* Major disasters increased over 93 per cent during the 1990s, reaching 712 in 2001 * Up to 340 million people are affected by disasters every year* 'Vulnerability' is the key to understanding the causes, impacts and ways to mitigate disasters In this penetrating analysis, the authors critically examine "vulnerability" as a concept that is vital to the way we understand the impact and magnitude of disasters. This book is a counterbalance to technocratic approaches that limit themselves to simply looking at natural phenomena. Through the notion of vulnerability, the authors stress the importance of social processes and human-environmental interactions as causal agents in the making of disasters. They critically examine what renders communities unsafe, a condition they argue that depends primarily on the relative position of advantage or disadvantage that a particular group occupies within a society's social order. Bolstering their theoretical analysis with case studies drawn from Asia, Africa and Latin America, the authors also look at vulnerability in terms of its relationship to development and through its impact on policy and peoples' lives.

In Spain, on May 15, 2011, a movement against austerity measures began. In a time when representative democracies were under threat, 15M came to life as a virtuous and democratic response to the slide into far-right populism and authoritarianism. More than a social movement, 15M became a mode of being with transformative, democratizing potential. In Democracy Here and Now, Pablo Ouziel offers a grounded analysis of 15M. At the time of the movement and during the ensuing encampments, Ouziel travelled extensively, speaking to participants, and keeping an ongoing record of his conversations. Presenting an original participatory mode of research, the book reveals six types of intersubjective, "joining hands" relationships that 15M has brought into being and works to carry on in creative ways. The book shows how the movement's way of being and temporality persists in Spain following the square occupations, while 15M citizens continue to learn and move forward in less perceptible ways. Democracy Here and Now sheds light on a deeply relational, intersectional, and eco-social mode of democracy, and shows how 15M's ongoing democratization practices are exemplary of similar grassroots movements around the world, broadening our understandings of what it means to be democratic in the here and now.

This award-winning classic in the study of ethnicity, identity, and nation-building has a new introduction (on which Eric Wolf collaborated near the end of his life) that shows the continuing validity of the book's innovative approach to ethnography, ecology, culture, and politics. The authors investigated two Alpine villages--the German-speaking community of St. Felix and Romance-speaking Tret--only a mile apart in the same mountain valley.

An accessible and hard-hitting look at the facts behind air pollution in everyday life. Take a deep breath. You'll do it 20,000 times a day. You assume all this air is clean; it's the very breath of life. But in Delhi, the toxic smog is as bad for you as smoking 50 cigarettes a day. Even a few days in Paris, London or Rome is equivalent to two or three cigarettes. Air pollution is implicated in six of the top ten causes of death worldwide, including lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, and dementia. Breathless gives us clear facts about air pollution in our everyday lives, showing how it affects our bodies, how much of it occurs in unexpected places (indoors, inside your car), and how you can minimise the risks. Rooted in the latest science, including real-time air-quality experiments in city streets and ordinary homes, it will allow you to make up your own mind about the risks and trade-offs of modern living - wherever in the world you are.

This working paper records an exercise carried out by Oxfam GB to map out the range of natural hazards and other risks to which people in Mexico and Central America are exposed. It also relates these to complex social, economic, political, and cultural factors that make some social sectors more critically vulnerable than others in emergencies. Further, it identifies the wide range of local capacities (organizational, social, governmental, and non-governmental) that can contribute to developing effective approaches to disaster prevention and mitigation programs, as well as emergency rehabilitation and reconstruction programs.

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.

Scientists and policymakers are beginning to understand in ever-increasing detail that environmental problems cannot be understood solely through the biophysical sciences. Environmental issues are fundamentally human issues and must be set in the context of social, political, cultural, and economic knowledge. The need both to understand how human beings in the past responded to climatic and other environmental changes and to synthesize the implications of these historical patterns for present-day sustainability spurred a conference of the world's leading scholars on the topic. "The Way the Wind Blows" is the rich result of that conference.

Articles discuss the dynamics of climate, human perceptions of and responses to the environment, and issues of sustainability and resiliency. These themes are illustrated through discussions of human societies around the world and throughout history.

Michael P Hassell examines the population dynamics of the interaction between insect parasitoids and their hosts. He incorporates all the major recent advances in our understanding of these interactions to show how the resulting body of theory makes direct contact with systems in the field, and can provide us with an in-depth understanding of a whole area of population dynamics. Hassell gives us a new and authoritative synthesis of his subject, as well as an elegant and exciting demonstration of how ecological studies advance.

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.

Lean Logic is David Fleming's masterpiece, the product of more than thirty years' work and a testament to the creative brilliance of one of Britain's most important intellectuals. A dictionary unlike any other, it leads readers through Fleming's stimulating exploration of fields as diverse as culture, history, science, art, logic, ethics, myth, economics, and anthropology, being made up of four hundred and four engaging essay-entries covering topics such as Boredom, Community, Debt, Growth, Harmless Lunatics, Land, Lean Thinking, Nanotechnology, Play, Religion, Spirit, Trust, and Utopia. The threads running through every entry are Fleming's deft and original analysis of how our present market-based economy is destroying the very foundations-ecological, economic, and cultural- on which it depends, and his core focus: a compelling, grounded vision for a cohesive society that might weather the consequences. A society that provides a satisfying, culturally-rich context for lives well lived, in an economy not reliant on the impossible promise of eternal economic growth. A society worth living in. Worth fighting for. Worth contributing to. The beauty of the dictionary format is that it allows Fleming to draw connections without detracting from his in-depth exploration of each topic. Each entry carries intriguing links to other entries, inviting the enchanted reader to break free of the imposed order of a conventional book, starting where she will and following the links in the order of her choosing. In combination with Fleming's refreshing writing style and good-natured humor, it also creates a book perfectly suited to dipping in and out. The decades Fleming spent honing his life's work are evident in the lightness and mastery with which Lean Logic draws on an incredible wealth of cultural and historical learning-from Whitman to Whitefield, Dickens to Daly, Kropotkin to Kafka, Keats to Kuhn, Oakeshott to Ostrom, Jung to Jensen, Machiavelli to Mumford, Mauss to Mandelbrot, Leopold to Lakatos, Polanyi to Putnam, Nietzsche to Naess, Keynes to Kumar, Scruton to Shiva, Thoreau to Toynbee, Rabelais to Rogers, Shakespeare to Schumacher, Locke to Lovelock, Homer to Homer-Dixon-in demonstrating that many of the principles it commends have a track-record of success long pre-dating our current society. Fleming acknowledges, with honesty, the challenges ahead, but rather than inducing despair, Lean Logic is rare in its ability to inspire optimism in the creativity and intelligence of humans to nurse our ecology back to health; to rediscover the importance of place and play, of reciprocity and resilience, and of community and culture. ------ Recognizing that Lean Logic's sheer size and unusual structure could be daunting, Fleming's long-time collaborator Shaun Chamberlin has also selected and edited one of the potential pathways through the dictionary to create a second, stand-alone volume, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. The content, rare insights, and uniquely enjoyable writing style remain Fleming's, but presented at a more accessible paperback-length and in conventional read-it-front-to-back format.

This book focuses on drosophila as an especially useful model organism for exploring questions of evolutionary biology in the full range of evolutionary studies: population genetics, ecology, ecological genetics, speciation, phylogenetics, genome evolution, molecular evolution, and development. The author presents an integrated view of evolutionary biology as elucidated in this single organism. Special effort is made to point out holes in our knowledge and areas particularly ripe for new investigation.

We are living in the midst of the Earth's sixth great extinction event, the first one caused by a single species: our own. In "Wild Dog Dreaming, " Deborah Bird Rose explores what constitutes an ethical relationship with nonhuman others in this era of loss. She asks, Who are we, as a species? How do we fit into the Earth's systems? Amidst so much change, how do we find our way into new stories to guide us? Rose explores these questions in the form of a dialogue between science and the humanities. Drawing on her conversations with Aboriginal people, for whom questions of extinction are up-close and very personal, Rose develops a mode of exposition that is dialogical, philosophical, and open-ended.

An inspiration for Rose--and a touchstone throughout her book--is the endangered dingo of Australia. The dingo is not the first animal to face extinction, but its story is particularly disturbing because the threat to its future is being actively engineered by humans. The brazenness with which the dingo is being wiped out sheds valuable, and chilling, light on the likely fate of countless other animal and plant species.

"People save what they love," observed Michael Soule, the great conservation biologist. We must ask whether we, as humans, are capable of loving--and therefore capable of caring for--the animals and plants that are disappearing in a cascade of extinctions. Wild Dog Dreaming engages this question, and the result is a bold account of the entangled ethics of love, contingency, and desire.

The past few years have seen the re-emergence of the Balkans as the "cockpit" of Europe. The break up of Yugoslavia, the regional conflict between ethnic groups, the creation of new states like Slovenia and the transformation of existing ones like Albania, have made the area of prime importance in geopolitical terms once again. Reconstructing the Balkans looks at the complex and rapidly changing human geography of the Balkans and considers the cultural, social and political geographies of the region and its neighbours. It provides both an examination of the history of the Balkans emphasising ethnicity and nationality issues and an evaluation of the historical and geographical roots of contemporary Balkan disputes from a range of national viewpoints. Written by acknowledged experts in the field, the book assesses some of the geographical consequences of the region s conflicts and analyses the post-socialist restructuring, reconstruction and reconfiguration regionwide and country by country. It also gives projections of likely regional development trends. This is a unique book as it represents diverse viewpoints from a wide range of ethnic, national and disciplinary approaches. It draws upon expertise from the USA, the UK and everyone concerned with the Balkan regions making it essential reading for analysts and consultants, in banks, funding agencies and government departments. It will also be of interest to advanced students of European Studies, Geography, International Relations, Politics, Development and History.

A gracefully written treatment of the mutual relationship between pine trees and jays, this book covers a wide range of regions, focusing on the Rocky Mountains and the American Southwest, but also ranging from the Alps to Finland, and from Siberia to China. The book treats one of the more satisfying stories of symbiosis and natural history from perspectives of evolution, ecology, and animal behaviour.

Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful collision--if we don't alter course.

In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth environmental sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion.

Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human development.

Unlike nearly all science books which tell of successful ventures and satisfactory conclusions, this book reveals the harsher but more common side of scientific research. Written by one of this century's most distinguished small mammal ecologists, it is both a personal history of and an apology for a life in science spent working on problems for which no final dramatic closure was reached. Included along the way are important anecdotes and history about Charles Elton and his pioneering work at the Bureau of Animal Population at Oxford University, from which much of modern population has grown, and insights on the philosophy and practice of science. This eye-opening account of a scientific career should be read by everyone in life sciences or the history and philosophy of science.

The apparent decline in numbers among many species of migratory songbirds is a timely subject in conservation biology, particularly for ornithologists, ecologists, and wildlife managers. This book is an attempt to discuss the problem in full scope. It presents an ambitious, comprehensive assessment of the current status of neotropical migratory birds in the U.S., and the methods and strategies used to conserve migrant populations. Each chapter is an essay reviewing and assessing the trend from a different viewpoint, all written by leaders in the fields of ornithology, conservation, and population biology.

The biggest challenge of the twenty-first century is to bring the effects of public life into relation with the intractable problem of global atmospheric change. Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics explains how we came to think of the climate as something abstract and remote rather than a force that actively shapes our existence. The book argues that this separation between climate and sensibility predates the rise of modern climatology and has deep roots in the era of colonial expansion, when the American tropics were transformed into the economic supplier for Euro-American empires. The book shows how the writings of American travellers in the Caribbean registered and pushed forward this new understanding of the climate in a pivotal period in modern history, roughly between 1770 and 1860, which was fraught with debates over slavery, environmental destruction, and colonialism. Offering novel readings of authors including J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Leonora Sansay, William Cullen Bryant, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James McCune Smith in light of their engagements with the American tropics, this book shows that these authors drew on a climatic epistemology that fused science and sentiment in ways that citizen science is aspiring to do today. By suggesting a new genealogy of modern climate thinking, Climate and the Picturesque in the American Tropics thus highlights the urgency of revisiting received ideas of tropicality deeply ingrained in American culture that continue to inform current debates on climate debt and justice.

Throughout the world people are concerned about the demise of tropical forests and their wildlife. Hunting by forest-dwelling people has a dramatic effect on wildlife in many tropical forests, frequently driving species to local extinction, with devastating implications for other species and the health of the forests themselves. But wildlife is an important source of protein and cash for rural peoples. Can hunting be managed to conserve biological communities while meeting human needs? Are hunting rates as practiced by tropical forest peoples sustainable? If not, what are the biological, social, and cultural implications of this failure? Answering these questions is ever more important as national and international agencies seek to integrate the development of local peoples with the conservation of tropical forest systems and species.

This book presents a wide array of studies that examine the sustainability of hunting as practiced by rural peoples. Comprising work by both biological and social scientists, "Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests" provides a balanced viewpoint on the ecological and human aspects of this hunting. The first section examines the effects of hunting on wildlife in tropical forests throughout the world. The next section looks at the importance of hunting to local communities. The third section looks at institutional challenges of resource management, while the fourth draws on economic perspectives to understand both hunting and sustainability. A final section provides synthesis and summary of the factors that influence sustainability and the implications for management.

Drawing on examples from Ecuador to Congo-Zaire to Sulawesi, "Hunting for Sustainability in Tropical Forests" will be a valuable resource to policymakers, conservation organizations, and students and scholars of biology, ecology, and anthropology.

Social work is the profession that claims to intervene to enhance people's well-being. However, social workers have played a low-key role in environmental issues that increasingly impact on people's well-being, both locally and globally.

This compelling new contribution confronts this topic head-on, examining environmental issues from a social work perspective. Lena Dominelli draws attention to the important voice of practitioners working on the ground in the aftermath of environmental disasters, whether these are caused by climate change, industrial accidents or human conflict. The author explores the concept of 'green social work' and its role in using environmental crises to address poverty and other forms of structural inequalities, to obtain more equitable allocations of limited natural resources and to tackle global socio-political forces that have a damaging impact upon the quality of life of poor and marginalized populations at local levels. The resolution of these matters is linked to community initiatives that social workers can engage in to ensure that the quality of life of poor people can be enhanced without costing the Earth.

This important book will appeal to those in the fields of social work, social policy, sociology and human geography. It powerfully reveals how environmental issues are an integral part of social work's remit if it is to retain its currency in the modern world and emphasize its relevance to the social issues that societies have to resolve in the twenty-first century.

On April 26, 1986, Unit Four of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor exploded in then Soviet Ukraine. More than 3.5 million people in Ukraine alone, not to mention many citizens of surrounding countries, are still suffering the effects. "Life Exposed" is the first book to comprehensively examine the vexed political, scientific, and social circumstances that followed the disaster. Tracing the story from an initial lack of disclosure to post-Soviet democratizing attempts to compensate sufferers, Adriana Petryna uses anthropological tools to take us into a world whose social realities are far more immediate and stark than those described by policymakers and scientists. She asks: What happens to politics when state officials fail to inform their fellow citizens of real threats to life? What are the moral and political consequences of remedies available in the wake of technological disasters?

Through extensive research in state institutions, clinics, laboratories, and with affected families and workers of the so-called Zone, Petryna illustrates how the event and its aftermath have not only shaped the course of an independent nation but have made health a negotiated realm of entitlement. She tracks the emergence of a "biological citizenship" in which assaults on health become the coinage through which sufferers stake claims for biomedical resources, social equity, and human rights. "Life Exposed" provides an anthropological framework for understanding the politics of emergent democracies, the nature of citizenship claims, and everyday forms of survival as they are interwoven with the profound changes that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Hailed as "one of the most eminent environmental historians of the West" by Alan Brinkley in The New York Times Book Review, Donald Worster has been a leader in reshaping the study of American history. Winner of the prestigious Bancroft Prize for his book Dust Bowl, Worster has helped bring humanity's interaction with nature to the forefront of historical thinking. Now, in The Wealth of Nature, he offers a series of thoughtful, eloquent essays which lay out his views on environmental history, tying the study of the past to today's agenda for change.
The Wealth of Nature captures the fruit of what Worster calls "my own intellectual turning to the land." History, he writes, represents a dialogue between humanity and nature--though it is usually reported as if it were simple dictation. Worster takes as his point of departure the approach expressed early on by Aldo Leopold, who stresses the importance of nature in determining human history; Leopold pointed out that the spread of bluegrass in Kentucky, for instance, created new pastures and fed the rush of American settlers across the Appalachians, which affected the contest between Britain, France, and the U.S. for control of the area. Worster's own work offers an even more subtly textured understanding, noting in this example, for instance, that bluegrass itself was an import from the Old World which supplanted native vegetation--a form of "environmental imperialism." He ranges across such areas as agriculture, water development, and other questions, examining them as environmental issues, showing how they have affected--and continue to affect--human settlement. Environmental history, he argues, is not simply the history of rural and wilderness areas; cities clearly have a tremendous impact on the land, on which they depend for their existence. He argues for a comprehensive approach to understanding our past as well as our present in environmental terms.
"Nostalgia runs all through this society," Worster writes, "fortunately, for it may be our only hope of salvation." These reflective and engaging essays capture the fascination of environmental history--and the beauty of nature lost or endangered--underscoring the importance of intelligent action in the present.

Does climate change cause conflict? Did it cause the Syrian uprising? Some policymakers and academics have made this claim, but is it true? This study presents a new conceptual framework to evaluate this claim. Contributing to scholarship in the fields of critical security, environmental security, human security, and Arab politics, Marwa Daoudy prioritizes non-Western and marginalized perspectives to make sense of Syria's place in this international debate. Designing an innovative multidisciplinary framework and applying it to the Syrian case, Daoudy uses extensive field research and her own personal background as a Syrian scholar to present primary interviews with Syrian government officials and citizens, as well as the research of domestic Syrian experts, to provide a unique insight into Syria's environmental, economic and social vulnerabilities leading up to the 2011 uprising.