Fundamental Processes in Ecology

Fundamental Processes in Ecology PDF Author: David M Wilkinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198568460
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The book presents a way to study ecosystems that is not yet available in current textbooks but is resonant with current thinking in the emerging fields of geobiology and Earth System Science. It asks and endeavours to answer the question, "what are the really fundamental characteristics of living systems that might allow them to sustain life?" The author goes on to show how the idea of fundamental ecological processes can be developed at the systems level, specifically their involvement in control and feedback mechanisms. This is not a popular science book about Gaian theory, instead it is written as a text and is directed at a predominantly scientific audience.

Fundamental Processes in Ecology

Fundamental Processes in Ecology PDF Author: David M Wilkinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198568460
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book presents a way to study ecosystems that is not yet available in current textbooks but is resonant with current thinking in the emerging fields of geobiology and Earth System Science. It asks and endeavours to answer the question, "what are the really fundamental characteristics of living systems that might allow them to sustain life?" The author goes on to show how the idea of fundamental ecological processes can be developed at the systems level, specifically their involvement in control and feedback mechanisms. This is not a popular science book about Gaian theory, instead it is written as a text and is directed at a predominantly scientific audience.

Ecology and Revolution

Ecology and Revolution PDF Author: Charles Reitz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429796935
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A timely addition to Henry Giroux’s Critical Interventions series, Ecology and Revolution is grounded in the Frankfurt School critical theory of Herbert Marcuse. Its task is to understand the economic architecture of wealth extraction that undergirds today’s intensifying inequalities of class, race, and gender, within a revolutionary ecological frame. Relying on newly discovered texts from the Frankfurt Marcuse Archive, this book builds theory and practice for an alternate world system. Ecology and radical political economy, as critical forms of systems analysis, show that an alternative world system is essential – both possible and feasible – despite political forces against it. Our rights to a commonwealth economy, politics, and culture reside in our commonworks as we express ourselves as artisans of the common good. It is in this context, that Charles Reitz develops a GreenCommonWealth Counter-Offensive, a strategy for revolutionary ecological liberation with core features of racial equality, women’s equality, liberation of labor, restoration of nature, leisure, abundance, and peace.

Ecology and Socialism

Ecology and Socialism PDF Author: Chris Williams
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608460924
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
Around the world, consciousness of the threat to our environment is growing. The majority of solutions on offer, from using efficient light bulbs to biking to work, focus on individual lifestyle changes, yet the scale of the crisis requires far deeper adjustments. Ecology and Socialism argues that time still remains to save humanity and the planet, but only by building social movements for environmental justice that can demand qualitative changes in our economy, workplaces, and infrastructure. Chris Williams is a longtime environmental activist, professor of physics and chemistry at Pace University, and chair of the science department at Packer Collegiate Institute. He lives in New York City.

The World System and the Earth System

The World System and the Earth System PDF Author: Alf Hornborg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315416832
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
In this benchmark volume top scholars come together to present state-of-the-art research and pursue a more rigorous framework for understanding and studying the linkages between social and ecological systems. Contributors from a wide spectrum of disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, geography, ecology, palaeo-science, geology, sociology, and history, present and assess both the evolution of our thinking and current, state-of-the-art theory and research. Covering ancient through modern periods, they discuss the complex ways in which human culture, economy, and demographics interact with ecology and climate change. The World System and the Earth System is critical reading for all scholars and students working at the interface of nature and society.Contributors: Thomas Abel, Björn Berglund, Chris Chase-Dunn, Alfred Crosby, Carole L. Crumley, John Dearing, Bert de Vries, Nina Eisenmenger, Andre Gunder Frank, Jonathan Friedman, Stefan Giljum, Thomas Hall, Karin Holmgren, Alf Hornborg, Kristian Kristiansen, Thomas Malm, Daniel Mandell, Betty Meggers, George Modelski, Emilio Moran, Helena Öberg, Frank Oldfield, Susan Stonich, William Thompson, Peter Turchin.

Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System

Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System PDF Author: Chris Campbell
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 303076155X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
Literary and Cultural Production, World-Ecology, and the Global Food System marks a significant intervention into the field of literary food studies. Drawing on new work in world literature, cultural studies, and environmental studies, the essays gathered here explore how literary and cultural texts have represented and responded to the global food system from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Covering topics such as the impact of colonial monocultures and industrial agriculture, enclosure and the loss of the commons, the meatification of diets, the toxification of landscapes, and the consequences of climate breakdown, the volume ranges across the globe, from Thailand to Brazil, Cyprus to the Caribbean. Whether it is anxieties over imported meat in late Victorian Britain, labour struggles on Guatemalan banana plantations, or food dependency in Puerto Rico, the contributors to this volume show how fiction, poetry, drama, film, and music have critically explored and contributed to food cultures worldwide.

Capitalism in the Web of Life

Capitalism in the Web of Life PDF Author: Jason W. Moore
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781689024
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Integrating both social and historical factors, this radical analysis of the development of capitalism reveals the ever-deepening relationship between capital and ecology Finance. Climate. Food. Work. How are the crises of the twenty-first century connected? In Capitalism in the Web of Life, Jason W. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turbulence have a common cause: capitalism as a way of organizing nature, including human nature. Drawing on environmentalist, feminist, and Marxist thought, Moore offers a groundbreaking new synthesis: capitalism as a “world-ecology” of wealth, power, and nature. Capitalism’s greatest strength—and the source of its problems—is its capacity to create Cheap Natures: labor, food, energy, and raw materials. That capacity is now in question. Rethinking capitalism through the pulsing and renewing dialectic of humanity-in-nature, Moore takes readers on a journey from the rise of capitalism to the modern mosaic of crisis. Capitalism in the Web of Life shows how the critique of capitalism-in-nature—rather than capitalism and nature—is key to understanding our predicament, and to pursuing the politics of liberation in the century ahead.

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.

Ecology and the World-System

Ecology and the World-System PDF Author: Walter L. Goldfrank
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313030146
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Integrating environmental and world-systems analyses in chapters ranging from the ancient to the contemporary, from the global to the local, from West to East, and from North to South, this book is the first collection to analyze environmental issues from the world-systems perspective. The introduction provides Immanuel Wallerstein's fullest explication of the role of ecological constraints in the world-system. Early chapters diagnose the increasing environmental threats to global sustainability and suggest ways to arrive at an integrated theoretical understanding of those threats. The work then shows the historical and geographical range necessary to do justice to ecological considerations in chapters considering ancient civilizations, capitalism, the circumpolar North, the dam-builders of Asia, and the polluters of East Central Europe. The final chapters analyze the successes and limits of environmental movements in the United States, South Africa, and South Korea.

The Ecology of Law

The Ecology of Law PDF Author: Fritjof Capra
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1626562083
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly

Human Ecology

Human Ecology PDF Author: Frederick R. Steiner
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917383
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Humans have always been influenced by natural landscapes, and always will be—even as we create ever-larger cities and our developments fundamentally change the nature of the earth around us. In Human Ecology, noted city planner and landscape architect Frederick Steiner encourages us to consider how human cultures have been shaped by natural forces, and how we might use this understanding to contribute to a future where both nature and people thrive. Human ecology is the study of the interrelationships between humans and their environment, drawing on diverse fields from biology and geography to sociology, engineering, and architecture. Steiner admirably synthesizes these perspectives through the lens of landscape architecture, a discipline that requires its practitioners to consciously connect humans and their environments. After laying out eight principles for understanding human ecology, the book’s chapters build from the smallest scale of connection—our homes—and expand to community scales, regions, nations, and, ultimately, examine global relationships between people and nature. In this age of climate change, a new approach to planning and design is required to envision a livable future. Human Ecology provides architects, landscape architects, urban designers, and planners—and students in those fields— with timeless principles for new, creative thinking about how their work can shape a vibrant, resilient future for ourselves and our planet.