Description
Book SynopsisCarole L. Crumley has brought together top scholars from across anthropology in a benchmark volume that displays the range of exciting new work on the complex relationship between humans and the environment. Continually pursuing anthropology''s persistent claim that both the physical and the mental world matter, these environmental scholars proceed from the holistic assumption that the physical world and human societies are always inextricably linked. As they incorporate diverse forms of knowledge, their work reaches beyond anthropology to bridge the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, and to forge working relationships with non-academic communities and professionals. Theoretical issues such as the cultural dimensions of context, knowledge, and power are articulated alongside practical discussions of building partnerships, research methods and ethics, and strategies for implementing policy. New Directions in Environment and Anthropology will be important for all scholars and
Trade ReviewAs review articles, all the essays are informative and potentially useful, pointing the way towards work that could be followed up in more detail. In this sense, they serve their purpose as introductions to environmental anthropology and its various subfields. In particular, Tsing's analysis of the relations among environmental history, science studies, political ecology, and cultural anthropology in the creation of particular strands of interdisciplinary scholarship is insightful, especially when paired with Dove's demonstration of and reflections on interdisciplinary borrowing in ecological anthropology.... [This book] highlights some important developments in the field, and it forcefully advocates anthropology's engagement in environmental discourse. Some chapters, those of Sponsel, Dove, and Ingerson, in particular, will become central to my course reading lists, while some others might be recommended as useful illustrations. -- Kay Milton, (Queen's University, Belfast) * Current Anthropology *
The papers in this volume offer a rich and varied menu sure to delight young scholars seeking to engage environmental issues through an anthropological prism. From approaches to the construction of nature to the emergence of a spiritual ecology, engagement with environmentalism, historical ecology, and political ecology readers will find much food for thought in these pages. -- Emilio Moran, (Director, Anthropological Center for Training and Research on Global Environmental Change, Indiana University)
Table of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Defining Environment and Interpreting Nature Chapter 1: Nature in the Making Chapter 2: Linking Language and the Environment: A Coevolutionary Perspective Chapter 3: Cognitive Anthropology and the Environment Chapter 4: Archaeology and Environmental Change Chapter 5: Interdisciplinary Borrowing in Environmental Anthropology, and the Critique of Modern Science Part Two: Beliefs, Values and Environmental Justice Chapter 6: Political Ecology and Constructions of Environment in Biological Anthropology Chapter 7: Anthropology and Environmental Justice: Analysts, Activists, Mediators, and Trouble Makers Chapter 8: The Politics of Ethnographic Presence: Sites and Topologies in the Study of Transnational Movements Chapter 9: Do Anthropologists Need Religion and Vice Versa: Adventures and Dangers in Spiritual Ecology Part Three: Application and Engagement Chapter 10: Historical Ecology: Landscapes of Change in the Pacific Northwest Chapter 11: Getting the Dirt Out: An Anthropological Approach to the Culture and Political Economy of Urban Land in the United States Chapter 12: Environmental Anthropology at Sea Chapter 13: The Discourse of Environmental Partnerships
