Book Description
The accelerating interpenetration of nature and culture is the hallmark of the new "light-green" social order that has emerged in postwar France, argues Michael Bess in this penetrating new history. On one hand, a preoccupation with natural qualities and equilibrium has increasingly infused France's economic and cultural life. On the other, human activities have laid an ever more potent and pervasive touch on the environment, whether through the intrusion of agriculture, industry, and urban growth, or through the much subtler and more well-intentioned efforts of ecological management.
The Light-Green Society limns sharply these trends over the last fifty years. The rise of environmentalism in the 1960s stemmed from a fervent desire to "save" wild nature-nature conceived as a qualitatively distinct domain, wholly separate from human designs and endeavors. And yet, Bess shows, after forty years of environmentalist agitation, much of it remarkably successful in achieving its aims, the old conception of nature as a "separate sphere" has become largely untenable. In the light-green society, where ecology and technological modernity continually flow together, a new hybrid vision of intermingled nature-culture has increasingly taken its place.
Book Description
This seminal book, based on innovative research at Harvard Forest, describes the dramatic natural and human-induced changes in the land and environment of New England over the past 1,000 years.
“An important and timely addition to a growing literature that documents change and, by implication, underlines our responsibilities to that thing out there that we call ‘nature.’”—Michael Williams, Science
“A must-read for anyone interested in the study of historical forest ecology and anthropogenic impacts on ecosystem dynamics.”—Marc D. Abrams, BioScience
Customer Reviews:
Mmmm..........2007-01-19
This book got here with a speed comprable to the starship enterprise entering warp speed. You know with the blurry stars.
Book Description
The Rhine River is Europe's most important commercial waterway, channeling the flow of trade among Switzerland, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In this innovative study, Mark Cioc focuses on the river from the moment when the Congress of Vienna established a multinational commission charged with making the river more efficient for purposes of trade and commerce in 1815. He examines the engineering and administrative decisions of the next century and a half that resulted in rapid industrial growth as well as profound environmental degradation, and highlights the partially successful restoration efforts undertaken from the 1970s to the present.
The Rhine is a classic example of a "multipurpose" river -- used simultaneously for transportation, for industry and agriculture, for urban drinking and sanitation needs, for hydroelectric production, and for recreation. It thus invites comparison with similarly over-burdened rivers such as the Mississippi, Hudson, Colorado, and Columbia. The Rhine's environmental problems are, however, even greater than those of other rivers because it is so densely populated (50 million people live along its borders), so highly industrialized (10% of global chemical production), and so short (775 miles in length).
Two centuries of nonstop hydraulic tinkering have resulted in a Rhine with a sleek and slender profile. In their quest for a perfect canal-like river, engineers have modified it more than any other large river in the world. As a consequence, between 1815 and 1975, the river lost most of its natural floodplain, riverside vegetation, migratory fish, and biodiversity. Recent efforts to restore that biodiversity, though heartening, can have only limited success because so many of the structural changes to the river are irreversible.
The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 makes clear just how central the river has been to all aspects of European political, economic, and environmental life for the past two hundred years.
Customer Reviews:
The Life and Times of the Rhine.......2006-03-26
Marc Cioc's book The Rhine: An Eco-Biography is a detailed case study of the impact of human engineering on arguably the most important river on the European continent. It is a history of both the Rhine and of the Rhine Commission, the international body created in 1815 to oversee the river and mold it into what amounts to a commercial canal. Utilizing a variety of scientific sources as well as historical accounts of the various agencies that had control over the Rhine, Cioc reveals that human changes to the river that took into account only the immediate, commercial impacts of their actions severely damaged its biodiversity and vitality. However, he argues, recent efforts to compensate for earlier destruction of the river's ecosystem are achieving moderate success.
In his book, Cioc traces the history of efforts in the past two centuries to control the Rhine and make it more useful for human commercial and industrial ventures. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he argues, were a time of great ecological change for the river, the most dramatic since the Ice Age. The Rhine was seen as a "multipurpose" waterway, using by the various countries through which it flows for a variety of purposes, from urban sanitation and transportation to industrial production and power generation. Under the guiding hand of various commissions and communes, river engineers took on the Rhine and tried to shape it into a more commercially useful river. Just as John F. Richards argues in his book The Unending Frontier, European colonizers were awed into wastefulness by the abundance of natural resources they found, most politicians, business people, and scientists believed for decades that the Rhine was simply too vast to ever be harmed by waste or overuse. Seeing the river as an "imperfect canal," countries and companies attempted to straighten the river, standardize its flow, and eliminate its floodplains.
All of these efforts to tame and harness the Rhine had incredibly deleterious effects on the rivers' diverse ecosystems. Cioc argues that these attempts to simplify the river into a commercially useful tool effectively destroyed the diversity of habitats, flora and fauna that once populated its banks and waters; this is not unlike William Cronon's argument that European colonizers simplified and thus de-diversified the natural environments of New England (Changes in the Land). The coal and chemical industries, particularly in Germany, polluted many tributaries to the point of biodeath, as did the use of the waters as an urban sewer and waste product repository. Efforts to reshape the river eliminated floodplains and other important natural habitats like islands, which not only eliminated a great deal of animal and plant life but also increased the risk of flooding in many areas. As Cioc reveals, those who failed to see the Rhine as a natural system and instead perceived it as a machine were responsible for creating long-term environmental damage in exchange for short-term political and financial gains.
Cioc's book is sometimes difficult for a reader without any scientific training; his close examination of the river's biological profile is thorough, but often challenging to follow. The non-chronological organization of many of the historically-focused chapters also makes it hard to keep track of the historical context in which changes to the river were made. And Cioc's rather gloomy tone often makes humans out to be the evil destroyers of nature - although it's possible that this feeling was unavoidable on his part after discovering the wholly negative effects of industrial use on the Rhine. But Cioc ends on a more hopeful note; his cautious optimism about current Rhine restoration projects is certainly heartening, and shows that humans can actually encourage biodiversity as well as eliminate it. In general, the book is a comprehensive and fascinating account of a very important world river.
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IDEAS & CAREERS OF SIMON
Darline Gay Levy
Manufacturer: University of Illinois Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 025200311X |
Book Description
As we enter a new millennium ruled by technology, will poetry still matter? The Song of the Earth answers eloquently in the affirmative. A book about our growing alienation from nature, it is also a brilliant meditation on the capacity of the writer to bring us back to earth, our home.
In the first ecological reading of English literature, Jonathan Bate traces the distinctions among "nature," "culture," and "environment" and shows how their meanings have changed since their appearance in the literature of the eighteenth century. An intricate interweaving of climatic, topographical, and political elements poetically deployed, his book ranges from greenhouses in Jane Austen's novels to fruit bats in the poetry of Les Murray, by way of Thomas Hardy's woodlands, Dr. Frankenstein's Creature, John Clare's birds' nests, Wordsworth's rivers, Byron's bear, and an early nineteenth-century novel about an orangutan who stands for Parliament. Though grounded in the English Romantic tradition, the book also explores American, Central European, and Caribbean poets and engages theoretically with Rousseau, Adorno, Bachelard, and especially Heidegger.
The model for an innovative and sophisticated new "ecopoetics," The Song of the Earth is at once an essential history of environmental consciousness and an impassioned argument for the necessity of literature in a time of ecological crisis.
Customer Reviews:
The Song of the Earth.......2007-06-08
This is probably the best book I've read all year. As an English teacher, I appreciate Bate's literary sensibility, and as a citizen of the earth, I value his insights into our environment. I have recommended this book to every intelligent person I know.
'ecocriticism' comes of age.......2001-02-06
Jonathan Bate's short book, 'Romantic Ecology'(1991) was a landmark in literary ecocriticism. In 'The Song of the Earth' Bate has developed his theme further and in doing so has produced an instant classic.
The purpose of the book is to show how poetry is not only relevant but necessary in an age of increasing environmental unease. It is a manifesto for the urgency of 'ecopoetics'. Bate writes: 'This is a book about why poetry continues to matter as we enter a new millennium that will be ruled by technology. It is a book about modern western man's alienation from nature. It is about the capacity of the writer to restore us to the earth which is our home' (vii)
Chapters are as follows: 1. Going, Going 2. The State of Nature 3. A Voice for Ariel 4. Major Weather 5. The Picturesque Environment 6. Nests, Shell, Landmarks 7. Poets, Apes and Other Animals 8. The Place of Poetry 9. What are Poets For?
My favourite chapter is 'Major Weather' which, in some quite startling and original ways, charts the influence of climate on writing . The centre piece of the chapter is a reading of Keat's 'Ode to Autumn' as a 'weather poem', resembling 'a well-regulated ecosystem'. For Bate, the ode 'is not an escapist fantasy which turns its back on the ruptures of Regency culture, as late twentieth century criticism tended to suggest. No: it is a meditation on how human culture can only function through links and reciprocal relations with nature.'(103-4). I learned 'Ode to Autumn' as a schoolchild, and it has always stayed with me. Now I see eloquently expressed the reasons for its significance to me.
Bate has set himself a difficult but worthy task, to argue for poetry as 'the place where we save the earth', that if culture is the cause of environmental destruction it can also be its remedy. This, then, is a book that should be read by everyone with an interest in literature, by everyone with an interest in the continuation of life on the planet.
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The Environment of Britain in the First Millennium AD
Petra Dark
Manufacturer: Duckworth Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0715629093 |
Product Description
This study of the relationship between human activity and environmental change from the Iron Age to the end of the Anglo-Saxon period brings together the results of the latest research in many fields to reconstruct changes in climate, sea level, soils and vegetation. The consequences of the major cultural changes of the first millennium are examined, including the Roman Conquest, the end of Roman Britain, and the Anglo-Saxon settlement, revealing the different ways in which human activity modified the environment. Copiously illustrated with photographs, maps and line drawings, the book will be of particular relevance to anyone with an interest in archaeology, history, geography, palaeoecology, botany, or environmental science. Preface List of figures 1. Reconstructing enviroments of the first millennium AD 2. Climate and sea level in the first millennium AD 3. The Iron Age context 4. The Roman period 5. The end of Roman Britain and the Anglo-Saxon period to AD800 6. Late Anglo-Saxon England and the Viking Age 7. Discussion References Index
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Photographic Guide to Sea and Shore Life of Britain and North-west Europe (Oxford Natural History)
Ray Gibson ,
Ben Hextall , and
Alex Rogers
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0198507097 |
Book Description
This photographic guide to sea shore animals and plants represents a completely new approach to field guides. It is aimed at those who wish to find and identify organisms encountered on the sea shore or immediately offshore quickly and easily while promoting their conservation. Uniquely, each species is illustrated by a photograph and, in most cases, accompanied by a line drawing that emphasises the critical features for identification and a map to show the distribution of the species in North-West Europe. The text itself deliberately focuses on features that complement the photographs and facilitate identification non-destructively - where, for example, burrowing worms can only be identified by digging them up and therefore killing them, only the cast, the part usually seen, is shown. Stress is laid on the importance of exploiting all available information for locating and identifying each species - if two species have identical appearance they are described separately and behavioural, geographical, or seasonal features that distinguish them are described in the text. There is no other guide to sea shore organisms like this one; those available are either less comprehensive or less well illustrated. It will appeal to beachcombers of all levels, from families to students and professionals, as well to divers and those visiting the proliferating numbers of commercially run marine aquaria that are open to the public.
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The River: A Love Story, a New Life in the Country, and One Idyllic Year Filming Otters
Philippa Forrester
Manufacturer: Orion Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0752856855 |
Book Description
When Philippa Forrester and her partner, wildlife photographer Charlie Hamilton James, decide to get out of the rat race and set up home in an old mill-worker's cottage on a river in the heart of Worcestershire, they get considerably more than they bargained for. Populated by otters, kingfishers, and water fowl, the river is teeming with life and the young couple soon fall in love with it. But it is the otters that really capture the couple's imagination, and they soon become absorbed in researching and filming this timid and endangered species. The River is the utterly captivating and personal story of their attempts to get a commission for and make a film about the families of otters, while at the same time having a baby, moving house, and pursuing their careers. Written with endless charm and real affection, featuring a cast of memorable characters, The River is packed with hilarious stories spanning floods, chicken-keeping, and wildlife-watching.
Amazon.com
Scholars in the age of Charles Darwin, writes feminist scholar Barbara Gates, were of two minds about women: on one hand, they embodied "the restful responsiveness of nature" and were somehow closer to living in a state of nature than were men; on the other hand, by the very virtue of this naturalness, they were less capable of being truly civilized and educated. Despite this, generations of women labored to speak on nature's behalf and to study its ways; "denied formal higher education," Gates writes, "they also constituted large portions of the audience at public lectures on science and read whatever was available to them on the subject," including a large literature in popular science written by women. Gates recounts the lives of many important naturalists of the age, among them traveler and Africanist Mary Kingsley, independent scholar Arabella Buckley (who served as secretary to the eminent English geologist Sir Charles Lyell and was acquainted with many of the leading scientists of her time), eminent illustrator Jemima Blackburn, and antivivisectionist Frances Power Cobbe. Although these women are not well represented in standard histories of science, Gates demonstrates that their contributions to their contemporaries' understanding of the natural world were estimable indeed. --Gregory McNamee
Book Description
In Kindred Nature, Barbara T. Gates highlights the contributions of Victorian and Edwardian women to the study, protection, and writing of nature. Recovering their works from the misrepresentation they often faced at the time of their composition, Gates discusses not just well-known women like Beatrix Potter but also others—scientists, writers, gardeners, and illustrators—who are little known today.
Some of these women discovered previously unknown species, others wrote and illustrated natural histories or animal stories, and still others educated women, the working classes, and children about recent scientific advances. A number of women also played pivotal roles in the defense of animal rights by protesting overhunting, vivisection, and habitat destruction, even as they demanded their own rights to vote, work, and enter universities.
Kindred Nature shows the enormous impact Victorian and Edwardian women had on the natural sciences and the environmental movement, and on our own attitudes toward nature and human nature.
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Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Postcolonial Era
William M. Adams , and
Martin Mulligan
Manufacturer: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1853837490 |
Book Description
This book explores the enduring influence of the colonial legacy on attitudes about relationships between people and nature in countries that were once part of the British Empire, either at the periphery or the center. Colonial annexation and government were accompanied by the colonization and exploitation of nature, both for production and even in the name of conservation. At the start of the 21st century, the conservation of nature is still of vital importance in these countries, but what should this conservation look like? What ideas can it be based upon? This book argues that there is a need for new forms of ethical engagement between people and nature.
Books:
- The Little Penguin
- The Molecular Biology of Chloroplasts and Mitochondria in (Advances in Photosynthesis and Respiration)
- The New Encyclopedia of Mammals
- The Politics of Jesus : Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted
- The Thrips, or Thysanoptera of Illinois
- The Tower Menagerie: The Amazing 600-Year History of the Royal Collection of Wild and Ferocious Beasts Kept at the Tower of London
- The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next
- The Warriors of Poseidon (Atlantis Rising, Book 1)
- The Whale Rider
- The Wildlife of Southern Africa: A Field Guide to the Animal and Plants of the Region
Books Index
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