Culture and the Changing Environment

Uncertainty, Cognition, and Risk Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective
1. Auflage 2008
ISBN: 978-1-57181-478-4
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 410 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 778 g

Today human ecology has split into many different sub-disciplines such as historical ecology, political ecology or the New Ecological Anthropology. The latter in particular has criticised the predominance of the Western view on different ecosystems, arguing that culture-specific world views and human-environment interactions have been largely neglected. However, these different perspectives only tackle specific facets of a local and global hyper-complex reality. In bringing together a variety of views and theoretical approaches, these especially commissioned essays prove that an interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding of the extreme complexity of the human-environment interface(s) is possible.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Casimir, Michael J.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geowissenschaften Umweltwissenschaften Umweltschutz, Umwelterhaltung
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften, Biologie: Sachbuch, Naturführer

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Maps, Figures and Tables

Preface

The Mutual Dynamics of Cultural and Environmental Change: An Introductory Essay

Michael J. Casimir

PART I: EVALUATING, ATTRIBUTING AND DECIDING

Chapter 1. Antinomies of Environmental Risk Perception: Cognitive Structure and Evaluation

Gisela Böhm and Hans-Rüdiger Pfister

Chapter 2. Risk Management and Morality in Agriculture: Conventional and Organic Farming in a German Region

Thomas Döring, Lutz H. Eckensberger, Annette Huppert and Heiko Breit

Chapter 3. Attributed Causes of Environmental Problems: A Cross-Cultural Study of Coping Strategies

Josef Nerb, Andrea Bender and Hans Spada

Chapter 4. Decision-Making in Times of Disaster: The Acceptance of Wet-Rice Cultivation among the Aeta of Zambales, Philippines

Stefan Seitz

Chapter 5. Drought and ‘Natural’ Stress in the Southern Dra Valley: Varying Perceptions among Nomads and Farmers

Barbara Casciarri

Chapter 6. Local Environmental Crises and Global Sea-Level Rise: The Case of Coastal Zones in Senegal

Anita Engels

Chapter 7. Meshing a Tight Net: A Cultural Response to the Threat of Open Access Fishing Grounds

Andrea Bender

PART II: KNOWLEDGE, MEANING AND DISCOURSE

Chapter 8. Dangers, Experience and Luck: Living with Uncertainty in the Andes

Barbara Göbel

Chapter 9. Transforming Livelihoods: Meanings and Concepts of Drought, Coping and Risk Management in Botswana

Fred Krüger and Andrea Grotzke

Chapter 10. Cultural Politics of Natural Disasters: Discourses on Volcanic Eruptions in Indonesia

Judith Schlehe

Chapter 11. Knowing the Sea in the ‘Time of Progress’: Environmental Change, Parallel Knowledges and the Uses of Metaphor in Kerala (South India)

Götz Hoeppe

Chapter 12. Mass Tourism and Ecological Problems in Seaside Resorts of Southern Thailand: Environmental Perceptions, Assessments and Behaviour Regarding the Problem of Waste

Karl Vorlaufer, Heike Becker-Baumann and Gabriela Schmitt

Chapter 13. Local Experts – Expert Locals: A Comparative Perspective on Biodiversity and Environmental Knowledge Systems in Australia and Namibia

Thomas Widlok

Notes on Contributors

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Casimir, Michael J.
Michael J. Casimir is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. He has conducted prolonged fieldwork on the ecology, economy, environmental management and nutritional and socialisation patterns among pastoral nomads in west Afghanistan and Kashmir. Together with Aparna Rao he was chairperson of the Commission on Nomadic Peoples of the International Union of Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences (1995–1998), and was until 2004 one of the editors of Nomadic Peoples (Berghahn), the official journal of the Commission. His major publications include Flocks and Food. A Biocultural Approach to the Study of Pastoral Foodways (1991); Mobility and Territoriality (ed. 1992); Nomadism in South Asia (ed. 2003).