Through Amazonian Eyes

Through Amazonian Eyes PDF Author: Emilio F. Moran
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587291576
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this well-written, comprehensive, reasonable yet passionate volume, Emilio Moran introduces us to the range of human and ecological diversity in the Amazon Basin. By describing the complex heterogeneity on the Amazon's ecological mosaic and its indigenous populations' conscious adaptations to this diversity, he leads us to realize that there are strategies of resource use which do not destroy the structure and function of ecosystems. Finally, and most important, he examines ways in which we might benefit from the study of human ecology to design and implement a balance between conservation and use.

Through Amazonian Eyes

Through Amazonian Eyes PDF Author: Emilio F. Moran
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587291576
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this well-written, comprehensive, reasonable yet passionate volume, Emilio Moran introduces us to the range of human and ecological diversity in the Amazon Basin. By describing the complex heterogeneity on the Amazon's ecological mosaic and its indigenous populations' conscious adaptations to this diversity, he leads us to realize that there are strategies of resource use which do not destroy the structure and function of ecosystems. Finally, and most important, he examines ways in which we might benefit from the study of human ecology to design and implement a balance between conservation and use.

Through Amazonian Eyes

Through Amazonian Eyes PDF Author: Emilio F. Moran
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587291576
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this well-written, comprehensive, reasonable yet passionate volume, Emilio Moran introduces us to the range of human and ecological diversity in the Amazon Basin. By describing the complex heterogeneity on the Amazon's ecological mosaic and its indigenous populations' conscious adaptations to this diversity, he leads us to realize that there are strategies of resource use which do not destroy the structure and function of ecosystems. Finally, and most important, he examines ways in which we might benefit from the study of human ecology to design and implement a balance between conservation and use.

Indians, Markets, and Rainforests

Indians, Markets, and Rainforests PDF Author: Ricardo Godoy
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231505035
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
This book addresses two important and related questions: does participation in a market economy help or hurt indigenous peoples and how does it affect the conservation of tropical rainforest flora and fauna? Oddly, there have been few quantitative studies that have addressed these issues. Ricardo Godoy's research takes an important step toward rectifying this oversight by investigating five different lowland Amerindian societies of tropical Latin America—all of which are experiencing deep changes as they modernize. Godoy examines the effect of markets on a broad range of areas including health, conservation of flora and fauna, leisure, folk knowledge, reciprocity, and private time preference. He concludes that, contrary to considerable anthropological theory, the effect of markets on the quality of life and the rainforest are often unclear or benign. Godoy uses multivariate techniques to examine the changes modernization has had on many indicators of the quality of life and the environment and concludes that the seeds of socioeconomic differentiation may already lie dormant in simple economies. The impact of modernization on lowland Amerindians is a topic of great concern to anthropologists, researchers, and policymakers in developing nations, and this book is a significant contribution to the debate about the likely future of indigenous people.

Advances in Historical Ecology

Advances in Historical Ecology PDF Author: William L. Balée
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 9780231533577
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Ecology is an attempt to understand the reciprocal relationship between living and nonliving elements of the earth. For years, however, the discipline either neglected the human element entirely or presumed its effect on natural ecosystems to be invariably negative. Among social scientists, notably in geography and anthropology, efforts to address this human-environment interaction have been criticized as deterministic and mechanistic. Bridging the divide between social and natural sciences, the contributors to this book use a more holistic perspective to explore the relationships between humans and their environment. Exploring short- and long-term local and global change, eighteen specialists in anthropology, geography, history, ethnobiology, and related disciplines present new perspectives on historical ecology. A broad theoretical background on the material factors central to the field is presented, such as anthropogenic fire, soils, and pathogens. A series of regional applications of this knowledge base investigates landscape transformations over time in South America, the Mississippi Delta, the Great Basin, Thailand, and India. The contributors focus on traditional societies where lands are most at risk from the incursions of complex, state-level societies. This book lays the groundwork for a more meaningful understanding of humankind's interaction with its biosphere. Scholars and environmental policymakers alike will appreciate this new critical vocabulary for grasping biocultural phenomena.

Redefining Nature

Redefining Nature PDF Author: Roy Ellen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000323862
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture?- What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development?Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes:- nature as a cultural construction;- the cultural management of the environment; and- relations between plants, animals and humans.

The Evolution of Human Societies

The Evolution of Human Societies PDF Author: Allen W. Johnson
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804740326
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Combining original theoretical ideas and interpretation with ethnographic evidence, Johnson and Earle seek to describe and account for the development of complex human societies. A wealth of case studies are referred to throughout and these are used to support arguments for the proposed causes, mechanisms and patterns of change and for the factors involved, such as technological change, population growth, warfare, the exchange of goods. This second edition sees a complete re-writing of the theoretical chapters, taking account of recent research, plus a new chapter on changes since the Industrial Revolution and the globalisation of society.

New Horizons in Research on Sustainable Organisations

New Horizons in Research on Sustainable Organisations PDF Author: Mark Starik
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351281062
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
Environmental sustainability practice and research have advanced over the past decade from novelty to near-mainstream status today. During this environmentally critical time period, sustainability practitioner techniques, such as environmental, energy and social auditing, other sustainability information and related systems, and a wide variety of environmental sustainability approaches have been developed, improved and institutionalised, advancing both the practice and research of environmental sustainability management and policy. However, academics and practitioners in the sustainability field still have widely differing perspectives on what a sustainable organisation is or might be, but seldom take the opportunity to share these respective sustainability visions, let alone the multiple ways to achieve them. New Horizons in Research on Sustainable Organisations is intended to bridge this gap between academics and practitioners with cutting-edge research from both groups on progress towards sustainability. After working on sustainability-related projects involving other academics, both research- and practitioner-oriented graduate students, consultants, managers and activists, the lead co-editors of this volume saw the need to encourage information exchanges among differing networks of sustainability stakeholders to create a pathway for researchers and practitioners in the general area of organisations and the natural environment to address issues of common interest. There are many networks in the general subject area, but the cross-pollination of ideas between academics and practitioners remains sketchy. New Horizons in Research on Sustainable Organisations is intended to present and encourage such cross-pollination. The chapters in this volume are presented in three subsets, generally proceeding from the most "macro" to the most "micro" in terms of perspective and applicability. However, this arbitrary division belies the integration from macro through meso (or mid-range) to micro levels that is apparent in these studies. Macro approaches typically include wider geographic scopes, greater numbers of stakeholders, and more complex explanatory factors than micro approaches. Each chapter adopts one or more particular sustainability world-view and then grounds these and the other chapter elements within actual organisations. Therefore, the reader is advised to envision not a one-dimensional continuum but rather a circle in which the macro view both feeds back and feeds forward to the micro view. This volume addresses a number of intriguing and important sustainable organisation phenomena such as multiple sustainable development perspectives, changing environmental politics, environmental management systems variations, voluntary environmental programme performance, complex adaptive systems, and environmental technology development. Additionally, several models are suggested, such as cultivation, capabilities and business ecology frameworks.

Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange

Global Ecology and Unequal Exchange PDF Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136658491
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
In modern society, we tend to have faith in technology. But is our concept of ‘technology’ itself a cultural illusion? This book challenges the idea that humanity as a whole is united in a common development toward increasingly efficient technologies. Instead it argues that modern technology implies a kind of global ‘zero-sum game’ involving uneven resource flows, which make it possible for wealthier parts of global society to save time and space at the expense of humans and environments in the poorer parts. We tend to think of the functioning of machines as if it was detached from the social relations of exchange which make machines economically and physically possible (in some areas). But even the steam engine that was the core of the Industrial Revolution in England was indissolubly linked to slave labour and soil erosion in distant cotton plantations. And even as seemingly benign a technology as railways have historically saved time (and accessed space) primarily for those who can afford them, but at the expense of labour time and natural space lost for other social groups with less purchasing power. The existence of technology, in other words, is not a cornucopia signifying general human progress, but the unevenly distributed result of unequal resource transfers that the science of economics is not equipped to perceive. Technology is not simply a relation between humans and their natural environment, but more fundamentally a way of organizing global human society. From the very start it has been a global phenomenon, which has intertwined political, economic and environmental histories in complex and inequitable ways. This book unravels these complex connections and rejects the widespread notion that technology will make the world sustainable. Instead it suggests a radical reform of money, which would be as useful for achieving sustainability as for avoiding financial breakdown. It brings together various perspectives from environmental and economic anthropology, ecological economics, political ecology, world-system analysis, fetishism theory, semiotics, environmental and economic history, and development theory. Its main contribution is a new understanding of technological development and concerns about global sustainability as questions of power and uneven distribution, ultimately deriving from the inherent logic of general-purpose money. It should be of interest to students and professionals with a background or current engagement in anthropology, sustainability studies, environmental history, economic history, or development studies.

Landscape, Process and Power

Landscape, Process and Power PDF Author: Serena Heckler
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1845459040
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
In recent years, the field of study variously called local, indigenous or traditional environmental knowledge (TEK) has experienced a crisis brought about by the questioning of some of its basic assumptions. This has included reassessing notions that scientific methods can accurately elicit and describe TEK or that incorporating it into development projects will improve the physical, social or economic well-being of marginalized peoples. The contributors to this volume argue that to accurately and appropriately describe TEK, the historical and political forces that have shaped it, as well as people’s day-to-day engagement with the landscape around them must be taken into account. TEK thus emerges, not as an easily translatable tool for development experts, but as a rich and complex element of contemporary lives that should be defined and managed by indigenous and local peoples themselves.

Nature and Society

Nature and Society PDF Author: European Association of Social Anthropologists. Conference
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415132169
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
First Published in 1996. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.