New Directions in Anthropology and Environment: Intersections / Edition 1

by Carole L. Crumley, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Luisa Maffi, Willett Kempton, Don D. Fowler and Donald L. Hardesty, Michael R. Dove, Thomas L. Leatherman, Barbara Rose Johnston, J Peter Brosius, Leslie Sponsel, Kathryn R. Winthrop, Alice E. Ingerson, Bonnie J. McCay, Eric C. Poncelet

Overview

Carole L. Crumley has brought together top scholars from across anthropology in a benchmark volume that displays the range of exciting new work on the complex relationship between humans and the environment. Continually pursuing anthropology's persistent claim that both the physical and the mental world matter, these environmental scholars proceed from the holistic assumption that the physical world and human societies are always inextricably linked. As they incorporate diverse forms of knowledge, their work reaches beyond anthropology to bridge the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, and to forge working relationships with non-academic communities and professionals. Theoretical issues such as the cultural dimensions of context, knowledge, and power are articulated alongside practical discussions of building partnerships, research methods and ethics, and strategies for implementing policy. New Directions in Environment and Anthropology will be important for all scholars and non-academics interested in the relation between our species and its biotic and built environments. It is also designed for classroom use in and beyond anthropology, and students will be greatly assisted by suggested reading lists for their further exploration of general concepts and specific research. Learn more about the author at the University of North Carolina Anthropology Department web pages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780742502659
Publisher:	AltaMira Press
Publication date:	03/28/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.03(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.82(d)

About the Author

Carole L. Crumley is professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a member of the Executive Board of the Carolina Environmental Program. She is secretary of the American Anthropological Association, and past president and founding member of the AAA Anthropology and Environment Section.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part One: Defining Environment and Interpreting Nature
Chapter 1: Nature in the Making
Chapter 2: Linking Language and the Environment: A Coevolutionary Perspective
Chapter 3: Cognitive Anthropology and the Environment
Chapter 4: Archaeology and Environmental Change
Chapter 5: Interdisciplinary Borrowing in Environmental Anthropology, and the Critique of Modern Science
Part Two: Beliefs, Values and Environmental Justice
Chapter 6: Political Ecology and Constructions of Environment in Biological Anthropology
Chapter 7: Anthropology and Environmental Justice: Analysts, Activists, Mediators, and Trouble Makers
Chapter 8: The Politics of Ethnographic Presence: Sites and Topologies in the Study of Transnational Movements
Chapter 9: Do Anthropologists Need Religion and Vice Versa: Adventures and Dangers in Spiritual Ecology
Part Three: Application and Engagement
Chapter 10: Historical Ecology: Landscapes of Change in the Pacific Northwest
Chapter 11: Getting the Dirt Out: An Anthropological Approach to the Culture and Political Economy of Urban Land in the United States
Chapter 12: Environmental Anthropology at Sea
Chapter 13: The Discourse of Environmental Partnerships

What People are Saying About This

Emilio Moran

The papers in this volume offer a rich and varied menu sure to delight young scholars seeking to engage environmental issues through an anthropological prism. From approaches to the construction of nature to the emergence of a spiritual ecology, engagement with environmentalism, historical ecology, and political ecology readers will find much food for thought in these pages.
— Emilio Moran

Editorial Reviews

As review articles, all the essays are informative and potentially useful, pointing the way towards work that could be followed up in more detail. In this sense, they serve their purpose as introductions to environmental anthropology and its various subfields. In particular, Tsing's analysis of the relations among environmental history, science studies, political ecology, and cultural anthropology in the creation of particular strands of interdisciplinary scholarship is insightful, especially when paired with Dove's demonstration of and reflections on interdisciplinary borrowing in ecological anthropology.... [This book] highlights some important developments in the field, and it forcefully advocates anthropology's engagement in environmental discourse. Some chapters, those of Sponsel, Dove, and Ingerson, in particular, will become central to my course reading lists, while some others might be recommended as useful illustrations.

Current Anthropology - Kay Milton

The papers in this volume offer a rich and varied menu sure to delight young scholars seeking to engage environmental issues through an anthropological prism. From approaches to the construction of nature to the emergence of a spiritual ecology, engagement with environmentalism, historical ecology, and political ecology readers will find much food for thought in these pages.

Emilio Moran

As review articles, all the essays are informative and potentially useful, pointing the way towards work that could be followed up in more detail. In this sense, they serve their purpose as introductions to environmental anthropology and its various subfields. In particular, Tsing's analysis of the relations among environmental history, science studies, political ecology, and cultural anthropology in the creation of particular strands of interdisciplinary scholarship is insightful, especially when paired with Dove's demonstration of and reflections on interdisciplinary borrowing in ecological anthropology.... [This book] highlights some important developments in the field, and it forcefully advocates anthropology's engagement in environmental discourse. Some chapters, those of Sponsel, Dove, and Ingerson, in particular, will become central to my course reading lists, while some others might be recommended as useful illustrations.
— Kay Milton, (Queen's University, Belfast)

Current Anthropology

The writings of the founders of the anthropology and environment section of the American anthropological association in 1996, and some of their colleagues, are here presented in a reader intended for the undergraduate classroom. The papers address how the several fields of anthropology have approached the study of the environment, the new approaches now being explored, the ethical and spiritual dimensions of the environment, and the policy arenas where anthropologists have become involved. Crumley teaches anthropology at the U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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