The nineteenth-century saw a significant transformation in the United States. In one short century, the nation had seen the populating of the Great Plains and West, the decimation of native Indian tribes, the growth of national transportation and communication networks, and the rise of major cities. The century also witnessed the destruction of the nation's forests, battles over land and water, and the ascent of agribusiness. With these changes in resource use patterns and values came a concordant shift in attitudes toward nature. Conservation and preservation emerged as watchwords for the 1900s. The century that started with an attitude of environmental conquest thus ended by embracing conservation and a new environmental awareness.

Simple text and photographs define environment and offer suggestions on how children can help protect nature.

What do we mean when we speak about and advocate for ‘nature’? Do inanimate beings possess agency, and if so what is its structure? What role does metaphor play in our understanding of and relation to the environment? How does nature contribute to human well-being? By bringing the concerns and methods of phenomenology to bear on questions such as these, this book seeks to redefine how environmental issues are perceived and discussed and demonstrates the relevance of phenomenological inquiry to a broader audience in environmental studies. The book examines what phenomenology must be like to address the practical and philosophical issues that emerge within environmental philosophy, what practical contributions phenomenology might make to environmental studies and policy making more generally, and the nature of our human relationship with the environment and the best way for us to engage with it.

Many contemporary environmental risks and global environmental changes occurring today are unprecedented in the history of human life on earth. However, the images and narratives through which humans relate to these phenomena are built on existing cultural tropes and narrative models. Cultural, social, and historical contexts strongly influence how we construct images and narratives of nature and the environment. It is therefore highly important to study such narratives in works of literature, film, and other forms of cultural expression in relation to the specific circumstances from which they arise. Nordic Narratives of Nature and the Environment is the first English language anthology that presents ecocritical research on northern European literatures and cultures. The contributors examine specifically Nordic narratives of nature and the environment, with a focus on the cultures and literatures of the modern northern European countries Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, including Sápmi, which is the land traditionally inhabited by the indigenous Sami people. Covering northern European literatures and cultures over a period of more than two centuries, this anthology provides substantial insights into both old and new narratives of nature and the environment as well as intertextual relations, the variety of cultural traditions, and current discourses connected to the Nordic environmental imagination. Case studies relating to works of literature, film, and other media shed new light on the role of culture, history and society in the formation of narratives of nature and the environment, and offer a comprehensive and multi-faceted overview of the most recent ecocritical research in Scandinavian studies.

The often impassioned nature of environmental conflicts can be attributed to the fact that they are bound up with our sense of personal and social identity. Environmental identity—how we orient ourselves to the natural world—leads us to personalize abstract global issues and take action (or not) according to our sense of who we are. We may know about the greenhouse effect—but can we give up our SUV for a more fuel-efficient car? Understanding this psychological connection can lead to more effective pro-environmental policymaking. Identity and the Natural Environment examines the ways in which our sense of who we are affects our relationship with nature, and vice versa. This book brings together cutting-edge work on the topic of identity and the environment, sampling the variety and energy of this emerging field but also placing it within a descriptive framework. These theory-based, empirical studies locate environmental identity on a continuum of social influence, and the book is divided into three sections reflecting minimal, moderate, or strong social influence. Throughout, the contributors focus on the interplay between social and environmental forces; as one local activist says, "We don't know if we're organizing communities to plant trees, or planting trees to organize communities."

How have sociologists responded to the emergence of environmentalism? What has sociology to offer the study of environmental problems? This uniquely comprehensive guide traces the origins and development of environmental movements and environmental issues, providing a critical review of the most significant debates in the new field of environmental sociology. It covers environmental ideas, environmental movements, social constructionism, critical realism, 'ecocentric' theory, environmental identities, risk society theory, sustainable development, Green consumerism, ecological modernization and debates around modernity and post- modernity. Philip Sutton adopts a long-term view, which focuses on the relationship between ideas of nature and environment, ecological identities and social change, providing a framework for future research. Bringing environmental isssues into contact with sociological theories, Nature, Environment and Society provides an up-to-date introduction to this important new field. It will be essential reading for all students of sociology, environmental studies and anyone interested in understanding environmental problems.

Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures consists of about 25 essays dealing with the environmental knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Thai, and Andean views of nature and the environment, among others, the book includes essays on Environmentalism and Images of the Other, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Worldviews and Ecology, Rethinking the Western/non-Western Divide, and Landscape, Nature, and Culture. The essays address the connections between nature and culture and relate the environmental practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both environmental history and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

Human society has constructed many varied notions of the environment. Scientific information about the environment is often seen as the only worthwhile knowledge. This ignores the complexities created by interaction between people and the environment. Idealist thinking argues that everything we know is based on a construct of our minds and that all is possible. Can both be correct and true? Interpreting Nature explores the position of humanity in the environment from the principle that the models we construct are imperfect and can only be provisional. Having examined the way in which the natural sciences have interrogated nature, the types of data produced and what they mean to us, this looks at the environment within philosophy and ethics, the social sciences and the arts, and analyses their role in the formation of environmental cognition.

A revolutionary new understanding of the precarious modern human-nature relationship and a path to a healthier, more sustainable world. Amidst all the wondrous luxuries of the modern world—smartphones, fast intercontinental travel, Internet movies, fully stocked refrigerators—lies an unnerving fact that may be even more disturbing than all the environmental and social costs of our lifestyles. The fragmentations of our modern lives, our disconnections from nature and from the consequences of our actions, make it difficult to follow our own values and ethics, so we can no longer be truly ethical beings. When we buy a computer or a hamburger, our impacts ripple across the globe, and, dissociated from them, we can’t quite respond. Our personal and professional choices result in damages ranging from radioactive landscapes to disappearing rainforests, but we can’t quite see how. Environmental scholar Kenneth Worthy traces the broken pathways between consumers and clean-room worker illnesses, superfund sites in Silicon Valley, and massively contaminated landscapes in rural Asian villages. His groundbreaking, psychologically based explanation confirms that our disconnections make us more destructive and that we must bear witness to nature and our consequences. Invisible Nature shows the way forward: how we can create more involvement in our own food production, more education about how goods are produced and waste is disposed, more direct and deliberative democracy, and greater contact with the nature that sustains us.