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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Human geography > General
In one of the few studies to draw upon cemetery data to reconstruct the social organization, social change, and community composition of a specific area, this volume contributes to the growing body of sociohistorical examinations of Appalachia. The authors herein reconstruct the Cades Cove community in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, USA, a mountain community from circa 1818 to 1939, whose demise can be traced to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By supplementing a statistical analysis of Cades Cove's twenty-seven cemeteries, completed as a National Park Study (#GRSM-01120), with ethnographic examination, the authors reconstruct the community in detail to reveal previously overlooked social patterns and interactions, including insight into the death culture and death-lore of the Upland South. This work establishes cemeteries as window into (proxies of) communities, demonstrating the relevance of socio-demographic data presented by statistical and other analyses of gravestones for Appalachian Studies, Regional Studies, Cemetery Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.
This book brings readers the first scientific publication, using a mixed-method approach, on the internal migration dynamics regarding disease ecologies of informality and the interactions between social capital, lifestyles, health literacy, and health outcomes in the context of informal settlements in two developing countries - Ghana and Uganda. Through the prism of the concepts of place and scale, the book demonstrates the myriad of ways by which place or context directly and indirectly influence migrant's health knowledge, literacy, and outcomes in poor urban slums. Readers will learn about the multi-faceted linkages between social capital, acculturation, and health in places of deprivation via quantitative methods (e.g. surveys) and qualitative methods such as focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, concept mapping, and body health mapping. Chapters 1-2 provide an overview of internal migration into urban slums of Ghana and Uganda, and discuss the intersections between migration, social capital, and health in a global context. Chapters 3-7 address disease patterns, environmental risks to health, health literacy of migrants, social capital and acculturation, and social capital and health. The book will be of interest to professors and students, as well as policy makers in low to middle income countries for planning targeted interventions.
This volume contains the extended versions of selected papers presented at the first Mediterranean Conference "Sharing Knowledge on Sustainable Building" held at the Polytechnic ofBari in December 1999, supported by the National Research Council of Italy. The publication of this book was made possible through the efforts of the contributing Authors. Other people have provided invaluable support for the conference and for the preparation of this volume; in particular, I wish to thank Antonella Lerario for providing support in the final editing of the text and images. 1 As reported in Boonstra and Rovers (200 I) , people spend a great deal of time inside buildings; therefore, decisions about design, construction, use, maintenance, renovation, demolition, reuse and recycling of buildings have a huge impact on the sustainable development of our society. Technical aspects, however, should be supported by adequate policies, developed with appropriate tools and driven by meaningful challenges. For people involved in sustainable buildings, the conceptual frameworks, studies and experiences collected in this volume, organized into three parts - "Policies", "Tools" and "Challenges" - will help to advance knowledge allowing them to adopt and more efficiently implement such innovations sooner.
Ethno-aesthetics of Surf in Florida discusses surf and music as glocal sociocultural constructs. Focusing on Florida's unexplored surfing culture, the book illustrates how musical experience begets representations about the world that highlight ways of acting and being of various sociocultural communities. Based on the conceptualization of ethno-aesthetics, this ethnographic study provides an analysis of the Space Coast surfers community's collaborative effort to build social cohesion through their musicking. This transdisciplinary research in American Studies draws upon various theoretical perspectives from both the humanities and social sciences, including ethnomusicology, social psychology, and sociolinguistics, to propose new ways of exploring the links between surfing and musicking. This monograph looks past the myth of iconic 1960s Californian surf music to show how, as a result of the glocalization of surfing, the musicking of Floridian surfers has allowed them to express their subjectivities and to make sense of their world. This book contributes to the debate on the disputed notions of identity and representations by establishing connections between a local expression of the surf lifestyle and its music. It proposes theoretical models that explain cultural hybridization, appropriation, and belonging in surfing. It also develops concepts and notions, such as surfanization, surf strand, lifestyle crossover, and identity marking, to illustrate how global practices, such as surfing, are endowed with various modes of expression exemplified by the emergence of unique regional subcultures of surfing.
This open access book reframes sustainable energy transitions as being a matter of resolving accountability crises. It demonstrates how the empirical study of several practices of legitimation can analytically deconstruct energy transitions, and presents a typology of these practices to help determine whether energy transitions contribute to sustainability. The real-world challenge of climate change requires sustainable energy transitions. This presents a crisis of accountability legitimated through situated practices in a wide range of cases including: solar energy transitions in Portugal, urban energy transitions in Germany, forestland conflicts in Indonesia, urban carbon emission targets in Norway, transport electrification in the Nordic region, and biodiversity conservation and energy extraction in the USA. By synthesising these cases, chapters identify various dimensions wherein practices of legitimation construct specific accountability relations. This book deftly illustrates the value of an analytical approach focused on accountable governance to enable sustainable energy transitions. It will be of great use to both academics and practitioners working in the field of energy transitions.
This book presents the latest research results related to urban center and urban center. It expounds the theoretical connotation, development models, hierarchical function, and spatial layout of the urban central structure through over 200 figures and tables. In addition, it analyzes the threshold characteristics, structural hierarchy, spatial characteristics, and development rules of urban central structure through field research and quantitative researches on the major urban central structures in Asia. Meanwhile, how to solve the issue of construction and layout of urban central structure in planning and design practice is also covered. The book reveals the laws and spatial characteristics of urban central structure and provides a valuable guide both for urban designers and planners as well as researchers and students working in urban design and planning fields. It sheds new light on better understanding of the urban central structure.
Disasters undermine societal well-being, causing loss of lives and damage to social and economic infrastructures. Disaster resilience is central to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially in regions where extreme inequality combines with the increasing frequency and intensity of natural disasters. Disaster risk reduction and resilience requires participation of wide array of stakeholders ranging from academicians to policy makers to disaster managers. Disaster Resilient Cities: Adaptation for Sustainable Development offers evidence-based, problem-solving techniques from social, natural, engineering and other disciplinary perspectives. It connects data, research, conceptual work with practical cases on disaster risk management, capturing the multi-sectoral aspects of disaster resilience, adaptation strategy and sustainability. The book links disaster risk management with sustainable development under a common umbrella, showing that effective disaster resilience strategies and practices lead to achieving broader sustainable development goals.
Recent work in the mobilities literature has highlighted the importance of thinking about mobility and immobility as a continuum, where movement intersects with processes that might entail episodes of transition, waiting, emptiness, and fixity. This focus on stillness, things that are stuck, incomplete or in a state of transition can point to new theoretical, methodological and practical dimensions in social studies of medicine. This edited volume brings the concept of immobility to the forefront of social studies of medicine to explore how immobility shapes processes of medical care and the theoretical and methodological challenges of studying immobility in medical contexts. The authors in this volume draw from a wide range of case studies across the globe to make contributions to our current understanding of health, illness and medicine, mobilities and immobilities. Chapter 2 "Lists in Flux, Lives on Hold? Technologies of Waiting in Liver Transplant Medicine" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.
Water is one of the most pressing concerns of our time. This book argues for the importance of water as a cultural object, and as a source of complex meanings and practices in everyday life, embedded in the socio-economics of local water provision. Each chapter aims to capture one element of water's fluid existence in the world, as material object, cultural representation, as movement, as actor, as practice and as ritual. The book explores the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans, of nature and culture, and the complex entanglements of water in all its many forms; how water constitutes multiple differences and is implicated in relations of power, often invisible, but present nevertheless in the workings of daily life in all its rhythms and forms; and water's capacity to assemble a multiplicity of publics and constitute new socialities and connections. Cities, and their inhabitants, without water will die, and so will their cultures.
This book describes the challenges for the natural environments and local communities in the future. Among the high mountains of Africa, only Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and the Rwenzori Mountains are still capped with glaciers. The retreating rate of these glaciers has accelerated, and they are expected to disappear in the near future. In the area around Mount Kenya, the precipitation is generally low, such that rainfall cannot stably supply water for farmlands and daily life. It has been revealed that the glacial meltwater has produced springs at the foot of the mountain. It is therefore important to characterize the condition of water sources near Mount Kenya for use by local people. This book discusses the relationships between the actual state of the climate and glacier shrinkage around Mount Kenya, the surrounding vegetation, soil, and water environments, and the lives of the foothill region inhabitants confronting the glacier shrinkage. This book is valuable in the contemporary age, when the assurance of a sustainable relationship between nature and mankind is critical.
The 20th century's most protracted conflict, the Cold War, also provided the longest and most stable peace in the history of the modern world--a fragile peace that came at the price of national freedom for many. With the demise of the Cold War, new nearly unknown countries, long ignored or suppressed, came to the world's attention, as ethnic and national conflicts, rooted in the newly independent states' own multiethnic populations, emerged. From Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia to Eritrea and Uzbekistan, this book provides an essential guide to the states recognized since 1989 and the nations that dwell in their borders. It is the first reference work to address the post-Cold War nationalist resurgence by focusing on the nations within the new nation-states--both the core nationalities and the national minorities. Each article highlights the historical, political, social, and economic evolution of the new nations. The book provides detailed up-to-date information on nations that are emerging to claim a role in the post-Cold War world.
In this fully illustrated book, the Rev. H. G. Nicholls, M.A., studies the historical evidence of the Iron Ore Mining in the Forest of Dean from the earliest times. The book contains these words in the introduction: In the year 1780, wrote Mr. Wyrrall, in his valuable MS. on the ancient iron works of the Forest: - "There are, deep in the earth, vast caverns scooped out by men's hands, and large as the aisles of churches; and on its surface are extensive labyrinths worked among the rocks, and now long since overgrown with woods, which whosoever traces them must see with astonishment, and incline to think them to have been the work of armies rather than of private labourers. They certainly were the toil of many centuries, and this perhaps before they thought of searching in the bowels of the earth for their ore-whither, however, they at length naturally pursued the veins, as they found them to be exhausted near the surface."
Recent global appropriations of public spaces through urban activism, public uprising, and political protest have brought back democratic values, beliefs, and practices that have been historically associated with cities. Given the aggressive commodification of public re- sources, public space is critically important due to its capacity to enable forms of public dis- course and social practice which are fundamental for the well-being of democratic societies. Public Space Reader brings together public space scholarship by a cross-disciplinary group of academics and specialists whose essays consider fundamental questions: What is public space and how does it manifest larger cultural, social, and political processes? How are public spaces designed, socially and materially produced, and managed? How does this impact the nature and character of public experience? What roles does it play in the struggles for the just city, and the Right to The City? What critical participatory approaches can be employed to create inclusive public spaces that respond to the diverse needs, desires, and aspirations of individuals and communities alike? What are the critical global and comparative perspectives on public space that can enable further scholarly and professional work? And, what are the futures of public space in the face of global pandemics, such as COVID-19? The readers of this volume will be rewarded with an impressive array of perspectives that are bound to expand critical understanding of public space.
The book examines the emergence of hegemonic development ideas and practices in the context of shifts in world orders post-1945 and debates concerning the transforming of the prevailing world order characterized by neoliberalism and securitization of development and security. It also examines the rise of China and the start of Obama's presidency.
Dutch planning is widely known and admired for its ambitions and its achievements. This book provides, for the first time, a comprehensive description and analysis in English of its full range of policies and practices. It gives an up-to-date account of the principles - written and unwritten - behind the planning, and in addition shows how the practice sometimes ignores those principles in order to achieve better results. It describes the content of the policies, the measures taken to realise them, and the successes and failures. The book is not uncritical of Dutch land-use planning, but the author values its strengths and believes that planning in other countries could learn from them. These strengths arise in the continuing tension between the high ambitions of the Dutch planning, and the ingenuity and pragmatism exercised in order to realise those ambitions.
This book explores the real-world consequences changing ideas and strategies have on effective climate governance. Its main focus is on why accountability matters - both for transformations and transitions in international climate change governance and how international support for environmentally responsible actions, and extending shared accountabilities, might strengthen climate governance globally. A main point of discussion is if and how better understanding of accountabilities and transformations in ecosystems dynamics, the capacities of organisms to adapt, migrate or otherwise respond to environmental or climatic changes, can improve climate governance mechanisms. Bringing together a diverse set of considerations from various fields of study, chapters examine responses to environmental transformations that occur during periods of climatic crisis, such as species depletion, industrialisation, de-industrialisation or urbanisation. Throughout, this book aims to further readers understanding of if or how accountable climate governance can reduce the risks of global political disorder and widespread conflict in the 21st century, arising from environmental transformations of depleted forests, re-routed waterways, coastlines impacted by sea level rises, changed rainfall patterns and industrial practices.
This book addresses the mystery and diversity of urbanization in China, especially with regard to urban villages. The "village in the city" is a unique social phenomenon in the process of Chinese urbanization. A local village society composed of deep-rooted social networks linked by blood, geography, folk beliefs, and folk customs is the outcome of a complex social process, which is accompanied by changes in property rights, restructuring of social networks, and conflicting benefits and values. The end of the village is the epitome of social transformation, and for China as a whole, this change may take a very long time to complete. This book includes various examples of and stories on urban villages, offering readers a wealth of insights into the phenomenon and its significance.
Originally published in 1981, The Origins of Open Field Agriculture looks at the problems connected with open field agriculture - the origins of strip cultivation, the three-field system, the adaptation of 'Celtic' fields, and the development of ploughing techniques. The book looks at the challenges to traditional ideas on the origins of settlement and their associated economy, and casts new light on understandings of village development. The book suggests that conventional views of the nucleated village, in the midst of open field strips as a product of the Anglo-Saxon migration, is no longer tenable. The book brings together the work of distinguished archaeologists, historians, and historical geographers and opens up a new perspective on the early development of medieval agriculture.
This book examines place and place-making in London's Borough Market. In particular, it uses topo/graphy ('place-writing) to interrogate the ways in which Borough Market's material, social-sensual and discursive relations assemble to reproduce Borough Market as a place, market and marketplace. Its central premise is that market-processes - the negotiation and exchange of commodities -are place-processes. This means that the often-abstract relationships that ultimately define what we think of as the economy are embedded in the rich and every materiality, sociality, sensuality and meanings associated with place. By tracing out these different elements, topo/graphy illustrates the ways in which economic reproduction is grounded in particular and often discrete practices. However, by assembling them together, this highlights the ways in which place and place-making are the driving force behind the economy at large.
This book is the second volume in a new series on 'Great Minds in Regional Science,' which seeks to present a contemporary view on the scientific relevance of the work done by great thinkers in regional science. This volume presents, among others, Adam Smith, Johann Heinrich von Thunen, and Alan Wilson. Each chapter combines factual biographical information about the 'Great Mind,' a description of their major contributions, and a discussion of the broader context of their work, as well as an assessment of its current relevance, scientific recognition, and policy impact. The book attempts to fill a gap in our knowledge and to respond to the growing interest in the formation and development of the field of regional science and its key influential figures.
This book explores the issues of transformation phenomena of the urban dimension (regionalization processes) that traditional scientific literature fails to describe appropriately. So far, scholars have adopted a widespread dominant perspective that proved unable to grasp the essence of post-modern complexities that urban spaces imply. The book provides a taxonomy, in order to describe the rules of these new and peculiar cities, by using the living dimension as a device for the epistemological breaking down of traditional socio-spatial analyses. After a thorough theoretical introduction, it describes two Sicilian case studies that prove particularly relevant to the construction of a new, alternative urban regionalization theory. These two areas, Palermo and South-Eastern Sicily, are described through several aspects, such as the role of migrants and migrations in defining urban regionalization, the power of fiction and the new urban forms that are slowly emerging in Sicily. Overall, this book provides a refreshing view of what Sicily has been and is becoming, by deconstructing most of its cliches and suggesting theoretical perspectives grounded in both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
This book describes a participatory case study of a small family farm in Maharashtra, India. It is a dialectical study of cultivating cultivation: how paddy cultivation is learnt and taught, and why it is the way it is. The paddy cultivation that the family is doing at first appears to be 'traditional'. But by observation and working along with the family, the authors have found that they are engaging in a dynamic process in which they are questioning, investigating, and learning by doing. The authors compare this to the process of doing science, and to the sort of learning that occurs in formal education. The book presents evidence that paddy cultivation has always been varying and evolving through chance and necessity, experimentation, and economic contingencies. Through the example of one farm, the book provides a critique of current attempts to sustain agriculture, and an understanding of the ongoing agricultural crisis.
This book explores urban futures in the making, as seen through the lens of urban infrastructure. The book describes how socio-technical arrangements of energy and water provision are being recast in continuing efforts towards realising 'sustainable' transformation of cities. It critically investigates how infrastructure comes to matter by analyzing the shifting capacities and entanglements of diverse actors with these systems, the various means they use to envision, enact and contest changes, and the wide-ranging social and political implications of emerging infrastructure transitions. Drawing on original research into urban infrastructure debates and projects in Stockholm and Paris, the author develops a novel conceptual framework for studying and acknowledging the active, vital role of infrastructure in constituting a material politics of urban transformation. Straddling the latest theoretical insights and empirical investigation of urban planning practice and socio-technical engineering of systems and flows, Redeploying Urban Infrastructure forges new, timely reflections and perspectives which will be of interest to the growing multidisciplinary community of scholars investigating infrastructure and to academics and practitioners with a concern for understanding the wider politics of urban futures.
The book examines management strategies for developing and implementing strategic resilience and sustainability plans for sustainable and climate-resilient communities and organizations. It examines trends in resilience and sustainability planning, highlighting best practices and case studies. The book explores Quadruple Bottom Line strategies and methods to implement resilience and sustainability-related initiatives in organizations and communities. It also examines diverse perspectives on climate resilience, climate preparedness and readiness, greenhouse gas emission reductions policies, climate adaptation and mitigation, disaster preparedness and readiness, and sustainable energy policies and projects. Additionally, the book offers insights on strategic resilience and sustainability planning during a pandemic as well as private sector perspectives on strategic resilience and sustainability. In chapter one, the author presents expanded definitions of strategic resilience and sustainability as well as mechanisms reshaping communities and organizations. Chapter two examines strategic planning processes for communities and organizations and lays out planning steps. Chapter three offers insights into community and organizational level engagement, looking at internal and external stakeholders, organizers, partners, collaborators, and implementers of distinct stages of strategic resilience and sustainability planning. Chapter four outlines measurements and tactics to track and improve strategic resilience and sustainability reporting mechanisms using the quadruple bottom line strategy. It offers a resilience progress report to ensure accountability, answerability, transparency, and good governance. Chapter five details the implementation of a strategic resilience and sustainability plan, describing programs and initiatives to achieve resilient and sustainable communities and organizations. Chapter six extensively examines the theoretical and practical intersection between climate change, resilience, and sustainability. Chapter seven reviews resources available for strategic resilience and sustainability plans to aid communities and organizations. Chapter eight assesses the current and future state of resilience and sustainability in communities and organizations, including concerns surrounding climate change, pandemics, disaster resilience, and emergency management and preparedness.
This book analyzes the ongoing transformation in the "smart city" paradigm and explores the possibilities that technological innovations offer for the effective involvement of ordinary citizens in collective knowledge production and decision-making processes within the context of urban planning and management. To so, it pursues an interdisciplinary approach, with contributions from a range of experts including city managers, public policy makers, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) specialists, and researchers. The first two parts of the book focus on the generation and use of data by citizens, with or without institutional support, and the professional management of data in city governance, highlighting the social connectivity and livability aspects essential to vibrant and healthy urban environments. In turn, the third part presents inspiring case studies that illustrate how data-driven solutions can empower people and improve urban environments, including enhanced sustainability. The book will appeal to all those who are interested in the required transformation in the planning, management, and operations of data-rich cities and the ways in which such cities can employ the latest technologies to use data efficiently, promoting data access, data sharing, and interoperability. |
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