Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas

Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas PDF

Author: Dan Smyer Yü

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-16

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1000397580

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Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas: Symbiotic Indigeneity, Commoning, Sustainability showcases how the eco-geological creativity of the earth is integrally woven into the landforms, cultures, and cosmovisions of modern Himalayan communities. Unique in scope, this book features case studies from Bhutan, Assam, Sikkim, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sino-Indian borderlands, many of which are documented by authors from indigenous Himalayan communities. It explores three environmental characteristics of modern Himalayas: the anthropogenic, the indigenous, and the animist. Focusing on the sentient relations of human-, animal-, and spirit-worlds with the earth in different parts of the Himalayas, the authors present the complex meanings of indigeneity, commoning and sustainability in the Anthropocene. In doing so, they show the vital role that indigenous stories and perspectives play in building new regional and planetary environmental ethics for a sustainable future. Drawing on a wide range of expert contributions from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanist disciplines, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental humanities, religion and ecology, indigenous knowledge and sustainable development more broadly.

Environmental Humanities in India

Environmental Humanities in India PDF

Author: Debajyoti Biswas

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2024-11-06

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789819739325

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This open access book offers an introduction to the field of the environmental humanities in India. The environmental humanities, often referred to as ‘EH’, are a multifaceted, relatively new, and swiftly evolving field of scholarship that integrates the theories and approaches of various disciplines - from anthropology, art, communications, cultural studies, philosophy and ecology to history, literature, media, music, performance, politics, sociology, theology and theater. Practitioners of this considerably integrative and widely ranging field aim to address and, in certain cases, confront today's urgent ecological and cultural challenges, namely climate change, urban sustainability, biodiversity conservation, species decline, energy policy, the exigencies of the Anthropocene, environmental activism, and Indigenous peoples' justice. Although the environmental humanities have been relatively slow to gain traction in South Asia, an increasing momentum towards transdisciplinary approaches to ecology and sustainability is palpable in India. Comprising fourteen chapters, this contributed volume is the first major publication to call attention to current work in the environmental humanities in India. The volume foregrounds particular ecohumanist theories and methodologies evolving from Indian biocultural contexts. Towards this aim, the book consists of four thematic sections: Indigenous Perspectives: Conservation, Spirituality, and Language; Theoretical Grounding: Education, Law, and Ethics; Literary Formulations: Memoir, Parable, and Storyworlds; and Popular Narratives: Myth, Travel, and Music. The volume is of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, early career scholars, and more established researchers in the environmental humanities and the allied fields of ecopoetics, ecocriticism, ecomusicology, environmental art, cultural ecology, postcolonial studies, and South Asian studies. This is an open access book.

Critical Humanities from India

Critical Humanities from India PDF

Author: D. Venkat Rao

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2018-03-09

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1351234927

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The field of humanities generates a discourse that traditionally addressed the questions of what is proper to man, rights of man, crimes against humanity, human creativity and action, human reflection and performance, human utterance and artefact. The university as a philosophical-political institution transmits this humanist account. This European humanistic legacy, which is little more than Christian anthropology, barely received any questioning from cultures that faced colonialism. In such a context, this volume attempts to unravel the ‘barely secularized heritage’ of Europe (Derrida’s phrase) and its fatal consequences in other cultures. The task of Critical Humanities is to explore the ways in which the question of being human (along with non-human others) today from heterogeneous cultural ‘backgrounds’ can be undertaken. The future of the humanities teaching and research is contingent upon the risky task of configuring cultural difference from non-European locations. Such a task is inescapable and urgently needed when tectonic cultural upheavals have begun to show devastating effect on planetary coexistence today. It is precisely in such a context that this collection of essays on critical humanities affirms, ‘without alibi’, the urgency of collective reflection and innovative research across the traditional disciplinary and institutional borders and communication systems on the one hand and Asian, African and European cultural formations on the other. Critical Humanities are at one level little more than communities on the verge (critical) but whose centuries long survival and resilient creations of cultural (and /as natural) habitats are of deeply enduring significance to affirm the biocultural diversities of living that compose the planet. Topical and timely, this book will be useful to scholars, researchers and teachers of cultural theory, literary studies, philosophy, cultural geography, legal studies, sociology, history, performance studies, environmental studies, caste and communalism studies, postcolonial theory, India studies, and education.

The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities

The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities PDF

Author: Ursula K. Heise

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-01-06

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 1317660196

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The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities provides a comprehensive, transnational, and interdisciplinary map to the field, offering a broad overview of its founding principles while providing insight into exciting new directions for future scholarship. Articulating the significance of humanistic perspectives for our collective social engagement with ecological crises, the volume explores the potential of the environmental humanities for organizing humanistic research, opening up new forms of interdisciplinarity, and shaping public debate and policies on environmental issues. Sections cover: The Anthropocene and the Domestication of Earth Posthumanism and Multispecies Communities Inequality and Environmental Justice Decline and Resilience: Environmental Narratives, History, and Memory Environmental Arts, Media, and Technologies The State of the Environmental Humanities The first of its kind, this companion covers essential issues and themes, necessarily crossing disciplines within the humanities and with the social and natural sciences. Exploring how the environmental humanities contribute to policy and action concerning some of the key intellectual, social, and environmental challenges of our times, the chapters offer an ideal guide to this rapidly developing field.

Climate Change and the Humanities

Climate Change and the Humanities PDF

Author: Alexander Elliott

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-01

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1137551240

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This volume of essays fills a lacunae in the current climate change debate by bringing new perspectives on the role of humanities scholars within this debate. The humanities have historically played an important role in the various debates on environment, climate and society. The past two decades especially have seen a resurfacing of these environmental concerns across humanities disciplines in the wake of what has been termed climate change. This book argues that these disciplines should be more confident and vocal in responding to climate change while questioning the way in which the climate change debate is currently being conducted in academic, political and social arenas. Addressing climate change through the varied approaches of the humanities means re-thinking and re-evaluating its fundamental assumptions and responses to perceived crisis through the lens of history, philosophy and literature. The volume aims thus to be a catalyst for emerging scholarship in this field and to appeal to an academic and popular readership.

The Environmental Humanities

The Environmental Humanities PDF

Author: Robert S. Emmett

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-10-13

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0262342308

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A concise overview of this multidisciplinary field, presenting key concepts, central issues, and current research, along with concrete examples and case studies. The emergence of the environmental humanities as an academic discipline early in the twenty-first century reflects the growing conviction that environmental problems cannot be solved by science and technology alone. This book offers a concise overview of this new multidisciplinary field, presenting concepts, issues, current research, concrete examples, and case studies. Robert Emmett and David Nye show how humanists, by offering constructive knowledge as well as negative critique, can improve our understanding of such environmental problems as global warming, species extinction, and over-consumption of the earth's resources. They trace the genealogy of environmental humanities from European, Australian, and American initiatives, also showing its cross-pollination by postcolonial and feminist theories. Emmett and Nye consider a concept of place not synonymous with localism, the risks of ecotourism, and the cultivation of wild areas. They discuss the decoupling of energy use and progress, and point to OECD countries for examples of sustainable development. They explain the potential for science to do both good and harm, examine dark visions of planetary collapse, and describe more positive possibilities—alternative practices, including localization and degrowth. Finally, they examine the theoretical impact of new materialism, feminism, postcolonial criticism, animal studies, and queer ecology on the environmental humanities.

An Environmental History of India

An Environmental History of India PDF

Author: Michael H. Fisher

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1107111625

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This longue durée survey of the Indian subcontinent's environmental history reveals the complex interactions among its people and the natural world.

Ecological Indian

Ecological Indian PDF

Author: Shepard Krech

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9780393321005

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Krech (anthropology, Brown U.) treats such provocative issues as whether the Eden in which Native Americans are viewed as living prior to European contact was a feature of native environmentalism or simply low population density; indigenous use of fire; and the Indian role in near-extinctions of buffalo, deer, and beaver. He concludes that early Indians' culturally-mediated closeness with nature was not always congruent with modern conservation ideas, with implications for views of, and by, contemporary Indians. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Medical-Environmental Humanities

The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Medical-Environmental Humanities PDF

Author: Scott Slovic

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-07-28

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1350197327

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Bringing together two parallel and occasionally intersecting disciplines - the environmental and medical humanities - this field-defining handbook reveals our ecological predicament to be a simultaneous threat to human health. The book: · Represents the first collection to bring the environmental humanities and medical humanities into conversation in a systematic way · Features contributions from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives including literary studies, environmental ethics and philosophy, cultural history and sociology · Adopts a truly global approach, examining contexts including, but not limited to, North America, the UK, Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Turkey and East Asia · Touches on issues and approaches such as narrative medicine, ecoprecarity, toxicity, mental health, and contaminated environments. Showcasing and surveying a rich spectrum of issues and methodologies, this book looks not only at where research currently is at the intersection of these two important fields, but also at where it is going.

Perceptions of Climate Change from North India

Perceptions of Climate Change from North India PDF

Author: Aase J. Kvanneid

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-03-07

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1000359042

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Perceptions of Climate Change from North India: An Ethnographic Account explores local perceptions of climate change through ethnographic encounters with the men and women who live at the front line of climate change in the lower Himalayas. From data collected over the course of a year in a small village in an eco-sensitive zone in North India, this book presents an ethnographic account of local responses to climate change, resource management and indigenous environmental knowledge. Aase Kvanneid’s observations cast light on the precarious reality of climate change in this region and bring to the fore issues such as access to water, NGO intervention and climate information for farmers. In doing so, she also explores classic topics in the study of rural India including ritual, gender, social hierarchy and political economy. Overall, this book shows how the cause and effect of climate change is perceived by those who have the most to lose and explores how the impact of climate change is being dealt with on a local and global scale. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the anthropology of climate change, environmental sociology and rural development.