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Redefining Nature
- How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture? - What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development? Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes: - nature as a cultural construction; - the cultural management of the environment; and - relations between plants, animals and humans.
Red Ellen
In 1908 Ellen Wilkinson, a fiery adolescent from a working-class family in Manchester, was “the only girl who talks in school debates.” By midcentury, Wilkinson had helped found Britain’s Communist Party, earned a seat in Parliament, and become a renowned advocate for the poor and dispossessed at home and abroad. She was one of the first female delegates to the United Nations, and she played a central role in Britain’s postwar Labour government. In Laura Beers’s account of Wilkinson’s remarkable life, we have a richly detailed portrait of a time when Left-leaning British men and women from a range of backgrounds sought to reshape domestic, imperial, and international affairs. Wil...
Folkbiology
The term "folkbiology" refers to people's everyday understanding of the biological world—how they perceive, categorize, and reason about living kinds. The study of folkbiology not only sheds light on human nature, it may ultimately help us make the transition to a global economy without irreparably damaging the environment or destroying local cultures. This book takes an interdisciplinary approach, bringing together the work of researchers in anthropology, cognitive and developmental psychology, biology, and philosophy of science. The issues covered include: Are folk taxonomies a first-order approximation to classical scientific taxonomies, or are they driven more directly by utilitarian c...
Environmental Uncertainty and Local Knowledge
Southeast Asia is a laboratory showing current worldwide ecological issues. Environmental change, natural resource exploitation as well as global climate change increasingly threaten people's livelihoods. Environmentally-based uncertainties foster a high level of knowledge uncertainty. This poses a constantly growing threat to agricultural production. Vulnerable communities with a low degree of resilience are most severely affected. But local communities have abilities to innovate and develop locally embedded coping strategies. The contributors of this volume are most interested in environmental change that fosters knowledge uncertainties. Regions discussed include the Mekong Delta in Vietnam, Moluccas, Central Kalimantan, West Sumatra and South Sulawesi in Indonesia and Tangail Region in Bangladesh.
Nature Across Cultures
Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures consists of about 25 essays dealing with the environmental knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Thai, and Andean views of nature and the environment, among others, the book includes essays on Environmentalism and Images of the Other, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Worldviews and Ecology, Rethinking the Western/non-Western Divide, and Landscape, Nature, and Culture. The essays address the connections between nature and culture and relate the environmental practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both environmental history and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.
Sacred Ecology
Sacred Ecology examines bodies of knowledge held by indigenous and other rural peoples around the world, and asks how we can learn from this knowledge and ways of knowing. Berkes explores the importance of local and indigenous knowledge as a complement to scientific ecology, and its cultural and political significance for indigenous groups themselves. This third edition further develops the point that traditional knowledge as process, rather than as content, is what we should be examining. It has been updated with about 150 new references, and includes an extensive list of web resources through which instructors can access additional material and further illustrate many of the topics and themes in the book. Winner of the Ecological Society of America's 2014 Sustainability Science Award.
The Modern Anthropology of South-East Asia
This is a comprehensive introduction to the social and cultural anthropology of South-East Asia. It provides an overview of the major theoretical issues and themes which have emerged from the engagement of anthropologists with South-East Asian communities; a succinct historical survey and analysis of the peoples and cultures of the region. Most importantly the volume reveals the vitally important role which the study of the area has occupied in the development of the concepts and methods of anthropology: from the perspectives of Edmund Leach to Clifford Geertz, Maurice Freedman to Claude Levi-Strauss; Lauriston Sharp to Melford Spiro.
The Sago Palm
In order to produce sufficient quantities of food to feed the world's growing population, we need to increase the food producing capacities of crops and to protect the environments in which they grow. Discovering untapped plant resources is an important challenge, but a haphazard increase in food production may cause environmental damage. We need foresight and must take sound appropriate actions. The sago palm is a plant that might fulfill all of these requirements. The sago palm accumulates more starch than any other plant in the world, yet, in global terms, it continues to languish in relative obscurity. The Japanese Society of Sago Palm Studies was formed in the hope of raising its profile by hosting seminars and symposiums in Japan and overseas to help it achieve the recognition it deserves. To this end, the Society's members have worked together to produce this volume, written in an easy-to-read style. [Subject: Botany, Agriculture, Conservation, Environmental Studies]
