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A groundbreaking study of how sustainability became a social and political problem, and how to think about it today.
Power to the People examines the varied but interconnected relationships between energy consumption and economic development in Europe over the last five centuries. It describes how the traditional energy economy of medieval and early modern Europe was marked by stable or falling per capita energy consumption, and how the First Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century--fueled by coal and steam engines--redrew the economic, social, and geopolitical map of Europe and the world. The Second Industrial Revolution continued this energy expansion and social transformation through the use of oil and electricity, but after 1970 Europe entered a new stage in which energy consumption has stabili...
Environmental History as a distinct discipline is now over a generation old, with a large and diverse group of practitioners around the globe. This book provides a reflection on the achievements, diversity, and direction of environmental history in its varied national, international and continental contexts.
This book reconstructs and extends sociological approaches to the understanding of food consumption. It identifies new ways to approach the explanation of food choice and it develops new concepts which will help reshape and reorient common understandings. Leading sociologist of food, Alan Warde, deals both with abstract issues about theories of practice and substantive analyses of aspects of eating, demonstrating how theories of practice can be elaborated and systematically applied to the activity of eating. The book falls into two parts. The first part establishes a basis for a practice-theoretic account of eating. Warde reviews research on eating, introduces theories of practice and constr...
Offers an innovative look at why science and technology cannot alone meet the needs of energy policy making in the future.
Drawing on the first systematic study of cultural capital in contemporary Britain, Culture, Class, Distinction examines the role played by culture in the relationships between class, gender and ethnicity. Its findings promise a major revaluation of the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu’s account of the relationships between class and culture.
This anthology provides an historical overview of the scientific ideas behind environmental prediction and how, as predictions about environmental change have been taken more seriously and widely, they have affected politics, policy, and public perception. Through an array of texts and commentaries that examine the themes of progress, population, environment, biodiversity and sustainability from a global perspective, it explores the meaning of the future in the twenty-first century. Providing access and reference points to the origins and development of key disciplines and methods, it will encourage policy makers, professionals, and students to reflect on the roots of their own theories and practices.
The sociology of consumption has concentrated unduly on the more spectacular and visual aspects of contemporary consumer behaviour, thereby constructing an unbalanced and misleading view. This collection emphasises ordinary rather than extraordinary items, routine and repetitive behaviour rather than conscious decision-making. It studies practical contexts of use rather than decisions to purchase and analyses collective identification rather than personal identity. Each essay argues one or more of these points, for the most part using new empirical material from several different national contexts. The topics analysed include shopping in Taiwan, second-home ownership in France, environmental...
This is an innovative analysis of the agrarian world and growth of government in early modern Germany through the medium of pre-industrial society's most basic material resource, wood. Paul Warde offers a regional study of south-west Germany from the late fifteenth to the early eighteenth century, demonstrating the stability of the economy and social structure through periods of demographic pressure, warfare and epidemic. He casts light on the nature of 'wood shortages' and societal response to environmental challenge, and shows how institutional responses largely based on preventing local conflict were poor at adapting to optimise the management of resources. Warde further argues for the inadequacy of models that oppose the 'market' to a 'natural economy' in understanding economic behaviour. This is a major contribution to debates about the sustainability of peasant society in early modern Europe, and to the growth of ecological approaches to history and historical geography.