China's Environmental Challenges

China's Environmental Challenges PDF

Author: Judith Shapiro

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-01-19

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0745698670

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China's huge environmental challenges are significant for us all. They affect not only the health and well-being of China but the very future of the planet. In the second edition of this acclaimed, trailblazing book, noted China specialist and environmentalist Judith Shapiro investigates China's struggle to achieve sustainable development against a backdrop of acute rural poverty and soaring middle class consumption. Using five core analytical concepts to explore the complexities of this struggle - the implications of globalization, the challenges of governance; contested national identity, the evolution of civil society, and problems of environmental justice and displacement of environmental harm - Shapiro poses a number of pressing questions: Can the Chinese people equitably achieve the higher living standards enjoyed in the developed world? Are China's environmental problems so severe that they may shake the government's stability, legitimacy and control? To what extent are China's environmental problems due to world-wide patterns of consumption? Does China's rise bode ill for the displacement of environmental harm to other parts of the world? And in a world of increasing limits on resources, how can we build a system in which people enjoy equal access to resources without taking them from successive generations, from the vulnerable, or from other species? China and the planet are at a pivotal moment; transformation to a more sustainable development model is still possible. But - as Shapiro persuasively argues - doing so will require humility, creativity, and a rejection of business as usual. The window of opportunity will not be open much longer.

Environmental Winds

Environmental Winds PDF

Author: Michael J. Hathaway

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2013-07-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0520276191

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"This is an ethnography of globalization with particular attention paid to how global environmentalism has been reshaping rural China over the past two decades, and how activities in that country have in turn reshaped global environmentalism itself. The book challenges the notion that globalized social formations emerged solely in the Global North prior to impacting the Global South. Instead, such formations have been constituted, transformed, and propelled through diverse, site specific social interactions that complicate and defy divisions between 'global' and 'local.' The book brings the reader into the lives of Chinese scientists, officials, villagers, and expatriate conservationists who were caught up in environmental trends over the past 25 years. Hathaway reveals how global environmentalism has been enacted and altered in China, often with unanticipated effects, such as the rise of indigenous rights, or the reconfiguration of human/animal relationships, fostering what rural villagers will refer to as "the revenge of wild elephants." Intended audience: Undergrad and grad courses in Chinese Anthropology, Chinese history, Environmental Studies, environmental history, global environment, global studies"--

Anthropology Of China, The: China As Ethnographic And Theoretical Critique

Anthropology Of China, The: China As Ethnographic And Theoretical Critique PDF

Author: Stephan Feuchtwang

Publisher: World Scientific Publishing Company

Published: 2016-07-13

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1783269855

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Putting China into the context of general anthropology offers novel insights into its history, culture and society. Studies in the anthropology of China need to look outwards, to other anthropological areas, while at the same time, anthropologists specialised elsewhere cannot afford to ignore contributions from China. This book introduces a number of key themes and in each case describes how the anthropology and ethnography of China relates to the surrounding theories and issues. The themes chosen include the anthropology of intimacy, of morality, of food and of feasting, as well as the anthropology of civilisation, modernity and the state.The Anthropology of China covers both long historical perspectives and ethnographies of the twenty-first century. For the first time, ethnographic perspectives on China are contextualised in comparison with general anthropological debates. Readers are invited to engage in and rethink China's place within the wider world, making it perfect for professional researchers and teachers of anthropology and Chinese history and society, and for advanced undergraduate and graduate study.

Chinese Environmental Ethics

Chinese Environmental Ethics PDF

Author: Mayfair Yang

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2021-11-08

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 1538156490

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An interdisciplinary collection in the new field of environmental humanities, this volume brings together Chinese environmental ethics, religious ontology, and religious practice to explore how traditional Chinese religio-environmental ethics are actually put into social practice both in China’s past and present. It also examines how Chinese religious teachings offer a wealth of resources to the environmental project of forging new ontologies for humans co-existing with other living beings. Different chapters examine how: Buddhist ontology avoids anthropocentrism, fengshui (Chinese geomancy) can help protect the landscape from economic development, popular religion organizes tree-planting, ancient dream interpretation practices avoided constructing the possessive individual subjectivity of modern consumerism, Buddhist rituals and ethics promoted compassion for animals and modern recycling, Confucian ancestor rituals and tombs have deterred industrial expansion, and also how Daoism’s potential role to deter desertification in northern China was stymied by state operations in contemporary China. A significant advance in the field of Chinese environmental anthropology, the outstanding scholars in this volume provide a unique and much needed contribution to the scholarship on China and the environment.

Discovering Nature

Discovering Nature PDF

Author: Robert P. Weller

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2006-02-16

Total Pages: 9

ISBN-13: 1139450603

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Robert P. Weller's richly documented account describes the extraordinary transformations which have taken place in Chinese and Taiwanese responses to the environment across the twentieth century. Indeed, both places can be said to have 'discovered' a new concept of nature. The book focuses on nature tourism, anti-pollution movements, and policy implementation to show how the global spread of western ideas about nature has interacted with Chinese traditions. Inevitably differences of understanding across groups have caused problems in administering environmental reforms. They will have to be resolved if the dynamic transformations of the 1980s are to be maintained in the twenty-first century. In spite of a century of independent political development, a comparison between China and Taiwan reveals surprising similarities, showing how globalization and shared cultural traditions have outweighed political differences in shaping their environments. The book will appeal to a broad readership from scholars of Asia, to environmentalists, and anthropologists.

Continent in Dust

Continent in Dust PDF

Author: Jerry C. Zee

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0520384091

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Apparatus A : nightwind -- Introduction : earthly interphases -- Apparatus B : the wind tunnel -- Machine sky -- Apparatus C : a sheet of loose sand -- Groundwork -- Apparatus D : five thousand years -- Holding patterns -- Particulate exposures -- Apparatus E : wildfires -- City of chambers -- Apparatus F : a sinocene -- Downwinds -- Apparatus G : monsters.

Fieldwork Connections

Fieldwork Connections PDF

Author: Ayi Bamo

Publisher: University of Washington Press

Published: 2011-11-15

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0295804068

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Fieldwork Connections tells the story of the intertwined research histories of three anthropologists working in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China in the late twentieth century. Chapters are written alternately by a male American anthropologist, a male researcher raised in a village in Liangshan, and a highly educated woman from an elite Nuosu/Chinese family. As decades of mutual ethnographic research unfold, the authors enter one another's narratives and challenge the reader to ponder the nature of ethnographic �truth.� The book begins with short accounts of the process by which each of the authors became involved in anthropological field research. It then proceeds to describe the research itself, and the stories begin to connect as they become active collaborators. The scene shifts in the course of the narrative from China to America, and the relationship between the authors shifts from distant, wary, and somewhat hierarchical to close, egalitarian, and reciprocal. The authors share their histories through personal stories, not technical analyses; their aim is to entertain while addressing the process of ethnography and the dynamics of international and intercultural communication.