Anticipatory Environmental (Hi)Stories from Antiquity to the Anthropocene PDF Download

Author: Christopher Schliephake
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1666921157
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 339

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Book Description
Anticipatory Environmental (Hi)Stories from Antiquity to the Anthropocene studies the interplay of environmental perception and the way societies throughout history have imagined the future state of “nature” and the environments in which coming generations would live. What sorts of knowledge were and are involved in outlining future environments? What kinds of texts and narrative strategies were and are developed and modified over time? How did and do scenarios and narratives of the past shape (hi)stories of the future? This book answers these questions from a diachronic as well as a cross-cultural perspective. By looking at a diverse range of historical evidence that transcends stereotypical utopian and dystopian visions and allows for nuanced insights beyond the dichotomous reservoir of pastoral motifs and apocalyptic narratives, the contributors illustrate the multifaceted character of environmental anticipation across the ages.

Author: Christopher Schliephake
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108802370
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
What can a study of antiquity contribute to the interdisciplinary paradigm of the environmental humanities? And how does this recent paradigm influence the way we perceive human-'nature' interactions in pre-modernity? By asking these and a number of related questions, this Element aims to show why the ancient tradition still matters in the Anthropocene. Offering new perspectives to think about what directions the ecological turn could take in classical studies, it revisits old material, including ancient Greek religion and mythology, with central concepts of contemporary environmental theory. It also critically engages with forms of classical reception in current debates, arguing that ancient ecological knowledge is a powerful resource for creating alternative world views.

Author: Carolyn Merchant
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300244231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
A wide-ranging and original introduction to the Anthropocene (the Age of Humanity) that offers fresh, theoretical insights bridging the sciences and the humanities From noted environmental historian Carolyn Merchant, this book focuses on the original concept of the Anthropocene first proposed by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in their foundational 2000 paper. It undertakes a broad investigation into the ways in which science, technology, and the humanities can create a new and compelling awareness of human impacts on the environment. Using history, art, literature, religion, philosophy, ethics, and justice as the focal points, Merchant traces key figures and developments in the humanities throughout the Anthropocene era and explores how these disciplines might influence sustainability in the next century. Wide-ranging and accessible, this book from an eminent scholar in environmental history and philosophy argues for replacing the Age of the Anthropocene with a new Age of Sustainability.

Author: J. R. McNeill
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674970748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The pace of energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and population growth has thrust the planet into a new age—the Anthropocene. Humans have altered the planet’s biogeochemical systems without consciously managing them. The Great Acceleration explains the causes, consequences, and uncertainties of this massive uncontrolled experiment.

Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004392084
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Environment and Society in the Long Late Antiquity brings together scientific, archaeological and historical evidence on the interplay of social change and environmental phenomena at the end of Antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages, ca. 300-800 AD.

Author: Joy McCorriston
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500052143
Category : Anthropology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Since taking their first steps on this planet, humans have changed the environment around them. Anthropocene: A New Introduction to World Prehistory tells the comprehensive story of human prehistory through the lens of anthropogenic environmental change. Each chapter explains how and why ancient humans transformed the Earth, linking prehistory to today's greatest global challenge. As they explore this record of the world's early people and societies, authors Joy McCorriston and Julie Field reject the traditional account of cultural evolution, instead presenting a thematic organization that highlights our Anthropocene narrative. Chapters are devoted to cities and agriculture, but also to such topics as technology, extinction, food production, writing and extractivism. Chapter 9, 'Individuals and Identity, ' considers human identity and agency in more recent eras, and the book ends with a contemporary chapter that takes a hopeful look at the future.

Author: J. Donald Hughes
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134017820
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
This book is an overview of human history in relationship to the natural environment, from origins to the present, with case studies of different societies in each period

Author: Joel Alden Schlosser
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022670484X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
We are living in the age of the Anthropocene, in which human activities are recognized for effecting potentially catastrophic environmental change. In this book, Joel Alden Schlosser argues that our current state of affairs calls for a creative political response, and he finds inspiration in an unexpected source: the ancient writings of the Greek historian Herodotus. Focusing on the Histories, written in the fifth century BCE, Schlosser identifies a cluster of concepts that allow us to better grasp the dynamic complexity of a world in flux. Schlosser shows that the Histories, which chronicle the interactions among the Greek city-states and their neighbors that culminated in the Persian Wars, illuminate a telling paradox: at those times when humans appear capable of exerting more influence than ever before, they must also assert collective agency to avoid their own downfall. Here, success depends on nomoi, or the culture, customs, and laws that organize human communities and make them adaptable through cooperation. Nomoi arise through sustained contact between humans and their surroundings and function best when practiced willingly and with the support of strong commitments to the equality of all participants. Thus, nomoi are the very substance of political agency and, ultimately, the key to freedom and ecological survival because they guide communities to work together to respond to challenges. An ingenious contribution to political theory, political philosophy, and ecology, Herodotus in the Anthropocene reminds us that the best perspective on the present can often be gained through the lens of the past.

Author: Julia Adeney Thomas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 150953461X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Humans rank with the powerful forces of nature transforming Earth. Since the mid-20th century, population growth, industrialization, and globalization have had such deep and wide-ranging impacts that our planet no longer functions as it did during the previous eleven millennia. So distinctive is this collective human intervention that a new geological interval has been proposed; it is called the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is intriguing scientifically, fascinating intellectually, and deeply disturbing politically, socially, economically, and ethically. We must learn how to co-exist sustainably with the rest of nature in what is emerging as a new planetary state. To do so, we must first understand what "Anthropocene" means in all its dimensions. This book adopts a multidisciplinary approach, starting with an exploration of the Anthropocene as a geological concept: ranging across the physical changes to the landscape, to the rapidly heating climate, to a biosphere undergoing transformation. And what of the "anthropos" in the Anthropocene? While geoscience does not normally address political and ethical issues of justice and equity, or economics and culture, Anthropocene studies in the humanities and social sciences investigate the complexities of the human activity driving global change. Here the book looks at human history, both in the deep past and more recently, the politics and economics of growth spurring the Anthropocene, and potential ways of mitigating its cruel effects. Our fragile, still beautiful, planet is finite. The new realities of the Anthropocene will need our best efforts, across disciplinary divides, at effective hope and action.

Author: Caitlin DeSilvey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780956855923
Category : Art and science
Languages : en
Pages : 77

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Book Description
"This volume poses the term 'anticipatory history' as a tool to help us connect past, present and future environmental change. Through discussion of a series of topics, a range of leading academics, authors and practitioners consider how the stories we tell about ecological and landscape histories can help shape our perceptions of plausible environmental futures."--Publisher's blurb.