Download or read book Cities and Catastrophes written by Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud and published by Peter Lang Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book Review

Download or read book Rivers of Empire written by Donald Worster and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American West, blessed with an abundance of earth and sky but cursed with a scarcity of life's most fundamental need, has long dreamed of harnessing all its rivers to produce unlimited wealth and power. In Rivers of Empire, award-winning historian Donald Worster tells the story of this dream and its outcome. He shows how, beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Mormons were the first attempting to make that dream a reality, damming and diverting rivers to irrigate their land. He follows this intriguing history through the 1930s, when the federal government built hundreds of dams on every major western river, thereby laying the foundation for the cities and farms, money and power of today's West. Yet while these cities have become paradigms of modern American urban centers, and the farms successful high-tech enterprises, Worster reminds us that the costs have been extremely high. Along with the wealth has come massive ecological damage, a redistribution of power to bureaucratic and economic elites, and a class conflict still on the upswing. As a result, the future of this "hydraulic West" is increasingly uncertain, as water continues to be a scarce resource, inadequate to the demand, and declining in quality.

Download or read book The Uses of Sociology written by Paul Felix Lazarsfeld and published by . This book was released on 1967 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Genesis and Geology written by Charles Coulston Gillispie and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1951, Genesis and Geology describes the background of social and theological ideas and the progress of scientific researches that, between them, produced the religious difficulties that afflicted the development of science in early industrial England. The book makes clear that the furor over On the Origin of Species was nothing new: earlier discoveries in science, particularly geology, had presented major challenges, not only to the literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, but even more seriously to the traditional idea that Providence controls the order of nature with an eye to fulfilling divine purpose. A new Foreword by Nicolaas Rupke places this book in the context of the last forty-five years of scholarship in the social history of evolutionary thought. Everyone interested in the history of modern science, in ideas, and in nineteenth-century England will want to read this book.

Download or read book Fear in Early Modern Society written by William G. Naphy and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-15 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fear of fire, flood, plague, invasion by the infidel, purgatory, death, witchcraft - these are just some of the fears that plagued the early modern world which are dealt with in this fascinating well-integrated collection of essays, based on extensive and ground-breaking new research. Drawing on British and Continental examples, the volume explores the panoply of personal and communal tragedies which tormented and terrified both elite and popular communities in this period, and shows how they formed strategies for dealing both practically and psychologically with their fears; it tells of the creation of the first fire service in France, of dog-massacres in times of plague in England, and of flood emergency plans in Holland.

Download or read book A Discourse on the Revolutions of the Surface of the Globe and the Changes Thereby Produced in the Animal Kingdom written by Georges baron Cuvier and published by . This book was released on 1831 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A River No More written by Philip L. Fradkin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1996-09-30 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here is the definitive history of the development of the Colorado River and the claims made on its waters, from its source in the Wyoming Rockies to the California and Arizona borders where, so saline it kills plants, it peters out just short of the Gulf of California. Ever increasing demands on the river to supply cities in the desert render this new edition all too timely. Philip Fradkin has updated this valuable book with a new preface.

Download or read book The Organic Machine written by Richard White and published by Hill and Wang. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics. In this pioneering study, White explores the relationship between the natural history of the Columbia River and the human history of the Pacific Northwest for both whites and Native Americans. He concentrates on what brings humans and the river together: not only the physical space of the region but also, and primarily, energy and work. For working with the river has been central to Pacific Northwesterners' competing ways of life. It is in this way that White comes to view the Columbia River as an organic machine--with conflicting human and natural claims--and to show that whatever separation exists between humans and nature exists to be crossed.

Download or read book Socioecological Transitions and Global Change written by Marina Fischer-Kowalski and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2007 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'In an important contribution to sustainability science, Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl extend the frontiers of contemporary socio-ecological research to articulate a theory of material, energy and land-use transitions across multiple scales based on detailed empirical studies in Europe and Asia. The insights it presents on agrarian-industrial transitions are crucial to understand the potential impact of emerging nations like India and China on global change.' - Aromar Revi, India China Institute, The New School University, US 'This volume represents the culmination of several years of empirical research and refinement of the social metabolism approach. That approach is one of the most exciting and illuminating innovations in the fields of human ecology, industrial ecology, and environmental history. Here the team from Vienna's Institute of Social Ecology shows masterfully how the insights of social metabolism shed light on transitions to high-energy society in Austria, in Britain, and in the world at large.' - J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University, US This significant new book analyses fundamental changes in society-nature interaction: the socioeconomic use of materials, energy and land. The volume presents a number of case studies addressing transitions from an agrarian to an industrial socioecological regime, analysed within the materials and energy flow accounting (MEFA) framework. It is argued that by concentrating on the biophysical dimensions of change in the course of industrialization, social development issues can be explicitly linked to changes in the natural environment. From the historical transition in Europe, to current transitions in developing countries, the book offers a broad and comprehensive analysis of transition processes across scales, from local to national. The comparison of historical and current assessments allows a theory of the underlying patterns of the agrarian-industrial transition to emerge. On this basis, future trends and possible pathways towards (or indeed further departures from) sustainability are discussed. Empirical in character and cautious in its assumptions, this insightful book provides rich and in-depth material for further studies in socioecological research. It will be essential reading for students and researchers of ecological economics, industrial ecology, human ecology, environmental sociology, environmental history, geography as well as land, energy and development studies.

Download or read book Great Geological Controversies written by Anthony Hallam and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1989 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second edition of the author's account of celebrated controversies in geology embraces many of the important ideas that have emerged since the birth of the subject. The two new chapters are on the emergence of stratigraphy in the 19th century and on the mass extinctions controversy.

Download or read book Religion and Cultural Memory written by Jan Assmann and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In ten brilliant essays, Jan Assmann explores the connections between religion, culture, and memory. Building on Maurice Halbwachs's idea that memory, like language, is a social phenomenon as well as an individual one, he argues that memory has a cultural dimension too. He develops a persuasive view of the life of the past in such surface phenomena as codes, religious rites and festivals, and canonical texts on the one hand, and in the Freudian psychodrama of repressing and resurrecting the past on the other. Whereas the current fad for oral history inevitably focuses on the actual memories of the last century or so, Assmann presents a commanding view of culture extending over five thousand years. He focuses on cultural memory from the Egyptians, Babylonians, and the Osage Indians down to recent controversies about memorializing the Holocaust in Germany and the role of memory in the current disputes between Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East and between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Download or read book The eruption of Vesuvius written by Pliny (the Younger.) and published by . This book was released on 1937 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Something New Under the Sun An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century World The Global Century Series written by J. R. McNeill and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2001-04-17 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "One of those rare books that’s both sweeping and specific, scholarly and readable…What makes the book stand out is its wealth of historical detail." —Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker The history of the twentieth century is most often told through its world wars, the rise and fall of communism, or its economic upheavals. In his startling book, J. R. McNeill gives us our first general account of what may prove to be the most significant dimension of the twentieth century: its environmental history. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the earth's air, water, and soil, and the biosphere of which we are a part. Based on exhaustive research, McNeill's story—a compelling blend of anecdotes, data, and shrewd analysis—never preaches: it is our definitive account. This is a volume in The Global Century Series (general editor, Paul Kennedy).

Download or read book Japanese Images of Nature written by Pamela J. Asquith and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1997 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the great diversity in how people perceive their natural environment and how they come to terms with nature, be it through brute force, rituals or idealization. The main message of the book is that 'nature' and the 'natural' are concepts very much conditioned by their context.

Download or read book Unwrapping Japan written by Eyal Ben-Ari and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 435 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent years have witnessed an explosive growth in the literature published about Japan. Yet it seems that the more that is written about Japan and Japanism – its culture, society, people – the more mysterious it becomes. As well as exploring issues relating to advertising, tourism, women, festivals and the art world, the book depicts how the study of Japanese society contributes to anthropological theory and understanding. The editors use the term ‘unwrapping’ to provide insights into Japanese culture and relate these insights to broader problems and questions prevalent in contemporary anthropological discourse. The issues explored include the contribution of applied anthropology to theory; the relationship between tourism and nostalgia; the interplay of marginality and belonging; the role of advertising in gender relations; status in the art world and the place of Japanese genres of writing within anthropology texts.

Download or read book Budo Perspectives written by Alexander Bennett and published by . This book was released on 2014-11-12 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bud is one of Japan's most significant contributions to the world's athletic heritage. In fact, I consider bud to be Japan's most successful cultural export. Wherever you go in the world, even in the remotest towns of the farthest countries, there is a high probability that there will be a 'd j ' of some sort in the community. In that d j you will find the local people barefooted, dressed in Japanese d -gi, obeying commands in the Japanese language, bowing the Japanese way, and more often than not, there will be a Japanese flag or a picture of some great Japanese master from the past occupying a prominent part of the d j . Interestingly, probably not one of the members will have ever been to Japan, and contact with Japanese people will be limited. There will always be some idiosyncrasies in the way training is conducted stemming from the fact that it is not actually Japan, and there are many aspects which have to be adapted to suit that particular social milieu.

Download or read book Home and Family in Japan written by Richard Ronald and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-04 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Japanese language the word ‘ie’ denotes both the materiality of homes and family relations within. The traditional family and family house - often portrayed in ideal terms as key foundations of Japanese culture and society - have been subject to significant changes in recent years. This book comprehensively addresses various aspects of family life and dwelling spaces, exploring how homes, household patterns and kin relations are reacting to contemporary social, economic and urban transformations, and the degree to which traditional patterns of both houses and households are changing. The book contextualises the shift from the hegemonic post-war image of standard family life, to the nuclear family and to a situation now where Japanese homes are more likely to include unmarried singles; childless couples; divorcees; unmarried adult children and elderly relatives either living alone or in nursing homes. It discusses how these new patterns are both reinforcing and challenging typical understandings of Japanese family life.