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Books > Earth & environment > Geography > Historical geography
What causes Ice Ages? How did we learn about them? What were their
affects on the social history of humanity? Allan Mazur's book tells
the appealing history of the scientific 'discovery' of Ice Ages.
How we learned that much of the Earth was repeatedly covered by
huge ice sheets, why that occurred, and how the waning of the last
Ice Age paved the way for agrarian civilization and, ultimately,
our present social structures. The book discusses implications for
the current 'controversies' over anthropogenic climate change,
public understanding of science, and (lack of) 'trust in experts'.
In parallel to the history and science of Ice Ages, sociologist
Mazur highlights why this is especially relevant right now for
humanity. Ice Ages: Their Social and Natural History is an
engrossing combination of natural science and social history:
glaciology and sociology writ large.
During the late eighteenth century, Portugal and Spain sent joint
mapping expeditions to draw a nearly 10,000-mile border between
Brazil and Spanish South America. These boundary commissions were
the largest ever sent to the Americas and coincided with broader
imperial reforms enacted throughout the hemisphere. Where Caciques
and Mapmakers Met considers what these efforts meant to Indigenous
peoples whose lands the border crossed. Moving beyond common
frameworks that assess mapped borders strictly via colonial law or
Native sovereignty, it examines the interplay between imperial and
Indigenous spatial imaginaries. What results is an intricate
spatial history of border making in southeastern South America
(present-day Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) with global
implications. Drawing upon manuscripts from over two dozen archives
in seven countries, Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr. traces on-the-ground
interactions between Ibero-American colonists, Jesuit and Guarani
mission-dwellers, and autonomous Indigenous peoples as they
responded to ever-changing notions of territorial possession. It
reveals that Native agents shaped when and where the border was
drawn, and fused it to their own territorial claims. While
mapmakers' assertions of Indigenous disappearance or subjugation
shaped historiographical imaginations thereafter, Erbig reveals
that the formation of a border was contingent upon Native
engagement and authority.
During the late eighteenth century, Portugal and Spain sent joint
mapping expeditions to draw a nearly 10,000-mile border between
Brazil and Spanish South America. These boundary commissions were
the largest ever sent to the Americas and coincided with broader
imperial reforms enacted throughout the hemisphere. Where Caciques
and Mapmakers Met considers what these efforts meant to Indigenous
peoples whose lands the border crossed. Moving beyond common
frameworks that assess mapped borders strictly via colonial law or
Native sovereignty, it examines the interplay between imperial and
Indigenous spatial imaginaries. What results is an intricate
spatial history of border making in southeastern South America
(present-day Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay) with global
implications. Drawing upon manuscripts from over two dozen archives
in seven countries, Jeffrey Alan Erbig Jr. traces on-the-ground
interactions between Ibero-American colonists, Jesuit and Guarani
mission-dwellers, and autonomous Indigenous peoples as they
responded to ever-changing notions of territorial possession. It
reveals that Native agents shaped when and where the border was
drawn, and fused it to their own territorial claims. While
mapmakers' assertions of Indigenous disappearance or subjugation
shaped historiographical imaginations thereafter, Erbig reveals
that the formation of a border was contingent upon Native
engagement and authority.
Since the nineteenth century, Greek financial and economic crises
have been an enduring problem, most recently engulfing the European
Union and EU member states. The latest crisis, beginning in 2010,
has been - and continues to be - a headline news story across the
continent. With a radically different approach and methodology,
this anthropological study brings new insights to our understanding
of the Greek crises by combining historical material from before
and after the nineteenth century War of Independence with extensive
longitudinal ethnographic research. The ethnography covers two
distinct periods - the 1980s and the current crisis years - and
compares Mystras and Kefala, two villages in southern Greece, each
of which has responded quite differently to economic circumstances.
Analysis of this divergence highlights the book's central point
that an ideology of aspiration to work in the public sector,
pervasive in Greek society since the nineteenth century, has been a
major contributor to Greece's problematic economic development.
Shedding new light on previously under-researched anthropological
and sociological aspects of the Greek economic crisis, this book
will be essential reading for economists, anthropologists and
historians.
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