Conservation of the environment Books

Book SynopsisThis volume reports all the information presently available from the fifty-seven regeneration surveys carried out to the present by government and private agencies within the Province of Ontario. It presents a general view of the nature of tree reproduction on cut-over forest land, followed by an analysis of the procedure in conducting and reporting regeneration surveys, and conclusions and recommendations for the conducting of future surveys.

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Book SynopsisWith Paul A. Johnsgard, we follow the migration of the sandhill cranes from the American Southwest to their Alaskan breeding grounds and back again, an annual pattern that has persisted over millions of years. By selecting four historic time frames of the migration between 1860 and 1980, Johnsgard illustrates how humans have influenced the flocks and how different American cultures have variously responded to the birds and perceived their value. Each section focuses on the interactions between children of four different American cultures and sandhill cranes, triggered by events occurring during the annual life cycle of the cranes. The story is enriched by the author’s exquisite illustrations, by Zuni prayers, and by Inuit and Pueblo legends. With a new preface and afterword and a new gallery of photographs by the author,Those of the Gray Wind is a classic story of a timeless ritual that can be enjoyed for generations to come. Trade Review“This is a very special story, a classic of nature writing that combines the keen observance of the scientist with the sensitivity of the naturalist. The result is a timeless story of the American landscape, wild creatures, and man.”—Outdoor Press “Sensitively written, scientifically accurate as to the bird’s habits and instincts, and gracefully illustrated.”—Seattle Times “One doesn’t have to be a naturalist to find pleasure in this brief yet highly intriguing tale of a timeless ritual.”—Living Today “Many scientists and historians have written about the natural history of the Great Plains, but few so compellingly as Paul Johnsgard.”—Annals of IowaTable of ContentsPreface Author's Note Spring, 1860 North to the Flat Waters Platte Valley Spring Summer, 1900 Destination: Arctic The Tundra of Igiak Bay Fall, 1940 The Roof of the Continent Rendezvous at Horsehead Lake Winter, 1980 The Valley of the Sacred River The Staked Plains Afterword

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Book SynopsisDirt Persuasion analyzes Bold Nebraska’s environmental campaign against TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline to examine how this grassroots environmental movement changed the rules for national environmentalism in the United States. Trade Review"Whether you are a Nebraskan or not, opposed to or supportive of the pipeline, you will learn a lot from this book and gain insight into the controversy."—Mark Brohman, Nebraska History Magazine"Readers will learn how one case of civil environmental populism evolved in a rural US context and, in so doing, will also gain an in-depth understanding of the existing scholarship on environmental communication. This exemplary book demonstrates outstanding, careful scholarship."—R. E. O'Connor, Choice"Dirt Persuasion: Civic Environmental Populism and the Heartland’s Pipeline Fight is an important contribution to the environmental and social historiography of the Great Plains."—Drew Folk, H-Environment“TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline is arguably one of the most significant environmental struggles in North American history. Moscato not only digs deep into these intense ecological antagonisms but—through the Bold Nebraska environmental campaign—also presents an important case study of the possibilities of engaged, multi-stakeholder environmental activism in a time of mounting global ecological crisis. . . . Dirt Persuasion is an exceptionally important contribution to environmental communication.”—Patrick D. Murphy, author of The Media Commons: Globalization and Environmental Discourses“Dirt Persuasion is a must-read for grassroots activists who care about rural environments. Lucidly written, Moscato’s fascinating book illuminates how Bold Nebraska mobilized cultural symbols, storytelling, and historical consciousness to build uncommon alliances and frame the media narrative in a successful movement to halt construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.”—Marsha Weisiger, Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of U.S. Western History at the University of OregonTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Tables Acknowledgments 1. A Pipeline Runs through It 2. Plains Spoken 3. Harvesting a Rural Metanarrative 4. Framing a Movement 5. Níbtháska 6. A Fight on Your Hands 7. From the Grass Roots Epilogue: After Nebraska References Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on an array of approachesbiographical, ecological and environmental, literary and politicalTheodore Roosevelt, Naturalist in the Arena analyzes the different elements of Roosevelt's manifold encounters with the great outdoors.Trade Review"This is a fine look at a complex man which brings attention to both his tragic demerits and valuable legacy."—Publishers Weekly, starred review"The collection makes a valuable scholarly contribution on multiple fronts: Roosevelt as a naturalist is the subject of the collection, but his life and work also provide a fulcrum to explore U.S. environmental history during one of its most transformative moments."—Kristen R. Egan, Western Historical Quarterly"Editors Char Miller and Clay Jenkinson identify as special strengths of this collection the care the contributors have given to reading TR correctly by intense immersion in the primary and secondary sources, by bringing personal perspectives to bear, and by using insights from multiple disciplines. The editors can be proud of the uniformly readable and diverse collection they present."—Dr. Spencer Davis, Nebraska History"Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena is a book about small things. This is good. In the immense scholarship of Theodore Roosevelt . . . the small things have often been over-looked. Editors Char Miller and Clay S. Jenkinson have done fine work knitting together a compendium of these small things—chance acquaintances, wildlife encounters, and political collaborations. . . . It is good for us today that these small things resulted in something big: the protection of our natural and wildlife treasures and efforts to educate the nation about them."—Gregory A. Wynn, Annals of Iowa"Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena is a welcome addition to the Roosevelt historiography. Its interdisciplinary approach allows for diverse topics and points of view, grounded by their shared connection to the natural world and Roosevelt's place within it."—Julie Courtwright, Great Plains Quarterly"Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena is suited for an audience interested in presidential history and environmental studies. I recommend this book because his policies continue to impact the nation."—Nicholas Christopher Francis Wooden, Chronicles of Oklahoma“Char Miller and Clay Jenkinson have brought together a remarkable collection of smart essays that is compulsively readable and thought-provoking. It is a volume full of spritely writing and rich insights.”—Virginia Scharff, distinguished professor of history emerita, University of New Mexico“A marvelous job of reminding the world why Theodore Roosevelt was America’s first green president. All the essays included in this volume are first rate. A dazzling addition to Progressive Era and environmental history studies. Highly recommended!”—Douglas Brinkley, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history, Rice UniversityTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction Char Miller and Clay S. Jenkinson Part 1. Field Notes 1. Beauty and Tragedy in the Wilderness: The Naturalism of Theodore Roosevelt Darrin Lunde 2. Theodore Roosevelt: “The Outdoor Man Who Writes” Thomas Cullen Bailey and Katherine Joslin 3. “I So Declare It”: Roosevelt’s Love Affair with Birds Duane G. Jundt 4. Urban Wild: Theodore Roosevelt’s Explorations of Rock Creek Park Melanie Choukas-Bradley Part 2. Outside Influences 5. “For Generations Yet Unborn”: George Bird Grinnell, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Early Conservation Movement John F. Reiger 6. Play, Work, and Politics: The Remarkable Partnership of Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot Char Miller 7. Friendship under Five Inches of Snow: Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir in YosemiteBarb Rosenstock 8. The Cowboy, the Crusader, and the Salvation of the American Buffalo Clay S. Jenkinson Part 3. Natural Politics 9. Theodore Roosevelt, the West, and the New America Elliott West 10. Theodore Roosevelt and Conservation: Looking Abroad Ian Tyrrell 11. Memorializing Theodore Roosevelt: Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice Clay S. Jenkinson List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisBy synthesizing scholarly work at the intersection of political ecology, digital geography, and science and technology studies, The Nature of Data analyzes how new digital technologies affect environments and their control.Trade Review"This book is a necessary piece to lay the groundwork for a political ecology of data and urge more research in this direction. . . . A welcome integration of digital social sciences, political ecology, critical GIS, and science and technology studies, and as such which will be of interest to scholars across these fields, but also to conservation practitioners. This collection of essays might also be useful as a methodological text for advanced graduate students."—Anne-Lise Boyer, H-Environment"Thanks to insights from ecomedia studies, environmental humanists are increasingly studying how the environment becomes digital and the digital becomes environmental. The Nature of Data ably contributes to this research."—Heather Houser, ISLE“Data may not grow on trees, but it increasingly shapes how humans know, govern, and struggle over forests—and indeed, much of the nonhuman world. The Nature of Data captures this moment empirically while advancing political ecology conceptually. An altogether stellar volume.”—Susanne Freidberg, author of Fresh: A Perishable History“In accelerating ways, environmental politics are data politics. This powerful book shows what this looks like in different settings and at different scales, persuasively calling for a new subfield focused on the political ecology of data. Extending from prior work on the delimitations and politics of environmental science, the collection draws out what environmental data can help us see, what it cuts out, and how environmental data production itself is both polluting and weighted by commercial interests.”—Kim Fortun, author of Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders“This is an original, diverse, and scintillating collection. Researchers working on political ecology of conservation and conservation social science have not taken challenges of data justice or the political economy of data production seriously enough. We must—and this book shows us how and why.”—Dan Brockington, author of Celebrity Advocacy and International Development“As environments are reverse engineered to match the spreadsheets and management platforms in which they are tallied, the environmental politics of data control, organization, and proliferation will hugely influence ecologies and politics going forward. By putting that insight front and center, Goldstein and Nost assemble a sweeping set of essays that gaze into the sometimes-disturbing future of the planet.”—Paul Robbins, author of Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction“This volume contributes to the growing discourses around political ecological work on data and the infrastructures that sustain, produce, and exchange them. The volume is startling in both its depth and breadth of engagement with timely and important topics; it marks a significant contribution to a growing field.”—Jim Thatcher, author of Thinking Big Data in Geography: New Regimes, New Research“Throughout, the reader is plunged into the complexities of digital systems, the environments they monitor and conserve, and the limits to their governance and oversight across a variety of places and scales and sovereignties. What emerges is resolutely not an endorsement of further digitalization of nature but a recognition that digitalization is perhaps yet another set of processes in which nature is actively produced.”—Matthew W. Wilson, author of New Lines: Critical GIS and the Trouble of the MapTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Tables Introduction: Infrastructuring Environmental Data Jenny Goldstein and Eric Nost Part 1. Sensors, Servers, and Structures 1. Data’s Metropolis: The Physical Footprints of Data Circulation and Modern Finance Graham Pickren 2. An Emerging Satellite Ecosystem and the Changing Political Economy of Remote Sensing Luis F. Alvarez León 3. Smart Earth: Environmental Governance in a Wired World Karen Bakker and Max Ritts 4. Data, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Nature in the Pacific Northwest Anthony Levenda and Zbigniew Grabowski Part 2. Civic Science and Community-Driven Data 5. Environmental Sensing Infrastructures and Just Good Enough Data Jennifer Gabrys and Helen Pritchard 6. Collaborative Modeling as Sociotechnical Data Infrastructure in Rural Zimbabwe M. V. Eitzel, Jon Solera, K. B. Wilson, Abraham Mawere Ndlovu, Emmanuel Mhike Hove, Daniel Ndlovu, Abraham Changarara, Alice Ndlovu, Kleber Neves, Adnomore Chirindira, Oluwasola E. Omoju, Aaron C. Fisher, and André Veski 7. Citizen Scientists and Conservation in the Anthropocene: From Monitoring to Making Coral Irus Braverman 8. Data Infrastructures, Indigenous Knowledge, and Environmental Observing in the Arctic Noor Johnson, Colleen Strawhacker, and Peter Pulsifer 9. Digital Infrastructure and the Affective Nature of Value in Belize Patrick Gallagher 10. Infrastructuring Environmental Data Justice Dawn Walker, Eric Nost, Aaron Lemelin, Rebecca Lave, Lindsey Dillon, and Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) Part 3. Governing Data, Infrastructuring Land and Resources 11. “A Poverty of Data”? Exporting the Digital Revolution to Farmers in the Global South Madeleine Fairbairn and Zenia Kish 12. Illicit Digital Environments: Monitoring and Surveilling Environmental Crime in Southeast Asia Hilary O. Faxon and Jenny Goldstein 13. Data Gaps: Penguin Science and Petrostate Formation in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) James J. A. Blair 14. Data Structures, Indigenous Ontologies, and Hydropower in the U.S. Northwest Corrine Armistead 15. How Forest Became Data: The Remaking of Ground-Truth in Indonesia Cindy Lin Conclusion: Toward a Political Ecology of Data Rebecca Lave, Eric Nost, and Jenny Goldstein Source Acknowledgments Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisNamed by Forbes as one of the 12 Best Books About Birds and Birding in 2017 After stumbling upon a book of photographs depicting extinct animals, B.J. Hollars became fascinated by creatures that are no longer with us: specifically, extinct North American birds. How, he wondered, could we preserve so beautifully on film what we’ve failed to preserve in life? And so begins his yearlong journey to find out, one that leads him from bogs to art museums, from archives to Christmas Bird Counts, until he at last comes as close to extinct birds as he ever will during a behind-the-scenes visit at the Chicago Field Museum. Heartbroken by the birds we’ve lost, Hollars takes refuge in those that remain. Armed with binoculars, a field guide, and knowledgeable friends, he begins his transition from budding birder to environmentally conscious citizen, a first step on a longer journey toward understanding the true tragedy of a bird&rsquTrade Review“Lively, passionate, melancholy, joyful, and quirky. . . . An endearing and highly readable book. . . . An ode to birds and nature, as well as to the eclectic and individual private fascinations—such as birding—that make our lives unique and worthwhile.”—Pamela Miller, Minneapolis Star Tribune “Flock Together is the highly satisfying tale of a fledgling birder. Hollars conveys an infectious sense of awe and excitement for every bird he spots. Yet this is so much more than just a catalog of sightings. It is also about the author’s entry into a community of intriguing characters—some brilliant, some eccentric, yet all bound by their fierce love for birds.”—Justin Hocking, author of The Great Floodgates of the Wonderworld"A wonderful read. . . . It reminds us that while we need to strive and protect species that are at risk, we must also place value on keeping common species common."—Tianna Burke, Canadian Field-Naturalist"While world travelers gain a broad picture of our planet, Hollars illustrates the world of information and interest within a few feet of our front door."—Bill Schwab, E Missourian“You’d think that nonfiction about extinct birds would be a trip into the void, but not in B.J. Hollars’s capable hands. Hollars takes us from specimen cabinets to his own backyard in a ceaseless pursuit of birds. They become a kind of compass for human morality in Flock Together. Lest that sound too heavy, be assured there is joy here too, in the very act of being attentive.”—Christopher Cokinos, author of Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds“This book should appeal to anyone with a curiosity about the world of nature. The topics, writing, and appealing voice of the author make this volume a most engaging read.”—Joel Greenberg, author of A Feathered River Across the Sky: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction"An insightful memoir."—KirkusTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsAuthor’s NotePrologue: Dodo LostPart I. Glimpsing1. The Resurrection of the Lord God Bird2. The Death List3. The Hermit and the HawkPart II. Spotting4. The Continuing Saga of the Resurrection of the Lord God Bird5. The Life List6. The Professor and the PigeonPart III. Seeing7. The Stunning Conclusion of the Continuing Saga of the Resurrection of the Lord God Bird8. The Christmas Count9. The Ghost of the GoshawkPart IV. Knowing10. Flock TogetherSourcesBibliography

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Book SynopsisIndustrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation and debt; and rural community decline. Yet the future of industrial agriculture depends fundamentally on farmers’ decisions.In Defense of Farmers illuminates anew the critical role that farmers play in the future of agriculture and examines the social, economic, and envirTrade Review“Valuable for food system leaders and policy-makers and in graduate seminars. . . . [Analyses] highlight unsustainable methods and suggest improvements that could serve as a starting point for dialogues and decisions on changing the food system framework.”—Stacey F. Stearns, Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development "In Defense of Farmers delivers a timely contribution to helping us better understand how we got to the corporate-hijacked food system we have today and how farm managers navigate this framework as they simultaneously promote and resist it. This edited volume is sharp in its critique while careful in its delivery, making it an important book for both scholars in the humanities and practitioners in the agricultural sciences. Through its successful disciplinary bridging, certainly contributing to its considerate tone, In Defense of Farmers will prove a useful foundation for practical conversations about the future of food production."—Nicole Welk-Joerger, H-Environment"In Defense of Farmers provides a solid overview of the current moment in industrialized agriculture and its human costs."—Megan Birk, New Mexico Historical Review“Feeding the world’s population in a sustainable manner is a topic of critical importance for all humankind. Those of us living in the developed world need to be cognizant of the perils of the industrialized model of agricultural production and the consequences of its adoption around the world. . . . Farmers’ voices are rarely heard, but this book now allows them to be heard with respect to the challenges of groundwater depletion, ‘big chicken,’ climate change, or the consequences of adopting new precision farming technologies.”—Michael J. Broadway, professor of geography at Northern Michigan University and coauthor of Slaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America“In Defense of Farmers is critical from the empirical standpoint of those disturbing processes that have taken us to a standardized place where too few corporate actors make too many decisions about what we eat, where we eat it, and who reaps food production’s benefits while others bear the costs of compromising animal welfare, the environment, and the quality of food. Gibson and Alexander have assembled an impressive, interdisciplinary volume of authors who know their subjects so well that their disgust at capital concentration, environmental destruction, and routine violations of human and animal rights is palpable.”—David Griffith, professor of anthropology at East Carolina University and author of American Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor MarketTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Foreword by John K. Hansen Acknowledgments Introduction: A Food System Imperiled Jane W. Gibson 1. Power, Food, and Agriculture: Implications for Farmers, Consumers, and Communities Mary K. Hendrickson, Philip H. Howard, and Douglas H. Constance 2. Chickenizing American Farmers Donald D. Stull 3. Industrial Chicken Meat and the Good Life in Bolivia Sarah Kollnig 4. Automating Agriculture: Precision Technologies, Agbots, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution Jane W. Gibson 5. Water to Wine: Industrial Agriculture and Groundwater Regulation in California Casey Walsh 6. Forecasting the Challenges of Climate Change for West Texas Wheat Farmers Sara E. Alexander 7. From Partner to Consumer: The Changing Role of Farmers in the Public Agricultural Research Process on the Canadian Prairies Katherine Strand 8. Transmission of the Brazil Model of Industrial Soybean Production: A Comparative Study of Two Migrant Farming Communities in the Brazilian Cerrado Andrew Ofstehage 9. The Price of Success: Population Decline and Community Transformation in Western Kansas Jane W. Gibson and Benjamin J. Gray 10. An Alternative Future for Food and Farming John Ikerd List of Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisBack from the Collapse covers the evolution, Euro-American-driven collapse, and large-scale restoration of Great Plains wildlife through efforts by the nonprofit organization American Prairie to assemble a protected area of 3.2 million acres on the plains of northeast Montana.Trade Review"This book would be an excellent addition to courses in ecology, conservation, and natural resource management, and will also interest naturalists and professional land managers working and living in the region."—A. L. Mayer, Choice"In Back from the Collapse: American Prairie and the Restoration of Great Plains Wildlife, Freese convinces us that the reintroduction of wildlife in the Great Plains is necessary and good by giving us the history of our planet earth and the Great Plains, by describing a thriving ecosystem that was destroyed by hunting, ranching and farming, and by recounting American Prairie's restoration successes."—Natalia Nebel, NewCity Lit“Grasslands are crucial to Earth’s biological diversity. North America once had a bounteous share. No one is better qualified to tell the story of such prairie ecosystems—the disruption of their dynamics, the collapse of their wildlife populations, and the vital possibility of saving and restoring them—than Curt Freese. This is an important, fascinating book.”—David Quammen, author of The Tangled Tree and Breathless“Curt Freese brings our nation’s ecologically rich but too-long-overlooked grasslands into sharp focus. He delivers a well-researched and approachably written account of the collapse of Great Plains wildlife populations and a challenge to readers—to envision the role that large protected areas can play in biodiversity conservation, especially in the face of climate change.”—Alison Piper Fox, chief executive officer of American PrairieTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Maps List of Tables Acknowledgements Introduction Part 1: History Chapter 1: How It Started Chapter 2: From Sea, Ice, and Forest Emerges a Prairie Chapter 3: From the End of One Faunal Collapse to the Dawn of Another Chapter 4: From Euro-American Settlement to Today Part 2: Wildlife Collapses and Recoveries Chapter 5: American Beaver and River Otter Chapter 6: Ungulates Chapter 7: Carnivores Chapter 8: Rocky Mountain Locust Chapter 9: Black-tailed Prairie Dog and Black-footed Ferret Chapter 10: Pallid Sturgeon and Other Fish Stories Chapter 11: Grassland Birds Part 3: Conclusion Chapter 12: Where We’ve Been and Where We Need to Go Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWhen we look at some of the most pressing issues in environmental politics today, it is hard to avoid data technologies. Big data, artificial intelligence, and data dashboards all promise “revolutionary” advances in the speed and scale at which governments, corporations, conservationists, and even individuals can respond to environmental challenges. By bringing together scholars from geography, anthropology, science and technology studies, and ecology, The Nature of Data explores how the digital realm is a significant site in which environmental politics are waged. This collection as a whole makes the argument that we cannot fully understand the current conjuncture in critical, global environmental politics without understanding the role of data platforms, devices, standards, and institutions. In particular, The Nature of Data addresses the contested practices of making and maintaining data infrastructure, the imaginaries produced by data infrastruTrade Review"This book is a necessary piece to lay the groundwork for a political ecology of data and urge more research in this direction. . . . A welcome integration of digital social sciences, political ecology, critical GIS, and science and technology studies, and as such which will be of interest to scholars across these fields, but also to conservation practitioners. This collection of essays might also be useful as a methodological text for advanced graduate students."—Anne-Lise Boyer, H-Environment"Thanks to insights from ecomedia studies, environmental humanists are increasingly studying how the environment becomes digital and the digital becomes environmental. The Nature of Data ably contributes to this research."—Heather Houser, ISLE“Data may not grow on trees, but it increasingly shapes how humans know, govern, and struggle over forests—and indeed, much of the nonhuman world. The Nature of Data captures this moment empirically while advancing political ecology conceptually. An altogether stellar volume.”—Susanne Freidberg, author of Fresh: A Perishable History“In accelerating ways, environmental politics are data politics. This powerful book shows what this looks like in different settings and at different scales, persuasively calling for a new subfield focused on the political ecology of data. Extending from prior work on the delimitations and politics of environmental science, the collection draws out what environmental data can help us see, what it cuts out, and how environmental data production itself is both polluting and weighted by commercial interests.”—Kim Fortun, author of Advocacy after Bhopal: Environmentalism, Disaster, New Global Orders“This is an original, diverse, and scintillating collection. Researchers working on political ecology of conservation and conservation social science have not taken challenges of data justice or the political economy of data production seriously enough. We must—and this book shows us how and why.”—Dan Brockington, author of Celebrity Advocacy and International Development“As environments are reverse engineered to match the spreadsheets and management platforms in which they are tallied, the environmental politics of data control, organization, and proliferation will hugely influence ecologies and politics going forward. By putting that insight front and center, Goldstein and Nost assemble a sweeping set of essays that gaze into the sometimes-disturbing future of the planet.”—Paul Robbins, author of Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction“This volume contributes to the growing discourses around political ecological work on data and the infrastructures that sustain, produce, and exchange them. The volume is startling in both its depth and breadth of engagement with timely and important topics; it marks a significant contribution to a growing field.”—Jim Thatcher, author of Thinking Big Data in Geography: New Regimes, New Research“Throughout, the reader is plunged into the complexities of digital systems, the environments they monitor and conserve, and the limits to their governance and oversight across a variety of places and scales and sovereignties. What emerges is resolutely not an endorsement of further digitalization of nature but a recognition that digitalization is perhaps yet another set of processes in which nature is actively produced.”—Matthew W. Wilson, author of New Lines: Critical GIS and the Trouble of the MapTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Tables Introduction: Infrastructuring Environmental Data Jenny Goldstein and Eric Nost Part 1. Sensors, Servers, and Structures 1. Data’s Metropolis: The Physical Footprints of Data Circulation and Modern Finance Graham Pickren 2. An Emerging Satellite Ecosystem and the Changing Political Economy of Remote Sensing Luis F. Alvarez León 3. Smart Earth: Environmental Governance in a Wired World Karen Bakker and Max Ritts 4. Data, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Nature in the Pacific Northwest Anthony Levenda and Zbigniew Grabowski Part 2. Civic Science and Community-Driven Data 5. Environmental Sensing Infrastructures and Just Good Enough Data Jennifer Gabrys and Helen Pritchard 6. Collaborative Modeling as Sociotechnical Data Infrastructure in Rural Zimbabwe M. V. Eitzel, Jon Solera, K. B. Wilson, Abraham Mawere Ndlovu, Emmanuel Mhike Hove, Daniel Ndlovu, Abraham Changarara, Alice Ndlovu, Kleber Neves, Adnomore Chirindira, Oluwasola E. Omoju, Aaron C. Fisher, and André Veski 7. Citizen Scientists and Conservation in the Anthropocene: From Monitoring to Making Coral Irus Braverman 8. Data Infrastructures, Indigenous Knowledge, and Environmental Observing in the Arctic Noor Johnson, Colleen Strawhacker, and Peter Pulsifer 9. Digital Infrastructure and the Affective Nature of Value in Belize Patrick Gallagher 10. Infrastructuring Environmental Data Justice Dawn Walker, Eric Nost, Aaron Lemelin, Rebecca Lave, Lindsey Dillon, and Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) Part 3. Governing Data, Infrastructuring Land and Resources 11. “A Poverty of Data”? Exporting the Digital Revolution to Farmers in the Global South Madeleine Fairbairn and Zenia Kish 12. Illicit Digital Environments: Monitoring and Surveilling Environmental Crime in Southeast Asia Hilary O. Faxon and Jenny Goldstein 13. Data Gaps: Penguin Science and Petrostate Formation in the Falkland Islands (Malvinas) James J. A. Blair 14. Data Structures, Indigenous Ontologies, and Hydropower in the U.S. Northwest Corrine Armistead 15. How Forest Became Data: The Remaking of Ground-Truth in Indonesia Cindy Lin Conclusion: Toward a Political Ecology of Data Rebecca Lave, Eric Nost, and Jenny Goldstein Source Acknowledgments Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisThis collection shows that Wallace Stegner’s work, however flawed, remains a useful tool for assessing the past, present, and future of the American West.Trade Review“Great writers present us with gifts as well as dilemmas. In this unflinching set of essays by scholars and practitioners of inclusive western history, Wallace Stegner is presented as bearing both. From various angles and social positions the contributors in this enlightening collection examine Stegner’s ideas, texts, political commitments, blind spots, and legacies, revealing not only Stegner’s mixed impact on American literature and culture but also how his critical vision can spark hope in these troubled times.”—Tiya Miles, author of All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake, winner of the National Book Award“Reappraisal is the perpetual destiny of artists and writers, so revisiting the life and messages of Wallace Stegner, the quintessential literary voice of the American West, is inevitable. In a collection that transports Stegner into the twenty-first century, the gifts the famed writer bequeathed us—beautiful expression, insights that can shade into horror, and yet hope for the future—are on display from every contributor. For all who treasure Stegner’s prose, his promotion of the art of writing, and his immersion in epic environmental battles, this smart, cutting-edge anthology may be the best book about him yet.”—Dan Flores, New York Times best-selling author of Coyote America and Wild New World“Wallace Stegner was one of the greatest original minds America ever produced, and I think he’d be quietly happy to see his work expanded, challenged, and built on to great effect in this smart volume. It’s a very high tribute.”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?“The contributors to Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled County revisit Stegner’s work in a critical and thoughtful way that reminds us of the brilliance of Stegner without glossing over his many faults as an observer of the American West. By drawing on inspiration from Stegner’s poignant observations, in these essays we find insight into what makes the American West such a complex and compelling region of study. As the authors remind us, only by dealing critically with our past as an unsettled region can we hope to make a better future.”—María E. Montoya, author of Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840–1900“To this day, Wallace Stegner continues to stand as the greatest writer on the modern American West. Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country captures his life and prominence beautifully. . . . As the authors ably show, his understanding of the past and vision for the future was based on his lifetime out on the ground in the arid West and his impeccable research into history, literature, and public policy. Stegner’s work was perhaps the most single important body of thought during the congressional action of the 1970s that is still the heart of modern conservation policy.”—Charles Wilkinson, author of Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the WestTable of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue: Wallace Stegner in His Time and in Ours Mark Fiege, Michael J. Lansing, and Leisl Carr Childers Openings 1. Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country: Ruin, Realism, and Possibility in the American West Mark Fiege Ruin 2. The American West as Exploited Space: From One Nation to Poston Alexandra Hernandez 3. Creation as Erasure: Wallace Stegner and the Making and Unmaking of Regions Michael J. Lansing 4. Exploits against the Effete: Wallace Stegner and Bernard DeVoto, Men of Western Letters Flannery Burke 5. Returning to the Best Idea We Ever Had Michael Childers Realism 6. The Legacies of Wallace Stegner and the Stegner Fellowships in a Changing American West Nancy S. Cook 7. Sludge in the Cup: Wallace Stegner’s Philosophical Legacy and the Hard Job Ahead Michael A. Brown 8. Hope in Public Lands: A Conversation Leisl Carr Childers and Adam M. Sowards Possibility 9. The Education of Wallace Stegner Melody Graulich 10. Revisiting “The Marks of Human Passage”: Lessons from the Dinosaur and Bears Ears National Monument Controversies Robert B. Keiter 11. The Geography of Hope in an Age of Uncertainty Paul Formisano 12. The American West as Unlivable Space: Hope, Despair, and Adaptation in an Era of Climate Chaos Robert M. Wilson Epilogue: Richer for This Sorrow Mark Fiege, Michael J. Lansing, and Leisl Carr Childers Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisPresents the previously untold story of perhaps the oldest outsider settlement in America, an invisible community on the annually flooded shores of the Mississippi River. This community exists in the place between the normal high and low water line of the Mississippi River, a zone known in Louisiana as the batture.

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Book SynopsisShrimp is easily America’s favourite seafood, but its very popularity is the wellspring of problems that threaten the shrimp industry’s existence. Asian-Cajun Fusion provides insightful analysis of this paradox and a detailed, thorough history of the industry in Louisiana.

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Book SynopsisFred Rogers wrote the television scripts and music, performed puppetry, sang, hosted, and directed Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for more than thirty years. This book centres on the show’s environmentalism, primarily expressed through his themed week ‘Caring for the Environment’, produced in 1990.

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Book SynopsisFred Rogers wrote the television scripts and music, performed puppetry, sang, hosted, and directed Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for more than thirty years. This book centres on the show’s environmentalism, primarily expressed through his themed week ‘Caring for the Environment’, produced in 1990.

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Book SynopsisBen Depp's photographs capture the beauty, complexity, and rapid destruction of south Louisiana. His photographs communicate weather and seasonal changes - like the shifting high-water line, colour temperature, and softness of light.

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Book SynopsisKennie Prince began his career with the Mississippi Department of Wildlife Conservation in 1983 and dedicated his life to protecting Mississippi’s fish and wildlife resources in dangerous undercover work. This book contains dozens of hair-raising accounts of covert wildlife operations.Trade ReviewThe Poacher’s Nightmare is filled with fascinating, exciting, and informative stories. It is a compelling read that will be popular with hunters, the fishing public, outdoor enthusiasts, and more." - Charlie Spillers, author of Confessions of an Undercover Agent: Adventures, Close Calls, and the Toll of a Double Life"The Poacher’s Nightmare is a deep sojourn into the motivation, sensitivity, courage, danger, and satisfaction that define the career of a game warden. I found it spellbinding and hard to put down." - Donald C. Jackson, author of A Sportsman's Journey

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Book SynopsisIn Embattled River, David Schuyler describes the efforts to reverse the pollution and bleak future of the Hudson River that became evident in the 1950s. Through his investigative narrative, Schuyler uncovers the critical role of this iconic American waterway in the emergence of modern environmentalism in the United States.Writing fifty-five years after Consolidated Edison announced plans to construct a pumped storage power plant at Storm King Mountain, Schuyler recounts how a loose coalition of activists took on corporate capitalism and defended the river. As Schuyler shows, the environmental victories on the Hudson had broad impact. In the state at the heart of the story, the immediate result was the creation in 1970 of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor, investigate, and litigate cases of pollution. At the national level, the environmental ferment in the Hudson Valley that Schuyler so richly describes contributed directly to the crTrade ReviewPlaces the Hudson at the center of the larger movement to preserve what is left of America the beautiful. Packed with details about the river's recent environmental history. * Lancaster Online *Exhaustively researched. A serious storyteller who plays by the stringent rules of the historian, Schuyler expertly weaves his many strands into a 360-degree view. * Hudson Valley One *Anyone interested in the Hudson River Valley—even those who think themselves well-versed in these topics—will find something of value in this well-researched and nicely written book. Perhaps most valuable is Schuyler's reminder that rivers have the potential to bind together disparate places and diverse individuals in powerful environmental coalitions. * The Hudson River Valley Review *Embattled River fills a historiographical niche by bringing the Hudson Valley's regional history of environmentalist action up to the present. Overall, Schuyler's writing is both clear and accessible, and the relatively short chapter lengths make Embattled River a pleasure to read. * Environmental History *In this carefully researched narrative, Schuyler explores the key events in the river's recent history as well as the principal agents and organizations that worked to save the river and that offered a model of activism and policy making that shaped the nation's response to its growing environmental challenges. * The Journal of American History *This is a timely and important book that illuminates environmental activism in an iconic American region. It also makes an important point about the genealogy of modern American environmentalism itself. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Battle over Storm King 2. Politics and the River 3. Pete Seeger and the Clearwater 4. The Fishermen and the Riverkeeper 5. The Continuing Battle against Power Plants 6. Scenic Hudson's Expanding Mission 7. Linking Landscapes and Promoting History 8. A Poisoned River 9. A River Still Worth Fighting For

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Book SynopsisEnvironmental educators face a formidable challenge when they approach climate change due to the complexity of the science and of the political and cultural contexts in which people live. There is a clear consensus among climate scientists that climate change is already occurring as a result of human activities, but high levels of climate change awareness and growing levels of concern have not translated into meaningful action. Communicating Climate Change provides environmental educators with an understanding of how their audiences engage with climate change information as well as with concrete, empirically tested communication tools they can use to enhance their climate change program.Starting with the basics of climate science and climate change public opinion, Armstrong, Krasny, and Schuldt synthesize research from environmental psychology and climate change communication, weaving in examples of environmental education applications throughout this practical book. ETrade ReviewThe intertwined fields of climate change and education are both expertly addressed in this timely, well-organized book. Not shying away from the inherent complexity of teaching to promote meaningful action in response to global climate challenges, this resource offers practical examples supported by conceptually rich perspectives.... This resource offers rich insights to both formal and informal environmental educators and to students studying climate change in the advanced secondary and higher education contexts. * Choice *Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Part 1: Background 1. Climate Change Science: The Facts 2. Climate Change Attitudes and Knowledge 3. Climate Change Education Outcomes 4. Climate Change Education Vignettes Part 1 Recap Part 2: The Psychology of Climate Change 5. Identity 6. Psychological Distance 7. Other Psychological Theories Part 2 Recap Part 3: Communication 8. Framing Climate Change 9. Using Metaphor and Analogy in Climate ChangeCommunication 10. Climate Change Messengers: Establishing Trust Part 3 Recap Part 4: Stories from the Field 11. Climate Change Education at the Marine Mammal Center, Sausalito, California 12. Climate Change Literacy, Action, and Positive Youth Development in Kentucky 13. Building Soil to Capture Carbon in a School Garden in New Mexico 14. Psychological Resilience in Denver, Colorado Part 4 Recap Closing Thoughts Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisIn this important intervention, change-agent Marianne E. Krasny challenges the knowledge-attitudes-behavior pathway that underpins much of environmental education practice; i.e., the assumption that environmental knowledge and attitudes lead to environmental behaviors. Krasny shows that certain types of knowledge are more likely than others to influence behaviors, and that generally it is more effective to work with existing attitudes than to try to change them. The chapters expand the purview of potential outcomes of environmental education beyond knowledge and attitudes to include nature connectedness, sense of place, efficacy, identity, norms, social capital, youth assets, and individual wellbeing.Advancing Environmental Education Practice also shows how, by constructing theories of change for their environmental education programs, environmental educators can target specific intermediate outcomes likely to lead to environmental behaviors and collective action, and Table of ContentsIntroduction Getting Started 1. Theory of Change 2. Evaluation Environment and Behavior/Action Outcomes 3. Environment, Sustainability, and Climate Change 4. Environmental Behaviors 5. Collective Environmental Action Intermediate Outcomes 6. Knowledge and Thinking 7. Values, Beliefs, and Attitudes 8. Nature Connectedness 9. Sense of Place 10. Efficacy 11. Identity 12. Norms 13. Social Capital 14. Positive Youth Development 15. Health and Well-Being Conclusion: Resilience: Adaptation and Transformation

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Book SynopsisTable of ContentsForeword Sundowner 1. Notes from the Hastings Natural History Reservation 2. Notes from the Santa Crus Island Reserve 3. Notes from the Golden Gate Raptor Observatory 4. Notes from the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest 5. Notes from the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center Afterword

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Book SynopsisIn Embattled River, David Schuyler describes the efforts to reverse the pollution and bleak future of the Hudson River that became evident in the 1950s. Through his investigative narrative, Schuyler uncovers the critical role of this iconic American waterway in the emergence of modern environmentalism in the United States.Writing fifty-five years after Consolidated Edison announced plans to construct a pumped storage power plant at Storm King Mountain, Schuyler recounts how a loose coalition of activists took on corporate capitalism and defended the river. As Schuyler shows, the environmental victories on the Hudson had broad impact. In the state at the heart of the story, the immediate result was the creation in 1970 of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to monitor, investigate, and litigate cases of pollution. At the national level, the environmental ferment in the Hudson Valley that Schuyler so richly describes contributed directly to the crTrade ReviewPlaces the Hudson at the center of the larger movement to preserve what is left of America the beautiful. Packed with details about the river's recent environmental history. * Lancaster Online *Exhaustively researched. A serious storyteller who plays by the stringent rules of the historian, Schuyler expertly weaves his many strands into a 360-degree view. * Hudson Valley One *Anyone interested in the Hudson River Valley—even those who think themselves well-versed in these topics—will find something of value in this well-researched and nicely written book. Perhaps most valuable is Schuyler's reminder that rivers have the potential to bind together disparate places and diverse individuals in powerful environmental coalitions. * The Hudson River Valley Review *Embattled River fills a historiographical niche by bringing the Hudson Valley's regional history of environmentalist action up to the present. Overall, Schuyler's writing is both clear and accessible, and the relatively short chapter lengths make Embattled River a pleasure to read. * Environmental History *In this carefully researched narrative, Schuyler explores the key events in the river's recent history as well as the principal agents and organizations that worked to save the river and that offered a model of activism and policy making that shaped the nation's response to its growing environmental challenges. * The Journal of American History *This is a timely and important book that illuminates environmental activism in an iconic American region. It also makes an important point about the genealogy of modern American environmentalism itself. * American Historical Review *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. The Battle over Storm King 2. Politics and the River 3. Pete Seeger and the Clearwater 4. The Fishermen and the Riverkeeper 5. The Continuing Battle against Power Plants 6. Scenic Hudson's Expanding Mission 7. Linking Landscapes and Promoting History 8. A Poisoned River 9. A River Still Worth Fighting For

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Book SynopsisA Wild Ideashares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York''s rural North Country forms the nation''s largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn''t as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence.The North Country''s environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to save the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement''s leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team andTrade ReviewEdmondson has told his complicated story well. He writes clearly, shows a grasp of broad swaths of information and opinion, and capably explains how the various players evolved in their thinking. A Wild Idea merits the attention of everyone deeply interested in the Adirondack region. * Adirondack Daily Enterprise *Brad Edmondson's thoroughly researched book details the difficult process behind the enactment of this law. * Albany Times Union *Brad Edmondson, the author of A Wild Idea, published to coincide with the anniversary of Governor Nelson Rockefeller's signing of the APA bill on June 25, 1971, reminds us how broadly popular environmentalism was in the early 70s, unifying a nation still fractured along generational, cultural and political fault lines. * The Lake George Mirror *A Wild Idea is essential reading for anyone interested in how human beings can coexist in reasonable harmony with our natural world. * Adirondack Explorer *Much of the journalistic-style narrative reported in A Wild Idea is derived from Edmondson's more than five dozen interviews with people who, in one way or another, were first-hand participants in the APA's founding. While the author's sympathies are clearly aligned with the APA and its supporters, his text offers a fair, measured treatment of the arguments, reasoning, and passions of opponents. * New York-Pennsylvania Collector *A Wild Idea is an important and timely intervention in Adirondack historiography as well as a helpful addition, particularly in its methodology, to the study of the American wilderness movement and the history of regional planning. * New York History *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Two Views of the Landscape 1. Whose Woods These Are 2. "A Three-Year Vacation" 3. Quickening 4. Brotherly Love 5. Going Rogue 6. Order Must Be 7. "Pass the F*cking Thing" 8. The Big Map 9. The Nature Business 10. The Big Push 11. Cashing the Chips Conclusion: Convinced against Their Will

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Book SynopsisIn The Nature of the Religious Right, Neall W. Pogue examines how white conservative evangelical Christians became a political force known for hostility toward environmental legislation. Before the 1990s, this group used ideas of nature to help construct the religious right movement while developing theologically based, eco-friendly philosophies that can be described as Christian environmental stewardship. On the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day in 1990, members of this conservative evangelical community tried to turn their eco-friendly philosophies into action. Yet this attempt was overwhelmed by a growing number in the leadership who made anti-environmentalism the accepted position through public ridicule, conspiracy theories, and cherry-picked science.Through analysis of rhetoric, political expediency, and theological imperatives, The Nature of the Religious Right explains how ideas of nature played a role in constructing the conservatiTrade ReviewPogue carefully delineates the backtracking of many conservative evangelicals on environmentalism, even as he presents the valiant but unsuccessful efforts of the Evangelical Environmental Network's Ron Sider and climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, among other evangelicals, to forestall this abandonment of environmental stewardship. * The Chrisitan Century *This book offers an important, persuasive corrective to the history of religious conservatism. Pogue argues that Evangelicals' dogmatic opposition of environmentalism is historically contingent rather than an inevitable result of theology and political ideology. Using a variety of primary and secondary sources, Pogue documents a doctrine of "Christian environmental stewardship" that was clearly articulated among prominent Evangelicals beginning in the late 1960s and shows how this environmentalism was purged from the religious Right only in the early 1990s. Though the book's accounting of evangelical theology, particularly the analysis of "the natural" and a land-based nationalism, will not particularly surprise scholars, Pogue successfully shows how these ideas might have been compatible with early conceptions of stewardship long before being deployed to oppose actions protecting the environment. The book also offers lessons for the environmental movement, noting that the first Earth Day activists' critique of Christianity helped lay the groundwork for Evangelicals' eventual rejection of environmentalism. Required reading for historians and analysts of the conservative movement, the religious Right, and/or the environmental movement. * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Conservative Evangelicals Respond to the Founding of Earth Day 2. Humanity's Proper Place Between God and Nature 3. Nature in a Religious Right Perspective 4. The Moral Majority Finds Favor in the Republican Party 5. The Struggle Between Christian Environmental Stewardship and Anti-Environmentalism in the Religious Right 6. The National Association of Evangelicals Turn Against the Environment 7. "It Could Have Taken a Very Different Path" Conclusion

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Book SynopsisButterflies of Maine and the Canadian Maritime Provinces introduces readers to over one hundred and twenty butterfly species documented in the Acadian region. Including contributions from researchers and community scientists, this volume is indispensable for anyone interested in the study and conservation of these ecologically important insects.This user-friendly guide features: The first annotated checklist of the species and subspecies of Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island Species accounts covering habitat, behavior, threats, and more Color photographs, flight histograms, and distribution maps

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Book SynopsisTree by Tree is a warning and a toolkit for the future of forest recovery. Scott J. Meiners investigates the critical biological threats endangering tree species native to the forests of eastern North America, providing a needed focus on this plight. Meiners suggests that if we are to save our forests, the first step is to recognize the threats in front of us. Meiners focuses on five familiar treesthe American elm, the American chestnut, the eastern hemlock, the white ash, and the sugar mapleand shares why they matter economically, ecologically, and culturally. From outbreaks of Dutch elm disease to infestations of emerald ash borers, Meiners highlights the challenges that have led or will lead to the disappearance of these trees from forests. In doing so, he shows us how diversity loss often disrupts intricately balanced ecosystems and how vital it is that we pay more attention to massive changes in forest composition.With practical steps for the Table of ContentsIntroduction: First, Some Context 1. American Elm—Ulmus americana 2. American Chestnut—Castanea dentata 3. Eastern Hemlock—Tsuga canadensis 4. White Ash—Fraxinus americana 5. Sugar Maple—Acer saccharum 6. Other Trees with Other Challenges 7. The Next in Line 8. Accumulating Impacts—Putting It All Together Conclusion: Protecting Our Forests' Future

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Book SynopsisThe environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice.Trade Review"Matthias Fritsch brings clarity and depth to issues of environmental justice and responsibility for future generations through a close engagement with the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Arendt. This book is an indispensable resource for both continental and analytic philosophers seeking to understand what it means to live and die ethically on the earth." -- Lisa Guenther * Queen's University *"With characteristic precision and rigor, Matthias Fritsch has produced an original contribution to thinking about intergenerational justice and our relationship to the planet. Taking Turns with the Earth is an exemplary model for how to theorize pressing ethical and political issues through a creative inheritance of the philosophical tradition." -- Samir Haddad * Fordham University *"Intergenerational ethics is at the heart of many of the biggest problems facing humanity today, yet our theories, institutions, and practices remain inadequate to the challenge. This admirable book offers us an ontological approach that is distinctive, innovative, and an important contribution to our ethical self-understanding." -- Stephen M. Gardiner * University of Washington *"Fritsch makes a convincing case for thinking of intergenerational and ecological relationships not as additional features or theoretical extensions of intragenerational and humanistic models of justice, but as constitutive features of justice...[His] style of cogent argumentation appears quite prudent, as it makes phenomenology and deconstruction directly relevant and applicable to those discourses and accessible to other scholars and professionals who are interested in justice and the future of the humanly habitable earth." -- Sam Mickey * Environmental Philosophy *"Fritsch argues that our moral obligation to tackle and respond to climate change is grounded in intergenerational justice...The key notion here is asymmetrical intergenerational reciprocity; the author's explication of this notion, and his discussion of potential objections to it, is especially useful and thought provoking...Recommended." -- M. A. Michael * CHOICE *"Taking Turns With the Earthoffers to the reader a rich and incisive analysis of intergenerational justice, especially as it relates to issues pertaining to the environment. With intergenerational ethics being relevant to so many issues that we face today, this book offers a timely theoretical analysis of the nature of our obligations to non-contemporary others." -- Christopher Black * Phenomenological Reviews *"Matthias Fritsch has written a supremely challenging and timely book about the ontological-normative dimensions of our intergenerational being....[I am] fully on board with the notion that we require ontological thinking in this area, and as far as I know, nobody has attempted this on the same scale or with as much boldness of philosophical vision as Fritsch. His book is a major contribution to our thinking about the philosophical foundations of our intergenerational being. I predict that it will have a profound effect on environmental philosophy, in both analytic and continental circles, for decades to come." -- Byron Williston * Environmental Ethics *"Taking Turns with the Earth is a model of scholarship in continental philosophy. Written in a clear argumentative style that never sacrifices depth or complexity, it shows how central ideas found in Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida—ideas often dismissed as obtuse—can be put to work to help us rethink some of the most pressing ethical issues of our times." -- Marie-Eve Morin * Research in Phenomenology *"Matthias Fritsch's Taking Turns with the Earth is a significant, illuminating, and timely—just in time, perhaps—phenomenological and deconstructive ontology and 'hauntology' of the problem of intergenerational justice. To my mind, it is the widest ranging and most profound work on this problem that I have so far encountered." -- Jason M. Wirth * Ethics & Politics *"[How] is one to respond in a meaningful and responsible way to a book that is this meticulously researched, this powerfully argued, this broad in its scope and implications, and, of course, this urgent not just for philosophy but for all of us who have inherited the earth and who have some responsibility for passing it on?[A] uniquely powerful work." -- Michael Naas * Ethics & Politics *"The cogency of [Fritsch's] proposals and, notwithstanding the complexity of the philosophical arguments supporting of them, the impressive clarity of their presentation, make the book a significant contribution to the field of environmental ethics." -- Scott Marratto * Ethics & Politics *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Ontological Problems and Methods in Intergenerational Justice chapter abstractThis chapter begins by reviewing the so-called ontological problems that affect relations with future people, from the nonexistence challenge and poor epistemic access to problems affecting interaction and world constitution. It is then argued that ontological problems call for ontological solutions—here, investigations of moral agents' being in relation to time and world. Drawing on phenomenological sources, the chapter provides a first sketch of the book's overarching claim that justice becomes an issue for human beings to the extent we are generational beings who are noncontingently subject to birth and death. Birth and death, the argument continues, link us to previous and subsequent generations in ways that are socially and morally relevant. If we take this into account, the dead and the unborn will appear less absent and more (albeit "spectrally") present. The chapter ends by outlining possible responses to many of the ontological problems. 2Levinas's "Being-for-Beyond-My-Death" chapter abstractThe second chapter elaborates the constitutive role of natality and mortality, sketched in the previous chapter, in much greater detail, with particular focus on Levinas. In the wake of Heidegger and others, Levinas argues that, in accessing the finite time that is co-disclosive of agency, I necessarily encounter the mortal, vulnerable other whose face demands that I let the other live. Agency is co-constituted by a futural demand to let others have possibilities for life beyond my death. Thus, the demand from actual future people on the living comes to be seen as exemplary of moral normativity. However, Levinas insufficiently links this futural responsibility to debts to previous others (including mothers), drawing legitimate feminist and Derridean critiques of his "fecundity" and "paternity." The chapter concludes that the moral demand cannot just be futural but must also be related to gifts from predecessors. 3Asymmetrical Reciprocity and the Gift in Mauss and Derrida chapter abstractTaking off from the insight offered at the end of the previous chapter, this chapter elaborates indirect, asymmetrical reciprocity as a model of intergenerational justice. This notion is meant to capture the idea that indebtedness to preceding others plays a role in giving to future others, no matter how asymmetrical and altruistic the gift to future people is taken to be. With this goal in view, the chapter connects Derrida's critical reading of Levinas to economic literature on intergenerational transfers, specifically economists who draw on the premodern, indigenous notion of the gift, as famously elaborated by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss. The chapter distinguishes four (ideal) types of intergenerational three-party reciprocities and concludes that the notion of the gift points to the enabling conditions of economic activity. Both gifts of nature and benefits from nonpresent generations belong to these conditions, conditions that are too often "externalized" by market economies. 4Double Turn-Taking among Generations and with Earth chapter abstractWith this topic of collectively shared goods in mind, the fourth chapter presents turn-taking as the second model of intergenerational justice that elaborates the "spectral" presence of nonpresent generations. Taking turns is more appropriate than reciprocity when the "object" of intergenerational sharing, in particular the natural environment and democratic institutions, is quasi-holistic and organically interrelated, such that it cannot easily be divided into parts nor can parts be substituted for one another. Drawing on Derrida's work on time and democracy, this model's distinct advantages are discussed in view of answering the question as to what a fair turn with earth and future people might be. The chapter concludes by showing that quasi-holistic objects such as earth and climate necessarily precede and outlive generations, and thus are not indifferent to, but co-constitutive of, the very being of generations, the subjects of sharing by turn-taking. 5Interment chapter abstractTo avoid the humanism that takes the earth to be an indifferent object of intergenerational sharing, the final chapter complicates taking turns by arguing that the earth, understood as the history and habitat of life, for its part turns human beings about. We do not only have human generations taking turns with the earth, but individuals being born of the earth into a generation, while returning to the earth upon death. Humans are both "interred'" (agonistically belonging to a larger time and space here called the earth) and "interring" (responsible for returning others to the earth, as in burial).

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Book SynopsisSoqotra, the largest island of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago, is one of the most uniquely diverse places in the world. A UNESCO natural World Heritage Site, the island is home not only to birds, reptiles, and plants found nowhere else on earth, but also to a rich cultural history and the endangered Soqotri language. Within the span of a decade, this Indian Ocean archipelago went from being among the most marginalized regions of Yemen to promoted for its outstanding global value. Islands of Heritage shares Soqotrans' stories to offer the first exploration of environmental conservation, heritage production, and development in an Arab state. Examining the multiple notions of heritage in play for twenty-first-century Soqotra, Nathalie Peutz narrates how everyday Soqotrans came to assemble, defend, and mobilize their cultural and linguistic heritage. These efforts, which diverged from outsiders' focus on the island's natural heritage, ultimately added to Soqotrans' calls for political and cultural change during the Yemeni Revolution. Islands of Heritage shows that far from being merely a conservative endeavor, the protection of heritage can have profoundly transformative, even revolutionary effects. Grassroots claims to heritage can be a potent form of political engagement with the most imminent concerns of the present: human rights, globalization, democracy, and sustainability.Trade Review"Islands of Heritage is at once a dazzling ethnography of everyday life and a well-researched history that is as extraordinary as its subject, the island of Soqotra in the Arabian Sea. It is truly a pleasure to read." -- Steven C. Caton * Harvard University *"Nathalie Peutz has written a beautiful account of the unsettling effects of and dynamics between international conservation efforts, national politics, and Soqotran notions of heritage, history, and place. Islands of Heritage is one of the richest ethnographies of the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean region that I have read in years." -- Mandana Limbert, Queens College and the Graduate Center * CUNY *"This book, the result of ten years of research and follow up, explores the sociopolitical transformation of Soqotra, the main island of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago. Peutz offers a detailed ethnographic presentation of the complicated and unsettled recent history of the island within its larger regional and global context...Recommended." -- A. Rassam * CHOICE *"Upon closing Islands of Heritage one can only be impressed by such a piece of interdisciplinary scholarship. Nathalie Peutz brilliantly manages to bring to life and interpret the local dynamics she observed in Soqotra, updating their significance and making them meaningful beyond the archipelago of Soqotra, and that of anthropologists." -- Laurent Bonnefoy * Arabian Humanities *"Peutz's book is required reading for anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and those investigating the impact of tourism, while being readable and compelling for nonspecialists... It is a delight to read and one of the strongest anthropological texts on heritage published in recent years." -- Victoria Hightower * Arab Studies Journal *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractBeginning with an anecdote of a Soqotran teacher convening a political protest (during the Yemeni Revolution) and a poetry contest on the same day, the Introduction asks how heritage (a nominally conservative endeavor) and revolution (a nominally transformative endeavor) could be connected. It lays out the importance of studying heritage. It reviews the history and politicization of heritage in the Arab world. And it provides a geographic and historical overview of Yemen's Soqotra Archipelago, a UNESCO-inscribed natural World Heritage Site with a long genealogy of being deemed exceptional and "protected." It then describes the author's fieldwork and methodology. It concludes by arguing that, despite important arguments for working to transcend the nature-culture divide (in heritage making, as in other things), certain "islands" (boundaries) may be productive. 1Hospitality in Unsettling Times chapter abstractThis chapter introduces readers to a transhumant pastoralist community living in a newly established protected area (Homhil). It shows how the unprecedented opening of Soqotra gave rise to a crisis of hospitality, a long-held cultural value. Soqotrans' discourse of hospitality (karam) in crisis reveals significant mutations in the island's political economy and social structures, precipitated by its 1990 absorption into the unified Yemeni state and its transformation from a militarized enclave to a national protected area. Karam (and the ostensible lack of it) has become the idiom through which the islanders have been processing these changes. In light of current debates in the West about the dangers of "hosting" (im)migrants, this chapter points out that, in Soqotra, the crisis was exacerbated not nearly as much by Soqotrans' fears of being too hospitable as by their concern that they were no longer being hospitable enough. 2Hungering for the State chapter abstractDue to the archipelago's annual isolation during the southwest monsoon, in addition to its arid climate, Soqotrans are no strangers to food insecurity or famine. Accordingly, their interactions with each entering state—the Sultanate, the British Protectorate, South Yemen, and the Saleh regime—have been mediated by food. Yet, as this historical chapter demonstrates, it was not only the state's administration of food that governed Soqotrans' interactions with each regime. Soqotrans have a long history of feeding—and simultaneously "hungering" for—the state in return. Drawing on oral histories, archives, and interviews, this chapter surveys Soqotra's political history as one governed through food, famine, and fear. It argues that Soqotrans may have experienced physical hunger in the past, but in the 2000s they hungered for a state that would provide real and lasting sustenance. 3When the Environment Arrived chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the implementation of four major integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) between 1996 and 2013, which resulted in the archipelago's inscription as a UNESCO natural World Heritage Site. It begins by reviewing how these projects were preceded by the decades-long arrivals of foreign researchers and the continued dissemination of their ideas about Soqotra's environmental exceptionality. It then discusses the establishment of environmental legislation in unified Yemen (post-1990) and details the various ICDP projects that were implemented on Soqotra during this period. It ends by describing two "environmental awareness" meetings in the protected area (Homhil). Drawing on project documents and literature, observation of rural outreach and environmental awareness programs, and daily participation within a the protected-area community, this chapter reveals why "the Environment," as project and concept, failed to mobilize these pastoral communities so dependent on their natural surroundings. 4Arrested Development chapter abstractThis chapter presents an ethnographic narrative of the material, social, and political effects of several conservation-and-development initiatives in a pilot protected area inhabited by pastoralists (Bedouin). It focuses on the implementation of three development projects by the Socotra Conservation and Development Programme: a new tourist campground, a community home garden, and piped water. Although these projects were meant to improve the pastoralists' material well-being, they wound up pitting leaders, tribes, villages, and men and women within the community against one another. Through a close "mapping" of these tensions, this chapter underscores why, in these pastoralists' view, "the Environment" had little traction—despite its strong influence in the island. As a result, some Soqotrans sought to preserve their livelihoods by shifting their focus to cultural heritage instead. 5Reorienting Heritage chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the influence of the Soqotran diaspora in island politics in the decade preceding the 2011 revolution. Beginning with an overview of the three major phases of twentieth-century emigration from Soqotra to the Arab Gulf, it illustrates how pervasive these Soqotra-Gulf connections were and are. It explores the ways in which emigrants politicized Soqotran identity, culture, heritage, and history through their histories, their poetry, and the island's first museum. And it examines the ways in which the diaspora sought to denature and reorient Soqotran heritage by shifting the focus from nature to culture, from Soqotran autochthony to Arab descent, from Indian Ocean hybridity to genealogical purity, and from the Yemeni nation to the transnational Gulf. These heterogeneous, kaleidoscopic, and entangled processes of heritage making reveal a deep-seated anguish over past political events and an ongoing struggle to reorient Soqotra's future. 6Heritage in the Time of Revolution chapter abstractThis chapter discusses how the islanders mobilized cultural heritage in the years bracketing the Yemeni Revolution, when several positioned themselves as "para-experts" alongside foreigners working for the environmental projects. It explores three individuals' growing interest in heritage as a political and profitable resource. It examines debates over the contours of this heritage. And it traces the development of an islandwide poetry competition, its overt politicization in the wake of the Arab uprisings, and the eventual recognition of the Soqotri language in the draft constitution for the new Yemen. It argues that Soqotrans' preoccupation with their cultural heritage during this period bears a strong resemblance to nineteenth-century European nationalists' "cultivation of culture." Thus, it was not a provincial, insular, or even conservative concern. Rather, it reflects a distinctly twenty-first-century realization that vernacular languages and endemic species are on the verge of extinction. Conclusion chapter abstractThe Conclusion provides an overview of the current humanitarian crisis in Yemen and Soqotra's renewed isolation since Yemen's civil war began in 2015. It underscores what a small group of Soqotran laymen (para-experts) were able to achieve through their mobilization of cultural heritage during a time of crisis, before the war. It then briefly discusses the two most recent, and potentially competing, visions for the archipelago: UAE-funded development and a new, Global Environment Facility (GEF)-funded conservation-and-development project. It offers suggestions for how ethnic and linguistic minorities like Soqotrans can be supported in their cultural work. And it concludes with some lessons learned from the author's interlocutors.

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Book SynopsisThe environmental crisis, one of the great challenges of our time, tends to disenfranchise those who come after us. Arguing that as temporary inhabitants of the earth, we cannot be indifferent to future generations, this book draws on the resources of phenomenology and poststructuralism to help us conceive of moral relations in connection with human temporality. Demonstrating that moral and political normativity emerge with generational time, the time of birth and death, this book proposes two related models of intergenerational and environmental justice. The first entails a form of indirect reciprocity, in which we owe future people both because of their needs and interests and because we ourselves have been the beneficiaries of peoples past; the second posits a generational taking of turns that Matthias Fritsch applies to both our institutions and our natural environment, in other words, to the earth as a whole. Offering new readings of key philosophers, and emphasizing the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in particular, Taking Turns with the Earth disrupts human-centered notions of terrestrial appropriation and sharing to give us a new continental philosophical account of future-oriented justice.Trade Review"Matthias Fritsch brings clarity and depth to issues of environmental justice and responsibility for future generations through a close engagement with the work of Derrida, Levinas, and Arendt. This book is an indispensable resource for both continental and analytic philosophers seeking to understand what it means to live and die ethically on the earth." -- Lisa Guenther * Queen's University *"With characteristic precision and rigor, Matthias Fritsch has produced an original contribution to thinking about intergenerational justice and our relationship to the planet. Taking Turns with the Earth is an exemplary model for how to theorize pressing ethical and political issues through a creative inheritance of the philosophical tradition." -- Samir Haddad * Fordham University *"Intergenerational ethics is at the heart of many of the biggest problems facing humanity today, yet our theories, institutions, and practices remain inadequate to the challenge. This admirable book offers us an ontological approach that is distinctive, innovative, and an important contribution to our ethical self-understanding." -- Stephen M. Gardiner * University of Washington *"Fritsch makes a convincing case for thinking of intergenerational and ecological relationships not as additional features or theoretical extensions of intragenerational and humanistic models of justice, but as constitutive features of justice...[His] style of cogent argumentation appears quite prudent, as it makes phenomenology and deconstruction directly relevant and applicable to those discourses and accessible to other scholars and professionals who are interested in justice and the future of the humanly habitable earth." -- Sam Mickey * Environmental Philosophy *"Fritsch argues that our moral obligation to tackle and respond to climate change is grounded in intergenerational justice...The key notion here is asymmetrical intergenerational reciprocity; the author's explication of this notion, and his discussion of potential objections to it, is especially useful and thought provoking...Recommended." -- M. A. Michael * CHOICE *"Taking Turns With the Earthoffers to the reader a rich and incisive analysis of intergenerational justice, especially as it relates to issues pertaining to the environment. With intergenerational ethics being relevant to so many issues that we face today, this book offers a timely theoretical analysis of the nature of our obligations to non-contemporary others." -- Christopher Black * Phenomenological Reviews *"Matthias Fritsch has written a supremely challenging and timely book about the ontological-normative dimensions of our intergenerational being....[I am] fully on board with the notion that we require ontological thinking in this area, and as far as I know, nobody has attempted this on the same scale or with as much boldness of philosophical vision as Fritsch. His book is a major contribution to our thinking about the philosophical foundations of our intergenerational being. I predict that it will have a profound effect on environmental philosophy, in both analytic and continental circles, for decades to come." -- Byron Williston * Environmental Ethics *"Taking Turns with the Earth is a model of scholarship in continental philosophy. Written in a clear argumentative style that never sacrifices depth or complexity, it shows how central ideas found in Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida—ideas often dismissed as obtuse—can be put to work to help us rethink some of the most pressing ethical issues of our times." -- Marie-Eve Morin * Research in Phenomenology *"Matthias Fritsch's Taking Turns with the Earth is a significant, illuminating, and timely—just in time, perhaps—phenomenological and deconstructive ontology and 'hauntology' of the problem of intergenerational justice. To my mind, it is the widest ranging and most profound work on this problem that I have so far encountered." -- Jason M. Wirth * Ethics & Politics *"[How] is one to respond in a meaningful and responsible way to a book that is this meticulously researched, this powerfully argued, this broad in its scope and implications, and, of course, this urgent not just for philosophy but for all of us who have inherited the earth and who have some responsibility for passing it on?[A] uniquely powerful work." -- Michael Naas * Ethics & Politics *"The cogency of [Fritsch's] proposals and, notwithstanding the complexity of the philosophical arguments supporting of them, the impressive clarity of their presentation, make the book a significant contribution to the field of environmental ethics." -- Scott Marratto * Ethics & Politics *Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Ontological Problems and Methods in Intergenerational Justice chapter abstractThis chapter begins by reviewing the so-called ontological problems that affect relations with future people, from the nonexistence challenge and poor epistemic access to problems affecting interaction and world constitution. It is then argued that ontological problems call for ontological solutions—here, investigations of moral agents' being in relation to time and world. Drawing on phenomenological sources, the chapter provides a first sketch of the book's overarching claim that justice becomes an issue for human beings to the extent we are generational beings who are noncontingently subject to birth and death. Birth and death, the argument continues, link us to previous and subsequent generations in ways that are socially and morally relevant. If we take this into account, the dead and the unborn will appear less absent and more (albeit "spectrally") present. The chapter ends by outlining possible responses to many of the ontological problems. 2Levinas's "Being-for-Beyond-My-Death" chapter abstractThe second chapter elaborates the constitutive role of natality and mortality, sketched in the previous chapter, in much greater detail, with particular focus on Levinas. In the wake of Heidegger and others, Levinas argues that, in accessing the finite time that is co-disclosive of agency, I necessarily encounter the mortal, vulnerable other whose face demands that I let the other live. Agency is co-constituted by a futural demand to let others have possibilities for life beyond my death. Thus, the demand from actual future people on the living comes to be seen as exemplary of moral normativity. However, Levinas insufficiently links this futural responsibility to debts to previous others (including mothers), drawing legitimate feminist and Derridean critiques of his "fecundity" and "paternity." The chapter concludes that the moral demand cannot just be futural but must also be related to gifts from predecessors. 3Asymmetrical Reciprocity and the Gift in Mauss and Derrida chapter abstractTaking off from the insight offered at the end of the previous chapter, this chapter elaborates indirect, asymmetrical reciprocity as a model of intergenerational justice. This notion is meant to capture the idea that indebtedness to preceding others plays a role in giving to future others, no matter how asymmetrical and altruistic the gift to future people is taken to be. With this goal in view, the chapter connects Derrida's critical reading of Levinas to economic literature on intergenerational transfers, specifically economists who draw on the premodern, indigenous notion of the gift, as famously elaborated by the anthropologist Marcel Mauss. The chapter distinguishes four (ideal) types of intergenerational three-party reciprocities and concludes that the notion of the gift points to the enabling conditions of economic activity. Both gifts of nature and benefits from nonpresent generations belong to these conditions, conditions that are too often "externalized" by market economies. 4Double Turn-Taking among Generations and with Earth chapter abstractWith this topic of collectively shared goods in mind, the fourth chapter presents turn-taking as the second model of intergenerational justice that elaborates the "spectral" presence of nonpresent generations. Taking turns is more appropriate than reciprocity when the "object" of intergenerational sharing, in particular the natural environment and democratic institutions, is quasi-holistic and organically interrelated, such that it cannot easily be divided into parts nor can parts be substituted for one another. Drawing on Derrida's work on time and democracy, this model's distinct advantages are discussed in view of answering the question as to what a fair turn with earth and future people might be. The chapter concludes by showing that quasi-holistic objects such as earth and climate necessarily precede and outlive generations, and thus are not indifferent to, but co-constitutive of, the very being of generations, the subjects of sharing by turn-taking. 5Interment chapter abstractTo avoid the humanism that takes the earth to be an indifferent object of intergenerational sharing, the final chapter complicates taking turns by arguing that the earth, understood as the history and habitat of life, for its part turns human beings about. We do not only have human generations taking turns with the earth, but individuals being born of the earth into a generation, while returning to the earth upon death. Humans are both "interred'" (agonistically belonging to a larger time and space here called the earth) and "interring" (responsible for returning others to the earth, as in burial).

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Book SynopsisA sweeping, policy-oriented account of the private and public management of the world's essential natural resource. Governments dominated water management throughout the twentieth century. Tasked with ensuring a public supply of clean, safe, reliable, and affordable water, governmental agencies controlled water administration in most of the world. They built the dams, reservoirs, and aqueducts that store water when available and move that water to areas with increasing populations and economies. Private businesses sometimes played a part in managing water, but typically in a supporting position as consultants or contractors. Today, given the global need for innovative new technologies, institutions, and financing to solve the freshwater crisis, private businesses and markets are playing a rapidly expanding role, bringing both new approaches and new challenges to a historically public field. In Liquid Asset, Barton H. Thompson, Jr. examines the growing position of the private sector in the "business of water." Thompson seeks to understand the private sector's involvement in meeting the water needs of both humans and the environment, looks at the potential risks that growing private involvement poses to the public interest in water, and considers the obstacles that private organizations face in trying to participate in a traditionally governmental sector. Thompson provides a richly detailed analysis to foster both improved public policy and responsible business behavior. As the book demonstrates, the story of private businesses and water offers a window into the serious challenges facing freshwater today, and their potential solutions.Trade Review"An engaging and well-written blueprint for harnessing private sector ingenuity and profit-motive in order to protect and preserve our most precious natural resource."—Nicole Neeman Brady, Vice President of the Los Angeles Board of Water and Power Commissioners"Liquid Asset, by one of the nation's preeminent water law scholars, presents a clarion call for greater involvement by the business community in global water management and security. This broad-ranging examination offers original insights for effective environmental stewardship."—Robert Glennon, University of Arizona College of Law, author of Unquenchable: America's Water Crisis and What to Do About It"Liquid Asset explores the critical questions of why, where, and how the private sector owns and manages water. A gifted teacher, Barton H. Thompson, Jr is admirably evenhanded in highlighting the risks and explaining the opportunities. If you want to understand the future of water management in the United States, read this book."—James Salzman, UCLA Law School and author of Drinking Water: A History"Putting the words 'water' and 'privatization' in the same sentence can be a hazard. "But given the critical imbalance between water supply and demand, Thompson is willing to risk the hazard. In Liquid Asset, he argues that the private sector's capabilities for managing the resource and rebuilding crumbling systems are too important to ignore."—Felicity Barringer, Stanford Lawyer"Thompson has done a marvelous job surveying the many varied, transformational initiatives in the water sector in the United States and the world. There is much here to discuss and, hopefully, implement for the benefit of humanity and the environment. The water sector and the people who depend on it owe him a debt of gratitude."—G. Tracy Mehan III, Journal AWWA

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Book SynopsisHow Japanese coastal residents and transnational conservationists collaborated to foster relationships between humans and sea life Drawing the Sea Near opens a new window to our understanding of transnational conservation by investigating projects in Okinawa shaped by a “conservation-near” approach—which draws on the senses, the body, and memory to collapse the distance between people and their surroundings and to foster collaboration and equity between coastal residents and transnational conservation organizations. This approach contrasts with the traditional Western “conservation-far” model premised on the separation of humans from the environment.Based on twenty months of participant observation and interviews, this richly detailed, engagingly written ethnography focuses on Okinawa’s coral reefs to explore an unusually inclusive, experiential, and socially just approach to conservation. In doing so, C. Anne Claus challenges orthodox assumptions about nature, wilderness, and the future of environmentalism within transnational organizations. She provides a compelling look at how transnational conservation organizations—in this case a field office of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Okinawa—negotiate institutional expectations for conservation with localized approaches to caring for ocean life. In pursuing how particular projects off the coast of Japan unfolded, Drawing the Sea Near illuminates the real challenges and possibilities of work within the multifaceted transnational structures of global conservation organizations. Uniquely, it focuses on the conservationists themselves: why and how has their approach to project work changed, and how have they themselves been transformed in the process?Trade Review"This is a fascinating, original, and important ethnography of how conservation can decolonize itself and the multiple benefits of doing so. In thought-provoking and clear prose, C. Anne Claus has provided a sympathetic and challenging account that will be warmly welcomed by anyone working with, on, or for conservation. It is especially interesting for anyone who wants to better understand how large conservation organizations like the WWF function—and change."—Dan Brockington, author of Fortress Conservation and Nature Unbound "Claus’ book offers a most captivating and original ethnographic study that brings together several important topics that have hitherto not been put into dialogue, like the way different boarders - ecological, linguistic, social, sensorial- are linked and function as agents in the reconfiguration of human lives."—Contemporary Japan "Through rich ethnographic engagement with conservationists, and local practices that could be glimpsed through the beautiful interludes, this book is an invaluable contribution to scholarly efforts to decolonise conservation that, ultimately, draws the sea near to the readers themselves."—Ethos: Journal of Anthropology "An important contribution of anthropological ethnography to the studies of conservation and environmentalism. Concise yet enriching discussions of Japanese and Okinawan center–peripheral relations also make this ethnography an excellent case study and teaching resource for contemporary Japanese society and environmental politics."—American Anthropologist"The book’s clear prose offers an account of a case study that will certainly be engaging for many environmental scholars across disciplines. We are fortunate Claus made the ethnography personal - storifying it ensures that broader audiences are not deprived of the clear writing and important takeaways of Drawing the Sea Near."—Electronic Green Journal"In her new book, C. Anne Claus introduces some of the activities of marine conservation NGOs on the islands of Ishigaki and Okinawa. The result is an original, ethnographically rich, and convincingly interdisciplinary monograph of interest not only to environmental anthropologists and Okinawan studies scholars, but also to scholars working in development studies, political ecology, and nature conservation more broadly. "—Japan Review"The beauty of the volume lies in it moving beyond simply presenting egregious failures of transnational conversation, as such critiques are already well-documented in the literature, to presenting methodical, well-researched, and rich ethnographic detail that highlights the history of conversation and the need for equity and social justice. The author does so with descriptions and detail that easily conjure up the colours and flavours of the sea and local peoples. "—Anthropological ReviewTable of ContentsContentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Drawing Near1. The Airport Problem: Transnational Politics at Japan’s EdgeA Song of Scientific Pluralism2. Satoumi: Localism, Environmentalism, and the Development of an Oceanic SocionatureShiraho’s Nearshore Sea (ino)3. Conservation in Collaboration: Transforming Practices at World Wide Fund for Nature’s Field StationSeeing the Sea4. Gustatory Engagements: The Taste of Okinawa’s SeaGods and Ghosts of the Sea5. Transnational Conservation: Compositions, Circumventions, and ConflictsSea Stories6. Touching and Smelling: Challenging Scientific Authority in Coral EncountersAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA fascinating and unprecedented ethnography of animal sanctuaries in the United States In the past three decades, animal rights advocates have established everything from elephant sanctuaries in Africa to shelters that rehabilitate animals used in medical testing, to homes for farmed animals, abandoned pets, and entertainment animals that have outlived their “usefulness.” Saving Animals is the first major ethnography to focus on the ethical issues animating the establishment of such places, where animals who have been mistreated or destined for slaughter are allowed to live out their lives simply being animals. Based on fieldwork at animal rescue facilities across the United States, Elan Abrell asks what “saving,” “caring for,” and “sanctuary” actually mean. He considers sanctuaries as laboratories where caregivers conceive and implement new models of caring for and relating to animals. He explores the ethical decision making around sanctuary efforts to unmake property-based human–animal relations by creating spaces in which humans interact with animals as autonomous subjects. Saving Animals illustrates how caregivers and animals respond by cocreating new human–animal ecologies adapted to the material and social conditions of the Anthropocene.Bridging anthropology with animal studies and political philosophy, Saving Animals asks us to imagine less harmful modes of existence in a troubled world where both animals and humans seek sanctuary.Trade Review "When Elan Abrell visited VINE, we put him to work mucking out the barn. He threw himself into the work whole-heartedly, seizing the opportunity to immerse himself in everyday life at the sanctuary. We could see that he understood why we require visitors to help co-create our community by adding their own labor to the mix. In Saving Animals, Abrell brings the same combination of vigor, rigor, and acuity to the challenge of thinking care-fully about the many ethical questions that arise in the course of rescue and sanctuary work."—pattrice jones, cofounder of VINE Sanctuary "Groundbreaking in both its focus and its depth, Saving Animals is essential reading for anyone interested in the complexities of building less-exploitative relationships with animals, whether in the context of a sactuary or in one's home."—American Anthropologist Table of ContentsContentsIntroduction1. Coming to Sanctuary2. Care and Rescue3. Creating and Operating Sanctuaries4. Animal DeathConclusion: Why Do Sanctuaries Matter?AcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisOne woman’s enlightening trek through the natural histories, cultural stories, and present perils of thirteen national monuments, from Maine to Hawaii This land is your land. When it comes to national monuments, the sentiment could hardly be more fraught. Gold Butte in Nevada, Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks in New Mexico, Katahdin Woods and Waters in Maine, Cascade–Siskiyou in Oregon and California: these are among the thirteen natural sites McKenzie Long visits in This Contested Land, an eye-opening exploration of the stories these national monuments tell, the passions they stir, and the controversies surrounding them today.Starting amid the fragrant sagebrush and red dirt of Bears Ears National Monument on the eve of the Trump Administration’s decision to reduce the site by 85 percent, Long climbs sandstone cliffs, is awed by Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings and is intrigued by 4,000-year-old petroglyphs. She hikes through remote pink canyons recently removed from the boundary of Grand Staircase–Escalante, skis to a backcountry hut in Maine to view a truly dark night sky, snorkels in warm Hawaiian waters to plumb the meaning of marine preserves, volunteers near the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States, and witnesses firsthand the diverse forms of devotion evoked by the Rio Grande. In essays both contemplative and resonant, This Contested Land confronts an unjust past and imagines a collaborative future that bears witness to these regions’ enduring Indigenous connections. From hazardous climate change realities to volatile tensions between economic development and environmental conservation, practical and philosophical issues arise as Long seeks the complicated and often overlooked—or suppressed—stories of these incomparable places. Her journey, mindfully undertaken and movingly described, emphasizes in clear and urgent terms the unique significance of, and grave threats to, these contested lands.Trade Review"In This Contested Land, McKenzie Long reframes national monuments in the American consciousness. With painterly language, superb historical research, and engaging boots-on-the-ground storytelling, this book explores crevices for meaning and truth in what for many is a gray area between politics and place. This is a vivid, smart, and overdue book."—Kathryn Aalto, author of Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World"This Contested Land takes readers deep into debates over national monuments. Through interviews, exploration, and vivid history, McKenzie Long unearths conflicting attitudes about human relationships to land and wildlife, tensions that go to the heart of our relationship with our country. This insightful book is essential reading for anyone who wants a better understanding of these fraught areas’ past and future."—Kim Todd, author of Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters""With intricately woven stories and stunningly artistic prose, This Contested Land invokes the intense power of relationships between humans and landscapes—a force that not only influences what people think should happen to a specific place but what the future of our Earth itself might become."—Katie Ives, editor-in-chief of Alpinist and author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams"McKenzie Long takes an evenhanded and compelling view of the complex nature of natural monuments both past, present, and future. She masterfully weaves the challenging history that precedes our current time—one of brutal Indigenous removal—with the current context of settler communities that are tied into these landscapes today. Her telling of her relationships with these places gives us deeper insight into the future we will share together on our public lands."—Len Necefer, Ph.D., CEO and founder, NativesOutdoors "This book is a must-read for anyone interested in national monuments today, their values, and the issues surrounding them. "—National Parks Traveler"Long's reporting is balanced, and her accounts are comprehensive, but the passages detailing her passion for these national treasures and for preserving and protecting them are the book's most compelling parts. A great storyteller, she has a knack for weaving in personal anecdotes and telling details, helping readers appreciate both the beauty of these monuments and the challenges they face."—BooklistTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: A Closer LookNational Monuments Visited in This BookPart 1 – Rock1. The Heart of Bears Ears: Bears Ears National Monument, Utah2. The Conflict of Dreams: Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument, Maine3. The Meaning of Monuments: Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, CaliforniaPart 2 – Rift4. Seeing: Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, Oregon and California5. Digging: Castle Mountains National Monument, California6. Shifting: Sand to Snow National Monument, California7. Expanding: Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, Hawaii8. Layering: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, UtahPart 3 – Ripple9. On Sharing: Rio Grande del Norte National Monument, New Mexico10. On Reactions: Hanford Reach National Monument, Washington11. On Walls: Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, New Mexico12. On Patterns: Basin and Range National Monument, Nevada13. On Possession: Gold Butte National Monument, NevadaEpilogue: Looking ForwardAmerican Antiquities Act of 1906List of Presidential Monument ProclamationsSelected ResourcesIndex

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Book SynopsisA personal health crisis, stories from environmental refugees, and our climate in danger prompt a meditation on intimate connections between the health of the body and the health of the ecosystem The body of the earth, beset by a climate in crisis, experiences drought much like the human body experiences thirst, as Ranae Lenor Hanson’s body did as a warning sign of the disease that would change her life: Type 1 diabetes. What if we tended to an ailing ecosystem just as Hanson learned to care for herself in the throes of a chronic medical condition. This is the possibility explored in a work that is at once a memoir of illness and health, a contemplation of the surrounding natural world in distress, and a reflection on the ways these come together in personal, local, and global opportunities for healing.Beginning with memories from a childhood nurtured among the waters of Minnesota, Watershed follows the streams and tributaries that connect us to our world and to each other, as revealed in the life stories of Hanson’s students, Minnesotans driven from their faraway homelands by climate disruption. The book’s currents carry us to threatened mangrove swamps in Saudi Arabia, to drought-stricken Ethiopia, to rocks bearing ancient messages above crooked rivers in northern Minnesota, to a diabetic crisis in an ICU bed at a St. Paul hospital. With the benefit of gentle insight and a broad worldview, Hanson encourages us at every turn to find our own way, to discover how the health of our bodies and the health of the world they inhabit are inextricably linked and how attending, and tending, to their shared distress can lead to a genuine, grounded wellbeing. When, in the grip of a global pandemic, humans drastically change their behavior to preserve human life, we also see how the earth breathes more freely as a result. In light of that lesson, Watershed helps us to consider our place and our part in the health and healing of the world around us. Trade Review "The credo ‘water is life’ has become a key environmental rallying cry in the years since Standing Rock, and this book helps us remember why. It recalls an American past, inhabits a global present, and imagines a working future—it will be an aid to many as they grapple with our difficult moment."—Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of The End of Nature "In a direct and often wise voice, through a series of moving, revealing, and entertaining stories, Watershed makes clear the connection between climate change and our own bodies. A difficult task in a culture that ignores the urgency of climate change while denying that human beings are part of nature. Difficult, but needed now while the earth that sustains our bodies is under assault. This book presents us with a paradoxical gift, the idea that we can make use of the aches and pains and illnesses plaguing so many of us to wake up and act in common cause with the earth."—Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature "Ranae Hanson’s elegy for the Earth and our bodies speaks of the holy, the sacred. The fates of water, our bodies, our communities are intertwined. She gives voice to the voiceless. She reports on the sacred and challenges us to live our lives knowing that the connection to each other and the Earth is the basis for health, the holy, the sacred."—Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director, Science and Environmental Health Network "We need Watershed now. There’s no book like it. It’s as clear-eyed and immersive as the northern Minnesota waters that birthed it. It’s the story for our time, and just in the nick of time. With courage and tenderness, Ranae Hanson pulls back the curtain to show us that the harm we have wrought on the world is no longer a future problem to be solved. It is here now in our bodies as much as in our watersheds and forests—and in the beloved homelands of her immigrant-refuge students whose voices and stories pierce any doubt, any ill-founded hope that all will be well."—Eric Utne, founder, Utne Reader "Ranae Hanson’s remarkable book is a deep, rich, profoundly personal, and powerful exploration of how we are inseparable from the water that surrounds us, that flows through, around, and beneath our lives. It’s a book that connects us to where we stand, to the place, the watershed, the webs of love, water, family, and nature that hold us throughout our lives. Its roots run deep, its implications even deeper, and it brings many rich gifts for these extraordinary times."—Rob Hopkins, founder, Transition Movement "Such a beautiful blend of Ranae Hanson’s own story and how it connects to the deeper story of environmental damage and climate change. The book gains gravitas and urgency by weaving the impact of environmental crisis on our own human bodies with stories from all over the globe. It shows that we must face this worldwide, systemic issue together now."—Ann Manning, director, Future First Initiatives "Born in northern Minnesota where waters divide, Ranae Hanson has been communicating with the earth with reverence and empathy since early childhood. Decades of conversations are gathered in Watershed, a beautifully written memoir that weaves together explorations of keenly observed impacts of ecologic damage, climate change, and personal illness. Wisdom that Ranae Hanson has gleaned from many years of service to the earth and her students is now available to us all. It is a captivating, cautionary tale urging humility, respect, and action."—Ted Schettler, science director, Science and Environmental Health Network "Watershed is grounded and calming. It brings the full story of ecological disruption into view. Ranae Hanson’s life story combined with an exploration of the real threat and the embodied response that is necessary is a new and important angle to address climate change."—Julia Nerbonne, executive director, Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light "This book took me away from this daily dose of gloom and filled me with a sense of preciousness enabling action that isn’t just reaction. Ranae Hanson’s personal and intimate stories are full of unsentimental love for people, trees, plants, and animals displaced by our political and climate brutality. In the stories told here, those of us who are in true community with the world around, close by and far away, find moments of joy and solace by standing side-by-side near the trauma without averting our eyes. The stories point toward possible sustaining acceptance even in the midst of nightmare realities."—Robert Bosnak, author A Little Course in Dreams "This book is very unique. Much like a memoir peppered with meditations and insights, it’s filled with so many anecdotes and details, it’s easy to relate to Hanson and her somewhat unconventional upbringing."—Rochester Post-Bulletin "Watershed helps us to consider our place and our part in the health and healing of the world around us."—The Thirteen Towns "In a sea of books about the environment and personal health, Hanson’s Watershed demonstrates the remarkable degree to which they are the same topic."—Minnesota Brown "Hanson encourages us to examine our own experiences of place, home, landscape, and watershed."—Land Stewardship Project "Ranea Lenor Hanson’s memoir intertwines reflections about how her body’s health challenges reflect the earth in distress."—Minnesota Women’s Press "The book connects people across generations, cultures, and continents."—Creative Nursing "Ranae Hanson weaves a connection of humanity like a watershed collects the essence of the land it flows through."—Ely Summer Times "Hanson manages to write a memoir that truly captures interconnectedness: between people, cultures, species, and watersheds... the book as a whole feels deeply rooted, with a full and conscious awareness of the issues and challenges inherent to environmental justice. "—ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment Table of ContentsContentsNavigating the Waters of This BookHow to Live1. Where Waters DivideHandholds and Stepping Stones2. Do Not Fall Away3. Pause to SurveyConsider the Need to Stop4. The Pattern of BreathStop. Breathe. Settle.5. ThirstLonging for Water6. Listen and AcceptThe Voice of the Body7. Rely on a Deep, Cool Lake8. Feel the GriefPractice for Mourning9. Connect Humbly10. Accept BothHow to Die11. Bear WitnessCome to Know12. Walk With and Nourish Others13. Water, Plant, and Make SoilComing Home14. Fog15. Miracles, Mystery, and Dreams16. When the Time ComesListen and Prepare17. Return18. May Your Watershed Live – and You with ItRemember the Branches and StonesCoda: Life Principles of the Indigenous People of My Natal WatershedNotes

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Book SynopsisHow contemporary environmental struggles and resistance to pipeline development became populist struggles Stunning Indigenous resistance to the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access pipelines has made global headlines in recent years. Less remarked on are the crucial populist movements that have also played a vital role in pipeline resistance. Kai Bosworth explores the influence of populism on environmentalist politics, which sought to bring together Indigenous water protectors and environmental activists along with farmers and ranchers in opposition to pipeline construction.Here Bosworth argues that populism is shaped by the “affective infrastructures” emerging from shifts in regional economies, democratic public-review processes, and scientific controversies. With this lens, he investigates how these movements wax and wane, moving toward or away from other forms of environmental and political ideologies in the Upper Midwest. This lens also lets Bosworth place populist social movements in the critical geographical contexts of racial inequality, nationalist sentiments, ongoing settler colonialism, and global empire—crucial topics when grappling with the tensions embedded in our era’s immense environmental struggles.Pipeline Populism reveals the complex role populism has played in shifting interpretations of environmental movements, democratic ideals, scientific expertise, and international geopolitics. Its rich data about these grassroots resistance struggles include intimate portraits of the emotional spaces where opposition is first formed. Probing the very limits of populism, Pipeline Populism presents essential work for an era defined by a wave of people-powered movements around the world.Trade Review "Pipeline Populism is an endlessly insightful, generative study of environmental populism as a response to extractivism and neoliberal environmentalism. Sensitive to multiracial populism’s democratic aspirations and its settler colonial desires, Kai Bosworth offers a vital guide to the limits of populist pipeline resistance and its resources for more revolutionary socialist transformation. This is essential reading for those interested in left-wing populism and climate justice alike."—Laura Grattan, author of Populism’s Power: Radical Grassroots Democracy in America "Environmental populism is a genre of white settler politics that may reiterate the worst parts of American hubris and anti-government individualism, but it may also have openings within it for transformation, through solidarity with indigenous people and more radical political action. Kai Bosworth’s wonderful analysis of the ‘affective infrastructures’ of environmental populism helps us see the politics of climate change, and of populism, with a sharper and more nuanced eye. This book is an indispensable guide to many of the problems plaguing left-wing environmental politics, and it also offers us a clearer vision with which to move forward, both as academics and political actors."—Lida Maxwell, author of Insurgent Truth: Chelsea Manning and the Politics of Outsider Truth-Telling "Pipeline’s focus on populism is a unique approach to defining and engaging with the climate movement, bringing together geographical and political concerns to approach questions of community organization and activist movements. "—H-Net Reviews Table of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Affective Infrastructures of Populist Environmentalism1. “This Land Is Our Land”: Private Property and Territorialized Resentment2. “Keystone XL Hearing Nearly Irrelevant”: Participation and Resigned Pragmatism3. Canadian Invasion for Chinese Consumption: Foreign Oil and Heartland Melodrama4. The People Know Best: Counter-Expertise and Jaded ConfidenceConclusion: The Desire to Be PopularNotesBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisA study of Palestine-Israel through the unexpected lens of nature conservation Settling Nature documents the widespread ecological warfare practiced by the state of Israel. Recruited to the front lines are fallow deer, gazelles, wild asses, griffon vultures, pine trees, and cows—on the Israeli side—against goats, camels, olive trees, hybrid goldfinches, and akkoub—which are affiliated with the Palestinian side. These nonhuman soldiers are all the more effective because nature camouflages their tactical deployment as such.​Drawing on more than seventy interviews with Israel’s nature officials and on observations of their work, this book examines the careful orchestration of this animated warfare by Israel’s nature administration on both sides of the Green Line. Alongside its powerful protection of wildlife biodiversity, the territorial reach of Israel’s nature protection is remarkable: to date, nearly 25 percent of the country’s total land mass is assigned as a park or a reserve. Settling Nature argues that the administration of nature advances the Zionist project of Jewish settlement and the corresponding dispossession of non-Jews from this space.Trade Review"This remarkable book expertly covers a neglected part of the planet’s most commented-on conflict, the central role of nature protection in Palestine-Israel. Combining rich empirics and eye-opening theoretical insights, Irus Braverman presses a highly ‘unsettling’ yet profoundly important point: how the conservation of critical more-than-human natures sits at the heart of many of the most consequential and distressing power struggles of our time."—Bram Büscher, author of The Truth about Nature: Environmentalism in the Era of Post-truth Politics and Platform Capitalism"Irus Braverman’s fascinating account of the formulation and enforcement of conservation policies in Palestine-Israel examines a series of cases that exemplify tensions that emerge around attempts to conserve species, landscapes, and ecosystems. As it illuminates the environmental and political history of Palestine-Israel, Settling Nature will also engage those interested in the conflicts surrounding conservation movements in many other places."—Harriet Ritvo, author of The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in Victorian England

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Book SynopsisHow afforestation reveals the often-concealed politics between humans and plantsIn Plant Life, Rosetta S. Elkin explores the procedures of afforestation, the large-scale planting of trees in otherwise treeless environments, including grasslands, prairies, and drylands. Elkin reveals that planting a tree can either be one of the ultimate offerings to thriving on this planet, or one of the most extreme perversions of human agency over it. Using three supracontinental case studies—scientific forestry in the American prairies, colonial control in Africa’s Sahelian grasslands, and Chinese efforts to control and administer territory—Elkin explores the political implications of plant life as a tool of environmentalism. By exposing the human tendency to fix or solve environmental matters by exploiting other organisms, this work exposes the relationship between human and plant life, revealing that afforestation is not an ecological act: rather, it is deliberately political and distressingly social. Plant Life ultimately reveals that afforestation cannot offset deforestation, an important distinction that sheds light on current environmental trends that suggest we can plant our way out of climate change. By radicalizing what conservation protects and by framing plants in their total aliveness, Elkin shows that there are many kinds of life—not just our own—to consider when advancing environmental policy. Trade Review "In Plant Life, the misadventures of tree planting campaigns around the world expose a fundamental failure to understand things that are alive. Human cultivation—a blunt apparatus often focused only on an above-ground outcropping—usually manages to kill plants. Rosetta S. Elkin’s lush and stringent narratives travel instead within the roots and ramifying relationships that huge forests and grasslands generate when they are simply allowed to grow—a live rhizosphere in the crust of the earth."—Keller Easterling, Yale University "With climate change comes a recognition that we are part of a global landscape and that we need to think at this scale. However, even as we need to ‘think global, act local,’ what Rosetta S. Elkin shows in her in her deep and multi-faceted reading of afforestation projects is that in doing so we must really ‘think local, act global.’"—Julian Raxworthy, University of Canberra "Tightly argued and rigorously researched, Plant Life draws on history, geography, political ecology, botany, landscape ecology, and climate science to present a powerful critique of afforestation. "—Landscape Architecture Magazine "Delving into philosophical treatises, colonial archives, and botanical manuals that span such themes as soil science, plant morphology, and taxonomy, Elkin convincingly argues that planting is a social—not ecological—act that radically reshapes landscapes based on models of standardization and replicability."—H-Net Reviews Table of ContentsContentsPrefaceAbbreviationsIntroductionArtifact1. The Problem of Parts2. Great Green Wall3. Genus FaidherbiaIndex4. Confronting Treelessness5. Prairie States Forestry Project6. Ulmus pumilaL.Trace7. Contextual Indifference8. Three Norths Shelter System9. Species PopulusEpilogueNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisExplores ecological impasses and opportunities of our fossil-fueled civilization It is more and more obvious that our fossilized civilization has no sustainable future. It is an ecological Ponzi scheme stealing away the lives of countless species and the wellbeing of future generations in exchange for contemporary conveniences and the luxuries of a small subset of the human population. Yet a civilization wholly beyond fossils still seems difficult to grasp. In No More Fossils, Dominic Boyer tells the story of the rise of fossil civilization through successive phases of sucropolitics (plantation sugar), carbopolitics (industrial coal), and petropolitics (oily automobility and plasticity), showing what tethers us to the ecocidal trajectory of petroculture today and what it will take to overcome the forces that mire us in place. He also looks ahead toward the world that the rapid electrification of vehicles, buildings, and power is creating. What can we do to make electroculture more just and sustainable than the petroculture we are leaving behind?

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Book SynopsisAn immersive journey into the past, present, and future of a region many consider the Northeast’s wilderness backyard. Out of all the rural areas of the United States, including those in the West, which are bigger and propped up by more pervasive myths about adventure and nation and wilderness and freedom, the Adirondacks has accumulated a well-known identity beyond its boundaries. Untouched, unspoiled, it is defined by what we haven’t done to it. Combining author Matt Dallos’s personal observations with his thorough research of primary and secondary documents, In the Adirondacks rambles through the region to understand its significance within American culture and what lessons it might offer us for how we think about the environment. In vivid prose, Dallos digs through the region’s past and present to excavate a series of compelling stories and places: a moose named Harold, a hot dog mogul’s rustic mansion, an ecological restoration on an alpine summit, a hermit who demanded a helicopter ride, and a millionaire who dressed up as a Native American to rob a stagecoach. Along the way, Dallos listens to locals and tourists, visits wilderness areas and souvenir shops, and digs through archives in museums and libraries. In the Adirondacks blends lively history and immersive travel writing to explore the Adirondacks that captivated Dallos’s childhood imagination while presenting a compelling and entertaining story about America’s largest park outside of Alaska. The result is an inquisitive journey through the region’s bogs and lakes and boreal forests and the lives of residents and tourists. Dallos turned toward the region to understand why he couldn’t shake it from his mind. What he learned is that he’s not the only one. In the Adirondacks explores the history and future of the most complicated, contested park in North America, raising important questions about the role of environmental preservation and the great outdoors in American history and culture.

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Book SynopsisAlthough our planet faces numerous ecological crises, including climate change, many Christians continue to view their faith as primarily a "spiritual" matter that has little relationship to the world in which we live. But Steven Bouma-Prediger contends that protecting and restoring our planet is part and parcel of what it means to be a Christian. Making his case from Scripture, theology, and ethics and including insights from the global church, Bouma-Prediger explains why Christians must acknowledge their identity as earthkeepers and therefore embrace their calling to serve and protect their home planet and fellow creatures. To help readers put an "earthkeeping faith" into practice, he also suggests numerous practical steps that concerned believers can take to care for the planet. Bouma-Prediger unfolds a biblical vision of earthkeeping and challenges Christians to view care for the earth as an integral part of Christian discipleship.Table of Contents1. Overture: Why Read This BookBiblical Meditation: Water, Water Everywhere2. Beginning and Ending with Rivers and Trees: The Biblical Vision of EarthkeepingBiblical Meditation: God Remembers and the Earth Re-membered3. Humble Humans in a Holy World: Learning from Theology and EthicsBiblical Meditation: Lightning and Wind, Hawk and Vulture, Behemoth and Leviathan4. Ecumenical Insights: Wisdom from the Global ChurchBiblical Meditation: I Am the Good Shepherd5. Christian Faith in Action: Living What We BelieveBiblical Meditation: Peace Be with You6. Yearning for Shalom: Becoming Aching VisionariesIndexes

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisAn environmentalism that restores humans' connection to EarthTrade Review"In this exceptionally engaging book, Anthony Weston goes beyond the 'environmental ethics' approach to argue for the reinstatement of our age-old connections to Nature and other animals: what Vice President Al Gore refers to as a sense of the 'vividness, vibrancy, and aliveness of the rest of the natural world.' Weston draws upon an encyclopedic knowledge of recent research in animal behavior in his proposal for a new trans-species 'etiquette.' He also provides practical suggestions for redesigning our cities and neighborhoods in bioregional ways to help bring about a new ecological relationship with Nature."—George Sessions, Sierra College, coauthor of Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered"This is a wonderful book, generous and graceful—exactly what we need. Back to Earth is an invitation to live 'in the presence of the more-than-human...to awake and go to sleep with it, to take its rhythms and cycles for the rhythms and cycles of [our own lives], until the two finally merge into one stream.' It is written in the conviction that our fate is bound up with the more-than-human world and that to return home, to come back to earth, is a matter of etiquette, grace, and generosity of spirit—and a matter of coming, once again, to our senses through concrete and practical 'enabling practices,' sources and embodiments of a genuine environmental ethic."—Jim Cheney, University of WisconsinTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Has Environmentalism Forgotten the Earth? 2. Animals Next to Us 3. Animals on the Borderlines 4. The Land Sings 5. Desolation 6. Coming to Our Senses 7. Transhuman Etiquettes 8. Is It Too Late? Notes Index

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Book SynopsisSeeing a cat rubbing against a person, Charles Darwin described her as \u0022in an affectionate frame of mind\u0022; for Samuel Barnett, a behavioralist, the mental realm is beyond the grasp of scientists andbehavior must be described technically, as a physical action only. What difference does this difference make? In Eileen Crist's analysis of the language used to portray animal behavior, the difference \u0022is that in the reader's mind the very image of the cat's 'body' is transfigured...from an experiencing subject...into a vacant object.\u0022 Images of Animals examines the literature of behavioral science, revealing how works with the common aim of documenting animal lives, habits, and instincts describe \u0022realities that are worlds apart.\u0022 Whether the writer affirms the Cartesian verdict of an unbridgeable chasm between animals and humans or the Darwinian panorama of evolutionary continuity, the question of animal mind is ever present and problematic in behavioral thought. Comparing the naturalist writings of Charles Darwin, Jean Henri Fabre, and George and Elizabeth Peckham to works of classical ethology by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen and of contemporary sociobiology, Crist demonstrates how words matter. She does not attempt to defend any of these constructions as a faithful representation of animal existence, but to show how each internally coherent view molds the reader's understanding of animals. Rejecting the notion that \u0022a neutral language exists, or can be constructed, which yields incontestably objective accounts of animal behavior,\u0022 Crist argues that \u0022language is not instrumental in the depiction of animals and, in particular, it is never impartial with respect to the question of animal mind.\u0022Trade Review"From anthorpomorphism to zoomorphism, Crist analyzes the language used to portray animal behavior in the behavioral science literature: from Darwin's stance of evolutionary continuity to ethologist Samuel Barnett's disavowal of studying anything other than observable behavior in 'realities that are worlds apart.'" -Book News "...an important exposition of matters of great importance in understanding the relationships of human knowledge and animal actors and the intersection of human language and animal behavior." -Isis "...an original, insightful, sophisticated, and lucidly written analysis of the powerful role that language plays in constructing our understanding of animal life. ... very much worth the attention of all those interested in how language shapes the way we think, and how, as human minds approach the subject of animal minds, anthropomorphism may have something going for it." -Science, Technology, and Human Values "The author critically reviews the observation language of historical contributors to the study of animal behavior (Darwin, naturalists, ethologists, behaviorists and sociobiologists)." -The Quarterly Review of BiologyTable of ContentsCONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: The Significance of Language in Portraying Animals 1. Darwin's Anthropomorphism 2. Lifeworld and Subjectivity: Naturalists' Portrait of Animals 3. The Ethological Constitution of Animals as Natural Objects 4. Genes and Their Animals: The Language of Sociobiology 5. Words as Icons: Comparative Images of Courtship 6. Unraveling the Distinction Between Action and Behavior Notes Bibliography Index

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