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Contributors explore common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture resulting from convergent evolution. During the past 12,000 years, agriculture originated in humans as many as twenty-three times, and during the past 65 million years, agriculture also originated in nonhuman animals at least twenty times and in insects at least fifteen times. It is much more likely that these independent origins represent similar solutions to the challenge of growing food than that they are due purely to chance. This volume seeks to identify common elements in the evolutionary histories of both human and insect agriculture that are the results of convergent evolution. The...
One of the critical issues of our time is the dwindling capacity of the planet to provide life support for a large and growing human population. Based on a symposium on ecosystem health, Managing for Healthy Ecosystems identifies key issues that must be resolved if there is to be progress in this complex area, such as: Evolving methods f
A sweeping overview of how and what humans have eaten in their long history as a species The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are uses case studies from recent archaeological research to tell the story of food in human prehistory. Beginning with the earliest members of our genus, Robyn E. Cutright investigates the role of food in shaping who we are as humans during the emergence of modern Homo sapiens and through major transitions in human prehistory such as the development of agriculture and the emergence of complex societies. This fascinating study begins with a discussion of how food shaped humans in evolutionary terms by examining what makes human eating un...
Across the world, animals are being domesticated at an unprecedented rate and scale. But what exactly is domestication, and what does it tell us about ourselves? In this book, Marcus Baynes-Rock seeks the common thread linking stories about the domestication of Australia's native animals, arguing that domestication is part of a process by which late modernity threatens to undo the world. In a deeply personal account, the author tells of his encounters with crocodiles and emus behind fences, dingoes and kangaroos crossing boundaries, and native bees producing honey in his suburban backyard. Drawing on comparisons between Aboriginal and colonial Australians, Baynes-Rock reveals how the domesti...
Exploring the interconnectedness of human health, biodiversity, and bioethics. We all depend on environmental biodiversity for clean air, safe water, adequate nutrition, effective drugs, and protection from infectious diseases. Today's healthcare experts and policymakers are keenly aware that biodiversity is one of the crucial determinants of health—not only for individuals but also for the human population of the planet. Unfortunately, rapid globalization and ongoing environmental degradation mean that biodiversity is rapidly deteriorating, threatening planetary health on a mass scale. In Wounded Planet, Henk A.M.J. ten Have argues that the ethical debate about healthcare has become too n...
Brings together research from a range of fields to address key questions relating to agriculture: its origins and long-term sustainability.
Decolonial Animal Ethics in Linda Hogan’s Poetry and Prose is a plea for an urgent redefinition of human-animal relations on the basis of a nonanthropocentric animal ethic embraced by premodern Indigenous communities but depreciated by coloniality. Without decolonial revisions of animal subjectivity and personhood, the animal genocide can never truly stop. It is also a close reading of Linda Hogan’s poetry and prose in search of the coordinates of a decolonized animal ethic which would foster interspecies becoming. Having defined the recurring tropes, motifs, and attitudes that underpin Hogan’s treatment of nonhuman animals, the book moves on to trace the way she depicts the human-anim...
Nested Ecology provides a pragmatic and functional approach to realizing a sustainable environmental ethic. Edward T. Wimberley asserts that a practical ecological ethic must focus on human decision making within the context of larger social and environmental systems. Think of a set of mixing bowls, in which smaller bowls sit within larger ones. Wimberley sees the world in much the same way, with personal ecologies embedded in social ecologies that in turn are nested within natural ecologies. Wimberley urges a complete reconceptualization of the human place in the ecological hierarchy. Going beyond the physical realms in which people live and interact, he extends the concept of ecology to spirituality and the “ecology of the unknown.” In doing so, Wimberley defines a new environmental philosophy and a new ecological ethic.