Anthropologists have acted as experts and educators on the nature and ways of life of people worldwide, working to understand the human condition in broad comparative perspective. As a discipline, anthropology has often advocated - and even defended - the cultural integrity, authenticity, and autonomy of societies across the globe. Public anthropology today carries out the discipline's original purpose, grounding theories in lived experience and placing empirical knowledge in deeper historical and comparative frameworks. This is a vitally important kind of anthropology that has the goal of improving the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education, and political action.

The concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic, and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically. Sustainable development cannot be understood apart from a community, its ethos, and ways of life. Although broadly conceived, the pursuit of sustainable development is a local practice because every community has different needs and quality of life concerns. Within this framework, contributors representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, law, public policy, architecture, and urban studies explore sustainability in communities in the Pacific, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America. Contributors: Janet E. Benson, Karla Caser, Snjezana Colic, Angela Ferreira, Johanna Gibson, Krista Harper, Paulo Lana, Barbara Yablon Maida, Carl A. Maida, Kenneth A. Meter, Dario Novellino, Deborah Pellow, Claude Raynaut, Thomas F. Thornton, Richard Westra, Magda Zanoni

The concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic, and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically. Sustainable development cannot be understood apart from a community, its ethos, and ways of life. Although broadly conceived, the pursuit of sustainable development is a local practice because every community has different needs and quality of life concerns. Within this framework, contributors representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, law, public policy, architecture, and urban studies explore sustainability in communities in the Pacific, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America. Contributors: Janet E. Benson, Karla Caser, Snjezana Colic, Angela Ferreira, Johanna Gibson, Krista Harper, Paulo Lana, Barbara Yablon Maida, Carl A. Maida, Kenneth A. Meter, Dario Novellino, Deborah Pellow, Claude Raynaut, Thomas F. Thornton, Richard Westra, Magda Zanoni

Collaboration between experts and the public is vital for effective community engagement aimed at improving the lives of the most vulnerable in society, whether at the local or global level. Using case-based and theoretical chapters that examine rural and urban communities of practice, this volume illustrates how participatory researchers and students, as well as policy and community leaders, find ways to engage with the broader public when it comes to global sustainability research and practice.

Anthropologists have acted as experts and educators on the nature and ways of life of people worldwide, working to understand the human condition in broad comparative perspective. As a discipline, anthropology has often advocated - and even defended - the cultural integrity, authenticity, and autonomy of societies across the globe. Public anthropology today carries out the discipline's original purpose, grounding theories in lived experience and placing empirical knowledge in deeper historical and comparative frameworks. This is a vitally important kind of anthropology that has the goal of improving the modern human condition by actively engaging with people to make changes through research, education, and political action.

Common Worlds: Paths Toward Sustainable Urbanism explores expert and lay approaches to sustainable urbanism, focusing on the politics and civic aesthetics of space and place; project-based learning and it consequences for the life chances of youth; and the prospect of intergenerational civic engagement. Extended case studies of sustainable urbanism describe areas undergoing demographic and socioeconomic change over the two decades since the end of the Cold War. The case studies, based upon participatory action research, are framed through the lens of transformational anthropology, which focuses on the structural factors and power relationships that contribute to social and economic disparities within a population. This approach is based upon principles of personal and group transformation, and it holds researchers responsible for collaborating with communities and groups in co-constructing research, thereby enhancing the constituents' ability to carry out subsequent transformational change studies rooted in and shaped by the local community. Each case also focuses on a movement in support of aesthetic improvement, including preservation, conservation, and restoration efforts on behalf of parkland, open space, agricultural land, and marine wetlands in the face of external threats to their sustainability.

By working with underserved communities, anthropologists may play a larger role in democratizing society. The growth of disparities challenges anthropology to be used for social justice. This engaged stance moves the application of anthropological theory, methods, and practice toward action and activism. However, this engagement also moves anthropologists away from traditional roles of observation toward participatory roles that become increasingly involved with those communities or social groupings being studied. The chapters in this book suggest the roles anthropologists are able to play to bring us closer to a public anthropology characterized as engagement.

Sam Beck is Senior Lecturer in the College of Human Ecology and Director of the Urban Semester Program of Cornell University. His publications include "Ethnicity and Nationalism in Southeastern Europe" (1981, ed with John W. Cole) and "Manny Almeida's Ringside Lounge: The Cape Verdean Struggle for their Neighborhood" (1992).

Carl A. Maida is Professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of California, Los Angeles. His publications include "Sustainability and Communities of Place" (2007), "Pathways through Crisis: Urban Risk and Public Culture" (2008), "Children and Disasters" (1999), and "The Crisis of Competence: Transitional Stress and the Displaced Worker" (1990).

When densely populated urban areas face severe crises-natural disasters, epidemics, sudden unemployment, massive immigration-they often find that established mechanisms cannot respond adequately to the problems. Carl Maida argues that solutions to these problems tend to be developed within the affected communities themselves. In Pathways through Crisis, he draws on his two decades of work in ethnography and with crisis centers in the Los Angeles area to study the kinds of informal organizations that arise at the grass-roots level in order to deal with severe crises. This ground-breaking examination of responses to urban disaster suggests how both informal and formal organizations can be developed to serve people under extreme duress.

When disaster strikes, survivors suddenly find themselves in a world that has become confusing and unfamiliar. Such traumatic events impose severe psychological strain on every member of a community, but children are a particularly vulnerable group requiring special attention. Children and Disasters addresses the needs of this specific population by examining the impact of major disasters on the mental health and emotional functioning of children. The programs described in this book are designed to provide early intervention to children and families undergoing stress reactions to a catastrophic event. The authors offer interventions aimed at enhancing the skills of mental health professionals, educators, and peer counselors in responding to the intensified demands of disasters. These intervention approaches provide information regarding the event itself, reinforce the legitimacy of the anxieties and fears that children and their families are experiencing, and encourage the expression of feelings in group and individual settings (for the younger child, through drawing and play). Furthermore, they build on the coping capacity of individuals and theirs families and provide concrete coping skills and techniques to alleviate stress reactions. The intervention model can be applied to programs for individual children and their families, multi-family groups, and groups for children in mental health, educational, and community settings. The practical "hands-on" approach to program design makes this book an attractive resource for mental health professionals, social workers, rehabilitation specialists, professional and volunteer counselors, and suicide intervention workers. It will also be useful for school personnel, including teachers, school counselors, and administrators, as well as federal and state emergency planners and coordinators.

Collaboration between experts and the public is vital for effective community engagement aimed at improving the lives of the most vulnerable in society, whether at the local or global level. Using case-based and theoretical chapters that examine rural and urban communities of practice, this volume illustrates how participatory researchers and students, as well as policy and community leaders, find ways to engage with the broader public when it comes to global sustainability research and practice.

Common Worlds: Paths Toward Sustainable Urbanism explores expert and lay approaches to sustainable urbanism, focusing on the politics and civic aesthetics of space and place; project-based learning and it consequences for the life chances of youth; and the prospect of intergenerational civic engagement. Extended case studies of sustainable urbanism describe areas undergoing demographic and socioeconomic change over the two decades since the end of the Cold War. The case studies, based upon participatory action research, are framed through the lens of transformational anthropology, which focuses on the structural factors and power relationships that contribute to social and economic disparities within a population. This approach is based upon principles of personal and group transformation, and it holds researchers responsible for collaborating with communities and groups in co-constructing research, thereby enhancing the constituents' ability to carry out subsequent transformational change studies rooted in and shaped by the local community. Each case also focuses on a movement in support of aesthetic improvement, including preservation, conservation, and restoration efforts on behalf of parkland, open space, agricultural land, and marine wetlands in the face of external threats to their sustainability.

When disaster strikes, survivors suddenly find themselves in a world that has become confusing and unfamiliar. Such traumatic events impose severe psychological strain on every member of a community, but children are a particularly vulnerable group requiring special attention. Children and Disasters addresses the needs of this specific population by examining the impact of major disasters on the mental health and emotional functioning of children. The programs described in this book are designed to provide early intervention to children and families undergoing stress reactions to a catastrophic event. The authors offer interventions aimed at enhancing the skills of mental health professionals, educators, and peer counselors in responding to the intensified demands of disasters. These intervention approaches provide information regarding the event itself, reinforce the legitimacy of the anxieties and fears that children and their families are experiencing, and encourage the expression of feelings in group and individual settings (for the younger child, through drawing and play). Furthermore, they build on the coping capacity of individuals and theirs families and provide concrete coping skills and techniques to alleviate stress reactions. The intervention model can be applied to programs for individual children and their families, multi-family groups, and groups for children in mental health, educational, and community settings. The practical "hands-on" approach to program design makes this book an attractive resource for mental health professionals, social workers, rehabilitation specialists, professional and volunteer counselors, and suicide intervention workers. It will also be useful for school personnel, including teachers, school counselors, and administrators, as well as federal and state emergency planners and coordinators.

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