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Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.
A rich, authoritative look at a material that plays an essential role in human culture Wood has been a central part of human life throughout the world for thousands of years. In an intoxicating mix of science, history, and practical information, historian and woodworker Harvey Green considers this vital material's place on the planet. What makes one wood hard and one soft? How did we find it, tame it? Where does it fit into the histories of technology, architecture, and industrialization, of empire, exploration, and settlement? Spanning the surprising histories of the log cabin and Windsor chair, the deep truth about veneer, the role of wood in the American Revolution, the disappearance of the rain forests, the botany behind the baseball bat, and much more, Wood is a deep and satisfying look at one of our most treasured resources.
The Built Environment through the Prism of the Colonial Periodical Press is a venture of the International Group for Studies of Colonial Periodical Press of the Portuguese Empire (IGSCP-PE), who are also interested in comparative studies and conceptual discussions. Through a focus on the understudied role of colonial periodicals in the creation and public discussion of colonial built environments, the present book contributes to a cultural history of the idea of built environment. The studies underscore the role of press in articulating environment imaging and transformations with colonial ideologies, projects and policies, and the fixing, othering and disputing of identities, while still re...
This timely study explores how societies have responded to mass inflows of refugees between 1945 and 2000.
Forests being the lungs of planet Earth are the most important ecosystems. They act as carbon sinks and sustain a huge amount of carbon in them. They play an extremely important role for the survival of the living beings on this earth. From human beings to the flora and fauna of the earth’s ecosystem depend on the forests in some way or the other. Forests are the repositories of enormous biodiversity on this planet. They are an adobe to millions of species of animals including human beings, plants and microorganisms. They also give massive ecosystem services to mankind and to all the living beings thriving on this earth. They regulate climate, water cycles and carbon sequestering on this p...
Burning the Dead traces the evolution of cremation in India and the South Asian diaspora across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Through interconnected histories of movement, space, identity, and affect, it examines how the so-called traditional practice of Hindu cremation on an open-air funeral pyre was culturally transformed and materially refashioned under British rule, following intense Western hostility, colonial sanitary acceptance, and Indian adaptation. David Arnold examines the critical reception of Hindu cremation abroad, particularly in Britain, where India formed a primary reference point for the cremation debates of the late nineteenth century, and explores the struggle for official recognition of cremation among Hindu and Sikh communities around the globe. Above all, Arnold foregrounds the growing public presence and assertive political use made of Hindu cremation, its increasing social inclusivity, and its close identification with Hindu reform movements and modern Indian nationhood.
For decades, tree planting and forestry have been pivotal to Chinese environmentalism. During the Mao era, while forests were razed to fuel rapid increases in industrial production, the "Greening the Motherland" campaign promoted conservationist tree-planting nationwide. Contested Environmentalisms explores the seemingly contradictory rhetoric and desires of Chinese conservation from the early twentieth century through to the present. Drawing on literary, cinematic, scientific, archival, and digital media sources, Cheng Li investigates the emergence, evolution, and devolution of Chinese conservationist ideas. Combining literary, historical, and environmental studies approaches, he shows that...
Research Handbook on International Law and Natural Resources provides a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the role of international law in regulating the exploration and exploitation of natural resources. It illuminates interactions and tensions between international environmental law, human rights law and international economic law. It also discusses the relevance of soft law, international dispute settlement, as well as of various unilateral, bilateral, regional and transnational initiatives in the governance of natural resources. While the Handbook is accessible to those approaching the subject for the first time, it identifies pressing areas for further investigation that will be of interest to advanced researchers.
From antiquity to our own time those interested in political economy have with almost no exceptions regarded the natural physical environment as a resource meant for human use. Focusing on the period 1600-1850, and paying particular attention to major figures including Adam Smith, T.R. Malthus, David Ricardo and J.S. Mill, this book provides a detailed overview of the intellectual history of the economic consideration of nature from antiquity to modern times. It shows how even someone like Mill, who was clearly influenced by romantic notions regarding the spiritual need for contact with pristine nature, ultimately regarded it as an economic resource. Building on existing scholarship, this study demonstrates how the rise of modern sensitivity to nature, from the late eighteenth century in particular, was in fact a dialectical reaction to the growing distance of modern urban civilization from the natural environment. As such, the book offers an unprecedentedly detailed overview of the intellectual history of economic considerations of nature, whilst underlining how the history of this topic has been remarkably consistent.
Drawing on novels, plays, science fiction, and films of the 1920s and 1930s, this book examines modern science's place in reproduction in British and American cultural history.