Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease

Human Frontiers, Environments and Disease
Author: Tony McMichael
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 632
Release: 2001-06-28
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1139428942

This compelling account charts the relentless trajectory of humankind, and its changing survival and disease patterns, across place and time from when our ancient ancestors roamed the African Savannah to today's populous, industrialised, globalising world. This expansion of human frontiers - geographic, climatic, cultural and technological - has encountered frequent setbacks from disease, famine and dwindling resources. The social and environmental transformations wrought by agrarianism, industrialisation, fertility control, social modernisation, urbanisation and mass consumption have profoundly affected patterns of health and disease. Today, as life expectancies rise, the planet's ecosystems are being damaged by the combined weight of population size and intensive economic activity. Global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion and loss of biodiversity pose large-scale hazards to human health and survival. Recognising this, can we achieve a transition to sustainability? This and other profound questions underlie this chronicle of expansive human activity, social change, environmental impact and their health consequences.

After Nature

After Nature
Author: Jedediah Purdy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2015-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674368223

An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic

Shaping the African Savannah

Shaping the African Savannah
Author: Michael Bollig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 427
Release: 2020-07-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 110848848X

A history of 150 years of social-ecological transformations in the arid savannah landscape of Namibia.

Landesque Capital

Landesque Capital
Author: N Thomas Håkansson
Publisher: Left Coast Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-03-31
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 161132386X

This book is the first comprehensive, global treatment of landesque capital, a widespread concept used to understand anthropogenic landscapes that serve important economic, social, and ritual purposes. Spanning the disciplines of anthropology, human ecology, geography, archaeology, and history, chapters combine theoretical rigor with in-depth empirical studies of major landscape modifications from ancient to contemporary times. They assess not only degradation but also the social, political, and economic institutions and contexts that make sustainability possible. Offering tightly edited, original contributions from leading scholars, this book will have a lasting influence on the study long-term human-environment relations in the human and natural sciences.

Successes, Limitations, and Frontiers in Ecosystem Science

Successes, Limitations, and Frontiers in Ecosystem Science
Author: Michael L. Pace
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 515
Release: 2013-12-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1461217245

Ecosystem research has emerged in recent decades as a vital, successful, and sometimes controversial approach to environmental science. This book emphasizes the idea that much of the progress in ecosystem research has been driven by the emergence of new environmental problems that could not be addressed by existing approaches. By focusing on successes and limitations of ecosystems studies, the book explores avenues for future ecosystem-level research.

Understanding Human Anatomy and Pathology

Understanding Human Anatomy and Pathology
Author: Rui Diogo
Publisher: CRC Press
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1498753914

Understanding Human Anatomy and Pathology: An Evolutionary and Developmental Guide for Medical Students provides medical students with a much easier and more comprehensive way to learn and understand human gross anatomy by combining state-of-the-art knowledge about human anatomy, evolution, development, and pathology in one book. The book adds evolutionary, pathological, and developmental information in a way that reduces the difficulty and total time spent learning gross anatomy by making learning more logical and systematic. It also synthesizes data that would normally be available for students only by consulting several books at a time. Anatomical illustrations are carefully selected to follow the style of those seen in human anatomical atlases but are simpler in their overall configuration, making them easier to understand without overwhelming students with visual information. The book’s organization is also more versatile than most human anatomy texts so that students can refer to different sections according to their own learning styles. Because it is relatively short in length and easily transportable, students can take this invaluable book anywhere and use it to understand most of the structures they need to learn for any gross anatomy course.

Structural Human Ecology

Structural Human Ecology
Author: Nadine Bratchatzek
Publisher: Washington State University Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2021-09-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1636820808

The desire to understand people’s influence on ecosystems has inspired scientific studies and analyses of the stress individuals and communities place on the environment, human well-being, and the tradeoffs between them. As an emerging discipline, Structural Human Ecology is devoted to unlocking the dynamic links between population, environment, social organization, and technology. The new field offers cutting-edge research in risk analysis that can be used to evaluate environmental policies and thus help citizens and societies worldwide learn how to most effectively mitigate human impacts on the biosphere. The essays in this volume were presented by leading international scholars at a 2011 symposium honoring the late Dr. Eugene Rosa, then Boeing Distinguished Professor of Environmental Sociology at WSU.

Better Not Bigger

Better Not Bigger
Author: Eben Fodor
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1999
Genre: Architecture
ISBN:

If you have had enough of endless growth, and want to do something about it, then Better NOT Bigger: How to Take Control of Urban Growth and Improve Your Community is the resource you've been searching for. Exploding the myth that growth is good for us, this book clearly and convincingly shows how urban growth can, in fact, leave our communities permanently scarred, and saddled with very high costs. Lively, accessible, and packed with insights, ideas, tools, and resources, Better NOT Bigger is for both the professional planner and the ordinary citizen.

Understanding Human Ecology

Understanding Human Ecology
Author: Robert Dyball
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2023-06-30
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1000882276

Understanding Human Ecology offers a coherent conceptual framework for human ecology – a clear approach for understanding the many systems we are part of and for how we frame and understand the problems we face. Blending natural, social, and cognitive sciences with dynamical systems theory, this key text offers systems approaches that are accessible to all, from the undergraduate student to policymakers and practitioners across government, business, and community. In the first edition, road-tested and refined over a decade of teaching and workshops, the authors built a clear, inspiring, and important framework for anyone approaching the management of complex problems and the transition to sustainability. Fully updated for the second edition, the book now goes further in using systems-thinking principles to explain fundamental processes of change in social–ecological systems. Revised case examples provide a working application of these principles, whilst a new discussion of the hierarchical structure of complex systems is included to guide practical policymaking. This new edition is essential reading for students and scholars of human ecology, environmental ethics, and sustainability studies.