The Ecological Other

The Ecological Other PDF Author: Sarah Jaquette Ray
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816511888
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This book engages recent scholarship on trans-corporeality, disability studies, and environmental justice. Ray argues that environmental discourse often frames ecological crisis as a crisis of the body, therefore promoting ecological health at the cost of social equality. Ray urges us to be careful about the ways in which we construct “others” in our arguments to protect nature.

The Ecological Other

The Ecological Other PDF Author: Sarah Jaquette Ray
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816511888
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
This book engages recent scholarship on trans-corporeality, disability studies, and environmental justice. Ray argues that environmental discourse often frames ecological crisis as a crisis of the body, therefore promoting ecological health at the cost of social equality. Ray urges us to be careful about the ways in which we construct “others” in our arguments to protect nature.

The Ecological Other

The Ecological Other PDF Author: Sarah Jaquette Ray
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816599815
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
With roots in eugenics and other social-control programs, modern American environmentalism is not always as progressive as we would like to think. In The Ecological Other, Sarah Jaquette Ray examines the ways in which environmentalism can create social injustice through discourses of the body. Ray investigates three categories of ecological otherness: people with disabilities, immigrants, and Native Americans. Extending recent work in environmental justice ecocriticism, Ray argues that the expression of environmental disgust toward certain kinds of bodies draws problematic lines between ecological “subjects”—those who are good for and belong in nature—and ecological “others”—those who are threats to or out of place in nature. Ultimately, The Ecological Other urges us to be more critical of how we use nature as a tool of social control and to be careful about the ways in which we construct our arguments to ensure its protection. The book challenges long-standing assumptions in environmentalism and will be of interest to those in environmental literature and history, American studies, disability studies, and Native American studies, as well as anyone concerned with issues of environmental justice.

Ecological Indian

Ecological Indian PDF Author: Shepard Krech
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393321005
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Krech (anthropology, Brown U.) treats such provocative issues as whether the Eden in which Native Americans are viewed as living prior to European contact was a feature of native environmentalism or simply low population density; indigenous use of fire; and the Indian role in near-extinctions of buffalo, deer, and beaver. He concludes that early Indians' culturally-mediated closeness with nature was not always congruent with modern conservation ideas, with implications for views of, and by, contemporary Indians. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Mexican Americans and the Environment

Mexican Americans and the Environment PDF Author: Devon G. Peña
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816550824
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.

A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety

A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety PDF Author: Sarah Jaquette Ray
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520974727
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Gen Z's first "existential toolkit" for combating eco-guilt and burnout while advocating for climate justice. A youth movement is reenergizing global environmental activism. The “climate generation”—late millennials and iGen, or Generation Z—is demanding that policy makers and government leaders take immediate action to address the dire outcomes predicted by climate science. Those inheriting our planet’s environmental problems expect to encounter challenges, but they may not have the skills to grapple with the feelings of powerlessness and despair that may arise when they confront this seemingly intractable situation. Drawing on a decade of experience leading and teaching in college environmental studies programs, Sarah Jaquette Ray has created an “existential tool kit” for the climate generation. Combining insights from psychology, sociology, social movements, mindfulness, and the environmental humanities, Ray explains why and how we need to let go of eco-guilt, resist burnout, and cultivate resilience while advocating for climate justice. A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety is the essential guidebook for the climate generation—and perhaps the rest of us—as we confront the greatest environmental threat of our time.

Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities

Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities PDF Author: Sarah Jaquette Ray
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496201671
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 682

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Book Description
Although scholars in the environmental humanities have been exploring the dichotomy between "wild" and "built" environments for several years, few have focused on the field of disability studies, a discipline that enlists the contingency between environments and bodies as a foundation of its scholarship. On the other hand, scholars in disability studies have demonstrated the ways in which the built environment privileges some bodies and minds over others, yet they have rarely examined the ways in which toxic environments engender chronic illness and disability or how environmental illnesses disrupt dominant paradigms for scrutinizing "disability." Designed as a reader for undergraduate and graduate courses, Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities employs interdisciplinary perspectives to examine such issues as slow violence, imperialism, race, toxicity, eco-sickness, the body in environmental justice, ableism, and other topics. With a historical scope spanning the seventeenth century to the present, this collection not only presents the foundational documents informing this intersection of fields but also showcases the most current work, making it an indispensable reference.

Abundant Earth

Abundant Earth PDF Author: Eileen Crist
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022659680X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
In Abundant Earth, Eileen Crist not only documents the rising tide of biodiversity loss, but also lays out the drivers of this wholesale destruction and how we can push past them. Looking beyond the familiar litany of causes—a large and growing human population, rising livestock numbers, expanding economies and international trade, and spreading infrastructures and incursions upon wildlands—she asks the key question: if we know human expansionism is to blame for this ecological crisis, why are we not taking the needed steps to halt our expansionism? Crist argues that to do so would require a two-pronged approach. Scaling down calls upon us to lower the global human population while working within a human-rights framework, to deindustrialize food production, and to localize economies and contract global trade. Pulling back calls upon us to free, restore, reconnect, and rewild vast terrestrial and marine ecosystems. However, the pervasive worldview of human supremacy—the conviction that humans are superior to all other life-forms and entitled to use these life-forms and their habitats—normalizes and promotes humanity’s ongoing expansion, undermining our ability to enact these linked strategies and preempt the mounting suffering and dislocation of both humans and nonhumans. Abundant Earth urges us to confront the reality that humanity will not advance by entrenching its domination over the biosphere. On the contrary, we will stagnate in the identity of nature-colonizer and decline into conflict as we vie for natural resources. Instead, we must chart another course, choosing to live in fellowship within the vibrant ecologies of our wild and domestic cohorts, and enfolding human inhabitation within the rich expanse of a biodiverse, living planet.

The Ecological Self

The Ecological Self PDF Author: Freya Matthews
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134840667
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
This is the first book-length treatment of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. The author seeks to provide a metaphysical illumination of the fundamental ecological intuitions that we are in some sense `one with' nature and that everything is connected with everything else. Drawing on contemporary cosmology, systems theory and the history of philosophy, Freya Mathews elaborates a new metaphysics of `interconnectedness'. She offers an inspiring vision of the spiritual implications of ecology, which leads to a deepening of our conception of conservation.

The Ecological World View

The Ecological World View PDF Author: Charles Krebs
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520254794
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 596

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Book Description
Filled with many examples of topic issues and current events, this book develops a basic understanding of how the natural world works and of how humans interact with the planet's natural ecosystems. It covers the history of ecology and describes the general approaches of the scientific method, then takes a look at basic principles of population dynamics and applies them to everyday practical problems.

Being Ecological

Being Ecological PDF Author: Timothy Morton
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262038048
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
A book about ecology without information dumping, guilt inducing, or preaching to the choir. Don't care about ecology? You think you don't, but you might all the same. Don't read ecology books? This book is for you. Ecology books can be confusing information dumps that are out of date by the time they hit you. Slapping you upside the head to make you feel bad. Grabbing you by the lapels while yelling disturbing facts. Handwringing in agony about “What are we going to do?” This book has none of that. Being Ecological doesn't preach to the eco-choir. It's for you—even, Timothy Morton explains, if you're not in the choir, even if you have no idea what choirs are. You might already be ecological. After establishing the approach of the book (no facts allowed!), Morton draws on Kant and Heidegger to help us understand living in an age of mass extinction caused by global warming. He considers the object of ecological awareness and ecological thinking: the biosphere and its interconnections. He discusses what sorts of actions count as ecological—starting a revolution? going to the garden center to smell the plants? And finally, in “Not a Grand Tour of Ecological Thought,” he explores a variety of current styles of being ecological—a range of overlapping orientations rather than preformatted self-labeling. Caught up in the us-versus-them (or you-versus-everything else) urgency of ecological crisis, Morton suggests, it's easy to forget that you are a symbiotic being entangled with other symbiotic beings. Isn't that being ecological?