The Agrarian Vision Sustainability And Environmental Ethics Culture Of The Land
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| Author | : Paul Thompson |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 338 |
| Release | : 2010-07-30 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 0813173817 |
As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the earth’s ability to provide for its inhabitants grows increasingly precarious as we attempt to achieve sustainable development. In The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics, Paul B. Thompson articulates a new agrarian philosophy, emphasizing the vital role of agrarianism in modern agricultural practices. Thompson, a highly regarded voice in environmental philosophy, unites concepts of agrarian philosophy, political theory, and environmental ethics to illustrate the importance of creating and maintaining environmentally conscious communities. Thompson describes the evolution of agrarian values in America, following the path blazed by Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck, and Wendell Berry. Providing a pragmatic approach to ecological responsibility and commitment, The Agrarian Vision is a significant, compelling argument for the practice of a reconfigured and expanded agrarianism in our efforts to support modern industrialized culture while also preserving the natural world.
| Author | : Paul B. Thompson |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : |
| ISBN | : 9780813135557 |
| Author | : Eric T. Freyfogle |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 192 |
| Release | : 2007-03-02 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 081313823X |
Every society expresses its fundamental values and hopes in the ways it inhabits its landscapes. In this literate and wide-ranging exploration, Eric T. Freyfogle raises difficult questions about America's core values while illuminating the social origins of urban sprawl, dwindling wildlife habitats, and over-engineered rivers. These and other land-use crises, he contends, arise mostly because of cultural attitudes that made sense on the American frontier but now threaten the land's ecological fabric. To support and sustain healthy communities, profound adjustments will be required. Freyfogle's search leads him down unusual paths. He probes Charles Frazier's novel Cold Mountain for insights on the healing power of nature and tests the wisdom in Wendell Berry's fiction. He challenges journalists writing about environmental issues to get beyond well-worn rhetoric and explain the true choices that Americans face. In an imaginary job advertisement, he issues a call for a national environmental leader, identifying the skills and knowledge required, taking note of cultural obstacles, and looking critically at supposed allies. Examining recent federal elections, he largely blames the conservation cause and its inattention to cultural issues for the diminished status of the environment as a decisive issue. Agrarianism and the Good Society identifies the social, historical, political, and cultural obstacles to humans' harmony with nature and advocates a new orientation, one that begins with healthy land and that better reflects our utter dependence on it. In all, Agrarianism and the Good Society offers a critical yet hopeful guide for cultural change, essential for anyone interested in the benefits and creative possibilities of responsible land use.
| Author | : Paul B. Thompson |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 393 |
| Release | : 2017-05-25 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1317196864 |
In this second edition of The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics, Paul B. Thompson reviews four worldviews that shape competing visions for agriculture. Productionists have sought increasing yields—to make two seeds grow where only one grew before—while traditional visions of good farming have stressed stewardship. These traditional visions have been challenged by two more worldviews: a call for a total cost accounting for farming and an advocacy for a holistic perspective. Thompson argues that an environmentally defensible systems approach must draw upon all four worldviews, recognizing their flaws and synthesizing their strengths in a new vision of sustainable agriculture. This classic 1995 study has been thoroughly revised and significantly expanded in its second edition with up-to-date examples of agriculture’s impact on the environment. These include extensive discussions of new pesticides and the effects of animal agriculture on climate and other areas of the environment. In addition, a new final chapter discusses sustainability, which has become a dominant idea within environmental studies and agrarian political philosophy.
| Author | : Todd LeVasseur |
| Publisher | : SUNY Press |
| Total Pages | : 278 |
| Release | : 2017-10-27 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 1438467737 |
Examines religious communities as advocates of environmental stewardship and sustainable agriculture practices. Writing at the interface of religion and nature theory, US religious history, and environmental ethics, Todd LeVasseur presents the case for the emergence of a nascent religious agrarianism within certain subsets of Judaism and Christianity in the United States. Adherents of this movement, who share an environmental concern about the modern industrial food economy and a religiously grounded commitment to the values of locality, health, and justice, are creating new models for sustainable agrarian lifeways and practices. LeVasseur explores this greening of US religion through an extensive engagement with the scholarly literature on lived religion, network theory, and grounded theory, as well as through ethnographic case studies of two intentional communities at the vanguard of this movement: Koinonia Farm, an ecumenical Christian lay monastic community, and Hazon, a progressive Jewish environmental group. The blend of empirical sociology and philosophical/religious ethics is impressive. I found the book not only interesting but valuable for my own scholarship. Paul B. Thompson, author of The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics
| Author | : Kimberly K. Smith |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kansas |
| Total Pages | : 280 |
| Release | : 2014-01-17 |
| Genre | : Political Science |
| ISBN | : 0700619690 |
Farmer and conservationist Wendell Berry has published more than thirty books, making his name a household word among environmentalists. From his Kentucky farm, Berry preaches and practices stewardship of the land as he seeks to defend the value and traditions of farm life in an industrial capitalist society. A central figure in the greening of American agrarianism, Berry has been an advocate of small farming and traditional values who has tirelessly reminded readers that sustainable agriculture is more than a catchphrase. Kimberly Smith now reveals the depth of his ideas and their relevance for American social and political theory. Berry's central teaching focuses on the fragility of our natural and social worlds; Smith's timely book revisits the problem of living a meaningful life in a world filled with both deadly perils and unimagined possibilities. Hers is the first book to explore the implications of this central tenet and other key aspects of Berry's thought, as well as his overall contribution to environmental theory and politics. Smith shows how the many strands of Berry's thought can be woven together into a coherent agrarian philosophy. Focusing on his relationship to the American agrarian and environmental traditions, she examines how Berry's ecological agrarianism derives from the concept of "grace," or living in concert with nature and society. Along the way, she defends his social theory against accusations of utopianism, shows how his moral theory subverts the notion of rugged individualism usually associated with farming, and reviews his political theory's argument for decentralized democracy. By assessing Berry's reformulation of democratic agrarianism, Smith goes beyond any previous critiques of his writing, and her exploration of Berry's moral vision shows that such vision is more relevant as America continues to move further away from its agrarian past.
| Author | : Todd LeVasseur |
| Publisher | : University Press of Kentucky |
| Total Pages | : 394 |
| Release | : 2016-10-21 |
| Genre | : Religion |
| ISBN | : 081316799X |
Distinct practices of eating are at the heart of many of the world's faith traditions -- from the Christian Eucharist to Muslim customs of fasting during Ramadan to the vegetarianism and asceticism practiced by some followers of Hinduism and Buddhism. What we eat, how we eat, and whom we eat with can express our core values and religious devotion more clearly than verbal piety. In this wide-ranging collection, eminent scholars, theologians, activists, and lay farmers illuminate how religious beliefs influence and are influenced by the values and practices of sustainable agriculture. Together, they analyze a multitude of agricultural practices for their contributions to healthy, ethical living and environmental justice. Throughout, the contributors address current critical issues, including global trade agreements, indigenous rights to land and seed, and the effects of postcolonialism on farming and industry. Covering indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, and Jewish perspectives, this groundbreaking volume makes a significant contribution to the study of ethics and agriculture.
| Author | : Eric T. Freyfogle |
| Publisher | : Shearwater Books |
| Total Pages | : 348 |
| Release | : 2001-09 |
| Genre | : Business & Economics |
| ISBN | : |
The engaging writings gathered in this new book explore an important but little-publicized movement in American culture -- the marked resurgence of agrarian practices and values in rural areas, suburbs, and even cities. It is a movement that in widely varied ways is attempting to strengthen society's roots in the land while bringing greater health to families, neighborhoods, and communities. The New Agrarianism vividly displays the movement's breadth and vigor, with selections by such award-winning writers as Wendell Berry, William Kittredge, Stephanie Mills, David Orr, Scott Russell Sanders, and Donald Worster. As editor Eric Freyfogle observes in his stimulating and original introduction, agrarianism is properly conceived in broad terms, as reaching beyond food production to include a wide constellation of ideals, loyalties, sentiments, and hopes. It is a temperament and a moral orientation, he explains, as well as a suite of diverse economic practices -- all based on the insistent truth that people everywhere are part of the land community, as dependent as other life on its fertility and just as shaped by its mysteries and possibilities. The writings included here have been chosen for their engaging narratives as well as their depiction of the New Agrarianism's broad scope. Many of the selections illustrate agrarian practitioners in action -- restoring prairies, promoting community forests and farms, reducing resource consumption, reshaping the built environment. Other selections offer pointed critiques of contemporary American culture and its market-driven, resource-depleting competitiveness. Together, they reveal what Freyfogle identifies as the heart and soul of the New Agrarianism: its yearning to regain society's connections to the land and its quest to help craft a more land-based and enduring set of shared values. The New Agrarianism offers a compelling vision of this hopeful new way of living. It is an essential book for social critics, community activists, organic gardeners, conservationists, and all those seeking to forge sustaining ties with the entire community of life.
| Author | : Norman Wirzba |
| Publisher | : Catapult |
| Total Pages | : 235 |
| Release | : 2015-10-15 |
| Genre | : Nature |
| ISBN | : 1619026988 |
With an introduction by Barbara Kingsolver, this collection of essays from leaders in the community is an excellent introduction to the agrarian philosophy. A compelling worldview with advocates from around the globe, agrarianism challenges the shortcomings of our industrial and technological economy. Not simply focused on farming, the agrarian outlook encourages us to develop practices and policies that promote the health of land, community, and culture. Agrarianism reminds us that no matter how urban we become, our survival will always be inextricably linked to the precious resources of soil, water, and air. Combining fresh insights from the disciplines of education, law, history, urban and regional planning, economics, philosophy, religion, ecology, politics, and agriculture, these original essays develop a sophisticated critique of our culture’s current relationship to the land, while offering practical alternatives. Leading agrarians, including Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon, Brian Donahue, Eric Freyfogle, and David Orr, explain how our goals should be redirected toward genuinely sustainable communities. These writers call us to an honest accounting and correction of our often destructive ways. They suggest how our society can take practical steps toward integrating soils, watersheds, forests, wildlife, urban areas, and human populations into one great system—a responsible flourishing of our world and culture.
| Author | : Paul B. Thompson |
| Publisher | : Springer Science & Business Media |
| Total Pages | : 232 |
| Release | : 2008-09-19 |
| Genre | : Philosophy |
| ISBN | : 1402087225 |
The Ethics of Agricultural Intensification: An Interdisciplinary and International Conversation Paul B. Thompson and John Otieno Ouko* Global agriculture faces a number of challenges as the world approaches the second decade of the third millennium. Predictions unilaterally indicate dramatic increases in world population between 2010 and 2030, and a trend in developing countries toward greater consumption of animal products could multiply the need for prod- tion of basic grains even further. Although global food production in 2000 was estimated to be adequate for the existing population, hunger and malnutrition are persistent problems that have led decision makers to recognize that increasing food production in specific regions may be the most effective way to address food se- rity for impoverished peoples. At the same time, there will need to be policy adju- ments that improve poor people’s access to current food supplies without simultaneously undercutting the ability of local producers to obtain needed cash income. What is more, the uncertain effects of global climate change on agricultural ecosystems complicate planning for this process, while poorly understood processes of globa- zation create additional unknowns from the side of social systems. In short, despite surpluses in many parts of the developed world, finding ways to increase food p- duction on both selected regional and a total global basis remains a priority for many farmers, policy makers and agricultural researchers.
