Virtuous Waters

Virtuous Waters PDF Author: Casey Walsh
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520291735
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
"Virtuous Waters is the first study of mineral waters and bathing in Mexico. It traces the evolving ideas about these waters, from European contact to the present, in order to shed new light on human-environment relations in the modern world. Our relation to water is among the most urgent of global issues, as increasing scarcity and pollution threaten food shortages, deteriorating public health, and the collapse of aquatic ecosystems. Drawing on ideas from political ecology, the author brings together an analysis of the shifts in the concept of water and a material history of environments, infrastructures, and bathing. The book analyzes a range of issues concerning complex "water cultures" that have formed around Mexican groundwaters over time and suggests that this understanding might also help us comprehend and confront the water crisis that is coming to a head in the twenty-first century"--Provided by publisher.

Virtuous Waters

Virtuous Waters PDF Author: Casey Walsh
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520291735
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Virtuous Waters is the first study of mineral waters and bathing in Mexico. It traces the evolving ideas about these waters, from European contact to the present, in order to shed new light on human-environment relations in the modern world. Our relation to water is among the most urgent of global issues, as increasing scarcity and pollution threaten food shortages, deteriorating public health, and the collapse of aquatic ecosystems. Drawing on ideas from political ecology, the author brings together an analysis of the shifts in the concept of water and a material history of environments, infrastructures, and bathing. The book analyzes a range of issues concerning complex "water cultures" that have formed around Mexican groundwaters over time and suggests that this understanding might also help us comprehend and confront the water crisis that is coming to a head in the twenty-first century"--Provided by publisher.

Replenish

Replenish PDF Author: Sandra Postel
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917901
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
"Nothing is more important to life than water, and no one knows water better than Sandra Postel. Replenish is a wise, sobering, but ultimately hopeful book." --Elizabeth Kolbert "Remarkable." --New York Times Book Review "Clear-eyed treatise...Postel makes her case eloquently." --Booklist, starred review "An informative, purposeful argument." --Kirkus We spend billions of dollars on irrigation, dams, sanitation plants, and other feats of engineering to control water for our own prosperity. What if the answer was not control, but replenishment? Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with, rather than against, nature's rhythms. Forest rehabilitation is safeguarding drinking water, farmers are planting cover crops to reduce polluted runoff, and "sponge cities" are capturing rainwater to curb urban flooding. Postel argues that efforts like these will be essential as we adjust to a hotter, wilder climate. Will we continue to fight the water cycle, endangering ourselves and the planet, or recognize our place in it and take advantage of the inherent services nature offers?

Hydrohumanities

Hydrohumanities PDF Author:
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520380460
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
A free open access ebook is available upon publication. Learn more at www.luminosoa.org. Discourse about water and power in the modern era have largely focused on human power over water: who gets to own and control a limited resource that has incredible economic potential. As a result, discussion of water, even in the humanities, has traditionally focused on fresh water for human use. Today, climate extremes from drought to flooding are forcing humanities scholars to reimagine water discourse. This volume exemplifies how interdisciplinary cultural approaches can transform water conversations. The manuscript is organized into three emergent themes in water studies: agency of water, fluid identities, and cultural currencies. The first section deals with the properties of water and the ways in which water challenges human plans for control. The second section explores how water (or lack of it) shapes human collective and individual identities. The third engages notions of value and circulation to think about how water has been managed and employed for local, national, and international gains. Contributions come from preeminent as well as emerging voices across humanities fields including history, art history, philosophy, and science and technology studies. Part of a bigger goal for shaping the environmental humanities, the book broadens the concept of water to include not just water in oceans and rivers but also in pipes, ice floes, marshes, bottles, dams, and more. Each piece shows how humanities scholarship has world-changing potential to achieve more just water futures.

Water Follies

Water Follies PDF Author: Robert Jerome Glennon
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597267872
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The Santa Cruz River that once flowed through Tucson, Arizona is today a sad mirage of a river. Except for brief periods following heavy rainfall, it is bone dry. The cottonwood and willow trees that once lined its banks have died, and the profusion of birds and wildlife recorded by early settlers are nowhere to be seen. The river is dead. What happened? Where did the water go. As Robert Glennon explains in Water Follies, what killed the Santa Cruz River -- and could devastate other surface waters across the United States -- was groundwater pumping. From 1940 to 2000, the volume of water drawn annually from underground aquifers in Tucson jumped more than six-fold, from 50,000 to 330,000 acre-feet per year. And Tucson is hardly an exception -- similar increases in groundwater pumping have occurred across the country and around the world. In a striking collection of stories that bring to life the human and natural consequences of our growing national thirst, Robert Glennon provides an occasionally wry and always fascinating account of groundwater pumping and the environmental problems it causes. Robert Glennon sketches the culture of water use in the United States, explaining how and why we are growing increasingly reliant on groundwater. He uses the examples of the Santa Cruz and San Pedro rivers in Arizona to illustrate the science of hydrology and the legal aspects of water use and conflicts. Following that, he offers a dozen stories -- ranging from Down East Maine to San Antonio's River Walk to Atlanta's burgeoning suburbs -- that clearly illustrate the array of problems caused by groundwater pumping. Each episode poses a conflict of values that reveals the complexity of how and why we use water. These poignant and sometimes perverse tales tell of human foibles including greed, stubbornness, and, especially, the unlimited human capacity to ignore reality. As Robert Glennon explores the folly of our actions and the laws governing them, he suggests common-sense legal and policy reforms that could help avert potentially catastrophic future effects. Water Follies, the first book to focus on the impact of groundwater pumping on the environment, brings this widespread but underappreciated problem to the attention of citizens and communities across America.

The Penguin Book of Hindu Names

The Penguin Book of Hindu Names PDF Author: Maneka Gandhi
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9780140128413
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
The product of several years of research, this book provides a comprehensive compilation of Hindu names in current use. The meaning of each name is extensively discussed and information on sources and usage is also provided.

The Preliminary Practice of Altar Set-up & Water Bowl Offerings eBook

The Preliminary Practice of Altar Set-up & Water Bowl Offerings eBook PDF Author: Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Publisher: FPMT
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
This eBook provides a complete explanation of how to set up a personal altar, how to make water bowl offerings, and how to offer them in the most extensive and beneficial way. This edition includes information on water bowls, meditations to use while doing the practice, and a mantra to recite when removing food offerings from the altar to avoid creating the karma of stealing from the Triple Gem. Contents Include: - Altar Set-up and Water Bowl Offerings - The Practice of Offering by Lama Zopa Rinpoche - Guidelines for Completing 100,000 Water Bowl Offerings - Extensive Offering Practice - Light Offering Prayer by Lama Atisha - Appendix: How to Fill a Small Statue 40 Pages. 2016 Edition.

In Defense of Farmers

In Defense of Farmers PDF Author: Jane Gibson
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496206738
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
Industrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation and debt; and rural community decline. Yet the future of industrial agriculture depends fundamentally on farmers’ decisions. In Defense of Farmers illuminates anew the critical role that farmers play in the future of agriculture and examines the social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities of industrial agriculture, as well as its adaptations and evolution. Contextualizing the conversations about agriculture and rural societies within the disciplines of sociology, geography, economics, and anthropology, this volume addresses specific challenges farmers face in four countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. By concentrating on countries with the most sophisticated production technologies capable of producing the largest quantities of grains, soybeans, and animal proteins in the world, this volume focuses attention on the farmers whose labors, decision-making, and risk-taking throw into relief the implications and limitations of our global industrial food system. The case studies here acknowledge the agency of farmers and offer ways forward in the direction of sustainable agriculture.

Finding Our True Home

Finding Our True Home PDF Author: Thich Nhat Hanh
Publisher: Parallax Press
ISBN: 1935209140
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
Finding Our True Home presents a new definitive translation of the Amitabha Sutra along with Thich Nhat Hanh’s first commentary on one of the most practiced forms of Buddhism in the world, the Pure Land school. Introduced in the Buddha’s own lifetime, Pure Land practice puts us in touch with the beauty in our own world and brings us the security, solidity, and freedom we need in order to truly enjoy it. Realizing that Buddha is within us, we see that the Pure Land (paradise) is here and now, rather than in the future. Finding Our True Home will open a new Dharma door to many students of meditation.

Renegade Monk

Renegade Monk PDF Author: Soho Machida
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520920228
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
The Pure Land sect of Japanese Buddhism is one of the strongest Buddhist sects in Japan, with three and a half million followers. In this book, Soho Machida provides the first detailed, objective account in English of the life and thought of its founder, Honenbo Genku (1133-1212), known as Honen. Opening with the destruction and chaos that beleaguered Kyoto during Honen's lifetime, Soho Machida explores Honen's social context to discover the roots of his thought and the source of his popularity. The Old Buddhist regime had a stranglehold on peasants, he shows, by concocting images of vindictive spirits, hell, and an apocalyptic collapse of the law in these chaotic times. Machida asserts that when Honen countered such negative, menacing images by focusing his imagination on the Pure Land and actually affirming death, he became not only a radical thinker but also the leader of a revolutionary social movement—a medieval Japanese "liberation theology." Clearly argued and informed by contemporary Western theory, this book will become the definitive source on Honen's life and thought for decades to come.

Terrestrial Transformations

Terrestrial Transformations PDF Author: Thomas K. Park
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793605475
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Humanity’s future may rest on how we deal with climate change, environmental problems, and their impacts on society. Terrestrial Transformations: A Political Ecology Approach to Society and Nature recognizes that such problems have social, political, and cultural contexts, and that politics, money, and power have physical impacts on nature and society that cannot be ignored. This book brings together a set of chapters that provide an overview of the political ecology approach, illustrating its theoretical underpinnings, central concepts, methods, and major interests. The authors examine the political contexts of a broad range of environmental and social problems, drawing attention to the political and economic forces driving environmental and ecological problems, how societies are transformed as they attempt to cope and adapt to a changing nature, and who pays the price.