Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 272 pages
- Published by: Oxford University Press, USA March 28, 1996
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0195090101
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0195090109
-
Book Dimensions:
9.1 x 5.8 x 1 inches
- Weighs: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
A cultural ecologist specializing in resource management, Anderson has studied how people manage their environment in such diverse countries as China, Malaysia, British Columbia and Mexico. He points out that traditional societies that have managed their resources well have done so in part through reliance on religion or ritual. Ecological problems, he claims, result from human choice, which is usually based on strong emotions. Anderson makes a scholarly, penetrating analysis of the sociocultural side of environmental decision-making. He looks at a Chinese folk belief system, the spiritual kinship with animals of American Northwest Indians, and Mayan agriculture with its attendant ceremonies. He discusses economics, information processing and institutions. The author believes that laws and enforcement agencies are poor strategies for protecting the environment; instead, he advocates that we view environmental management as involving an ethical and moral code. He calls for hands-on environmental education and for the conservation movement to set priorities and hold to them.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Review
"With his characteristic generosity and skilled analytic doggedness, Gene Anderson engages in a series of explorations in cultural ecology. Like a skilled therapist, he explores the conditions of reasonable and harmful human interactions with environments. He sensitively looks at intersections of ecology with religion, cognition, and, especially, emotionality.One learns from the dragons in the hills, Northwest coast religious ecology, Webers disenchantment, and much more."--Lynn Thomas, Professor of Anthropology, Pomona College
"Here is another E. N. Anderson masterpiece--a carefully crafted, meticulously researched, and compellingly personal treatment of a topic so critically important to all humanity: Why do we treat our environment and its resources the way we do? This book is a 'must' for any thoughtful reader concerned about the future of the earth. Biologists and ecologists, anthropologists, economists, political scientists, religious scholars--and most especially politicians and decision-makers of industrial societies--will find here a new way of thinking about humans and our place in the universe."--Nancy J. Turner, Professor of Environmental Studies, University of Victoria
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