The Future Of Nature

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.

DIVAn innovative anthology that offers a global perspective on how people think about predicting the future of life on Earth/div

"In the seemingly mundane Northern farm of early America and the people who sought to improve its productivity and efficiency, Emily Pawley finds a world rich with innovative practices and marked by a developing interrelationship between scientific knowledge, industrial methods, and capitalism. Agricultural "improvers" became increasingly scientistic, driving tremendous increases in the range and volume of agricultural output-and transforming American conceptions of expertise, success, and exploitation. Pawley's focus on soil, fertilizer, apples, mulberries, agricultural fairs, and experimental stations shows each nominally dull subject to have been an area of intellectual ferment and sharp contestation: mercantile, epistemological, and otherwise"--

Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions concerning the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. As we begin to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. ‘Playing God’ is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species, which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp. In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas – the most influential philosopher and social thinker in Germany today – takes up the question of genetic engineering and its ethical implications and subjects it to careful philosophical scrutiny. His analysis is guided by the view that genetic manipulation is bound up with the identity and self-understanding of the species. We cannot rule out the possibility that knowledge of one’s own hereditary factors may prove to be restrictive for the choice of an individual’s way of life and may undermine the symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings. In the concluding chapter – which was delivered as a lecture on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 2001 – Habermas broadens the discussion to examine the tension between science and religion in the modern world, a tension which exploded, with such tragic violence, on September 11th.

A collection of writings by such contributors as Ursula Le Guin, David Orr, and Mark Dowie evaluates the role of human nature as both a key and obstacle in achieving environmental goals, in a volume that explores such topics as America's incarnation society, spiritual ecology, and the military-industrial landscape.

An examination of how Western visions of endless future growth have contributed to the global environmental crisis "This book does something that is worth doing and that no other scholarly book I know of comes close to doing: tracing the history of imagined environmental futures in the Western world."--William Meyer, Colgate University For centuries, the West has produced stories about the future in which humans use advanced science and technology to transform the earth. Michael Rawson uses a wide range of works that include Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, the science fiction novels of Jules Verne, and even the speculations of think tanks like the RAND Corporation to reveal the environmental paradox at the heart of these narratives: the single-minded expectation of unlimited growth on a finite planet. Rawson shows how these stories, which have long pervaded Western dreams about the future, have helped to enable an unprecedentedly abundant and technology-driven lifestyle for some while bringing the threat of environmental disaster to all. Adapting to ecological realities, he argues, hinges on the ability to create new visions of tomorrow that decouple growth from the idea of progress.

An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic

Why it matters that our relationship with nature is increasingly mediated and augmented by technology. Our forebears may have had a close connection with the natural world, but increasingly we experience technological nature. Children come of age watching digital nature programs on television. They inhabit virtual lands in digital games. And they play with robotic animals, purchased at big box stores. Until a few years ago, hunters could "telehunt"—shoot and kill animals in Texas from a computer anywhere in the world via a Web interface. Does it matter that much of our experience with nature is mediated and augmented by technology? In Technological Nature, Peter Kahn argues that it does, and shows how it affects our well-being. Kahn describes his investigations of children's and adults' experiences of cutting-edge technological nature. He and his team installed "technological nature windows" (50-inch plasma screens showing high-definition broadcasts of real-time local nature views) in inside offices on his university campus and assessed the physiological and psychological effects on viewers. He studied children's and adults' relationships with the robotic dog AIBO (including possible benefits for children with autism). And he studied online "telegardening" (a pastoral alternative to "telehunting"). Kahn's studies show that in terms of human well-being technological nature is better than no nature, but not as good as actual nature. We should develop and use technological nature as a bonus on life, not as its substitute, and re-envision what is beautiful and fulfilling and often wild in essence in our relationship with the natural world.

This groundbreaking volume is the first comprehensive, critical examination of the rise of protected areas and their current social and economic position in our world. It examines the social impacts of protected areas, the conflicts that surround them, the alternatives to them and the conceptual categories they impose. The book explores key debates on devolution, participation and democracy; the role and uniqueness of indigenous peoples and other local communities; institutions and resource management; hegemony, myth and symbolic power in conservation success stories; tourism, poverty and conservation; and the transformation of social and material relations which community conservation entails. For conservation practitioners and protected area professionals not accustomed to criticisms of their work, or students new to this complex field, the book will provide an understanding of the history and current state of affairs in the rise of protected areas. It introduces the concepts, theories and writers on which critiques of conservation have been built, and provides the means by which practitioners can understand problems with which they are wrestling. For advanced researchers the book will present a critique of the current debates on protected areas and provide a host of jumping off points for an array of research avenues