: Why We Can't Have Everything We Want With the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western mode of production and living. The logic of liberal markets since the 19thCentury, and especially since World War II, has been inscribed into everyday practices that are usually unconsciously reproduced. The authors show that they are a main driver of the ecological crisis and economic and political instability. The Imperial Mode of Living implies that people's everyday practices, including individual and societal orientations, as well as identities, rely heavily on the unlimited appropriation of resources; a disproportionate claim on global and local ecosystems and sinks; and cheap labour from elsewhere. This availability of commodities is largely organised through the world market, backed by military force and/or the asymmetric relations of forces as they have been inscribed in international institutions. Moreover, the Imperial Mode of Living implies asymmetrical social relations along class, gender and race within the respective countries. Here too, it is driven by the capitalist accumulation imperative, growth-oriented state policies and status consumption. The concrete production conditions of commodities are rendered invisible in the places where the commodities are consumed. The imperialist world order is normalized through the mode of production and living.

Ecological and Social Healing

Ecological and Social Healing PDF Author: Jeanine M. Canty
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317273419
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
This book is an edited collection of essays by fourteen multicultural women (including a few Anglo women) who are doing work that crosses the boundaries of ecological and social healing. The women are prominent academics, writers and leaders spanning Native American, Indigenous, Asian, African, Latina, Jewish and Multiracial backgrounds. The contributors express a myriad of ways that the relationship between the ecological and social have brought new understanding to their experiences and work in the world. Moreover by working with these edges of awareness, they are identifying new forms of teaching, leading, healing and positive change. Ecological and Social Healing is rooted in these ideas and speaks to an "edge awareness or consciousness." In essence this speaks to the power of integrating multiple and often conflicting views and the transformations that result. As women working across the boundaries of the ecological and social, we have powerful experiences that are creating new forms of healing. This book is rooted in academic theory as well as personal and professional experience, and highlights emerging models and insights. It will appeal to those working, teaching and learning in the fields of social justice, environmental issues, women's studies, spirituality, transformative/environmental/sustainability leadership, and interdisciplinary/intersectionality studies.

The Denial of Nature

The Denial of Nature PDF Author: Arne Johan Vetlesen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317906381
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
A study of the increasingly precarious relationship between humans and nature, this book seeks to go beyond work already contributed to the environmental movement. It does so by highlighting the importance of experiencing, rather than merely theorizing nature, while realizing that such experience is becoming increasingly rare, thus reinforcing the estrangement from nature that is a source of its ongoing human-caused destruction. In his original approach to environmental philosophy, the author argues for the reinstatement of nature's value outside of its exploitative usefulness for human ends. Such a perspective emphasizes the extent to which the environmental problem is a concrete reality requiring urgent action, based on a multi-sensuous appreciation of humans' dependence on nonhuman lifeforms. Designed as an accompaniment to undergraduate and postgraduate research, The Denial of Nature draws on empirically informed literature from the social sciences to examine what life is really like for humans and nature in the era of global capitalism. The book contends that capitalist society exploits nature - both in the form of human capital and natural capital - more relentlessly than any other and offers an environmental philosophy which actively opposes current developments. Through discussions of the work of Teresa Brennan, Theodor Adorno, Martin Heidegger and Hans Jonas, and through a radical critique of the nature deficit in Jürgen Habermas' theory of capitalist modernity, The Denial of Nature relies on insights from Critical Realism to bring together several, seldom-linked philosophies and suggest a new approach to the heavily-discussed question of environmental ethics. Arne Johan Vetlesen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, Norway and the author of twenty books among them Perception, Empathy and Judgment: An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance (1994), Closenes: An Ethics (with H. Jodalen; 1997), Evil and Human Agency ​(2005) and A Philosophy of Pain (2010). .

Social-Ecological Transformation

Social-Ecological Transformation PDF Author: Karl Bruckmeier
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137438282
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
This book advances a social-ecological theory to reconnect nature and society through sustainable transformation of interacting social and ecological systems. Social ecology develops as an interdisciplinary science by using knowledge from the social sciences, especially sociology and economics, and from natural-scientific ecology. Knowledge integration across the boundaries of social and natural sciences is not widespread, blocked by the specialisation of theories and their competing forms of explanation and interpretation. Chapters in this book describe a new social-ecological theory that connects concepts and theories from both sides to create a new interdisciplinary theory. Inter- and transdisciplinary knowledge synthesis creates possibilities to analyse global environmental problems more systematically by integrating specialized research on environmental problems. The author uses social-ecological theory to analyse and explain problems and processes of global change in modern society such as climate change and adaptation to it, ecosystem change, and transformation of the industrial energy regime , finally offering pathways of transformation to a future sustainable society.