Search results for ""author phillip vannini""
McGill-Queen's University Press Inhabited: Wildness and the Vitality of the Land
People are key elements of wild places. At the same time, human entanglements with wild ecologies involve extractivism, the growth of resource-based economies, and imperial-colonial expansion, activities that are wreaking havoc on our planet.Through an ethnographic exploration of Canada’s ten UNESCO Natural World Heritage sites, Inhabited reflects on the meanings of wildness, wilderness, and natural heritage. As we are introduced to local inhabitants and their perspectives, Phillip Vannini and April Vannini ask us to reflect on the colonial and dualist assumptions behind the received meaning of wild, challenging us to reimagine wildness as relational and rooted in vitality. Over the three years they spent in and around these sites, they learned from Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples about their entanglements with each other and with non-human animals, rocks, plants, trees, sky, water, and spirits. The stories, actions, and experiences they encountered challenge conventional narratives of wild places as uninhabited by people and disconnected from culture and society. While it might be tempting to dismiss the idea of wildness as outdated in the Anthropocene era, Inhabited suggests that rethinking wildness offers a better – if messier – way forward.Part geography and anthropology, part environmental and cultural studies, and part politics and ecology, Inhabited balances a genuine love of nature’s vitality with a culturally responsible understanding of its interconnectedness with more-than-human ways of life.
£26.99
University of British Columbia Press In the Name of Wild: One Family, Five Years, Ten Countries, and a New Vision of Wildness
Five continents. Ten countries. Twenty Natural World Heritage sites in five years. In the Name of Wild is the story of what happened when one family set out to learn what wildness means to people around the world. What draws us to seek out wild places? Do they mean the same to everyone? As they embarked on their fieldwork the Vannini family expected pristine landscapes, but romantic ideals soon crashed into reality. Adventurers were there to conquer the wilderness. Conservationists were there to manage it. Tourism operators were there to make a dollar. Part travelogue, part ethnography, In the Name of Wild takes us on a wide-ranging journey, searching for answers from people who call places like Tasmania, Patagonia, and Iceland home. Wildness, they explain, isn’t about remoteness or an absence of people. This brilliantly conceived, beautifully told account reveals that wild is really about connections, kinship, and coexistence with the land.
£21.99
