Throughout history, the weather has been both feared and revered for its powerful influence over living creatures. Not only does it control our moods, activities, and fashions, but it has also played a crucial role in broader issues of cultural identity, concepts of time, and economic development. In fact, the weather has become so ingrained in our everyday routines that many of us forget just how profoundly this omnipotent force shapes culture. With the continuing rise in global warming and consequential change in weather patterns, our awareness and understanding of this topic has never been so important. This fascinating book is the first to explore our close relationship with the weather. From folklore to visual representations, agricultural and health practices, and unusual weather events, "Weather, Climate, Culture" demonstrates that the way we discuss and interpret meteorological phenomena concerns not only the events in question but, more complexly, the cultural, political, and historical framework in which we discuss them. Why is it politically safe to discuss current weather conditions, but highly controversial to discuss long-term climate change? Why are the British renowned for talking about the weather and why, in the eighteenth century, was this regarded as genteel? How can accounts of cultural or moral change be associated with narratives of changing climate and vice-versa?Drawing on a wide range of case studies from around the world, this pioneering book provides an original and lively perspective on a subject that continues to have an incalculable impact on the way we live. It will serve as a landmark text for years to come.

This is a book about the biological conquest of the New World. Taking as a case study the sixteenth century history of a region of highland central Mexico, it shows how the environmental and social changes brought about by the introduction of Old World species aided European expansion. The book spells out in detail the environmental changes associated with the introduction of Old World grazing animals into New World ecosystems, demonstrates how these changes enabled the Spanish takeover of land, and explains how environmental changes shaped the colonial societies.

Monitoring the environment is absolutely essential if we are to identify hazards to human health, to assess environmental cleanup efforts, and to prevent further degradation of the ecosystem. Biomonitors and biomarkers combined with chemical monitoring offer the only approach to making these assessments. Based on an International Association of Great Lakes Research conference, this book is intended for researchers who want to incorporate new and different technologies in their development of specifically-crafted monitors; students who are learning the field of biomonitoring; and regulatory agencies that want to consider newer technologies to replace inadequate and less powerful test regimes.

Seasonality has effects on a wide range of human functions and activities, and is important in the understanding of human environment relationships. In this volume, distinguished contributors, including human biologists, anthropologists, physiologists and nutritionists consider many of the different ways in which seasonality influences human biology and behaviour. Topics addressed include the influence of seasonality on hominid evolution, seasonal climatic effects on human physiology, fertility and physical growth, seasonality in morbidity, mortality and nutritional state, and seasonal factors in food production, modernisation and work organisation in Third World economics. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in human biology, anthropology and nutrition.

The human species faces a new threat to its health--perhaps to its survival. Our burgeoning numbers, the spread of technology, and our conspicuous consumption are overloading Earth's capacity to replenish and repair itself. Taking a unique perspective, Planetary Overload forcefully points out the consequences to human health of ongoing degradation of Earth's ecosystems. In a broad-based, accessible analysis, A.J. McMichael examines current ecological disruptions--land degradation, ozone depletion, temperature increases, and loss of genetic diversity through the extinction of species, among others--and compellingly demonstrates their potentially disastrous results, including food shortages, new and intensified disease patterns, rising seas, mass refugee problems, and cancers, blindness, and immune suppression from increased ultraviolet radiation. While other books on the subject analyze only the environmental impact of these problems, McMichael takes his analysis to an entirely new and disturbing extreme: he relates each of these insidious processes back to its ultimate impact on human health. He thoroughly considers these problems--and their scientific uncertainties--within a broad evolutionary, biological, social, and economic context. He also explores the underlying problems contributing to environmental breakdown, especially the relations between the world's rich and poor. This eloquent and alarming book will be of intense interest to environmentalists, public health professionals, policy makers, environmental studies and human ecology scholars, and anyone wishing a lucid, rational assessment of today's pressing ecological concerns. A. J. McMichael is the chair of the Australian Government's Environmental Health Committee and the co-author of The LS Factor: Lifestyle and Health (Penguin, 1987).

The human species faces a new threat to its health--perhaps to its survival. Our burgeoning numbers, the spread of technology, and our conspicuous consumption are overloading Earth's capacity to replenish and repair itself. Taking a unique perspective, Planetary Overload forcefully points out the consequences to human health of ongoing degradation of Earth's ecosystems. In a broad-based, accessible analysis, A.J. McMichael examines current ecological disruptions--land degradation, ozone depletion, temperature increases, and loss of genetic diversity through the extinction of species, among others--and compellingly demonstrates their potentially disastrous results, including food shortages, new and intensified disease patterns, rising seas, mass refugee problems, and cancers, blindness, and immune suppression from increased ultraviolet radiation. While other books on the subject analyze only the environmental impact of these problems, McMichael takes his analysis to an entirely new and disturbing extreme: he relates each of these insidious processes back to its ultimate impact on human health. He thoroughly considers these problems--and their scientific uncertainties--within a broad evolutionary, biological, social, and economic context. He also explores the underlying problems contributing to environmental breakdown, especially the relations between the world's rich and poor. This eloquent and alarming book will be of intense interest to environmentalists, public health professionals, policy makers, environmental studies and human ecology scholars, and anyone wishing a lucid, rational assessment of today's pressing ecological concerns. A. J. McMichael is the chair of the Australian Government's Environmental Health Committee and the co-author of The LS Factor: Lifestyle and Health (Penguin, 1987).

Struggles for environmental justice involve communities mobilising against powerful forces which advocate 'development', driven increasingly by neoliberal imperatives. In doing so, communities face questions about their alliances with other groups, working with outsiders and issues of class, race, ethnicity, gender, worker/community and settler/indigenous relationships. Written by a wide range of international scholars and activists, contributors explore these dynamics and the opportunities for agency and solidarity. They critique the practice of community development professionals, academics, trade union organisers, social movements and activists and inform those engaged in the pursuit of justice as community, development and environment interact.

A quiet French country district is the site of a nuclear waste-processing plant. Francoise Zonabend describes the ways in which those working in the plant, and living nearby, come to terms with the risks in their daily lives. She provides a superb sociology of the nuclear work-place, with its divisions and hierarchies, and explains the often unexpected responses of the workers to the fear of radiation and contamination. The work is described euphemistically in terms of women's tasks - cleaning, cooking, preparing a soup - but the male workers subvert this language to create a more satisfying self-image. They divide workers into the cautious ('rentiers') and the bold ('kamikazes') who relish danger. By analysing work practices and the language of the work-place, the author shows how workers and locals can recognise the possibility of nuclear catastrophe while, at the same time, denying that it could ever happen to them. This is a major contribution to the anthropology of modern life.

This volume looks at the relationship between specific aspects of Third World cities and human health. Rapid and extensive urbanization of the less developed nations is perhaps the most dramatic demographic phenomenon of our times, but its impact on human biology is not well understood. Here, a cross-section of work is presented on this subject allowing human biologists, urban planners, public health workers and other specialists to assess our knowledge and the current approaches available to increase it. Contributions fall into two groups: studies of urban ecology including the social, economic and physical domains, and studies of biological responses to the urban environment. Health is not merely the absence of specific diseases, but is construed more broadly to include a wide range of biological parameters that are correlated with various states of sub-optimal health. These include patterns of child growth and development, frequencies of specific diseases, nutritional status, immunological characteristics and physiological parameters. This important volume will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and academics, including human biologists, anthropologists, healthcare professionals, human geographers, urban and regional planners, and economists.

How do people react to the visual character of their surroundings? What can planners do to improve the aesthetic quality of these surroundings? Too often in environmental design, visual quality--aesthetics--is misunderstood as only a minor concern, dependent on volatile taste and thus undefinable. Yet a substantial body of research indicates the importance of visual quality in the environment to the public and has uncovered systematic patterns of human response to visual attributes of the built environment. Efforts to understand environmental aesthetics have been undertaken by investigators from such diverse fields as landscape architecture, environmental psychology, geography, philosophy, architecture, and city planning. As a result the relevant information is scattered and not readily available to professionals and policy makers. The book brings together classic and new contributions by distinguished workers in different disciplines. It explores theory and data on preferences in the visual environment, and also addresses the practical application of aesthetic criteria in design, planning and public policy. Promising directions for future research are identified.

In the past, territorial conflict usually involved major powers seeking hegemony over strategic spaces and resources. More recently, however, the decline of opposing global power blocs has elevated ethnicity to a prime cause of conflict over land.This book considers the multiple roles ethnicity plays in fostering territorial conflicts, both violent and non-violent, across the globe. While land disputes relating to nationalism have resulted in the loss of human life in some regions, in others ties between ethnicity and land are asserted more peacefully. Nationalism and challenges to the validity of the links between people and places have caused widespread bloodshed in the disputed territory of Palestine, involving competing claims of Arabs and Jews, have led to war. In North America, however, indigenous Indians' claims to land are settled in the courts, rather than through violence. This book shows how human behaviour is affected by the multiple ways in which people identify with land, topography and natural resources. In doing so, it highlights the growing trend towards defining physical space in specific ethnic contexts, associated with a contemporary world that facilitates global movement.

In the past, territorial conflict usually involved major powers seeking hegemony over strategic spaces and resources. More recently, however, the decline of opposing global power blocs has elevated ethnicity to a prime cause of conflict over land.
This book considers the multiple roles ethnicity plays in fostering territorial conflicts, both violent and non-violent, across the globe. While land disputes relating to nationalism have resulted in the loss of human life in some regions, in others ties between ethnicity and land are asserted more peacefully. Nationalism and challenges to the validity of the links between people and places have caused widespread bloodshed in the disputed territory of Palestine, involving competing claims of Arabs and Jews, have led to war. In North America, however, indigenous Indians' claims to land are settled in the courts, rather than through violence. This book shows how human behaviour is affected by the multiple ways in which people identify with land, topography and natural resources. In doing so, it highlights the growing trend towards defining physical space in specific ethnic contexts, associated with a contemporary world that facilitates global movement.

In myriad ways, humans have gradually tailored their world to meet immediate material needs. In so doing, we have, in the minds of many, systematically altered a formerly hospitable environment into one more ambiguous in its effect on the human organism. Just as environments have adapted in response to human activity, so too is the human body now, in turn, forced to adapt to these altered conditions. Today, mysterious illnesses, from chronic fatigue to Gulf War Syndrome, meet us at every turn. Yet even as an increasing number of people attribute ailments to environmental problems, the suspected relationships between illness and environment remain unclear.

Illness and the Environment examines how sick people and their allies struggle to achieve public recognition of somatic complaints and disabilities that they contend are related to "manufactured environments." The first of its kind, the anthology considers the political, legal, and medical conflicts arising from these illnesses, and will prove invaluable to researchers, scholars, public policy makers, trial attorneys, and activist organizations.

We often envision the New World before the arrival of the Europeans as a land of pristine natural beauty and undisturbed environments. However, David Lentz offers an alternative view by detailing the impact of native cultures on these ecosystems prior to their contact with Europeans. Drawing on a wide range of experts from the fields of paleoclimatology, historical ecology, paleontology, botany, geology, conservation science, and resource management, this book unlocks the secret of how the Western Hemisphere's indigenous inhabitants influenced and transformed their natural environment.

A rare combination of collaborators uncovers the changes that took place in North America, Mexico, Central America, the Andes, and Amazonia. Each section of the book has been comprehensively arranged so that a botanical description of the natural vegetation of the region is coupled with a set of case studies outlining local human influences. From modifications of vegetation, to changes in soil, wildlife, microclimate, hydrology, and the land surface itself, this collection addresses one of the great issues of our time: the human modification of the earth.

Since the publication of the first edition of Environmental Health Science , preventing and treating acute and chronic disease caused by exposure to chemical health hazards has become even more central to the practice of public health. This fully revised and updated edition introduces students and practitioners to the concepts and terminology from chemistry, ecology, toxicology, and engineering necessary for identifying the sources of environmental contaminants; quantifying environmental levels and human exposures; and preventing and remediating environmental health hazards. Liberal use of figures and tables allows readers to visualize complex scientific phenomena and to understand their effects on every aspect of the environment from cells to entire ecosystems. Authored by two of the foremost educators, investigators, and practitioners in this increasingly important discipline, the new edition of Environmental Health Science is an essential resource for students and practitioners in public health; civil, environmental, and chemical engineers; policy makers; science journalists; and anyone else committed to promoting human health and the health of our environment.

This book, featuring a superb selection of papers from leading authors, summarises the state of current understanding about the extent of genetic variation within wild populations and the ways to monitor such variation. It proposes the idea that a fundamental objective of evolutionary ecology is necessary to predict organism, population, community and ecosystem response to environmental change. In fact, the overall theme of the papers centres around the expression of genetic variation and how it is shaped by the action of natural selection in the natural environment.

Social insects such as ants and termites can be viewed as powerful problem-solving systems with sophisticated collective intelligence. Composed of simple interacting agents, this intelligence lies in the networks of interactions among individuals and between individuals and the environment. Social insects are also a powerful metaphor for artificial intelligence. The problems they solve - for instance, finding food, dividing labor among nestmates, building nests, and responding to external challenges - have important counterparts in engineering and computer science. This book provides a detailed look at models of social insect behaviour and how these can be applied in the design of complex systems. It draws upon a complementary blend of biology and computer science, including artificial intelligence, robotics, operations research, information display, and computer graphics. The book should appeal to a broadly interdisciplinary audience of modellers, engineers, neuroscientists, and computer scientists, as well as some biologists and ecologists.

An invaluable key to understanding the intersection of ecology and Judaism.

Volume 2:
-- Zionism: One Land, Two Peoples
-- Eco-Judaism: One Earth, Many Peoples

This is a book about simplicity - not destitution, not parsimoniousness, not self-denial - but the restoration of wealth in the midst of an affluence in which the author believes we are starving the spirit. It has to do with having less and enjoying more - enjoying time to do the work you love, enjoying time to spend with your family, enjoying time to pursue creative projects, enjoying time for good eating, enjoying time just to be. Another theme of the book concerns the future of our home, the Earth. Our grandchildren will inherit an Earth with less than 20 per cent of its original forests still intact, with most of the readily available freshwater already spoken for, with most of the wetlands and reef systems either destroyed or degraded. Sooner or later, the author believes, a more frugal lifestyle will not only be desirable - it will become an imperative.

This magisterial survey of the historical geography of the West Indies is at bottom concerned with the causes and consequences of three complex and inter-related phenomena: the rapid and total removal of a large aboriginal population; the development of plantation agriculture and the arrival of enforced labour, in the form of many thousands of African slaves; and the environmental, ecological and cultural changes that resulted. Dr Watts shows how the initial European vision of a land of plenty has been replaced by an awareness of the geographic and ecological fragiliaty of the area, and explains how the exploitative agricultural systems of the colonial and recent West Indies have not adjusted to the demands of the environment. An enormous array of historical, biological and literary sources are marshalled in support of Dr Watts' analysis, which is likely to remain the standard work on the subject for many years to come.

Landscapes are not just backdrops to human action; people make them and are made by them. How people understand and engage with their material world depends upon particularities of time and place. These understandings are dynamic, variable, contradictory and open-ended. Landscapes are thus always evolving and are often volatile and contested. They are also always on the move - people may or may not be rooted, but they have 'legs'. From prehistoric times onwards people have travelled, but the process of people-on-the-move - as tourists, or on global business, as migrant workers or political or economic refugees - has vastly accelerated.
How and why do people who share the same landscape have different and often violently opposed ways of understanding its significance? How do people-on-the-move make sense of the unfamiliar? How do they create a sense of place? How do they rework the memories of places left behind? There is nothing easeful about the landscapes discussed in this book, which are often harsh-edged and troubled both socially and politically. The contributors tackle contested notions of landscape to explain the key role it plays in creating identity and shaping human behaviour.
This landmark study offers an important contribution towards an understanding of the complexity of landscape.

Many areas of Eastern Europe have been polluted to an extent unknown in the West. Four such sites - Kola Peninsula, northern Bohemia, upper Vistula Basin, and Katowice - have been identified and detailed accounts of the pollution at these sites are given. The current status of the use of biomarkers in hazard assessment is given by several scientists from NATO countries. Four working groups, comprising scientists working on the polluted sites and western scientists with expertise in biomarkers, examine the use of biomarkers to assess the environmental health of each of these areas and make recommendations on the future direction of remedial action in these areas.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is one of the most important tools employed in contemporary environmental management. Presenting the component activities of EIA within a coherent methodological framework, Environmental Impact Assessment: A Methodological Approach provides students and practitioners alike with a rigorous grounding in EIA theory, including biophysical, social, strategic and cumulative assessment activities, and examines the crucial role, and limitations, of the science of EIA. Deliberately designed to be relevant world-wide, the author focuses on the common skills and generic aspects of EIA that underpin all impact assessment work, independent of country or jurisdiction, such as screening and scoping, impact identification, public involvement, prediction and monitoring, evaluation, and quality control. The variety of approaches are identified along with their associated strengths and weaknesses, enabling potential, new and experienced practitioners to make informed choices and to improve their working practices through a better understanding of EIA activity. The ultimate aim of this book is to move from the notion of EIA as a technical procedure towards a concept of EIA as a particular form of problem-solving with varied methodological requirements.

In England, perhaps more than most places, people's engagement with the landscape is deeply felt and has often been expressed through artistic media. The popularity of walking and walking clubs perhaps provides the most compelling evidence of the important role landscape plays in people's lives. Not only is individual identity rooted in experiencing landscape, but under the multiple impacts of social fragmentation, global economic restructuring and European integration, membership in recreational walking groups helps recover a sense of community. Moving between the 1750s and the present, this transdisciplinary book explores the powerful role of landscape in the formation of historical class relations and national identity. The author's direct field experience of fell walking in the Lake District and with various locally based clubs includes investigation of the roles gender and race play. She shows how the politics of access to open spaces has implications beyond the immediate geographical areas considered and ultimately involves questions of citizenship.

Ever since the emergence of human culture, people and animals have co-existed in close proximity. Humans have always recognized both their kinship with animals and their fundamental differences, as animals have always been a threat to humans' well-being. The relationship, therefore, has been complex, intimate, reciprocal, personal, and -- crucially -- ambivalent. It is hardly surprising that animals evoke strong emotions in humans, both positive and negative. This companion volume to Morris' important earlier work, The Power of Animals, is a sustained investigation of the Malawi people's sacramental attitude to animals, particularly the role that animals play in life-cycle rituals, their relationship to the divinity and to spirits of the dead. How people relate to and use animals speaks volumes about their culture and beliefs. This book overturns the ingrained prejudice within much ethnographic work, which has often dismissed the pivotal role animals play in culture, and shows that personhood, religion, and a wide range of rituals are informed by, and even dependent upon, human-animal relations.