Planet Dialectics

Planet Dialectics PDF Author: Wolfgang Sachs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783603410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
All effects of human action will inevitably be played out within our planet's limits; any hope of infinity is an illusion. And yet, as Wolfgang Sachs warned almost twenty years ago, environmental concerns have been assimilated into the rhetoric, dynamics and power structures of development. This classic collection of trenchant and elegant explorations addresses the crisis of the Western world's relations with nature and social justice. Examining the notions of efficiency, speed, globalization and development, Sachs shows that sustainability, truly conceived, is incompatible with the worldwide rule of economism. Planet Dialectics reveals that the Western development model is fundamentally at odds with both the quest for justice among the world's people and the aspiration to reconcile humanity and nature.

Planet Dialectics

Planet Dialectics PDF Author: Wolfgang Sachs
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1783603410
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

Get Book

Book Description
All effects of human action will inevitably be played out within our planet's limits; any hope of infinity is an illusion. And yet, as Wolfgang Sachs warned almost twenty years ago, environmental concerns have been assimilated into the rhetoric, dynamics and power structures of development. This classic collection of trenchant and elegant explorations addresses the crisis of the Western world's relations with nature and social justice. Examining the notions of efficiency, speed, globalization and development, Sachs shows that sustainability, truly conceived, is incompatible with the worldwide rule of economism. Planet Dialectics reveals that the Western development model is fundamentally at odds with both the quest for justice among the world's people and the aspiration to reconcile humanity and nature.

Marx’s Capital and One Free World

Marx’s Capital and One Free World PDF Author: Tadas Horie
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349116181
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
This book aims to clarify what the author believes to be the fallacy of the infallibility of Marx's "Capital" and Marxist ideology in general. Other works by the author include "Marxian Economics and Reality", and "The Critique of Dialectic Economics".

Traditional Islamic Environmentalism

Traditional Islamic Environmentalism PDF Author: Tarik M. Quadir
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761861440
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
This work examines the relevance of traditional Islamic thought and practices for a lasting solution to the current environmental crisis. The book argues that only a revival of the traditional worldview which perceives all entities of nature as signs of God can effectively respond to the crisis our planet faces.

Sense of Place and Sense of Planet

Sense of Place and Sense of Planet PDF Author: Ursula K. Heise
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199714803
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Sense of Place and Sense of Planet analyzes the relationship between the imagination of the global and the ethical commitment to the local in environmentalist thought and writing from the 1960s to the present. Part One critically examines the emphasis on local identities and communities in North American environmentalism by establishing conceptual connections between environmentalism and ecocriticism, on one hand, and theories of globalization, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism, on the other. It proposes the concept of "eco-cosmopolitanism" as a shorthand for envisioning these connections and the cultural and aesthetic forms into which they translate. Part Two focuses on conceptualizations of environmental danger and connects environmentalist and ecocritical thought with the interdisciplinary field of risk theory in the social sciences, arguing that environmental justice theory and ecocriticism stand to benefit from closer consideration of the theories of cosmopolitanism that have arisen in this field from the analysis of transnational communities at risk. Both parts of the book combine in-depth theoretical discussion with detailed analyses of novels, poems, films, computer software and installation artworks from the US and abroad that translate new connections between global, national and local forms of awareness into innovative aesthetic forms combining allegory, epic, and views of the planet as a whole with modernist and postmodernist strategies of fragmentation, montage, collage, and zooming.

Wounded Planet

Wounded Planet PDF Author: Henk A.M.J. ten Have
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 142142746X
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
Exploring the interconnectedness of human health, biodiversity, and bioethics. We all depend on environmental biodiversity for clean air, safe water, adequate nutrition, effective drugs, and protection from infectious diseases. Today's healthcare experts and policymakers are keenly aware that biodiversity is one of the crucial determinants of health—not only for individuals but also for the human population of the planet. Unfortunately, rapid globalization and ongoing environmental degradation mean that biodiversity is rapidly deteriorating, threatening planetary health on a mass scale. In Wounded Planet, Henk A.M.J. ten Have argues that the ethical debate about healthcare has become too narrow and individualized. We must, he writes, adopt a new bioethical discourse—one that deals with issues of justice, equality, vulnerability, human rights, and solidarity—in order to adequately reflect the serious threat that current loss of biodiversity poses to planetary health. Exploring modern environmental challenges in depth, ten Have persuasively demonstrates that environmental concerns can no longer be separated from healthcare challenges, and thus should be included in global bioethics. Going beyond an individualized perspective, he poses audacious questions: What does it mean that patients are poor or uninsured and cannot afford suggested medicines? How can we deal with the air and water pollution that are producing a patient's illness? How do we respond to patients complaining about the safety and quality of drinking water in their neighborhood? Touching on infectious and noncommunicable diseases, as well as food, medicine, and water, Wounded Planet transcends the limited vision of mainstream bioethics to compassionately reveal how healthcare and medicine must take a broad perspective that includes the social and environmental conditions in which individuals live.

Animate Planet

Animate Planet PDF Author: Kath Weston
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822373823
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In Animate Planet Kath Weston shows how new intimacies between humans, animals, and their surroundings are emerging as people attempt to understand how the high-tech ecologically damaged world they have made is remaking them, one synthetic chemical, radioactive isotope, and megastorm at a time. Visceral sensations, she finds, are vital to this process, which yields a new animism in which humans and "the environment" become thoroughly entangled. In case studies on food, water, energy, and climate from the United States, India, and Japan, Weston approaches the new animism as both a symptom of our times and an analytic with the potential to open paths to new and forgotten ways of living.

Theory of the Earth

Theory of the Earth PDF Author: Thomas Nail
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 150362756X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 413

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Book Description
We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of plastic, chicken bones, and other waste that could remain in the fossil record for millennia or longer. Crafting a philosophy of geology that rewrites natural and human history from the broader perspective of movement, Thomas Nail provides a new materialist, kinetic ethics of the earth that speaks to this moment. Climate change and other ecological disruptions challenge us to reconsider the deep history of minerals, atmosphere, plants, and animals and to take a more process-oriented perspective that sees humanity as part of the larger cosmic and terrestrial drama of mobility and flow. Building on his earlier work on the philosophy of movement, Nail argues that we should shift our biocentric emphasis from conservation to expenditure, flux, and planetary diversity. Theory of the Earth urges us to rethink our ethical relationship to one another, the planet, and the cosmos at large.

Survival for a Small Planet

Survival for a Small Planet PDF Author: Tom Bigg
Publisher: Earthscan
ISBN: 184977269X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
Few scientific developments have given rise to as much controversy as biotechnology. Numerous groups are united in their opposition, expressing concern over environmental and health risks, impacts on rural livelihoods, the economic dominance of multinational companies and the ethical implications of crossing species boundaries. Among the supporters of the technology are those that believe in its potential to enhance food security, further economic development, increase productivity and reduce environmental pressures. As a result, countries - and sectors within countries - find themselves at odds with each other while potential opportunities for development offered by the use of biotechnology are seized or missed, and related risks go unmanaged.This book, a unique interdisciplinary collection of perspectives from the developing world, examines the ongoing debate. Writing for the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, leading experts address issues such as diffusion of technology, intellectual property rights, the Cartagena Protocol, impacts of international trade, capacity building and biotechnology research and regulation. With the most recent and relevant examples from around the world, Trading in Genes offers the reader a single-volume overview of the connections between biotechnology, trade and sustainability that is both wide-ranging and thorough.

The End of Ethics in a Technological Society

The End of Ethics in a Technological Society PDF Author: Lawrence Schmidt
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773533354
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This book offers a bold challenge to modern liberal ethics by exposing its inability to confront the inexorable advance of technology. Contemporary books on technology generally fall into three categories: those that offer optimist projections of a glorious future, those that provide radical critiques of specific techniques, and those that express alarm about the dehumanizing effects of a culture dominated by technology. The End of Ethics in a Technological Society offers a deeper assessment of the modern West's commitment to technological progress. It argues that modern technology, ethics, and politics are all expressions of the enlightenment view that there are no principles of truth or goodness higher than the free human will. Technological advances are, on this view, merely extensions of the range of human freedom. Modern ethics thus fails to give voice to our often inchoate moral intuition that, in the realm of techno science, some possibilities simply ought not to be pursued. The authors develop their challenge by examining typical ethical approaches to such urgent contemporary concerns as environmental degradation, nuclear energy, high tech militarism, and fetal genetic testing. They relate our social crises to the transformation of ethics that has taken place as technology has become the house in which we all live.

Capitalism at the Crossroads

Capitalism at the Crossroads PDF Author: Stuart L. Hart
Publisher: Pearson Education
ISBN: 0132715910
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Capitalism is indeed at a crossroads, facing international terrorism, worldwide environmental change, and an accelerating backlash against globalization. Companies are at crossroads, too: finding new strategies for profitable growth is now more challenging. Both sets of problems are intimately linked. Learn how to identify sustainable products and technologies that can drive new growth while also helping to solve today's most crucial social and environmental problems. Hart shows how to become truly indigenous to all markets -- and avoid the pitfalls of traditional 'greening' and 'sustainability' strategies. This book doesn't just point the way to a capitalism that is more inclusive and more welcome: it offers specific techniques to recharge innovation, growth, and profitability.