Ecology Beyond Shanshui

“Gives to anthropological reflection a new starting point and will become the compulsory reference for all our debates in the years to come.” —Claude Lévi-Strauss, on the French edition Beyond Nature and Culture has been a major influence in European intellectual life since its French publication in 2005. Here, finally, it is brought to English-language readers. At its heart is a question central to both anthropology and philosophy: what is the relationship between nature and culture? Culture—as a collective human making, of art, language, and so forth—is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world, of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Philippe Descola shows this essential difference to be not only a Western notion, but also a very recent one. Drawing on ethnographic examples from around the world and theoretical understandings from cognitive science, structural analysis, and phenomenology, he formulates a sophisticated new framework, the “four ontologies” —animism, totemism, naturalism, and analogism—to account for all the ways we relate ourselves to nature. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, Descola offers a fundamental reformulation by which anthropologists and philosophers can see the world afresh. “A compelling and original account of where the nature-culture binary has come from, where it might go—and what we might imagine in its place.” —Somatosphere “The most important book coming from French anthropology since Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Anthropologie Structurale.” —Bruno Latour, author of An Inquiry into Modes of Existence “Descola’s challenging new worldview should be of special interest to a wide range of scientific and academic disciplines from anthropology to zoology . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice

Environmental destruction, animal abuse, and widespread indifference toward plants and elemental systems demand that a human-centric view of the world be permanently dismantled. But once it is, what functional hierarchies take its place, if any? This volume brings Alfred North Whitehead's process-relational worldview into conversation with deeper empirical perspectives on science and religion, with activist and de/constructive philosophies, with South Asian and indigenous traditions, and with...

Ecocriticism has emerged as one of the most fascinating and rapidly growing fields of recent literary and cultural studies. From its regional origins in late-twentieth-century Anglo-American academia, it has become a worldwide phenomenon, which involves a decidedly transdisciplinary and transnational paradigm that promises to return a new sense of relevance to research and teaching in the humanities. A distinctive feature of the present handbook in comparison with other survey volumes is the combination of ecocriticism with cultural ecology, reflecting an emphasis on the cultural transformation of ecological processes and on the crucial role of literature, art, and other forms of cultural creativity for the evolution of societies towards sustainable futures. In state-of-the-art contributions by leading international scholars in the field, this handbook maps some of the most important developments in contemporary ecocritical thought. It introduces key theoretical concepts, issues, and directions of ecocriticism and cultural ecology and demonstrates their relevance for the analysis of texts and other cultural phenomena.

This book explores how to tackle the challenges of urbanization through international lessons in sustainable development and smart growth strategies. As readers will discover, smart growth offers an approach to urbanization with the aim to: improve the efficiency of land use, protect the natural and cultural environment, promote economic prosperity and improve the quality of life. Authors address various challenges experienced in China, including deepening regional imbalances, an aging population, wholesale environmental degradation and traffic congestion. China’s official long-term urbanization plan sets many challenges for urban planners, these range from implementation of the plan and financing, to protection of vulnerable groups and social justice. This book brings readers up to date on the use of big data and modern technologies such as geographic information system technology (GIS). The work encompasses themes of environmental planning, community development, cultural heritage preservation, land use and transportation, urban studies, climate change, housing and community development, infrastructure planning, disaster planning and social equity. Authors present the very latest theories and practices of smart growth and offer many valuable insights to urban planners and scholars, as well as policy makers.

The increasingly rapid destruction of the ecological systems that support life is calling into question some of the fundamental stories that we live by: stories of unlimited economic growth, of consumerism, progress, individualism, success, and the human domination of nature. Ecolinguistics shows how linguistic analysis can help reveal the stories we live by, open them up to question, and contribute to the search for new stories. Bringing together the latest ecolinguistic studies with new theoretical insights and practical analyses, this book charts a new course for ecolinguistics as an engaged form of critical enquiry. Featuring: A framework for understanding the theory of ecolinguistics and applying it practically in real life; Exploration of diverse topics from consumerism in lifestyle magazines to Japanese nature haiku; A comprehensive glossary giving concise descriptions of the linguistic terms used in the book; Discourse analysis of a wide range of texts including newspapers, magazines, advertisements, films, nonfiction books, and visual images. This is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers working in the areas of Discourse Analysis and Language and Ecology.

A pioneering book highlighting the dynamic environmental dimensions of towns and villages and spatial connections with surrounding land.

There are many current socio-environmental conflicts and problems around the world that affect distinct nationalities, races, or ethnicities. Part of the solution to these issues involves interdisciplinary scholarship to make sense of the communication challenges that are involved. However, current research in this area has lacked clear focus on the ways in which environmental issues are culturally and socially constructed by racial and ethnic minorities. This volume aims to improve our understanding of culturally bounded rationalities across racial and ethnic groups facing environmental challenges, as they relate to the formation of environmental identities, environmental injustice, political activism, public engagement, and media representations, among others. The ideas presented in this book dovetail with the idea that environmental communication scholars and practitioners can effectively intervene to engage ethnic groups that traditionally are not included in decision making or deliberation processes that directly affect their livelihoods. Considering problems such as the siting of industrial facilities, flooding, droughts, climate change, and air and water pollution, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of environmental communication.

This book offers an introduction to the theory and practice of ecological wisdom (EW). EW is the integration of robust contemporary science with proven cultural and historical practices to identify long-term, sustainable solutions to problems of environmental management and urban design. The book combines theoretical concepts with specific case studies, illustrating the opportunities for interdisciplinary approaches combining historical experience, cultural context, and contemporary science as effective strategies for addressing complex problems confronting metropolitan and rural environmental and resource management in areas such as land use, water management, materials and building engineering, urban planning, and architecture and design. EW transcends the limitations in these fields of the normative approaches of modernity or traditional wisdom by offering a new, synthetic strategy to address socio-ecological issues. By presenting these ideas both theoretically and through existing case studies, the book provides researchers, practitioners and students with a powerful new perspective in developing long-term, resilient solutions to existing socio-environmental challenges. It is intended mainly for those working or interested in the fields of sustainable environmental and resource management, city and regional planning, architecture and design, civil engineering, landscape architecture, and the philosophy of science, particularly those with an ecological or sustainability focus.