Globalization demands the construction of new business methods to enable companies to remain highly competitive. Due to this demand, cultural differences are now being implemented into policies and procedures as companies expand and seek to collaborate with international entrepreneurs. The Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems and Social Dynamics in a Globalized World is a pivotal reference source for emergent aspects of internationalization and regional development in an entrepreneurial context. Featuring extensive coverage on relevant areas such as digital entrepreneurship, sustainability, and financial performance, this publication is an ideal resource for academics, public and private institutions, developers, professors, researchers, and post-graduate students seeking current research on globalized entrepreneurship.

Towards a Cultural Politics of Climate Change provides a new perspective on how climate change matters in policy-making, business and everyday life. It argues that the work of low carbon transitions takes place through the creation of devices, the mobilisation of desires, and the articulation of dissent. Using case studies from the US, Australia, and Europe, the book examines the creation and contestation of new forms of cultural politics - of how a climate-changed society is articulated, realized and contested. Through this approach it opens up questions about how, where and by whom climate politics is conducted and the ways in which we might respond differently to this societal challenge. This book provides a key reference point for the emerging academic community working on the cultural politics of climate change, and a means through which to engage this new area of research with the broader social sciences.

This highly interdisciplinary book studies historical famines as an interface of nature and culture. It will bring together researchers from the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities. With reference to recent interdisciplinary concepts (disaster studies, vulnerability studies, environmental history) it will examine, how the dominant opposition of natural and cultural factors can be overcome. Such an integrated approach includes the "archives of nature" as well as "archives of man". It challenges deterministic models of human-environment interaction and replaces them with a dynamic, historicising approach. As a result it provides a fresh perspective on the entanglement of climate and culture in past societies.

Development interventions often generate contradictions around questions of who benefits from development and which communities are targeted for intervention. This book examines how the Baka, who live in Eastern Cameroon, assert forms of belonging in order to participate in development interventions, and how community life is shaped and reshaped through these interventions. Often referred to as 'forest people', the Baka have witnessed many recent development interventions that include competing and contradictory policies such as 'civilize', assimilate and integrate the Baka into 'full citizenship', conserve the forest and wildlife resources, and preserve indigenous cultures at the verge of extinction.

This book examines social and natural environmental changes in present-day Laos and presents a new research framework for environmental studies from an interdisciplinary point of view. In Laos, after the Lao version of perestroika, Chintanakaan Mai, in 1986, for better or worse, rural development and urbanization have progressed, and people's livelihoods are about to change significantly. Compared to those of the neighboring countries of mainland Southeast Asia, however, many traditional livelihoods such as region-specific/ethnic-specific livelihood complexes, which combined traditional rice farming with a variety of subsistence activities, have been carried over into the present in Laos. The biggest challenge this book presents is to elucidate livelihood strategies of people who cope successfully with both social and environmental changes and to illustrate how to maintain this rich social and natural environment of Laos in the future. The book includes chapters on social, cultural, and natural concerns and on ethnicity, urbanization, and regional development in Laos. All chapters are based on original data from field surveys. These data will greatly contribute not only to local studies in Laos but also to environmental studies in developing countries.

Nowadays, sports Mega-events - with the Olympic Games leading the way - go over immense effort to showcase their environmental credentials. With that in mind, this book compares and contrasts the environmental credentials of four Olympic Host cities starting with Sydney 2000, the host of the first Green Summer Olympics, and culminating with London 2012. Setting out a comparative cross-national study that makes extensive use of perspectives offered by environmental sociology, this book showcases the scientific analytical vigour of this sociological sub-discipline. Since in most cases, the linkages between hosting the Games and the environment that are made by the general public and policy-makers are mostly in relation to the regeneration of the host city, this book engages with this type of environmental related contributions that can be made by Olympic Games hosting. Yet, inspired by the emphasis that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) gives on the environmental impact and legacy of Games in terms of the Ecological Modernization (EM) perspective, the book engages with the potential imbued by Olympic Games hosting for the EM of the host nation.

Monique Taylor analyses the policy rationale and institutional underpinnings of China's state-led or neomercantilist oil strategy, and its development, set against the wider context of economic transformation as the country transitions from a centrally planned to market economy.

Building on recent developments in social ecology, this book advances a new critical theory of society and nature, exploring social metabolism and global resource flows in contemporary society. Charting the historical development of social ecology in the context of environmental research, the book examines the interactions between society and nature and identifies both the barriers to global sustainability and the conditions and best practice for transforming industrial economies towards new sustainable resource use.

North and South America share similar human and ecological histories and, increasingly, economic and social linkages. As such, issues of ecosystem functions and disruptions form a common thread among these cultures. This volume synthesizes the perspectives of several disciplines, such as ecology, anthropology, economy, and conservation biology. The chief goal is to gain an understanding of how human and ecological processes interact to affect ecosystem functions and species in the Americas. Throughout the text the emphasis is placed on habitat fragmentation. At the same time, the book provides an overview of current theory, methods, and approaches used in the analysis of ecosystem disruptions and fragmentation.

Set at the intersection of political theory and environmental politics, yet with broad engagement across the environmental social sciences and humanities, The Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory, defines, illustrates, and challenges the field of environmental political theory (EPT). Featuring contributions from distinguished political scientists working in this field, this volume addresses canonical theorists and contemporary environmental problems with a diversity of theoretical approaches. The initial volume focuses on EPT as a field of inquiry, engaging both traditions of political thought and the academy. In the second section, the handbook explores conceptualizations of nature and the environment, as well as the nature of political subjects, communities, and boundaries within our environments. A third section addresses the values that motivate environmental theorists - including justice, responsibility, rights, limits, and flourishing - and the potential conflicts that can emerge within, between, and against these ideals. The final section examines the primary structures that constrain or enable the achievement of environmental ends, as well as theorizations of environmental movements, citizenship, and the potential for on-going environmental action and change.

Although sustainability efforts in business are still a work in progress, it is increasingly clear that key elements of a new generation of enterprises will be radically different from those of our contemporary modern industrial economy. The core distinctions between what currently exists and what is being created are communicated in this book through the compelling metaphor of "Ants, Galileo, and Gandhi."This collection, developed from The Natural Step's conference on Sustainability and Innovation in 2002, provides radical ideas for generating a new perspective on the dynamics of business systems. 'Ants' symbolize the lessons to be learned from nature and the dependence of individual beings on broader, complex systems. "Galileo" embodies brilliance in perceiving and proving that the current paradigm is flawed. "Gandhi" exemplifies exceptional compassion in fighting for fundamental change. All of these attributes are increasingly relevant in a world where, globally, we are experiencing both a steady decline in life-supporting resources and rising demands. Recognition of these challenges is sparking innovation within the private sector where the first glimmers of systemic change can be seen. The book examines the emergence of 21st-century enterprises that recognize their reliance on broad social and ecological systems ("ants"), incorporate sparks of genius rooted in rigorous analyses ('Galileo'), and acknowledge the importance of compassion and determination within any endeavour ('Gandhi'). With contributions from Ray Anderson, Gretchen Daily, Karl-Henrik Robert, Alois Flatz, Allen White and many more, the book illustrates that pioneering companies recognize that new opportunities emerge from recognizing the broader systems on which all businesses rely. Efforts to work with ecological and social dynamics of vibrancy and resilience offer a new space for innovation. Companies are stepping into this space and exploring innovative approaches to developing sustainability-focused products, operations and strategies. These sustainability-inspired business efforts are considering new ways to address human needs and desires. The most promising approaches are based on systems thinking and recognition of the linkages between 'upstream' and 'downstream' effects of actions. Understanding the undesired 'downstream' impacts of a firm's practices draws attention 'upstream'. This assessment highlights the most expedient approach: to design these impacts out of enterprises from the very start.The book is divided into five sections to present a set of theories emerging about sustainability and its application to: business strategy and operations; financial-sector practices; accountability and reporting drivers; and organizational change pathways. Together, these sections illustrate the current range of sustainability theories and applications."Ants, Galileo, and Gandhi" will be essential reading for both academics looking for robust teaching material, practitioners looking for inspiration and the general reader interested in exploring the state of the art in the realignment of 21st-century business."

This book explores the relationship between cultural strategies and their biological outcomes, combining for the first time an ecosystems approach with cultural anthropological, archaeological and evolutionary behavioural concepts. Beginning with resource use and food procurement behaviour, the text examines major subsistence modes, the circumstances and dynamics of large-scale subsistence change, the effect of social differentiation on resource use and the effects of subsistence behaviour on population development and regulation.

The worldwide increase in population has led to numerous innovative approaches to the difficulties posed by food production and agriculture in general. New Technologies for Constructing Complex Agricultural and Environmental Systems presents high-quality research on the design and implementation of information systems in the fields of agronomics, mathematics, economics, computer science, and the environment. This book gives holistic approaches to the design, development, and implementation of complex agricultural and environmental information systems, addressing the integration of several scientific domains such as agronomy, mathematics, economics, and computer science. This book will only become more important as the world searches for the best ways to manage food production.

The current obsession of social and natural scientists with globalisation has not been matched by equal interest in the study of the consequences of local environmental change on society. As a result, our attention has been drawn away from community and locality to global processes often indifferent to the reality of those at the receiving end of the social, economic, and political problems globalisation creates. Larger (global) synthesis obscures local reality, and imposes conditions often insensitive to local needs, resource management institutions, and production systems, even distorting them. The case studies presented in this book illustrate how environmental degradation has contributed to the distortion of local institutions and economies, thus denying local communities the right to eke out their living in a productive and healthy environment. The contributors highlight the seriousness of the difficulties involved in conflating national policies and local reality, and imposing global policy instruments on local communities. Understandably, the case studies demonstrate that local communities resist putting their faith in environmental policies and plans imposed on them by global or national institutions that often deprive them of access to and control over their local environment.

The fall of the Soviet Union was a transformative event for the national political economies of Eastern Europe, leading not only to new regimes of ownership and development but to dramatic changes in the natural world itself. This painstakingly researched volume focuses on the emblematic case of postsocialist Romania, in which the transition from collectivization to privatization profoundly reshaped the nation's forests, farmlands, and rivers. From bureaucrats abetting illegal deforestation to peasants opposing government agricultural policies, it reveals the social and political mechanisms by which neoliberalism was introduced into the Romanian landscape.

In one form or another, water participates in the making and unmaking of people's lives, practices, and stories. Contributors' detailed ethnographic work analyzes the union and mutual shaping of water and social lives. This volume discusses current ecological disturbances and engages in a world where unbounded relationalities and unsettled frames of orientation mark the lives of all, anthropologists included. Water emerges as a fluid object in more senses than one, challenging anthropologists to foreground the mutable character of their objects of study and to responsibly engage with the generative role of cultural analysis.

Following the Second World War, a massive land reclamation project to boost Japan's rice production capacity led to the transformation of the shallow lagoon of Hachirogata in Akita Prefecture into a seventeen-thousand-hectare expanse of farmland. In 1964, the village of Ogata-mura was founded on the empoldered land inside the lagoon and nearly six hundred pioneers from across the country were brought to settle there. The village was to be a model of a new breed of highly mechanized, efficient rice agriculture; however, the village's purpose was jeopardized when the demand for rice fell, and the goal of creating an egalitarian farming community was threatened as individual entrepreneurialism took root and as the settlers became divided into political factions that to this day continue to struggle for control of the village. Based on seventeen years of research, this book explores the process of Ogatamura's development from the planning stages to the present. An intensive ethnographic study of the relationship between land reclamation, agriculture, and politics in regional Japan, it traces the internal social effects of the village's economic transformations while addressing the implications of national policy at the municipal and regional levels.

Readers drawn to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Laurie Garrett's The Coming Plague, or Theo Colburn's Our Stolen Future will appreciate this work by Thomas Kerns as well. The growing epidemics of chemically induced illnesses from long-term, low-dose exposure to toxicants in both developed and developing nations are being studied by serious researchers. Questions are being raised as to how societies will deal with these new problems. Kerns's book is the first to directly address the ethical dimension of managing environmental health and ubiquitous toxicants (such as solvents, pesticides, and artificial fragrances). The work includes recent medical literature on chronic health effects from exposure to toxicants and the social costs of these disorders; relevant historic and human rights documents; recommendations for public policy and legislation; and primary obstacles faced by public health advocates. College instructors and students, victims of chemical sensitivity disorders, public health workers, scientists, and policymakers who are interested in the challenge of these emerging epidemics will find Kerns's text highly informative.

As a field, anthropology brings an explicit evolutionary approach to the study of human behavior. Each of anthropology's four main subfields - sociocultural, biological, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology--acknowledges that Homo sapiens has a long evolutionary history that must be acknowledged if one is to know what it means to be a human being (What is Anthropology?).

The papers in this volume embody the view of anthropology explicit in the above statement. Behavioral ecology explains human behavior through the application of evolutionary theory in ecological context. It focuses on how behavior is influenced by the constraints of reproduction and resources acquisition. As a result, its purview is a wide swath of anthropology, especially economic anthropology. Human behavior varies through the life course, and humans make choices or exhibit behavioral variation depending on the costs, benefits, and constraints of local socioeconomic contexts. Pan-human conscious and unconscious processes generate these ???decisions???, because over evolutionary time scales they produced, on average, behavior that increased the relative reproductive success of their bearers. Behavioral ecology examines these adaptive behavioral responses to local conditions.

The volume??'s papers demonstrate behavioral ecology's maturation as a subfield of anthropology. They demonstrate the breadth of problems that can be gainfully addressed within the paradigm and the richness of specific hypotheses and data that this perspective can generate. The papers also show how behavioral ecology conceptually integrates the core of biological anthropology with the other subdisciplines by providing a common frameworkfor investigating and understanding basic economic questions.

We live in an age of crises that are global in scale and potentially apocalyptic in severity, affecting the lives of millions billions of people. Peter Lee examines the struggle for truth at the heart of these crises to show how political leaders attempt to shape individual behavior, attitudes and identity.

This book presents a novel approach in the field of global change by presenting a comprehensive analysis of interhemispheric linkages of climate, present and past, and their effects on human societies.
The ultimate goal of this interhemispheric integration is to improve our understanding of causes and mechanisms of climate change to enhance our capability in predicting future changes.
Given the societal interest in global change issues this book offers a new approach for the integration of global information.
It will provide a reference for professional scientists, researchers and graduate students in the fields of climatology, and the earth and environmental sciences.
* Chapters analyse instrumental atmospheric and oceanic data to address such phenomena as El Nino/Southern Oscillation variability and other climate anomalies such as the Pacific and North Atlantic Oscillation and polar air outbreaks
* * A new systematic methodology is presented that allows objective and verifiable reconstruction of climate fields from sparse data
* * Especially valuable in the context of climate proxy data.

The ever-increasing release of harmful agents due to human activities has led in some areas of the world to heavy pollution. In order to protect human health and the environment, environmental standards that shall limit the release and the concentration of those toxic agents in the environment and hence the exposure to it have to be established. The related assessment and decision-making procedures have to be based on solid scientific data about the effects and mechanisms of these agents as well as on ethical, social and economic aspects. For risk evaluation, the knowledge of the dose response curve is an essential prerequisite. Dose responses without a threshold dose are most critical in this connection. Such dose responses are assumed for mutagenic and carcinogenic effects, which, therefore, dominate also the discussion in this book. In the environmentally important low dose range, risk estimation can only be achieved by extrapolation from higher doses with measurable effects. The extrapolation is accompanied with uncertainties which makes risk evaluation as well as risk communication frequently problematic. In order to ensure rational efficient and fair decisions beyond a sound scientific assessment the dialogue between disciplines, with the affected people and with the general public is necessary. In this book, the whole range of relevant and essential aspects of risk evaluation and standard setting is addressed. Starting with the ethical foundations, the sound analysis of recent scientific findings sets the frame for further reflections by theory of cognition, psychosocial sciences, and jurisprudence. The authors end up with concluding recommendations for coping with the recentproblems of standard setting in the field of environmentally relevant low doses. The book is designed to a readership of scientists, legislators, administrators, and the interested public.

Earth's fractured geology is visible in its fault lines. It is along these lines that earthquakes occur, sometimes with disastrous effects. These disturbances can significantly influence urban development, as seen in the aftermath of two earthquakes in Messina, Italy, in 1908 and in the Belice Valley, Sicily, in 1968. Following the history of these places before and after their destruction, this book explores plans and developments that preceded the disasters and the urbanism that emerged from the ruins. These stories explore fault lines between "rural" and "urban," "backwardness" and "development," and "before" and "after," shedding light on the role of environmental forces in the history of human habitats.

Sustainable development and rural policies have pursued strategies where farming has been often regarded as a factor deteriorating the ecosystem. But the current economic, social and environmental problems of the Earth probably call for examples of a positive integration between human society and nature. This research work presents more than a hundred case studies where the historical relationships between man and nature have generated, not deterioration, but cultural, environmental, social and economic values. The results show that is not only the economic face of globalization that is negatively affecting the landscape, but also inappropriate environmental policies. The CBD-UNESCO program on biocultural diversity, the FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems and several projects of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, as well as European rural policies acknowledge the importance of cultural values associated to landscape. This research intends to support these efforts.