Earth, air, fire, water : humanistic studies of the environment / edited by Jill Ker Conway, Kenneth Keniston, and Leo Marx.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Conway, Jill K., 1934-2018.

Keniston, Kenneth.

Marx, Leo, 1919-2022.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Environmental degradation--Social aspects.

Environmental degradation.

Nature--Effect of human beings on.

Nature.

Physical Description:

ix, 349 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [1999]

Summary:

Written in a clear, accessible style with a general audience in mind, the essays in this volume offer fresh approaches to thinking about environmental issues.

When we consider the forms of environmental decline most urgently in need of attention -- eroding soils, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, acid rain, ozone depletion, air pollution, poisoned water supplies, the loss of biological diversity -- it may seem logical that scientists should be the people mobilized to tackle these problems. Yet to devise effective solutions for today's environmental threats, we must situate them within their larger historical, societal, and cultural settings. Amelioration does not require exclusively scientific knowledge, but also changes based upon law and public policy, on institutional structures and practices, on habits of consumption, and on countless other facets of daily life.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water seeks to redirect our thinking about environmental issues by locating them in the behavior of human beings -- in the institutions, beliefs, and practices that mediate between people and that obscure but beautiful nonhuman world we refer to as "nature." The book opens with a section on the elements and the ways humans have understood them in the past. There follows a section devoted to social institutions and the ways in which we can learn from current and past efforts to study the interaction between people and nature. The concluding section analyzes the culture of modernity and the ways in which the human imagination has changed in response to the arrival of modem technology.

Contents:

The New Environmentalisms / Jill Ker Conway, Kenneth Keniston, Leo Marx 1

I. Historical Studies

As the World Runs out of Breath: Metaphorical Perspectives on the Heavens and the Atmosphere in the Ancient World / Gregory Nagy 37

Climate and History: Lessons from the Great Plains / Donald Worster 51

Consumed by Either Fire or Fire: A Prolegomenon to Anthropogenic Fire / Stephen J. Pyne 78

Only a World Perspective Is Significant: Settlement Frontiers and Property Rights in Early Modern World History / John F. Richards 102

II. Social Studies

Environmentalism and Indian Peoples / Richard White 125

Indigenous Rights, Environmental Protection, and the Struggle over Forest Resources in the Amazon: The Case of the Brazilian Kayapo / Terence Turner 145

Grassroots Environmental Activism: The Toxics Movement and Directions for Social Change / Barbara Epstein 170

Russian Environmental Movements / Oleg N. Yanitsky 184

Gender and Environmental Action / Bina Agarwal 206

III. The Question of Modernity

Gender, Environment, and Nature: Two Episodes in Feminist Politics / Jill Ker Conway, Yaakov Garb 259

Modernity and the Environment as a Public Issue in Today's Russia / Anton Struchkov 279

Modernity and Literary Theory / Louis Menand 305

Environmental Degradation and the Ambiguous Social Role of Science and Technology / Leo Marx 320.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

1558492208

1558492216

OCLC:

41572579