Bücher der Reihe Routledge Environmental Humanities

Throughout the early modern period, scientific debate and governmental action became increasingly preoccupied with the environment, generating discussion across Europe and the wider world as to how to improve land and climate for human benefit. This discourse eventually promoted the reconsideration of long-held beliefs about the role of climate in upholding the social order, driving economies and affecting public health. Governing the Environment in the Early Modern World explores the relationship between cultural perceptions of the environment and practical attempts at environmental regulation and change between 1500 and 1800. Taking a cultural and intellectual approach to early modern environmental governance, this edited collection combines an interpretative perspective with new insights into a period largely unfamiliar to environmental historians. Using a rich and multifaceted narrative, this book offers an understanding as to how efforts to enhance productive aspects of the environment were both led by and contributed to new conceptualisations of the role of `nature¿ in human society. This book offers a cultural and intellectual approach to early modern environmental history and will be of special interest to environmental, cultural and intellectual historians, as well as anyone with an interest in the culture and politics of environmental governance.

In recent decades science has experienced a revolutionary shift. The development and extensive application of computer modelling and simulation has transformed the knowledge¿making practices of scientific fields as diverse as aströphysics, genetics, robotics and demography. This epistemic transformation has brought with it a simultaneous heightening of political relevance and a renewal of international policy agendas, raising crucial questions about the nature and application of simulation knowledges throughout public policy. Through a diverse range of case studies spanning over a century of theoretical and practical developments in the atmospheric and environmental sciences, this book argues that computer modelling and simulation have substantially changed scientific and cultural practices and shaped the emergence of novel `cultures of prediction¿.Making an innovative, interdisciplinary contribution to understanding the impact of computer modelling on research practice, institutional configurations and broader cultures, this volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the past, present, and future of climate change and the environmental sciences.

Anthropocene Antarctica offers new ways of thinking about the 'Continent for Science and Peace' in a time of planetary environmental change.

This volume discusses gardens as designed landscapes of mediation between nature and culture, embodying different levels of human control over wilderness, defining specific rules for this confrontation and staging different forms of human dominance.

Humanities for the Environment, or HfE, is an ambitious project that from 2013-2015 was funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project networked universities and researchers internationally through a system of "Observatories." This book collects the work of contributors networked through the North American, Asia-Pacific, and Australia-Pacific Observatories. Humanities for the Environment showcases how humanists are working to "integrate knowledges" from diverse cultures and ontologies and pilot new "constellations of practice" that are moving beyond traditional contemplative or reflective outcomes (the book, the essay) towards solutions to the greatest social and environmental challenges of our time. With the still controversial concept of the "Anthropocene" as a starting point for a widening conversation, contributors range across geographies, ecosystems, climates and weather regimes; moving from icy, melting Arctic landscapes to the bleaching Australian Great Barrier Reef, and from an urban pedagogical "laboratory" in Phoenix, Arizona to Vatican City in Rome. Chapters explore the ways in which humanists, in collaboration with local communities, NGOs, nonprofits, international science research platforms and disciplines across academia, are responding to warming oceans, disappearing islands, collapsing fisheries, evaporating reservoirs of water, exploding bushfires, and spreading radioactive contamination.This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences interested in interdisciplinary questions of environment and culture.

This book brings together perspectives on food security and related environmental concerns from experts in the disciplines of literary studies, history, science, and social sciences.

This book recovers complex histories that continue to shape both how we understand climate and what we understand by it. It also examines how climate change compels us to rethink many of our existing traditional means of historical understanding. This book examines It addresses these questions climate change from transdisciplinary perspectives across the environmental humanities, including oral history, museum studies, history of religion, literary history, philosophy and critical legal studies..

This book explores the notion of endangerment which stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. It looks at some of the fundamental ways in which this process involves science, but also more than science: not only data and knowledge and institutions, but also affects and values. With a focus on endangerment sensibility, it encapsulates tensions between the normative and the utilitarian, the natural and the cultural.

Humanities for the Environment, or HfE, is an ambitious project that from 2013-2015 was funded by a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project networked universities and researchers internationally through a system of "Observatories." This book collects the work of contributors networked through the North American, Asia-Pacific, and Australia-Pacific Observatories. Humanities for the Environment showcases how humanists are working to "integrate knowledges" from diverse cultures and ontologies and pilot new "constellations of practice" that are moving beyond traditional contemplative or reflective outcomes (the book, the essay) towards solutions to the greatest social and environmental challenges of our time. With the still controversial concept of the "Anthropocene" as a starting point for a widening conversation, contributors range across geographies, ecosystems, climates and weather regimes; moving from icy, melting Arctic landscapes to the bleaching Australian Great Barrier Reef, and from an urban pedagogical "laboratory" in Phoenix, Arizona to Vatican City in Rome. Chapters explore the ways in which humanists, in collaboration with local communities, NGOs, nonprofits, international science research platforms and disciplines across academia, are responding to warming oceans, disappearing islands, collapsing fisheries, evaporating reservoirs of water, exploding bushfires, and spreading radioactive contamination.This interdisciplinary work will be of great interest to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences interested in interdisciplinary questions of environment and culture.

This textbook provides an overview of different ways of conceptualising nature in epistemological terms, reflecting the tensions between the polarities of humans as masters or protectors of nature, or as part of or outside of nature.

This book explores the notion of endangerment which stands at the heart of a network of concepts, values and practices dealing with objects considered threatened by extinction, and with the procedures aimed at preserving them. It looks at some of the fundamental ways in which this process involves science, but also more than science: not only data and knowledge and institutions, but also affects and values. With a focus on endangerment sensibility, it encapsulates tensions between the normative and the utilitarian, the natural and the cultural.

This book captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, the `Age of Humans¿. It presents some of the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history. As well as calling for a greater reflexivity when talking about the Anthropocene, it shows that what has been represented as the impact of the human species on its environment is fundamentally a political issue, raising questions about power, global distribution and environmental justice.

Written by an international team of contributors from Scandinavia, Germany, the UK, and the US, this book examines in-depth the relationship between sustainability and the good life. It explores where contemporary visions of the sustainable good life come from; what functions they serve; how they are expressed in current transition processes; and whether a sustainable and satisfying life is possible for all. It frames the eco "crisis" in an optimistic way, showing it to be full of potential for creative unfolding and democratic participation at all levels ¿ personal, community, and societal.

As one of the originators of the concept of bioregionalism, Peter Berg (1937-2011) is a founding figure of contemporary environmental thought. As arguably the nation's first post-environmentalist, in the 1970s Berg perceived the negative direction the environmental movement was taking and began to articulate a more positive and pro-active alternative, centered on the concept of bioregions. This book introduces readers to the biospheric vision and post-environmental genius of Berg, with original tributes from twenty prominent writers and thinkers, whose reflections illuminate facets of Berg's continuing importance and offer fresh angles on bioregionalism.

As one of the originators of the concept of bioregionalism, Peter Berg (1937-2011) is a founding figure of contemporary environmental thought. As arguably the nation's first post-environmentalist, in the 1970s Berg perceived the negative direction the environmental movement was taking and began to articulate a more positive and pro-active alternative, centred on the concept of bioregions. This book introduces readers to the biospheric vision and post-environmental genius of Berg, with original tributes from twenty prominent writers and thinkers, whose reflections illuminate facets of Berg's continuing importance and offer fresh angles on bioregionalism.

Research from a uniquely humanist perspective has much to offer in interrogating the social and cultural ramifications of invasion ecologies. This book addresses the ongoing community concerns about invasive species and the ecological changes that we will together face in a climate changing world. It demonstrates beautifully how the environmental humanities can meaningfully impact discourse on environmental degradation. It allows us to rethink what has been a longstanding problem in global environmental history: the impact on national, regional or local ecologies of the deliberate or accidental introduction of foreign species, plant and animal. The book reveals how the nonhuman world must be examined in conjunction with cultural and historical processes. Particularly important is how it examines the prejudice toward nativism in much supposedly neutral environmental and ecological writing.

This book captures some of the radical new thinking prompted by the arrival of the Anthropocene and opens up the social sciences and humanities to the profound meaning of the new geological epoch, the `Age of Humans¿. It presents some of the challenges and difficult questions posed by the convergence of geological and human history. As well as calling for a greater reflexivity when talking about the Anthropocene, it shows that what has been represented as the impact of the human species on its environment is fundamentally a political issue, raising questions about power, global distribution and environmental justice.

Reflecting on waste in the context of sustainability, materiality, social practices, subjectivity, and environmental challenges, the book covers settings from the municipal garbage crisis in Beirut, to food rescue campaigns in Hong Kong, and the toxic by-products of computer chip production in Silicon Valley.