Joseph D. Witt
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813168128
- eISBN:
- 9780813168753
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813168128.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This volume examines the complex roles of religious values and perceptions of place in the efforts of twenty-first-century anti-mountaintop removal activists in Appalachia. Applying theoretical ...
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This volume examines the complex roles of religious values and perceptions of place in the efforts of twenty-first-century anti-mountaintop removal activists in Appalachia. Applying theoretical insights from religious studies, Appalachian studies, and critical regionalism, the work charts how views of Appalachian place were transformed and revised through activism and how different religious threads were involved in that process, weaving together patterns of meaning and significance to help motivate activist efforts and reshape visions of Appalachia. The specific religious threads examined include Catholic and mainline Protestant visions of eco-justice (or religiously inspired arguments in support of social and environmental justice), evangelical Christian views of Creation Care (a term encompassing multiple visions of theocentric stewardship ethics), and forms of nature-venerating spirituality (including spiritual and religious proponents of biocentric ethics and “dark green religion”). These religious perspectives encountered friction with other perspectives, structures, and practices, generating new perspectives on the issue formed from physical interactions between diverse stakeholders as well as new visions for Appalachia in a post-mountaintop removal future. The work points to ways that scholars might continue to analyze the interconnections between local religious values and perceptions of place, influencing further studies in the interdisciplinary field of religion and nature, place studies, and social movements.Less
This volume examines the complex roles of religious values and perceptions of place in the efforts of twenty-first-century anti-mountaintop removal activists in Appalachia. Applying theoretical insights from religious studies, Appalachian studies, and critical regionalism, the work charts how views of Appalachian place were transformed and revised through activism and how different religious threads were involved in that process, weaving together patterns of meaning and significance to help motivate activist efforts and reshape visions of Appalachia. The specific religious threads examined include Catholic and mainline Protestant visions of eco-justice (or religiously inspired arguments in support of social and environmental justice), evangelical Christian views of Creation Care (a term encompassing multiple visions of theocentric stewardship ethics), and forms of nature-venerating spirituality (including spiritual and religious proponents of biocentric ethics and “dark green religion”). These religious perspectives encountered friction with other perspectives, structures, and practices, generating new perspectives on the issue formed from physical interactions between diverse stakeholders as well as new visions for Appalachia in a post-mountaintop removal future. The work points to ways that scholars might continue to analyze the interconnections between local religious values and perceptions of place, influencing further studies in the interdisciplinary field of religion and nature, place studies, and social movements.
Norman Wirzba
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195157161
- eISBN:
- 9780199835270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195157168.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
This chapter charts the development of ecology as a science and then highlights the cultural and educational significance of this way of thinking. The career of Aldo Leopold is considered in order to ...
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This chapter charts the development of ecology as a science and then highlights the cultural and educational significance of this way of thinking. The career of Aldo Leopold is considered in order to show the transformation in thought necessary for a more robust environmentalism. The foundations are also laid for an ecological ethic, a garden aesthetic, and a conversation between religion and ecology around the topic of death.Less
This chapter charts the development of ecology as a science and then highlights the cultural and educational significance of this way of thinking. The career of Aldo Leopold is considered in order to show the transformation in thought necessary for a more robust environmentalism. The foundations are also laid for an ecological ethic, a garden aesthetic, and a conversation between religion and ecology around the topic of death.
Norman Wirzba
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195157161
- eISBN:
- 9780199835270
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195157168.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, History of Christianity
Given the wholeness of membership that creation itself is, an environmentalism is proposed that does not take us out of nature but places us more responsibly within it. Practical suggestions are ...
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Given the wholeness of membership that creation itself is, an environmentalism is proposed that does not take us out of nature but places us more responsibly within it. Practical suggestions are offered that will strengthen our identities and vocations as creatures made by God to serve the well-being of the whole creation. Our challenge is to design communities and construct built environments that will reflect God’s justice and peace.Less
Given the wholeness of membership that creation itself is, an environmentalism is proposed that does not take us out of nature but places us more responsibly within it. Practical suggestions are offered that will strengthen our identities and vocations as creatures made by God to serve the well-being of the whole creation. Our challenge is to design communities and construct built environments that will reflect God’s justice and peace.
Jessica Smartt Gullion
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029766
- eISBN:
- 9780262329798
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029766.001.0001
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Environmental Studies
When natural gas drilling moves into an urban or a suburban neighborhood, a two-hundred-foot-high drill appears on the other side of a back yard fence and diesel trucks clog a quiet two-lane ...
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When natural gas drilling moves into an urban or a suburban neighborhood, a two-hundred-foot-high drill appears on the other side of a back yard fence and diesel trucks clog a quiet two-lane residential street. Children seem to be having more than the usual number of nosebleeds. There are so many local cases of cancer that the elementary school starts a cancer support group. In this book, Jessica Smartt Gullion examines what happens when natural gas extraction by means of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” takes place not on wide-open rural land but in a densely populated area with homes, schools, hospitals, parks, and businesses. Gullion focuses on fracking in the Barnett Shale, the natural-gas–rich geological formation under the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. She gives voice to the residents—for the most part educated, middle class, and politically conservative—who became reluctant anti-drilling activists in response to perceived environmental and health threats posed by fracking. Gullion offers an overview of oil and gas development and describes the fossil-fuel culture of Texas, the process of fracking, related health concerns, and regulatory issues (including the notorious “Halliburton loophole”). She chronicles the experiences of community activists as they fight to be heard and to get the facts about the safety of fracking. Touted as a greener alternative and a means to reduce dependence on foreign oil, natural gas development is an important part of American energy policy. Yet, as this book shows, it comes at a cost to the local communities who bear the health and environmental burdens.Less
When natural gas drilling moves into an urban or a suburban neighborhood, a two-hundred-foot-high drill appears on the other side of a back yard fence and diesel trucks clog a quiet two-lane residential street. Children seem to be having more than the usual number of nosebleeds. There are so many local cases of cancer that the elementary school starts a cancer support group. In this book, Jessica Smartt Gullion examines what happens when natural gas extraction by means of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” takes place not on wide-open rural land but in a densely populated area with homes, schools, hospitals, parks, and businesses. Gullion focuses on fracking in the Barnett Shale, the natural-gas–rich geological formation under the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. She gives voice to the residents—for the most part educated, middle class, and politically conservative—who became reluctant anti-drilling activists in response to perceived environmental and health threats posed by fracking. Gullion offers an overview of oil and gas development and describes the fossil-fuel culture of Texas, the process of fracking, related health concerns, and regulatory issues (including the notorious “Halliburton loophole”). She chronicles the experiences of community activists as they fight to be heard and to get the facts about the safety of fracking. Touted as a greener alternative and a means to reduce dependence on foreign oil, natural gas development is an important part of American energy policy. Yet, as this book shows, it comes at a cost to the local communities who bear the health and environmental burdens.
Jennifer Thomson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469651996
- eISBN:
- 9781469651668
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469651996.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
Health figures centrally in late twentieth-century environmental activism. There are many competing claims about the health of ecosystems, the health of the planet, and the health of humans, yet ...
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Health figures centrally in late twentieth-century environmental activism. There are many competing claims about the health of ecosystems, the health of the planet, and the health of humans, yet there is little agreement among the likes of D.C. lobbyists, grassroots organizers, eco-anarchist collectives, and science-based advocacy organizations about whose health matters most, or what health even means. In this book, Jennifer Thomson untangles the complex web of political, social, and intellectual developments that gave rise to the multiplicity of claims and concerns about environmental health.
Thomson traces four strands of activism from the 1970s to the present: the environmental lobby, environmental justice groups, radical environmentalism and bioregionalism, and climate justice activism. By focusing on health, environmentalists were empowered to intervene in the rise of neoliberalism, the erosion of the regulatory state, and the decimation of mass-based progressive politics. Yet, as this book reveals, an individualist definition of health ultimately won out over more communal understandings. Considering this turn from collective solidarity toward individual health helps explain the near paralysis of collective action in the face of planetary disaster.Less
Health figures centrally in late twentieth-century environmental activism. There are many competing claims about the health of ecosystems, the health of the planet, and the health of humans, yet there is little agreement among the likes of D.C. lobbyists, grassroots organizers, eco-anarchist collectives, and science-based advocacy organizations about whose health matters most, or what health even means. In this book, Jennifer Thomson untangles the complex web of political, social, and intellectual developments that gave rise to the multiplicity of claims and concerns about environmental health.
Thomson traces four strands of activism from the 1970s to the present: the environmental lobby, environmental justice groups, radical environmentalism and bioregionalism, and climate justice activism. By focusing on health, environmentalists were empowered to intervene in the rise of neoliberalism, the erosion of the regulatory state, and the decimation of mass-based progressive politics. Yet, as this book reveals, an individualist definition of health ultimately won out over more communal understandings. Considering this turn from collective solidarity toward individual health helps explain the near paralysis of collective action in the face of planetary disaster.
Anna Lora-Wainwright
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036320
- eISBN:
- 9780262341097
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036320.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Pollution is one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary China and among the most prominent causes for unrest. Much of industry and mining takes place in rural areas, yet we know little about ...
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Pollution is one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary China and among the most prominent causes for unrest. Much of industry and mining takes place in rural areas, yet we know little about how rural communities affected by severe pollution make sense of it and the diverse form of activism they embrace. This book describes some of these engagements with pollution through three in-depth case studies based on the author’s fieldwork and an analysis of “cancer villages” examined in existing social science accounts. It challenges assumptions that villagers are ignorant about pollution or fully complicit with it and it looks beyond high-profile cases and beyond single strategies. It examines how villagers’ concerns and practices evolve over time and how pollution may become normalised. Through the concept of “resigned activism”, it advocates rethinking conventional approaches to activism to encompass less visible forms of engagement. It offers insights into the complex dynamics of popular contention, environmental movements and their situatedness within local and national political economies. Describing a likely widespread scenario across much of industrialised rural China, this book provides a window onto the staggering human costs of development and the deeply uneven distribution of costs and benefits. It portrays rural environmentalism and its limitations as prisms through which to study key issues surrounding contemporary Chinese culture and society, such as state responsibility, social justice, ambivalence towards development and modernisation and some of the new fault lines of inequality and social conflict which they generate.Less
Pollution is one of the most pressing issues facing contemporary China and among the most prominent causes for unrest. Much of industry and mining takes place in rural areas, yet we know little about how rural communities affected by severe pollution make sense of it and the diverse form of activism they embrace. This book describes some of these engagements with pollution through three in-depth case studies based on the author’s fieldwork and an analysis of “cancer villages” examined in existing social science accounts. It challenges assumptions that villagers are ignorant about pollution or fully complicit with it and it looks beyond high-profile cases and beyond single strategies. It examines how villagers’ concerns and practices evolve over time and how pollution may become normalised. Through the concept of “resigned activism”, it advocates rethinking conventional approaches to activism to encompass less visible forms of engagement. It offers insights into the complex dynamics of popular contention, environmental movements and their situatedness within local and national political economies. Describing a likely widespread scenario across much of industrialised rural China, this book provides a window onto the staggering human costs of development and the deeply uneven distribution of costs and benefits. It portrays rural environmentalism and its limitations as prisms through which to study key issues surrounding contemporary Chinese culture and society, such as state responsibility, social justice, ambivalence towards development and modernisation and some of the new fault lines of inequality and social conflict which they generate.
Sarah M. Pike
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520294950
- eISBN:
- 9780520967892
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520294950.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, World Religions
Drawing on analyses of activist art, music, and writings, as well as interviews and participant-observation in activist communities and at protests, For the Wild explores the ways in which radical ...
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Drawing on analyses of activist art, music, and writings, as well as interviews and participant-observation in activist communities and at protests, For the Wild explores the ways in which radical environmental and animal rights activists’ commitments develop through powerful experiences with the other-than-human world during childhood and young adulthood. The book addresses the question of how and why activists come to value nonhuman animals and the natural world as worthy of protection. For the Wild is about two kinds of ritual: conversion as a rite of passage or initiation into activism and protests as ritualized actions. In the context of conversion to activism, the book explores the ways in which the emotions of love, wonder, rage and grief that motivate radical activists develop through powerful, embodied relationships with nonhuman beings. These emotions, their ritualized expressions, and spirituality shape activists’ protest practices and help us understand their deep-rooted commitments to the planet and its creatures.Less
Drawing on analyses of activist art, music, and writings, as well as interviews and participant-observation in activist communities and at protests, For the Wild explores the ways in which radical environmental and animal rights activists’ commitments develop through powerful experiences with the other-than-human world during childhood and young adulthood. The book addresses the question of how and why activists come to value nonhuman animals and the natural world as worthy of protection. For the Wild is about two kinds of ritual: conversion as a rite of passage or initiation into activism and protests as ritualized actions. In the context of conversion to activism, the book explores the ways in which the emotions of love, wonder, rage and grief that motivate radical activists develop through powerful, embodied relationships with nonhuman beings. These emotions, their ritualized expressions, and spirituality shape activists’ protest practices and help us understand their deep-rooted commitments to the planet and its creatures.
Frank Broeze
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780973007336
- eISBN:
- 9781786944719
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780973007336.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Maritime History
This book maintains that container shipping is vital to the actualisation of globalisation, and that without it, globalisation would remain a concept rather than reality. It argues that container ...
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This book maintains that container shipping is vital to the actualisation of globalisation, and that without it, globalisation would remain a concept rather than reality. It argues that container shipping has been academically overlooked as a global business sector in favour of more prominent sectors such as oil or arms trade, and aims to provide a complete history of containerisation from the 1950s to the turn of the millennium. This history explores the growth of the container industry due to prominent innovation in vessel design, early adoption of the internet, large international mergers, and significant physical alterations to the global port system. With particular emphasis on the east-west trade, the chapters cover the growth and development of the container industry, to the social changes experienced by seafaring labour forces, the cultural impact of the container - bringing a domineering land-presence to maritime activity, through to the environmental concerns surrounding the industry. The study is not a quantitative economic analysis of the industry, rather, an updated history that strives to demonstrate the importance of transport infrastructures to any consideration of global business sectors, by providing evidence of the container industry’s stimulation of the global economy.Less
This book maintains that container shipping is vital to the actualisation of globalisation, and that without it, globalisation would remain a concept rather than reality. It argues that container shipping has been academically overlooked as a global business sector in favour of more prominent sectors such as oil or arms trade, and aims to provide a complete history of containerisation from the 1950s to the turn of the millennium. This history explores the growth of the container industry due to prominent innovation in vessel design, early adoption of the internet, large international mergers, and significant physical alterations to the global port system. With particular emphasis on the east-west trade, the chapters cover the growth and development of the container industry, to the social changes experienced by seafaring labour forces, the cultural impact of the container - bringing a domineering land-presence to maritime activity, through to the environmental concerns surrounding the industry. The study is not a quantitative economic analysis of the industry, rather, an updated history that strives to demonstrate the importance of transport infrastructures to any consideration of global business sectors, by providing evidence of the container industry’s stimulation of the global economy.
Stacy Alaimo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780816621958
- eISBN:
- 9781452955223
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816621958.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
Exposed argues for a material feminist posthumanism that departs from the predominant modes of humanist transcendence in theory, science, consumerism, and popular culture. Featuring three sections, ...
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Exposed argues for a material feminist posthumanism that departs from the predominant modes of humanist transcendence in theory, science, consumerism, and popular culture. Featuring three sections, the book calls for an environmental stance in which humanity thinks, feels, and acts as the very stuff of the world. As a work within the environmental humanities, it grapples with climate change, biodiversity, sustainability, ocean conservation, environmental activism, and the depiction of the anthropocene. And as a study in new materialism it focuses on how the materiality of human bodies provoke modes of posthumanist pleasure, environmental protest, and a sense of immersion within the strange agencies that constitute the world.Less
Exposed argues for a material feminist posthumanism that departs from the predominant modes of humanist transcendence in theory, science, consumerism, and popular culture. Featuring three sections, the book calls for an environmental stance in which humanity thinks, feels, and acts as the very stuff of the world. As a work within the environmental humanities, it grapples with climate change, biodiversity, sustainability, ocean conservation, environmental activism, and the depiction of the anthropocene. And as a study in new materialism it focuses on how the materiality of human bodies provoke modes of posthumanist pleasure, environmental protest, and a sense of immersion within the strange agencies that constitute the world.
Sarah Robertson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781496824325
- eISBN:
- 9781496824370
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496824325.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This chapter examines the varying strains of environmentalism and/or activism that run throughout the work of southern writers including Janisse Ray, Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Mary Hood, Ann ...
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This chapter examines the varying strains of environmentalism and/or activism that run throughout the work of southern writers including Janisse Ray, Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Mary Hood, Ann Pancake, Silas House, and Denise Giardina. It explores the relationship between environmentalism and poverty as it discusses waste, throw-away culture, recycling and sustainability. It argues for a move from regionalism/nationalism to localism/globalism and questions the false dichotomy between the Global North and Global South. The chapter turns to Appalachia to consider the impact of Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), and it interrogates both the economics that often drive the poor to undertake environmentally destructive jobs and the activism that exists within poor communities.Less
This chapter examines the varying strains of environmentalism and/or activism that run throughout the work of southern writers including Janisse Ray, Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, Mary Hood, Ann Pancake, Silas House, and Denise Giardina. It explores the relationship between environmentalism and poverty as it discusses waste, throw-away culture, recycling and sustainability. It argues for a move from regionalism/nationalism to localism/globalism and questions the false dichotomy between the Global North and Global South. The chapter turns to Appalachia to consider the impact of Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), and it interrogates both the economics that often drive the poor to undertake environmentally destructive jobs and the activism that exists within poor communities.
Sarah Daw
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474430029
- eISBN:
- 9781474453783
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474430029.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This introductory chapter begins by contextualising the study, discussing the representation of Nature in early Cold War American culture and the emergence of modern environmentalism from 1945. The ...
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This introductory chapter begins by contextualising the study, discussing the representation of Nature in early Cold War American culture and the emergence of modern environmentalism from 1945. The chapter also outlines the book’s argument that whilst the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is understandably viewed as a watershed moment in terms of raising environmental consciousness in America, Silent Spring should also be considered as part of a developing trend of ecological portrayals of Nature in American literature written after 1945. This opening chapter also situates the book’s argument within the field of Cold War literary studies and introduces the book’s ecocritical methodology, including its sustained engagement with Timothy Morton’s ideas of ‘the mesh’ and ‘the ecological thought’ as outlined in The Ecological Thought (2010).Less
This introductory chapter begins by contextualising the study, discussing the representation of Nature in early Cold War American culture and the emergence of modern environmentalism from 1945. The chapter also outlines the book’s argument that whilst the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is understandably viewed as a watershed moment in terms of raising environmental consciousness in America, Silent Spring should also be considered as part of a developing trend of ecological portrayals of Nature in American literature written after 1945. This opening chapter also situates the book’s argument within the field of Cold War literary studies and introduces the book’s ecocritical methodology, including its sustained engagement with Timothy Morton’s ideas of ‘the mesh’ and ‘the ecological thought’ as outlined in The Ecological Thought (2010).
Anna Lora-Wainwright
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262036320
- eISBN:
- 9780262341097
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262036320.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Environmental Politics
Chapter 1 situates the book vis-à-vis relevant literature on social movements, environmentalism, environmental health and these areas as they relate to China. In the first part, it suggests that ...
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Chapter 1 situates the book vis-à-vis relevant literature on social movements, environmentalism, environmental health and these areas as they relate to China. In the first part, it suggests that environmentalism may take very diverse forms and it is powerfully shaped by its cultural, social, political and economic contexts. These contexts in turn affect the ways in which locals value environment, health and development and the extent to which they may be uncertain about pollution’s health effects. In light of this, the chapter presents “resigned activism” as a conceptual tool for bridging analyses of activism and resignation, and for showing how they merge across a wide range of villagers’ attitudes and everyday practices. In the second part, it outlines some of China’s environmental challenges and burgeoning environmentalism. It argues in favour of looking beyond the obvious environmental agents (NGOs) and strategies, towards less visible environmental subjectivities.Less
Chapter 1 situates the book vis-à-vis relevant literature on social movements, environmentalism, environmental health and these areas as they relate to China. In the first part, it suggests that environmentalism may take very diverse forms and it is powerfully shaped by its cultural, social, political and economic contexts. These contexts in turn affect the ways in which locals value environment, health and development and the extent to which they may be uncertain about pollution’s health effects. In light of this, the chapter presents “resigned activism” as a conceptual tool for bridging analyses of activism and resignation, and for showing how they merge across a wide range of villagers’ attitudes and everyday practices. In the second part, it outlines some of China’s environmental challenges and burgeoning environmentalism. It argues in favour of looking beyond the obvious environmental agents (NGOs) and strategies, towards less visible environmental subjectivities.
Joseph D. Witt
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780813168128
- eISBN:
- 9780813168753
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813168128.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter examines a third thread of religious resistance to mountaintop removal, a set of perspectives broadly listed under the category of nature-venerating spiritualities. Most basically, these ...
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This chapter examines a third thread of religious resistance to mountaintop removal, a set of perspectives broadly listed under the category of nature-venerating spiritualities. Most basically, these forms of religious responses posit some sort of intrinsic, spiritual value in natural ecosystems. They often share similarities with biocentric arguments, particularly those associated with Deep Ecology and radical environmental movements. Nature-venerating spiritualities take many forms in the Appalachian movement, including the many types of dark green religion as described by Bron Taylor. Nature-venerating spiritualities are also expressed through a vernacular nature religion, or a localized expression of care for place based out of experience and work in Appalachia. The chapter describes several points where nature-venerating spiritualities entered the anti-mountaintop removal movement.Less
This chapter examines a third thread of religious resistance to mountaintop removal, a set of perspectives broadly listed under the category of nature-venerating spiritualities. Most basically, these forms of religious responses posit some sort of intrinsic, spiritual value in natural ecosystems. They often share similarities with biocentric arguments, particularly those associated with Deep Ecology and radical environmental movements. Nature-venerating spiritualities take many forms in the Appalachian movement, including the many types of dark green religion as described by Bron Taylor. Nature-venerating spiritualities are also expressed through a vernacular nature religion, or a localized expression of care for place based out of experience and work in Appalachia. The chapter describes several points where nature-venerating spiritualities entered the anti-mountaintop removal movement.
Richard A. Posner
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- November 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780195178135
- eISBN:
- 9780197562444
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780195178135.003.0007
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cultural and Historical Geography
I have said that the risk of catastrophe is growing because science and technology are advancing at breakneck speed. Oddly, this is a source of modest comfort. We do ...
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I have said that the risk of catastrophe is growing because science and technology are advancing at breakneck speed. Oddly, this is a source of modest comfort. We do not know what the cumulative risk of disaster is today, but we know that it will be greater several decades from now, so there is time to prepare measures against the truly terrifying dangers that loom ahead. But we must begin. And the formulation and implementation of the necessary measures cannot be left to scientists, as we know. The role of law and the social sciences is crucial. The law, however, is making little contribution to the control of catastrophic risks. Likewise the social sciences, with the partial exception of economics, which has produced a significant scholarly literature on global warming. The legal profession may even be increasing the probability of catastrophe by exaggerating the cost to civil liberties of vigorous responses to threats of terrorism. Improvement in the response to catastrophic risks may require both institutional reforms and changes in specific policies, procedures, and doctrines. The legal system cannot deal effectively with scientifically and technologically difficult questions unless lawyers and judges—not all, but more than at present—are comfortable with such questions. Comfortable not in the sense of knowing the answers to difficult scientific questions or being able to engage in scientific reasoning, but in the sense in which most antitrust lawyers today, few of whom are also economists, are comfortable in dealing with the economic issues that arise in antitrust cases. They know some economics, they work with economists, they understand that economics drives many outcomes of antitrust litigation, and as a result they can administer—not perfectly but satisfactorily— an economically sophisticated system of antitrust law. Economics, however, although at least quasi-scientific in method and outlook, and increasingly mathematized, is easier for lawyers and judges to get comfortable with than the natural sciences are. Because it plays an important role in many fields of law, economics is taught in law schools, whether in special courses on economic analysis of law or more commonly as a component of substantive law courses, such as torts, antitrust, securities regulation, environmental law, and bankruptcy.
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I have said that the risk of catastrophe is growing because science and technology are advancing at breakneck speed. Oddly, this is a source of modest comfort. We do not know what the cumulative risk of disaster is today, but we know that it will be greater several decades from now, so there is time to prepare measures against the truly terrifying dangers that loom ahead. But we must begin. And the formulation and implementation of the necessary measures cannot be left to scientists, as we know. The role of law and the social sciences is crucial. The law, however, is making little contribution to the control of catastrophic risks. Likewise the social sciences, with the partial exception of economics, which has produced a significant scholarly literature on global warming. The legal profession may even be increasing the probability of catastrophe by exaggerating the cost to civil liberties of vigorous responses to threats of terrorism. Improvement in the response to catastrophic risks may require both institutional reforms and changes in specific policies, procedures, and doctrines. The legal system cannot deal effectively with scientifically and technologically difficult questions unless lawyers and judges—not all, but more than at present—are comfortable with such questions. Comfortable not in the sense of knowing the answers to difficult scientific questions or being able to engage in scientific reasoning, but in the sense in which most antitrust lawyers today, few of whom are also economists, are comfortable in dealing with the economic issues that arise in antitrust cases. They know some economics, they work with economists, they understand that economics drives many outcomes of antitrust litigation, and as a result they can administer—not perfectly but satisfactorily— an economically sophisticated system of antitrust law. Economics, however, although at least quasi-scientific in method and outlook, and increasingly mathematized, is easier for lawyers and judges to get comfortable with than the natural sciences are. Because it plays an important role in many fields of law, economics is taught in law schools, whether in special courses on economic analysis of law or more commonly as a component of substantive law courses, such as torts, antitrust, securities regulation, environmental law, and bankruptcy.
Carl Death
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300215830
- eISBN:
- 9780300224894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300215830.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African History
This chapter concludes the argument of the book and shows how environmental politics in Africa is central to the production of state effects, and vice versa. The theoretical framework, inspired by ...
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This chapter concludes the argument of the book and shows how environmental politics in Africa is central to the production of state effects, and vice versa. The theoretical framework, inspired by postcolonial approaches, produces a powerful way to categorise and assess African environmental politics in terms of the governance and contestation of land, populations, economies and international relations. Moreover, this chapter argues that green states in Africa are distinctive, compared to those elsewhere, in terms of the centrality of land and conservation, the importance of ‘the peasant question’, the importance of green modernisation and industrialisation strategies, and the assertion of continental solidarity. Based on the analysis of the political implications of these green state effects, the conclusion suggests that political resources should be marshalled in support of hybrid forms of territorialisation, environmental dissidents, radical strategies of green transformation, and relations of critical transnational solidarity. Taking green states in Africa seriously will challenge existing debates in global environmental governance, and encourage them to become more genuinely global than they have been hitherto.Less
This chapter concludes the argument of the book and shows how environmental politics in Africa is central to the production of state effects, and vice versa. The theoretical framework, inspired by postcolonial approaches, produces a powerful way to categorise and assess African environmental politics in terms of the governance and contestation of land, populations, economies and international relations. Moreover, this chapter argues that green states in Africa are distinctive, compared to those elsewhere, in terms of the centrality of land and conservation, the importance of ‘the peasant question’, the importance of green modernisation and industrialisation strategies, and the assertion of continental solidarity. Based on the analysis of the political implications of these green state effects, the conclusion suggests that political resources should be marshalled in support of hybrid forms of territorialisation, environmental dissidents, radical strategies of green transformation, and relations of critical transnational solidarity. Taking green states in Africa seriously will challenge existing debates in global environmental governance, and encourage them to become more genuinely global than they have been hitherto.
Naomi Oreskes
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780262027953
- eISBN:
- 9780262326100
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262027953.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
In the early 1990s a group of American oceanographers sought to change their focus away from Cold War military concerns and toward environmental matters related to anthropogenic climate change. ...
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In the early 1990s a group of American oceanographers sought to change their focus away from Cold War military concerns and toward environmental matters related to anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on insights and technologies developed in the Cold War, they proposed an experiment called ATOC—Acoustic Tomography of Ocean Climate—designed to provide definitive evidence of global warming. But the project was blocked when environmentalists and marine biologists raised concerns that it would harm marine mammals. In the ensuing public debate, the public judged the scientists more on their past activities than their present aspirations: many citizens distrusted the scientists’ new-found environmental passion and believed that global warming was a cover story hiding a secret military project. In the end, they judged scientists who had dedicated their lives to studying the ocean as a theatre of warfare not credible when they presented themselves as trustworthy guardians of the ocean as an abode of life. The failure of ATOC suggests that while Cold war military support led to numerous fundamental advances in understanding the ocean environment, it also created a community of scientists who were disrespectful not only of lay concerns but even of scientific evidence from other domains, unable to explain their work to diverse publics, and distrusted by significant segments of the American people. Forty years of military patronage were not just epistemically consequential, they were socially and culturally consequential as well.Less
In the early 1990s a group of American oceanographers sought to change their focus away from Cold War military concerns and toward environmental matters related to anthropogenic climate change. Drawing on insights and technologies developed in the Cold War, they proposed an experiment called ATOC—Acoustic Tomography of Ocean Climate—designed to provide definitive evidence of global warming. But the project was blocked when environmentalists and marine biologists raised concerns that it would harm marine mammals. In the ensuing public debate, the public judged the scientists more on their past activities than their present aspirations: many citizens distrusted the scientists’ new-found environmental passion and believed that global warming was a cover story hiding a secret military project. In the end, they judged scientists who had dedicated their lives to studying the ocean as a theatre of warfare not credible when they presented themselves as trustworthy guardians of the ocean as an abode of life. The failure of ATOC suggests that while Cold war military support led to numerous fundamental advances in understanding the ocean environment, it also created a community of scientists who were disrespectful not only of lay concerns but even of scientific evidence from other domains, unable to explain their work to diverse publics, and distrusted by significant segments of the American people. Forty years of military patronage were not just epistemically consequential, they were socially and culturally consequential as well.
Dale B. Martin
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780300222838
- eISBN:
- 9780300227918
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300222838.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical ...
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When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical criticism. Read historically, the Bible does not teach a doctrine of the trinity, and the Greek word for “spirit,” pneuma, refers to many different things in the New Testament. Moreover, the pneuma was considered in the ancient world to be a material substance, though a rarified and thin form of matter. Yet those ancient notions of pneuma may help us reimagine the Christian holy spirit in new, though not at all unorthodox, ways. The spirit may then become the most corporeal person of the trinity; the most present person of the trinity; or alternatively, the most absent. The various ways the New Testament speaks of pneuma—that of the human person, or the church, of God, of Christ, and even of “this cosmos”—may provoke Christian imagination in new ways once the constraints of modernist methods of interpretation are transcended. Even the gender of the spirit becomes a provocative but fruitful meditation for postmodern Christians.Less
When the subject is the Christian view of the holy spirit, it is even more difficult to find an orthodox doctrine of the spirit if the Bible is read only through the method of modern historical criticism. Read historically, the Bible does not teach a doctrine of the trinity, and the Greek word for “spirit,” pneuma, refers to many different things in the New Testament. Moreover, the pneuma was considered in the ancient world to be a material substance, though a rarified and thin form of matter. Yet those ancient notions of pneuma may help us reimagine the Christian holy spirit in new, though not at all unorthodox, ways. The spirit may then become the most corporeal person of the trinity; the most present person of the trinity; or alternatively, the most absent. The various ways the New Testament speaks of pneuma—that of the human person, or the church, of God, of Christ, and even of “this cosmos”—may provoke Christian imagination in new ways once the constraints of modernist methods of interpretation are transcended. Even the gender of the spirit becomes a provocative but fruitful meditation for postmodern Christians.
Christine M. DeLucia
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780300201178
- eISBN:
- 9780300231120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300201178.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This chapter examines evolving Narragansett and Euro-American practices around place and memory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on Native adaptations in the wake of the illegal ...
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This chapter examines evolving Narragansett and Euro-American practices around place and memory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on Native adaptations in the wake of the illegal “detribalization” process. It considers Native responses to colonial monuments such as the one erected at Great Swamp in 1906; a growing set of “pan-Indian” practices and tribal efforts to convey Indigenous identities to Yankee neighbors; and the role of the tribal magazine The Narragansett Dawn in fostering inter- and multi-tribal ties across the region. The chapter then considers late twentieth-century debates over federal recognition, sovereignty, and environmentalism, particularly around issues of potential casino gaming and land-into-trust cases, one of which rose all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and carried repercussions across Indian Country. The effects of a violent raid on a tribal-run smoke shop in the early 2000s are also examined. Additionally, the chapter takes up a recent “battlefields” project in the Nipsachuck area where archaeologists, landowners, and tribal community members are reassessing the character and legacies of a pivotal site from 1675-1676, and creating new opportunities for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and collective understandings.Less
This chapter examines evolving Narragansett and Euro-American practices around place and memory in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on Native adaptations in the wake of the illegal “detribalization” process. It considers Native responses to colonial monuments such as the one erected at Great Swamp in 1906; a growing set of “pan-Indian” practices and tribal efforts to convey Indigenous identities to Yankee neighbors; and the role of the tribal magazine The Narragansett Dawn in fostering inter- and multi-tribal ties across the region. The chapter then considers late twentieth-century debates over federal recognition, sovereignty, and environmentalism, particularly around issues of potential casino gaming and land-into-trust cases, one of which rose all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and carried repercussions across Indian Country. The effects of a violent raid on a tribal-run smoke shop in the early 2000s are also examined. Additionally, the chapter takes up a recent “battlefields” project in the Nipsachuck area where archaeologists, landowners, and tribal community members are reassessing the character and legacies of a pivotal site from 1675-1676, and creating new opportunities for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and collective understandings.
Jennifer Thomson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469651996
- eISBN:
- 9781469651668
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469651996.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter discusses the long first decade of environmental organization Friends of the Earth (1969-1984). Founded by David Brower, FOE's central contribution to environmentalism was to move from ...
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This chapter discusses the long first decade of environmental organization Friends of the Earth (1969-1984). Founded by David Brower, FOE's central contribution to environmentalism was to move from the Sierra Club's understanding of wilderness as a retreat within which certain individuals' health could be regenerated, to thinking of human health as a litmus test for the health of the environment. Although the more systemic and anti-authoritarian of these approaches faded by the early 1980s, others pertaining to consumption and individual health persisted within mainstream environmentalism. The result was a politics in which the primary subject position was held by an undifferentiated, globalized, non-place-specific consumer in need of governmental protection yet also responsible for ensuring her own health through proper consumer choices. FOE's development during its long first decade illustrates the growing importance of individualized, consumer-based conceptions of health to the consolidation, in the early 1980s, of the environmental lobby in Washington, D.C.Less
This chapter discusses the long first decade of environmental organization Friends of the Earth (1969-1984). Founded by David Brower, FOE's central contribution to environmentalism was to move from the Sierra Club's understanding of wilderness as a retreat within which certain individuals' health could be regenerated, to thinking of human health as a litmus test for the health of the environment. Although the more systemic and anti-authoritarian of these approaches faded by the early 1980s, others pertaining to consumption and individual health persisted within mainstream environmentalism. The result was a politics in which the primary subject position was held by an undifferentiated, globalized, non-place-specific consumer in need of governmental protection yet also responsible for ensuring her own health through proper consumer choices. FOE's development during its long first decade illustrates the growing importance of individualized, consumer-based conceptions of health to the consolidation, in the early 1980s, of the environmental lobby in Washington, D.C.
Jennifer Thomson
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469651996
- eISBN:
- 9781469651668
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469651996.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Environmental History
This chapter discusses the biocentric perspective on health, focusing particularly on bioregional activists and radical environmentalist organization Earth First! Following the 1972 UNCHE in ...
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This chapter discusses the biocentric perspective on health, focusing particularly on bioregional activists and radical environmentalist organization Earth First! Following the 1972 UNCHE in Stockholm, biocentric activists endeavoured to protect the health of the wild in a way that did not begin and end with human welfare. They developed interventions as varied as ecological restoration, land medicine, and re-inhabitation. Their vision of the health of the wild held an aspiration for human-ecological integration in tension with pronounced anti-humanist tendencies.Less
This chapter discusses the biocentric perspective on health, focusing particularly on bioregional activists and radical environmentalist organization Earth First! Following the 1972 UNCHE in Stockholm, biocentric activists endeavoured to protect the health of the wild in a way that did not begin and end with human welfare. They developed interventions as varied as ecological restoration, land medicine, and re-inhabitation. Their vision of the health of the wild held an aspiration for human-ecological integration in tension with pronounced anti-humanist tendencies.
