The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society

Front Cover
Jules Pretty, Andy Ball, Ted Benton, Julia Guivant, David R Lee, David Orr, Max Pfeffer, Professor Hugh Ward
SAGE, 2007 M10 30 - 640 pages
"A monumental and timely contribution to scholarship on society and environments. The handbook makes it easy and compelling for anyone to learn about that scholarship in its full manifestations and as represented by some of the most highly respected researchers and thinkers in the English-speaking world. It is wide-reaching in scope and far-reaching in its implications for public and private action, a definite must for serious researchers and their libraries."
- Bonnie J McCay, Rutgers University

"This is the desert island book for anyone interested in the relationship between society and the environment. The editors have assembled a masterful collection of contributions on every conceivable dimension of environmental thinking in the social sciences and humanities. No library should be without it!′
- Robyn Eckersley, University of Melbourne

The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society focuses on the interactions between people, societies and economies, and the state of nature and the environment. Editorially integrated but written from multi-disciplinary perspectives, it is organised in seven sections:

  • Environmental thought: past and present
  • Valuing the environment
  • Knowledges and knowing
  • Political economy of environmental change
  • Environmental technologies
  • Redesigning natures
  • Institutions and policies for influencing the environment

Key themes include: locations where the environment-society relation is most acute: where, for example, there are few natural resources or where industrialization is unregulated; the discussion of these issues at different scales: local, regional, national, and global; the cost of damage to resources; and the relation between principal actors in the environment-society nexus.

Aimed at an international audience of academics, research students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers, The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society presents readers in social science and natural science with a manual of the past, present and future of environment-society links.

From inside the book

Contents

22 Faces of the Sustainability Transition
325
Opportunity or Contradiction?
336
SECTION V Environmental Technologies
351
24 The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change
353
25 Healthy Environments
362
History of Actions and Effectiveness of Change
374
27 Terrestrial Environments Soils and Bioremediation
385
28 Regenerating Aquaculture Enhancing Aquatic Resources Management Livelihoods and Conservation
395

Prometheans Contrarians and Beyond
124
SECTION II Valuing the Environment
143
9 Fundamental Economic Questions for Choosing Environmental Management Instruments
145
10 Valuing Preferences Regarding Environmental Change
155
11 Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services
172
A Developing Country Perspective
181
13 Water Policy Economics and the EU Water Framework Directive
191
SECTION III Knowledges and Knowing
207
14 Ecological Design and Education
209
15 Knowing Systems and the Environment
224
16 Volunteer Environmental Monitoring Knowledge Creation and CitizenScientist Interaction
235
17 Environmental Ethics
250
18 Biocultural Diversity and Sustainability
267
SECTION IV Political Economy of Environmental Change
279
19 Representative Democracy and Environmental Problem Solution
281
Science and Interests
299
21 Protest Movements Environmental Activism and Environmentalism in the United Kingdom
314
Sustainability at the Consumption Junction
411
SECTION VI Redesigning Natures
429
An Evolving Paradigm
431
31 Environment and Human Security
442
32 Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems
457
33 Animals and Society
471
34 Social Change and Conservation
485
35 Coral Reefs and People
500
SECTION VII Institutions and Policies for Influencing the Environment
517
36 The Role of Science and Scientists in Environmental Policy
519
37 Interdependent SocialEcological Systems and Adaptive Governance for Ecosystem Services
536
Current Challenges and Opportunities in CommunityBased Natural Resources and Protected Areas Management
553
Learning from Studies in Nepal
578
40 The Precautionary Principle in Environmental Policies
590
41 Environmental Risks and Public Perceptions
601
Index
613
Copyright

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Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 98 - The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
Page 40 - Spirit of Nature ! here ! In this interminable wilderness Of worlds, at whose immensity Even soaring fancy staggers, Here is thy fitting temple. Yet not the lightest leaf That quivers to the passing breeze Is less instinct with thee : Yet not the meanest worm That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead Less shares thy eternal breath. Spirit of Nature ! thou ! Imperishable as this scene, Here is thy fitting temple.
Page 9 - Thousands of tired nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
Page 78 - A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.
Page 98 - The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.
Page 286 - Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives. 2. Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country. 3. The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government...
Page 43 - If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in pain, disease, death, suffering and famine — our slaves in the most laborious works, our companions in our amusements — they may partake [of?] our origin in one common ancestor — we may be all melted together.
Page 100 - cheapening of production", as it was called, everything was sacrificed: the happiness of the workman at his work, nay, his most elementary comfort and bare health, his food, his clothes, his dwelling, his leisure, his amusement, his education - his life, in short - did not weigh a grain of sand in the balance against this dire necessity of "cheap production" of things, a great part of which were not worth producing at all.

About the author (2007)

Andys research if focused on the response, in terms of activity and diversity of the microbial community to environmental perturbations. One of his major interests is teh bioremediation of contaminated land and water, using both laboratory and field based research to examine the potential role of microbial communities in the treatment of waste oils and also in the factors limiting the breakdown of contaminants in contaminated sites.

MAX J. PFEFFER is International Professor of Development Sociology and Senior Associate Dean of the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. His teaching concentrates on environmental sociology and sociological theory. His research spans several areas including rural labor markets, international migration, land use and environmental planning. The work has focused on a variety of rural and urban communities, including rural/urban fringe areas. Research sites include rural New York and Central America. He has been awarded competitive grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Agriculture′s National Research Initiative and its Fund for Rural America, and the Social Science Research Council. Pfeffer has published a wide range of scholarly articles and has written/co-edited four books. He recently published (with John Schelhas) Saving Forests, Protecting People? Environmental Conservation in Central America. Max has served on and led National Research Council committees of the Water Science and Technology Board. Max has served as Chair of the Development Sociology Department, and the Associate Director of both the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station and the Cornell University Center for the Environment.

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