Environmental Ethics in the Midwest

Environmental Ethics in the Midwest PDF Author: Ian Smith
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628954809
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
The American Midwest is environmentally rich and complex, home to some of the world’s largest freshwater lakes and streams as well as cities, prairies, forests, and farmlands. Nevertheless, the unique environmental opportunities and challenges the region presents have been left underappreciated and underexplored by environmental ethicists. The close integration of the natural and built environments of the Midwest prompts interdisciplinary inquiry in a particularly pointed way. To remedy the lack of scholarly attention to this area, this volume attends to the way that the broad concerns of environmental ethics manifest in the region. These eight original essays cover a wide range of topics, including agrarian ethics and Stoicism; the Dakota access pipeline and Indigenous women’s activism; philosophy of law and species classification; environmental justice and the Flint water crisis; hog farming and antimicrobial drug resistance; science education standards and climate change education; virtue ethics and ecological restoration; environmental pragmatism and the Clean Water Act; and more. Each accessibly written chapter brings multidisciplinary complexity to bear on this complex region. The authors include philosophers working in environmental ethics and other subfields of philosophy, and together with scholars in fields such as environmental sociology, American Indian studies, and environmental studies, they provide a fresh and necessary perspective on the American Midwest.

Environmental Ethics in the Midwest

Environmental Ethics in the Midwest PDF Author: Ian Smith
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628954809
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 341

Get Book Here

Book Description
The American Midwest is environmentally rich and complex, home to some of the world’s largest freshwater lakes and streams as well as cities, prairies, forests, and farmlands. Nevertheless, the unique environmental opportunities and challenges the region presents have been left underappreciated and underexplored by environmental ethicists. The close integration of the natural and built environments of the Midwest prompts interdisciplinary inquiry in a particularly pointed way. To remedy the lack of scholarly attention to this area, this volume attends to the way that the broad concerns of environmental ethics manifest in the region. These eight original essays cover a wide range of topics, including agrarian ethics and Stoicism; the Dakota access pipeline and Indigenous women’s activism; philosophy of law and species classification; environmental justice and the Flint water crisis; hog farming and antimicrobial drug resistance; science education standards and climate change education; virtue ethics and ecological restoration; environmental pragmatism and the Clean Water Act; and more. Each accessibly written chapter brings multidisciplinary complexity to bear on this complex region. The authors include philosophers working in environmental ethics and other subfields of philosophy, and together with scholars in fields such as environmental sociology, American Indian studies, and environmental studies, they provide a fresh and necessary perspective on the American Midwest.

Thinking Like a Mall

Thinking Like a Mall PDF Author: Steven Vogel
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262029103
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
A provocative argument that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the built environment. Environmentalism, in theory and practice, is concerned with protecting nature. But if we have now reached “the end of nature,” as Bill McKibben and other environmental thinkers have declared, what is there left to protect? In Thinking like a Mall, Steven Vogel argues that environmental thinking would be better off if it dropped the concept of “nature” altogether and spoke instead of the “environment”—that is, the world that actually surrounds us, which is always a built world, the only one that we inhabit. We need to think not so much like a mountain (as Aldo Leopold urged) as like a mall. Shopping malls, too, are part of the environment and deserve as much serious consideration from environmental thinkers as do mountains. Vogel argues provocatively that environmental philosophy, in its ethics, should no longer draw a distinction between the natural and the artificial and, in its politics, should abandon the idea that something beyond human practices (such as “nature”) can serve as a standard determining what those practices ought to be. The appeal to nature distinct from the built environment, he contends, may be not merely unhelpful to environmental thinking but in itself harmful to that thinking. The question for environmental philosophy is not “how can we save nature?” but rather “what environment should we inhabit, and what practices should we engage in to help build it?”

Respect for Nature

Respect for Nature PDF Author: Paul W. Taylor
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400838533
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
What rational justification is there for conceiving of all living things as possessing inherent worth? In Respect for Nature, Paul Taylor draws on biology, moral philosophy, and environmental science to defend a biocentric environmental ethic in which all life has value. Without making claims for the moral rights of plants and animals, he offers a reasoned alternative to the prevailing anthropocentric view--that the natural environment and its wildlife are valued only as objects for human use or enjoyment. Respect for Nature provides both a full account of the biological conditions for life--human or otherwise--and a comprehensive view of the complex relationship between human beings and the whole of nature. This classic book remains a valuable resource for philosophers, biologists, and environmentalists alike--along with all those who care about the future of life on Earth. A new foreword by Dale Jamieson looks at how the original 1986 edition of Respect for Nature has shaped the study of environmental ethics, and shows why the work remains relevant to debates today.

Ethics and the Environment

Ethics and the Environment PDF Author: Dale Jamieson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139467883
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
What is the environment, and how does it figure in an ethical life? This book is an introduction to the philosophical issues involved in this important question, focussing primarily on ethics but also encompassing questions in aesthetics and political philosophy. Topics discussed include the environment as an ethical question, human morality, meta-ethics, normative ethics, humans and other animals, the value of nature, and nature's future. The discussion is accessible and richly illustrated with examples. The book will be valuable for students taking courses in environmental philosophy, and also for a wider audience in courses in ethics, practical ethics, and environmental studies. It will also appeal to general readers who want a reliable and sophisticated introduction to the field.

Environmentally Induced Illnesses

Environmentally Induced Illnesses PDF Author: Thomas Kerns
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786450428
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Readers drawn to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, or Theo Colburn's Our Stolen Future will appreciate this work by Thomas Kerns as well. The growing epidemics of chemically induced illnesses from long-term, low-dose exposure to toxicants in both developed and developing nations are being studied by serious researchers. Questions are being raised as to how societies will deal with these new problems. Kerns's book is the first to directly address the ethical dimension of managing environmental health and ubiquitous toxicants (such as solvents, pesticides, and artificial fragrances). The work includes recent medical literature on chronic health effects from exposure to toxicants and the social costs of these disorders; relevant historic and human rights documents; recommendations for public policy and legislation; and primary obstacles faced by public health advocates. College instructors and students, victims of chemical sensitivity disorders, public health workers, scientists, and policymakers who are interested in the challenge of these emerging epidemics will find Kerns's text highly informative.

A Sand County Almanac

A Sand County Almanac PDF Author: Aldo Leopold
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345345053
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
The environmental classic that redefined the way we think about the natural world—an urgent call for preservation that’s more timely than ever. “We can place this book on the shelf that holds the writings of Thoreau and John Muir.”—San Francisco Chronicle These astonishing portraits of the natural world explore the breathtaking diversity of the unspoiled American landscape—the mountains and the prairies, the deserts and the coastlines. Conjuring up one extraordinary vision after another, Aldo Leopold takes readers with him on the road and through the seasons on a fantastic tour of our priceless natural resources, explaining the destructive effects humankind has had on the land and issuing a bold challenge to protect the world we love.

Matters of Care

Matters of Care PDF Author: María Puig de la Bellacasa
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452953473
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
To care can feel good, or it can feel bad. It can do good, it can oppress. But what is care? A moral obligation? A burden? A joy? Is it only human? In Matters of Care, María Puig de la Bellacasa presents a powerful challenge to conventional notions of care, exploring its significance as an ethical and political obligation for thinking in the more than human worlds of technoscience and naturecultures. Matters of Care contests the view that care is something only humans do, and argues for extending to non-humans the consideration of agencies and communities that make the living web of care by considering how care circulates in the natural world. The first of the book’s two parts, “Knowledge Politics,” defines the motivations for expanding the ethico-political meanings of care, focusing on discussions in science and technology that engage with sociotechnical assemblages and objects as lively, politically charged “things.” The second part, “Speculative Ethics in Antiecological Times,” considers everyday ecologies of sustaining and perpetuating life for their potential to transform our entrenched relations to natural worlds as “resources.” From the ethics and politics of care to experiential research on care to feminist science and technology studies, Matters of Care is a singular contribution to an emerging interdisciplinary debate that expands agency beyond the human to ask how our understandings of care must shift if we broaden the world.

Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (First Edition)

Environmental Philosophy and Ethics (First Edition) PDF Author: Theodore Grudin
Publisher: Cognella Academic Publishing
ISBN: 9781516596324
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Nature and Colonialism: A Reader provides students with a collection of classic texts on environmental thought and invites them to analyze the texts alongside the often contrarian ideas of expansion, development, and human exceptionalism. Readers are encouraged to consider early perspectives on the hierarchical power relationships between political/economic entities and nature/peoples, and whether foundational views of environmentalism supported the proliferation of colonial ideology. The collection begins with a piece by Zitkala-Sa, a Dakota Sioux activist and writer, and highlights a voice of resistance against the redefinition and reimagining of nature via colonialist thought. Students read seminal works related to nature by Charles Darwin, George Perkins Marsh, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Gifford Pinchot. They are challenged to engage in sociocultural inquiry to better understand how views of the relationship between humans and nature have developed over time, as well as how they continue to shape modern thought and perspectives regarding environmentalism. Designed to stimulate critical thought and inquiry, Nature and Colonialism is an ideal supplementary textbook for courses in environmental science or philosophy, especially those with emphasis on the relationship between humans and their environment.

The Midwestern Pastoral

The Midwestern Pastoral PDF Author: William Barillas
Publisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821442015
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
The midwestern pastoral is a literary tradition of place and rural experience that celebrates an attachment to land that is mystical as well as practical, based on historical and scientific knowledge as well as personal experience. It is exemplified in the poetry, fiction, and essays of writers who express an informed love of the nature and regional landscapes of the Midwest. Drawing on recent studies in cultural geography, environmental history, and mythology, as well as literary criticism, The Midwestern Pastoral: Place and Landscape in Literature of the American Heartland relates Midwestern pastoral writers to their local geographies and explains their approaches. William Barillas treats five important Midwestern pastoralists—Willa Cather, Aldo Leopold, Theodore Roethke, James Wright, and Jim Harrison—in separate chapters. He also discusses Jane Smiley, U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser, Paul Gruchow, and others. For these writers, the aim of writing is not merely intellectual and aesthetic, but democratic and ecological. In depicting and promoting commitment to local communities, human and natural, they express their love for, their understanding of, and their sense of place in the American Midwest. Students and serious readers, as well as scholars in the growing field of literature and the environment, will appreciate this study of writers who counter alienation and materialism in modern society.

Exposed

Exposed PDF Author: Stacy Alaimo
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452952183
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Opening with the statement “The anthropocene is no time to set things straight,” Stacy Alaimo puts forth potent arguments for a material feminist posthumanism in the chapters that follow. From trans-species art and queer animals to naked protesting and scientific accounts of fishy humans, Exposed argues for feminist posthumanism immersed in strange agencies and scale-shifting ethics. Including such divergent topics as landscape art, ocean ecologies, and plastic activism, Alaimo explores our environmental predicaments to better understand feminist occupations of transcorporeal subjectivity. She puts scientists, activists, artists, writers, and theorists in conversation, revealing that the state of the planet in the twenty-first century has radically transformed ethics, politics, and what it means to be human. Ultimately, Exposed calls for an environmental stance in which, rather than operating from an externalized perspective, we think, feel, and act as the very stuff of the world.