Search results for ""Author Mike Carr""

Bioregionalism and Civil Society addresses the urgent needfor sustainability in industrialized societies. The book explores thebioregional movement in the US, Canada, and Mexico, examining itsvision, values, strategies, and tools for building sustainablesocieties. Bioregionalism is a philosophy with values and practicesthat attempt to meld issues of social and economic justice andsustainability with cultural, ecological, and spiritual concerns.Further, bioregional efforts at democratic social and cultural changetake place primarily in the sphere of civil society. Practically, Carr argues for bioregionalism as a place-specific,community movement that can stand in diverse opposition to thehomogenizing trends of corporate globalization. Theoretically, theauthor seeks lessons for civil society-based social theory andstrategy. Conventional civil society theory from Europe proposes a dualstrategy of developing strong horizontal communicative action amongcivic associations and networks as the basis for strategic verticalcampaigns to democratize both state and market sectors. However, thistheory offers no ecological or cultural critique of consumerism. Bycontrast, Carr integrates both social and natural ecologies in a civilsociety theory that incorporates lessons about consumption and culturaltransformation from bioregional practice. Carr’s argument that bioregional values and community-buildingtools support a diverse, democratic, socially just civil society thatrespects and cares for the natural world makes a significantcontribution to the field of green political science, social changetheory, and environmental thought.

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An examination of the changing nature of crusade and its participants in the late medieval Mediterranean. The period from the fall of Acre until the end of the Crusade of Smyrna signified a dramatic shift in crusade impetus, as expeditions to liberate the Holy Land were superseded by those aimed at reducing the maritime power of the Turks in the Aegean. With this shift came a change in participation, as the members of the merchant republics of Venice and Genoa, together with the Frankish states in the Aegean, began slowly to replace the chivalry of western Europe as the most suitable leaders of a crusade. This resulted in a subtle alteration in how the papacy aimed to justify a crusade and encourage involvement from the merchant crusaders who were vital for its success. Drawingon a wealth of previously unexplored sources, including those related to crusading and also those recording trade between Christians and Muslims in the eastern Mediterranean, this book analyses the changing Latin perceptions of the Greeks and Turks during the period, the nature of the military response to the threat posed by the Turks in the Aegean and the relationship between the papacy and the merchant crusaders. In its investigation of the complex interplay between mercantile objectives and crusading ideals, it sheds revealing insights into the complexities of crusading in the later Middle Ages. Mike Carr is Lecturer in Late Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh.

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The conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade shattered irreversibly the political and cultural unity of the Byzantine world in the Greek peninsula, the Aegean and western Asia Minor. Between the disintegration of the Byzantine Empire after 1204 and the consolidation of Ottoman power in the fifteenth century, the area was a complex political, ethnic and religious mosaic, made up of Frankish lordships, Italian colonies, Turkish beyliks, as well as a number of states that professed to be the continuators of the Byzantine imperial tradition. This volume brings together western medievalists, Byzantinists and Ottomanists, combining recent research in the relevant fields in order to provide a holistic interpretation of this world of extreme fragmentation. Eight stimulating papers explore various factors that defined contact and conflict between Orthodox Greeks, Catholic Latins and Muslim Turks, highlighting common themes that run through this period and evaluating the changes that occurred over time. Particular emphasis is given on the crusades and the way they affected interaction in the area. Although the impact of the crusades on Byzantine history leading up to 1204 has been extensively examined in the past, there has been little research on the way crusading was implemented in Greece and the Aegean after that point. Far from being limited to crusading per se, however, the papers put it into its wider context and examine other aspects of contact, such as trade, interfaith relations, and geographical exploration.

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