Download or read book Paradoxes of Green written by Gareth Doherty and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This highly innovative book is a multidisciplinary study of green and its significance from multiple perspectives: aesthetic, architectural, environmental, political, and social. It is centered on the Kingdom of Bahrain, the smallest and greenest of the Arab states in the Persian Gulf, where green has a long and deep history appearing cooling, productive, and prosperous--and a radical contrast to the hot, hostile desert. As is the case with cities around the world, green is often celebrated as a counter to gray urban environments, yet green has not always been good for cities. To have the color green manifested in arid environments is often in direct conflict with 'green' from an environmental point of view; this paradox is at the heart of the book. Given the resources required to maintain green in arid areas, including cities, the provision of green often bears significant environmental costs. In arid environments such as Bahrain, this contradiction becomes extreme and even unsustainable. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Gareth Doherty explores the landscapes of Bahrain where green represents a plethora of implicit human values and lives in dialectical tension with other culturally and environmentally significant colors and hues. The book's six chapters focus on: Blue, Red, Date-palm Green, Grass Green, Beige, and White. Implicit in his book is the argument that concepts of color and object are mutually defining and thus a discussion about green becomes a discussion about the creation of space and place"--

Download or read book Urbanisms of Color written by Gareth Doherty and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Color is a ubiquitous yet essential part of the city, creating and shaping urban form. Volume 3 of New Geographies brings together artists and designers, anthropologists, geographers, historians, and philosophers with the aim of exploring the potency, the interaction, and the neglected design possibilities of color at the scale of the city.

Download or read book Affluence and Freedom written by Pierre Charbonnier and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this pathbreaking book, Pierre Charbonnier opens up a new intellectual terrain: an environmental history of political ideas. His aim is not to locate the seeds of ecological thought in the history of political ideas as others have done, but rather to show that all political ideas, whether or not they endorse ecological ideals, are informed by a certain conception of our relationship to the Earth and to our environment. The fundamental political categories of modernity were founded on the idea that we could improve on nature, that we could exert a decisive victory over its excesses and claim unlimited access to earthly resources. In this way, modern thinkers imagined a political society of free individuals, equal and prosperous, alongside the development of industry geared towards progress and liberated from the Earth’s shackles. Yet this pact between democracy and growth has now been called into question by climate change and the environmental crisis. It is therefore our duty today to rethink political emancipation, bearing in mind that this can no longer draw on the prospect of infinite growth promised by industrial capitalism. Ecology must draw on the power harnessed by nineteenth-century socialism to respond to the massive impact of industrialization, but it must also rethink the imperative to offer protection to society by taking account of the solidarity of social groups and their conditions in a world transformed by climate change. This timely and original work of social and political theory will be of interest to a wide readership in politics, sociology, environmental studies and the social sciences and humanities generally.

Download or read book Ecological Urbanism written by Mohsen Mostafavi and published by Lars Muller Publishers. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 668 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the aim of projecting alternative and sustainable forms of urbanism, the book asks: What are the key principles of an ecological urbanism? How might they be organized? And what role might design and planning play in the process? While climate change, sustainable architecture, and green technologies have become increasingly topical, issues surrounding the sustainability of the city are much less developed. The premise of the book is that an ecological approach is urgently needed both as a remedial device for the contemporary city and an organizing principle for new cities. Ecological urbanism approaches the city without any one set of instruments and with a worldview that is fluid in scale and disciplinary approach. Design provides the synthetic key to connect ecology with an urbanism that is not in contradiction with its environment. The book brings together design practitioners and theorists, economists, engineers, artists, policy makers, environmental scientists, and public health specialists, with the goal of reaching a more robust understanding of ecological urbanism and what it might be in the future. Contributors include: Homi Bhabha, Stefano Boeri, Chuck Hoberman, Rem Koolhaas, Sanford Kwinter, Bruno Latour, Nina-Marie Lister, Moshen Mostafavi, Matthias Schuler, Sissel Tolaas, Charles Waldheim

Download or read book The Jevons Paradox and the Myth of Resource Efficiency Improvements written by Blake Alcott and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2012-04-27 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Jevons Paradox, which was first expressed in 1865 by William Stanley Jevons in relation to use of coal, states that an increase in efficiency in using a resource leads to increased use of that resource rather than to a reduction. This has subsequently been proved to apply not just to fossil fuels, but other resource use scenarios. For example, doubling the efficiency of food production per hectare over the last 50 years (due to the Green Revolution) did not solve the problem of hunger. The increase in efficiency increased production and worsened hunger because of the resulting increase in population. The implications of this in todays world are substantial. Many scientists and policymakers argue that future technological innovations will reduce consumption of resources; the Jevons Paradox explains why this may be a false hope. This is the first book to provide a historical overview of the Jevons Paradox, provide evidence for its existence and apply it to complex systems. Written and edited by world experts in the fields of economics, ecological economics, technology and the environment, it explains the myth of efficiency and explores its implications for resource usage (particularly oil). It is a must-read for policymakers, natural resource managers, academics and students concerned with the effects of efficiency on resource use.

Download or read book A Budget of Paradoxes written by Augustus De Morgan and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Water Paradox written by Ed Barbier and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical new approach to tackling the growing threat of water scarcity Water is essential to life, yet humankind’s relationship with water is complex. For millennia, we have perceived it as abundant and easily accessible. But water shortages are fast becoming a persistent reality for all nations, rich and poor. With demand outstripping supply, a global water crisis is imminent. In this trenchant critique of current water policies and practices, Edward Barbier argues that our water crisis is as much a failure of water management as it is a result of scarcity. Outdated governance structures and institutions, combined with continual underpricing, have perpetuated the overuse and undervaluation of water and disincentivized much-needed technological innovation. As a result “water grabbing” is on the rise, and cooperation to resolve these disputes is increasingly fraught. Barbier draws on evidence from countries across the globe to show the scale of the problem, and outlines the policy and management solutions needed to avert this crisis.

Download or read book Ten Years to Midnight written by Blair H. Sheppard and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Shows how humans have brought us to the brink and how humanity can find solutions. I urge people to read with humility and the daring to act.” —Harpal Singh, former Chair, Save the Children, India, and former Vice Chair, Save the Children International In conversations with people all over the world, from government officials and business leaders to taxi drivers and schoolteachers, Blair Sheppard, global leader for strategy and leadership at PwC, discovered they all had surprisingly similar concerns. In this prescient and pragmatic book, he and his team sum up these concerns in what they call the ADAPT framework: Asymmetry of wealth; Disruption wrought by the unexpected and often problematic consequences of technology; Age disparities--stresses caused by very young or very old populations in developed and emerging countries; Polarization as a symptom of the breakdown in global and national consensus; and loss of Trust in the institutions that underpin and stabilize society. These concerns are in turn precipitating four crises: a crisis of prosperity, a crisis of technology, a crisis of institutional legitimacy, and a crisis of leadership. Sheppard and his team analyze the complex roots of these crises--but they also offer solutions, albeit often seemingly counterintuitive ones. For example, in an era of globalization, we need to place a much greater emphasis on developing self-sustaining local economies. And as technology permeates our lives, we need computer scientists and engineers conversant with sociology and psychology and poets who can code. The authors argue persuasively that we have only a decade to make headway on these problems. But if we tackle them now, thoughtfully, imaginatively, creatively, and energetically, in ten years we could be looking at a dawn instead of darkness.

Download or read book Is Landscape written by Gareth Doherty and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is Landscape . . . ? surveys multiple and myriad definitions of landscape. Rather than seeking a singular or essential understanding of the term, the collection postulates that landscape might be better read in relation to its cognate terms across expanded disciplinary and professional fields. The publication pursues the potential of multiple provisional working definitions of landscape to both disturb and develop received understandings of landscape architecture. These definitions distinguish between landscape as representational medium, academic discipline, and professional identity. Beginning with an inquiry into the origins of the term itself, Is Landscape . . . .? features essays by a dozen leading voices shaping the contemporary reading of landscape as architecture and beyond.

Download or read book Paradoxes of Youth and Sport written by Margaret Gatz and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2002-03-21 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paradoxes of Youth and Sport explores emergent debates among scholars, youth advocates, and sport practitioners concerning the role of sport in the lives of young people in urban settings. Specialists from diverse fields examine how sport can address social ills and act as a resource in the lives of disadvantaged youth versus how sport itself harbors and fosters social problems and is dominated by unequal access, the obsession to win, and commercialization. This book places sport at the crossroads of inquiry and practice regarding critical issues of our time, including youth development; violence; racial, gender, and class inequities; and inter-group relations.

Download or read book Climate Change Policy in the European Union written by Andrew Jordan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-04-29 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Union (EU) has emerged as a leading governing body in the international struggle to govern climate change. The transformation that has occurred in its policies and institutions has profoundly affected climate change politics at the international level and within its 27 Member States. But how has this been achieved when the EU comprises so many levels of governance, when political leadership in Europe is so dispersed and the policy choices are especially difficult? Drawing on a variety of detailed case studies spanning the interlinked challenges of mitigation and adaptation, this volume offers an unrivalled account of how different actors wrestled with the complex governance dilemmas associated with climate policy making. Opening up the EU's inner workings to non-specialists, it provides a perspective on the way that the EU governs, as well as exploring its ability to maintain a leading position in international climate change politics.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Paradox written by Wendy K. Smith and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of paradox dates back to ancient philosophy, yet only recently have scholars started to explore this idea in organizational phenomena. Two decades ago, a handful of provocative theorists urged researchers to take seriously the study of paradox, and thereby deepen our understanding of plurality, tensions, and contradictions in organizational life. Studies of organizational paradox have grown exponentially over the past two decades, canvassing varied phenomena, methods, and levels of analysis. These studies have explored such tensions as today and tomorrow, global integration and local distinctions, collaboration and competition, self and others, mission and markets. Yet even with both the depth and breadth of interest in organizational paradoxes, key issues around definitions and application remain. This Handbook seeks to aid, engage, and fuel the expanding interest in organizational paradox. Contributions to this volume depict how paradox studies inform, and are informed, by other theoretical perspectives, while creating a resource that enables scholars to learn about and apply this lens across varied organizational phenomena. The increasing complexity, volatility, and ambiguity in our world continually surfaces paradoxical dynamics. Thus, this Handbook offers insights to scholars across organizational theory.

Download or read book The Paradoxes of Freedom written by Sidney Hook and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-11-10 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Download or read book Misconceiving Merit written by Mary Blair-Loy and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive study showing how cultural ideas of merit in academic science produce unfair and unequal outcomes. In Misconceiving Merit, sociologists Mary Blair-Loy and Erin A. Cech uncover the cultural foundations of a paradox. On one hand, academic science, engineering, and math revere meritocracy, a system that recognizes and rewards those with the greatest talent and dedication. At the same time, women and some racial and sexual minorities remain underrepresented and often feel unwelcome and devalued in STEM. How can academic science, which so highly values meritocracy and objectivity, produce these unequal outcomes? Blair-Loy and Cech studied more than five hundred STEM professors at a top research university to reveal how unequal and unfair outcomes can emerge alongside commitments to objectivity and excellence. The authors find that academic STEM harbors dominant cultural beliefs that not only perpetuate the mistreatment of scientists from underrepresented groups but hinder innovation. Underrepresented groups are often seen as less fully embodying merit compared to equally productive white and Asian heterosexual men, and the negative consequences of this misjudgment persist regardless of professors’ actual academic productivity. Misconceiving Merit is filled with insights for higher education administrators working toward greater equity as well as for scientists and engineers striving to change entrenched patterns of inequality in STEM.

Download or read book The Light Green Society written by Michael Bess and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-11-15 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Paradoxes of Postcolonial Culture written by Sandra Ponzanesi and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative contribution to understanding the promise and contradictions of contemporary postcolonial culture applies a wide array of theoretical tools to a large body of literature. The author compares the work of established Indian writers including Bharati Mukherjee, Meena Alexander, Sara Suleri, and Sunetra Gupta to new writings by such Afro-Italian immigrant women as Ermina dell'Oro, Maria Abbebù Viarengo, Ribka Sibhatu, and Sirad Hassan. Sandra Ponzanesi's analysis highlights a set of dissymmetrical relationships that are set in the context of different imperial, linguistic, and market policies. By dealing with issues of representation linked to postcolonial literary genres, to gender and ethnicity questions, and to new cartographies of diaspora, this book imbues the postcolonial debate with a new élan.

Download or read book The Paradox of Choice written by Barry Schwartz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.