You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
That rosy tomato perched on your plate in December is at the end of a great journeyÑnot just over land and sea, but across a vast and varied cultural history. This is the territory charted in Fresh. Opening the door of an ordinary refrigerator, it tells the curious story of the quality stored inside: freshness. We want fresh foods to keep us healthy, and to connect us to nature and community. We also want them convenient, pretty, and cheap. Fresh traces our paradoxical hunger to its roots in the rise of mass consumption, when freshness seemed both proof of and an antidote to progress. Susanne Freidberg begins with refrigeration, a trend as controversial at the turn of the twentieth century ...
Issues of sustainability and increased competition over coastal resources are changing practices of resource management. Societal concerns about environmental degradation and loss of coastal resources have steadily increased, while other issues like food security, biodiversity, and climate change, have emerged. A full set of social, ecological and economic objectives to address these issues are recognized, but there is no agreement on how to implement them. This interdisciplinary and "big picture book" – through a series of vivid case studies from environments throughout the world – suggests how to achieve these new resource management principles in practical, accessible ways.
Winner of the 2017 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association Although humans have long depended on oceans and aquatic ecosystems for sustenance and trade, only recently has human influence on these resources dramatically increased, transforming and undermining oceanic environments throughout the world. Marine ecosystems are in a crisis that is global in scope, rapid in pace, and colossal in scale. In The Tragedy of the Commodity, sociologists Stefano B. Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark explore the role human influence plays in this crisis, highlighting the social and economic forces that are at the heart of this looming ecological problem. In ...
In Fragile World: Ecology and the Church, scholars and activists from Christian communities as far-flung as Honduras, the Philippines, Colombia, and Kenya present a global angle on the global ecological crisis--in both its material and spiritual senses--and offer Catholic resources for responding to it. This volume explores the deep interconnections, for better and for worse, between the global North and the global South, and analyzes the relationship among the physical environment, human society, culture, theology, and economics--the "integral ecology" described by Pope Francis in Laudato Si'. Integral ecology demands that we think deeply about humans and the physical environment, but also ...
This introductory text introduces basic concepts in cultural anthropology by comparing cultures of increasing scale and focusing on specific universal issues throughout human history. Cultural materials are presented in integrated ethnographic case studies organized by cultural and geographic areas to show how ideological, social organization, and material features fit together in specific sociocultural systems. Bodley explicitly seeks a balance between ecological-materialist and cultural-ideological explanations of sociocultural systems, while stressing the importance of individual power-seeking and human agency. Part One examines domestic-scale, autonomous tribal cultures. Part Two presents politically organized, class-based civilizations and ancient empires in the imperial world. Part Three surveys global, industrial, market-based civilizations in the contemporary commercial world. Cultural Anthropology uniquely challenges students to consider the big questions about the nature of cultural systems.
Recent decades have witnessed the rise of social and environmental certification programs that are intended to promote responsible business practices. Consumers now encounter organic or fair-trade labels on a variety of products, implying such desirable benefits as improved environmental conditions or more equitable market transactions. But what do we know about the origins and development of the organizations behind these labels? This book examines forest, coffee, and fishery certification programs to reveal how the early decisions of programs on governance and standards affect the path along which individual programs evolve and the variety and number of programs across sectors.
Although food-production systems for the world's rural poor typically have had devastating effects on the planet's wealth of genes, species, and ecosystems, that need not be the case in the future. In Ecoagriculture, two of the world's leading experts on conservation and development examine the idea that agricultural landscapes can be designed more creatively to take the needs of human populations into account while also protecting, or even enhancing, biodiversity. They present a thorough overview of the innovative concept of "ecoagriculture" - the management of landscapes for both the production of food and the conservation of wild biodiversity. The book: examines the global impact of agric...
As in many other oil and gas dependent countries, Brunei Darussalam—a country with a small population but the second highest income per capita in Southeast Asia—has been diversifying its economy in three sectors: from oil and gas to other sectors of export/economic growth; from the dominance of public sector employment to a more balanced public and private sectors employment; and from heavy dependence on foreign labours to development of local talents. This book examines the current socio-economic development in the journey toward a diversified social economy, as targeted in Brunei Vision 2035. By examining the unique context of Brunei, this book fills in the gap on studies focusing on s...