Download or read book Changing our Environment Changing Ourselves written by James S. Ormrod and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, a celebration of the work of the sociologist Peter Dickens serves as the catalyst for exploring the relationship between human ‘internal nature’ (our health and psychological well-being) and ‘external nature’ (the environment on which we depend and which we collectively transform). Across contributions from Ted Benton, James Ormrod, Kate Soper, John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark, Graham Sharp, James Addicott, Kathryn Dean and Peter Dickens himself, the book draws attention to alienation associated with the promotion of different knowledges in late capitalist production. But it also highlights the possibilities for generating less alienated relations with our environment in the future. As well as discussing the philosophical and theoretical issues involved, the book contains contemporary case studies of ultra-processed food, satellite farming, computerised thinking and dark tourism.
Download or read book Society and Nature written by Peter Dickens and published by Polity. This book was released on 2004-02-23 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society and Nature is a lively and highly accessible introduction to the sociology of the environment. The book provides a comprehensive guide to contemporary issues and current debates - including society, nature and the enlightenment, industry and environmental transformation, commodification, consumption, the network society and human identity, human biology, citizenship and new social movements. Combining insights from contemporary sociology, politics, developmental biology and psychology, Peter Dickens suggests that environmental degradation is largely due to humanity's narcissistic demand that the environment be made into a commodity to be consumed. Meanwhile, human biology is also being modified: people's bodies are being rebuilt in ways that reflect their class positions. People and their surroundings have always adapted according to the demands of society. But modern capitalist society is changing the environment and its people in profound, potentially catastrophic, ways, shaping both human and non-human nature in its own image. The book contains a number of student features to interest and guide the reader as well as an attractive and clear layout. It will be particularly useful for students and teachers of sociology, human ecology, environmental studies and social theory. Dickens' insight won his work the American Sociological Association's Outstanding Publication Award 2006, in the Environment and Technology section.
Download or read book Planetary Health written by Samuel Myers and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2020-08-13 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human health depends on the health of the planet. Earth’s natural systems—the air, the water, the biodiversity, the climate—are our life support systems. Yet climate change, biodiversity loss, scarcity of land and freshwater, pollution and other threats are degrading these systems. The emerging field of planetary health aims to understand how these changes threaten our health and how to protect ourselves and the rest of the biosphere. Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves provides a readable introduction to this new paradigm. With an interdisciplinary approach, the book addresses a wide range of health impacts felt in the Anthropocene, including food and nutrition, infectious disease, non-communicable disease, dislocation and conflict, and mental health. It also presents strategies to combat environmental changes and its ill-effects, such as controlling toxic exposures, investing in clean energy, improving urban design, and more. Chapters are authored by widely recognized experts. The result is a comprehensive and optimistic overview of a growing field that is being adopted by researchers and universities around the world. Students of public health will gain a solid grounding in the new challenges their profession must confront, while those in the environmental sciences, agriculture, the design professions, and other fields will become familiar with the human consequences of planetary changes. Understanding how our changing environment affects our health is increasingly critical to a variety of disciplines and professions. Planetary Health is the definitive guide to this vital field.
Download or read book Reason in a Dark Time written by Dale Jamieson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference there was a concerted international effort to stop climate change. Yet greenhouse gas emissions increased, atmospheric concentrations grew, and global warming became an observable fact of life. In this book, philosopher Dale Jamieson explains what climate change is, why we have failed to stop it, and why it still matters what we do. Centered in philosophy, the volume also treats the scientific, historical, economic, and political dimensions of climate change. Our failure to prevent or even to respond significantly to climate change, Jamieson argues, reflects the impoverishment of our systems of practical reason, the paralysis of our politics, and the limits of our cognitive and affective capacities. The climate change that is underway is remaking the world in such a way that familiar comforts, places, and ways of life will disappear in years or decades rather than centuries. Climate change also threatens our sense of meaning, since it is difficult to believe that our individual actions matter. The challenges that climate change presents go beyond the resources of common sense morality -- it can be hard to view such everyday acts as driving and flying as presenting moral problems. Yet there is much that we can do to slow climate change, to adapt to it and restore a sense of agency while living meaningful lives in a changing world.
Download or read book Evolving Ourselves written by Juan Enriquez and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eye-opening, mind-bending exploration of how mankind is reshaping its genetic future, based on the viral TED Talk series “Will Our Kids Be a Different Species?” and “The Next Species of Human.” Are you willing to engineer the DNA of your unborn children and grand-children to be healthier? Better looking? More intelligent? Why are rates of autism, asthma, and allergies exploding at an unprecedented pace? Why are humans living longer and having far fewer kids? Futurist Juan Enriquez and scientist Steve Gullans conduct a sweeping tour of how humans are changing the course of evolution for all species—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not. For example: • What if life forms are limited only by the bounds of our imagination? Are designer babies and pets, de-extinction, even entirely newspecies fair game? • As humans, animals, and plants become ever more resistant to disease and aging, what will become the leading causes of death? • Man-machine interfaces may allow humans to live much longer. What will happen when we transfer parts of our “selves” into clones, into stored cells and machines? Though these harbingers of change are deeply unsettling, the authors argue we are also in an epoch of tremendous opportunity. Future humans, perhaps a more diverse, resilient, gentler, and intelligent species, may become better caretakers of the planet—but only if we make the right choices now. Intelligent, provocative, and optimistic, Evolving Ourselves is the ultimate guide to the next phase of life on Earth. Chosen by Nature magazine as a Fall 2016 season highlight.
Download or read book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster written by Bill Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical—and accessible—plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe. Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.
Download or read book Sustainable Urban Development in the Age of Climate Change written by Ali Cheshmehzangi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the impact of climate change on cities, advocating that people are the panaceas and antidote to mitigating climate change, by enhancing their involvement in achieving sustainable development Goals (SDGs). This leads to the development of an SDG best practice participation template, which is supported by an extensive checklist of the ‘whats’ and ‘hows’ in participatory processes. Using case studies, extensive literature reviews and meta-analysis to make a case for a people-centric and integrated approach to sustainable urban development, it examines the role of governance in climate change, focusing on decision making processes, policies and regulations, as well as focusing on the significance of a people-oriented approach on climate change and cities. Through an extensive global outlook, this book highlights bottom-up methods of implementing and achieving sustainable urban development in the age of climate change. These highlights should help to develop new mindsets, new strategies, new directions and new policies, through which we can see a more sustainable approach to urbanisation and urban development globally, which can start ‘equipping future generations with the tools for them to help their future generations’.
Download or read book LifeCrafting written by Bradley R. E. Wright and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2023-10-19 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Would you like to live a more fulfilling life? A life marked by closeness to God, love for others, self-care, and productive purpose? Just about any life improvement requires one thing: changing behavior. You’ll either have to start a new behavior, refine an old one, or stop an unwanted behavior altogether. The decision to change behavior can be daunting because changing habits and routines is often difficult. Changes can bring about good, but they can also upend usual ways of doing things. This book guides you in how to change just about any behavior for what the apostle Paul called “a more excellent way.” The guidance is rooted in cutting-edge social science research joined with Christian understanding of the good life and how to achieve it. From this blended perspective, the book presents a general model for how you can effectively change your behavior. It gives you dozens of practical, proven strategies that you can start using right away. What’s the secret to behavior change? It happens best when a person combines several strategies. First, they start small. Next, they find ways to motivate themselves and to cultivate their spiritual gift of self-control. Finally, in all steps, they invite Christ into the process: through Scripture, prayer, and fellowship. Imagine what your life would be like if you could better match what you do daily to what matters most to you both now and eternally! Matching your behavior to your core values with God alongside is the key to creating a truly beautiful life.
Download or read book Redirect written by Timothy D. Wilson and published by Little, Brown Spark. This book was released on 2011-09-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What if there were a magic pill that could make you happier, turn you into a better parent, solve a number of your teenager's behavior problems, reduce racial prejudice, and close the achievement gap in education? There is no such pill, but story editing -- the scientifically based approach described in Redirect -- can accomplish all of this. The world-renowned psychologist Timothy Wilson shows us how to redirect the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us, with subtle prompts, in ways that lead to lasting change. Fascinating, groundbreaking, and practical, Redirect demonstrates the remarkable power small changes can have on the ways we see ourselves and our environment, and how we can use this in our everyday lives. "There are few academics who write with as much grace and wisdom as Timothy Wilson. Redirect is a masterpiece." -- Malcolm Gladwell
Download or read book Environmental Stewardship written by Robert James Berry and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-03-13 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is stewardship a useful way of regarding our relationship with our environment - or is it a dangerous excuse for plunder? Is it possible for us to be effective stewards? This book gathers together expositions of stewardship with criticisms of the concept and adds other contributions written especially for this collection.
Download or read book Shopping Our Way to Safety written by Andrew Szasz and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2007-11-15 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Not long ago, people did not worry about the food they ate. They did not worry about the water they drank or the air they breathed. It never occurred to them that eating, drinking water, satisfying basic, mundane bodily needs might be a dangerous thing to do. Parents thought it was good for their kids to go outside, get some sun. “That’s all changed now.” —from the Introduction Many Americans today rightly fear that they are constantly exposed to dangerous toxins in their immediate environment: tap water is contaminated with chemicals; foods contain pesticide residues, hormones, and antibiotics; even the air we breathe, outside and indoors, carries invisible poisons. Yet we have responded not by pushing for governmental regulation, but instead by shopping. What accounts for this swift and dramatic response? And what are its unintended consequences? Andrew Szasz examines this phenomenon in Shopping Our Way to Safety. Within a couple of decades, he reveals, bottled water and water filters, organic food, “green” household cleaners and personal hygiene products, and “natural” bedding and clothing have gone from being marginal, niche commodities to becoming mass consumer items. Szasz sees these fatalistic, individual responses to collective environmental threats as an inverted form of quarantine, aiming to shut the healthy individual in and the threatening world out. Sharply critiquing these products’ effectiveness as well as the unforeseen political consequences of relying on them to keep us safe from harm, Szasz argues that when consumers believe that they are indeed buying a defense from environmental hazards, they feel less urgency to actually do something to fix them. To achieve real protection, real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform. Andrew Szasz is professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of the award-winning EcoPopulism (Minnesota, 1994).
Download or read book On Learning Volume 2 written by David Scott and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2024-01-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited book, as you can see from its title, is about learning, or at least about the concept and practice of learning. The contributors to this volume are focusing on two meta-concepts, knowledge and learning, on the relationship between the two, and the way these can be framed in epistemic, social, political and economic terms. Knowledge and learning, as meta-concepts, are positioned in various networks or constellations of meaning, principally: the antecedents of the concepts, their relations to other relevant concepts, and the way the concepts are used in the lifeworld. In this book the various authors explore a number of important concepts that are relevant to the idea of learning. These are meta-concepts such as epistemology, inferential role semantics, phenomenology, rationality, thinking, hermeneutics, critical realism and pragmatism, and meso-concepts such as probability, woman, training, assessment, education, system, race, friendship, Bildung, curriculum, ecology and pedagogy. Like David Scott’s first volume of On Learning, this collection focusing on philosophy, concepts and practices is a response to empiricist and positivist conceptions of knowledge. It challenges detheorised and reductionist ideas of learning that have filtered through to the management of our schools, colleges and universities; over-simplified messages about learning, knowledge, curriculum and assessment; and fostered the denial that values are central to understanding how we live and how we should live – the normative dimension to social policy and social theorising. This book is also an attempt at a Bildungstheorie.
Download or read book The CNDA way A revolutionary approach to relationships and self love written by Colette Portelance and published by Les Éditions du CRAM. This book was released on 2015-03-31T00:00:00-04:00 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the CNDA (creative non directive approach) developed by Colette Portelance, individuals aiming to offer assistance or support to others in their personal or professional lives must first learn to know, understand, and accept themselves. Only then will those in the helping role be able to feel and show true acceptance, trust, and love towards those they are helping, enabling them to fulfil their creative potential and find greater happiness and harmony in their lives.
Download or read book The Creativity of Action written by Hans Joas and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hans Joas is one of the foremost social theorists in Germany today. Based on Joas’s celebrated study of George Herbert Mead, this work reevaluates the contribution of American pragmatism and European philosophical anthropology to theories of action in the social sciences. Joas also establishes direct ties between Mead’s work and approaches drawn from German traditions of philosophical anthropology. Joas argues for adding a third model of action to the two predominant models of rational and normative action—one that emphasizes the creative character of human action. This model encompasses the other two, allowing for a more comprehensive theory of action. Joas elaborates some implications of his model for theories of social movements and social change and for the status of action theory in sociology in the face of competition from theories advanced by Luhmann and Habermas. The problem of action is of crucial importance in both sociology and philosophy, and this book—already widely debated in Germany—will add fresh impetus to the lively discussions current in the English-speaking world.
Download or read book Society in Focus Change Challenge and Resistance written by Lindy Heinecken and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-06-09 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapters in this book showcase current sociological research, as undertaken both by established and budding social scientists in South Africa and Africa. The book covers a variety of topical themes, the first of which concerns the link between society, power and the environment, and how competing interests, whether these be corporate, legal, socio-ecological or environmentalist, relate to each. Another theme includes contributions on development, democracy and service delivery. Workplace change, resistance and well-being within the agricultural, manufacturing, mining and the service sector constitute a further central focus. The remaining theme addresses the interplay of race, class, gender and power within the context of specific topics, such as HIV/AIDS, tertiary education and minority groups. The collection of work presented in this book reflects a critical stance towards reification of roles, highlights contradictions between principles and practices in society, and underscores the complexity of societal issues on a broad range of contemporary themes. As such, the chapters are notable for their empirical richness and methodological pluralism, which are of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, whether scholars, professionals or practitioners.
Download or read book Being Ecological written by Timothy Morton and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-03-09 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A book about ecology without information dumping, guilt inducing, or preaching to the choir. Don't care about ecology? You think you don't, but you might all the same. Don't read ecology books? This book is for you. Ecology books can be confusing information dumps that are out of date by the time they hit you. Slapping you upside the head to make you feel bad. Grabbing you by the lapels while yelling disturbing facts. Handwringing in agony about “What are we going to do?” This book has none of that. Being Ecological doesn't preach to the eco-choir. It's for you—even, Timothy Morton explains, if you're not in the choir, even if you have no idea what choirs are. You might already be ecological. After establishing the approach of the book (no facts allowed!), Morton draws on Kant and Heidegger to help us understand living in an age of mass extinction caused by global warming. He considers the object of ecological awareness and ecological thinking: the biosphere and its interconnections. He discusses what sorts of actions count as ecological—starting a revolution? going to the garden center to smell the plants? And finally, in “Not a Grand Tour of Ecological Thought,” he explores a variety of current styles of being ecological—a range of overlapping orientations rather than preformatted self-labeling. Caught up in the us-versus-them (or you-versus-everything else) urgency of ecological crisis, Morton suggests, it's easy to forget that you are a symbiotic being entangled with other symbiotic beings. Isn't that being ecological?
Download or read book What We Think About When We Try Not To Think About Global Warming written by Per Espen Stoknes and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Today, about 98 percent of scientists affirm that climate change is human made, and about 2 percent still question it. Despite that overwhelming majority, though, about half the population of rich countries, like ours, choose to believe the 2 percent. And, paradoxically, this large camp of deniers grows even larger as more and more alarming proof of climate change has cropped up over the last decades. This disconnect has both climate scientists and activists scratching their heads, growing anxious, and responding, usually, by repeating more facts to 'win' the argument. But, the more climate facts pile up, the greater the resistance to them grows, and the harder it becomes to enact measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare communities for the inevitable change ahead. Is humanity up to the task? It is a catch-22 that starts, says psychologist and climate expert Per Espen Stoknes, from an inadequate understanding of the way most humans think, act, and live in the world around them. With dozens of examples, he shows how to retell the story of climate change and apply communication strategies more fit for the task."--Publisher's description.
