Sustaining Natures: An Environmental Anthropology Reader (Culture, Place, and Nature)

Sustaining Natures: An Environmental Anthropology Reader (Culture, Place, and Nature)

Highlights new directions in the field and topics of interest to undergraduate students Environmental anthropology is at its best when firmly grounded in respectful and systematic ethnographic research and writing that spotlights uncommon perspectives on widely recognized issues confronting the world. Intentionally crafted for undergraduate course use in anthropology, geography, and environmental studies, Sustaining Natures showcases the best contemporary writing on nature and sustainability. With concise introductions and sample discussion questions, the editors guide readers through some of the field’s most pressing themes and debates, including farming, alternative energy, extractive industries, environmental justice, multispecies relationships, and urban ecology. This timely reader foregrounds diverse voices, views, and experiences of nature, from US corporate boardrooms to urban waste disposal sites in China, and moves environmental anthropology in new theoretical, methodological, and applied terrains. "Uniquely timely and reflective of the importance of anthropological ways of understanding the complex challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, environmental inequities, and environmental justice. It brings all of these into situated and contextual focus, opening powerful insights for students and professors alike."―Anne Rademacher, author of Building Green: Environmental Architects and the Struggle for Sustainability in Mumbai "The introductory chapter is a tour de force and the section introductions are gems―lucid and beautifully written, they summarize the key issues animating each theme."―Andrew S. Mathews, author of Trees Are Shape Shifters: How Cultivation, Climate Change, and Disaster Create Landscapes "This remarkable book brings together some of the most exciting environmental thinkers working in anthropology today. The essays are beautifully written, grounded in compelling empirical materials, and push our field forward conceptually and theoretically."―Paige West, author of Dispossession and the Environment: Rhetoric and Inequality in Papua New Guinea "What a welcome volume! The environment is always a tangle of difference: bodies and things, meaning and power, people and non-people. With scholarship from around the world, these deeply researched cases drive this all home with energy, poignancy, and a terrific richness of story and detail. These are anthropologies of things that matter: sand, coal ash, goats, insects, and all of us."―Paul Robbins, author of Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction "This volume is further proof that the genre of the anthology, often declared dead since the spread of the copier, continues to live on."― Anthropos Highlights new directions in the field and topics of interest to undergraduate students Sarah R. Osterhoudt is associate professor of anthropology at Indiana University and author of Vanilla Landscapes: Meaning, Memory, and the Cultivation of Place in Madagascar . K. Sivaramakrishnan is Dinakar Singh Professor of Anthropology, professor in the School of the Environment, and codirector of the program in agrarian studies at Yale University. His most recent books include Nature Conservation in the New Economy: People, Wildlife and the Law in India (edited with Ghazala Shahabuddin). Contributors: Vanessa Agard-Jones, Shaila Seshia Galvin, Radhika Govindrajan, Hi'ilei Julia Hobart, Cindy Isenhour, Myles Lennon, Dáilan J. Long, Dana E. Powell, John Charles Ryan, Sarah E. Vaughn, and Amy Zhang