This book offers one of the first detailed anthropological studies of emergent ecotopianism in urban contexts. Engaging directly with debates on urbanisation, sustainability and utopia, it presents two detailed ethnographic case studies of inner urban Australian eco-communities in Adelaide and Melbourne. These novel responses to the ecological crisis – real social laboratories that attempt to manifest a vision of the ‘eco-city’ in microcosm – offer substantial new insights into the concept and creation of sustainable urban communities, their attempts to cultivate ways of living that are socially and ecologically nourishing, and their often fraught relationship to the capitalist city beyond. These studies also suggest the opportunities and limitations of moving beyond demonstration projects towards wider urban transformation, as well as exposing the problems of accessibility and affordability that thwart further urban eco-interventions and the ways that existing projects can exacerbate issues of gentrification and privilege in a socially polarised city. Amidst the challenges of the capitalist city, climate change and ecological crisis, this book offers vital lessons on the potential of urban sustainability in future cities.

'This book re-addresses the concepts of neighbourhood and community in a refreshing and challenging way. It will be of immense benefit, not only to town planners but also to al those professional and voluntary groups and politicians who seek to create the new communities of tomorrow' From the Foreword by Jed Griffiths, Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute. There is widespread support for the principle of creating more sustainable communities, but much hazy, wishful-thinking about what this might mean in practice. In reality, we witness more the death of local neighbourhoods than their creation or rejuvenation, reflecting an increasingly mobile, privatized and commodified society. Sustainable Communities examines the practicalities of re-inventing neighbourhoods. It is neither an idealistic, utopian tract nor a designer's manual, but is, rather, a serious attempt to address the real issues. This collection of expert contributions: * examines the nature of local community and methods of building social capital * presents the findings of a world-wide survey of eco-neighbourhoods and eco-villages with case studies from the United Kingdom, Europe, America and Australia * develops a fresh perspective on the planning and design of neighbourhoods in urban areas, based on the eco-system approach * explores practical programmes for local resource management and the implications for community-based decision-making * provides a detailed appendix listing current eco-village and eco-neighbourhood schemes by country Written by an interdisciplinary team of social and environmental scientists, town planners and urban designers, this is a thought-provoking and important contribution to both the theory and practice of the development of sustainable communities.

This book is in part a response to the attempts of governments to address increasing concerns over such environmental issues as the impact of climate change; carbon emissions; pressures from overpopulation of cities; coal seam gas extraction and depleting natural resources. The authors have developed a Sustainable Communities Framework (SCF) which incorporates social-cultural, environmental and economic sustainability principles in the process of urban planning. The authors propose a five-step SCF built on an application of sustainability tables. The book examines a wide range of urban planning practices utilizing sustainability criteria, outlining both qualitative and quantitative tools. Separate chapters discuss application of the SCF to both the natural environment and the built environment. This framework is applied to a case study of the outer Sydney growth area of Wyong Shire, Central Coast, NSW, Australia. Addressing the question of how best to measure the environment, the authors present a table for selecting indicators of sustainability, and outline sustainability scorecards which use color-coded ratings of green, red and amber to measure indicators of sustainability. The authors show how aggregating these ratings allows the framework to be scaled up for application to larger areas. Finally, the authors show how scorecards can be incorporated in sustainability reports, with actions and monitoring components. The authors also examine urban planning education including land use planning, natural resource planning and sustainable urban planning, focusing on the extent to which schools incorporate principles of sustainability. The authors offer their critique on the movement of planning practices towards a more coordinated and holistic framework, in incorporating sustainability principles. Sustainable Communities: A Framework for Planning concludes by drawing a future scenario on the application of the SCF to incorporate principles of sustainability into urban planning. The authors propose future options for SCF applications, including adopting a systems program; environmental performance monitoring and showing how the framework will accommodate the social-cultural and economic components of sustainability, in addition to the environmental ones as examined in the case study.

This book addresses a central dilemma of the urban age: how to make the vast suburban landscapes that ring the globe safe and sustainable in the face of planetary ecological crisis. The authors argue that degrowth, a planned contraction of economic overshoot, is the only feasible principle for suburban renewal. They depart from the anti-suburban sentiment of much environmentalism to show that existing suburbia can be the centre-ground of transition to a new social dispensation based on the principle of self-limitation. The book offers a radical new urban imaginary, that of degrowth suburbia, which can arise Phoenix like from the increasingly stressed cities of the affluent Global North and guide urbanisation in a world at risk. This means dispensing with much contemporary green thinking, including blind faith in electric vehicles and high-density urbanism, and accepting the inevitability and the benefits of planned energy descent. A radical but necessary vision for the times.

Arguing that climate injustice is one of our most pressing urban problems, this volume explores the possibilities and challenges for more just urban futures under climate change. Whether the situation be displacement within cities through carbon gentrification or the increasing securitization of elite spaces for climate protection, climate justice and urban justice are intimately connected. Contributors to the volume build theoretical tools for interrogating the root causes of climate change, as well as policy failures. They also highlight knowledge produced within communities already seeking transformative change and demonstrate meaningful learning from activist groups working to address the socionatural injustices caused by the impact of climate change. The editors' introduction situates our current climate emergency within historical processes of colonization, racial capitalism, and heteropatriarchy, while the editors' conclusion offers pathways forward through abolition, care, and reparations. Where other books focus on the project of critique, this collection advances real-world politics to help academics, practitioners, and social justice groups imagine, create, and enact more just urban futures under climate change.

Grappling with Societies and Institutions in an Era of Socio-Ecological Crisis is an autobiographical ethnography of the journey through various societies and institutions and how they function in the midst of an era of socio-ecological crises. The volume traces the steps of the author in becoming a radical anthropologist, namely through the experience of immigration and naturalization from Peru to the United States and then to Australia, politicization while working as an engineer in the aircraft industry during the late 1960s, socialization in and subsequent exit from Roman Catholicism, and experiences as an academic working in the corporate university. As well, the author illuminates the practices of research and engagement as a scholar-activist on various topics, such as the Levites of Utah and African American Spiritual churches, socio-political and religious life in East Germany, complementary and alternative medicine, the Australian climate movement, and democratic eco-socialism.

Recognizing that climate politics has been an increasingly contentious and heated topic in Australia over the past two decades, this book examines Australian capitalism as a driver of climate change and the nexus between the corporations and Coalition and Australian Labor parties. As a highly developed country, Australia is punching above its weight in terms of contributing to greenhouse gas emissions despite rising temperatures, droughts, water shortages and raging bushfires, storm surges and flooding, and the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. Drawing upon both archival and ethnographic research, Hans Baer examines Australian climate politics at the margins, namely the Greens, the labour union, the environmental NGOs, and the grass-roots climate movement. Adopting a climate justice perspective which calls for "system change, not climate change" as opposed to the conventional approach of seeking to mitigate emissions through market mechanisms and techno-fixes, particularly renewable energy sources, this book posits system-challenging transitional steps to shift Australia toward an eco-socialist vision in keeping with a burgeoning global socio-ecological revolution. Accessibly written and including an interview with renowned comedian and climate activist Rod Quantock OAM, this book is essential reading for academics, students and general readers with an interest in climate change and climate activism.

This book applies a critical perspective to anthropogenic climate change and the global socio-ecological crisis. The book focuses on the critical anthropology of climate change by opening up a dialogue with the two main contending perspectives in the field, namely the cultural ecological and the cultural interpretive perspectives. Guided by these, the authors take a firm stance on the types of changes that are needed to sustain life on Earth as we know it. Within this framework, they explore issues of climate and social equity, the nature of the current era in Earth’s geohistory, the perspectives of the elite polluters driving climate change, and the regrettable contributions of anthropologists and other scholars to climate change. Engaging with perspectives from sociology, political science, and the geography of climate change, the book explores various approaches to thinking about and responding to the existential threat of an ever-warming climate. In doing so, it lays the foundation for a brave new sustainable world that is socially just, highly democratic, and climatically safe for humans and other species. This book will be of interest to researchers and students studying environmental anthropology, climate change, human geography, sociology, and political science.

The third edition of Introducing Medical Anthropology: A Discipline in Action, provides students with a first exposure to the growing field of medical and health anthropology. The narrative is guided by unifying themes. First, health-oriented anthropologists are very involved in the process of helping, to varying degrees, to change the world around them through their work in applied projects, policy initiatives, and advocacy. Second, the authors present the fundamental importance of culture and social relationships in health and illness by demonstrating that illness and disease involve complex biosocial processes and that resolving them requires attention to a range of factors beyond biology. Third, through an examination of the issue of health inequality, this book underlines the need for an analysis that moves beyond cultural or even ecological models of health toward a comprehensive biosocial approach. Such an approach integrates biological, cultural, and social factors in building unified theoretical understandings of the origin of ill health, while contributing to the building of effective and equitable national health-care systems. NEW TO THIS EDITION All chapters have been updated or expanded. NEW: Chapter 8, “The Biopolitics of Life: Biotechnology, Biocapital, and Bioethics.”•Revised text style for crisper language and livelier phrasing. Added a brief signposting of chapter content at the beginning of each chapter and reviewquestions about the key issues and concepts at the end of each chapter. Expanded discussion of Zika, Ebola, gender and health, PTSD and psychological anthropol-ogy, geriatric health, the contemporary vaccine controversy, the internet and health, and thehealth impacts of fracking and nuclear energy development. Concluding chapter examines anthropologically informed strategies and visions for a health-ier world.

The world now has more than a billion motor vehicles, and this number continues to increase as developing countries imitate developed societies in their adoption of the culture of automobility. This book explores the political ecology of motor vehicles in an era of growing social disparities and environmental crises, the latter of which are most manifest in anthropogenic climate change to which motor vehicles constitute a major contributor. A political ecological perspective recognizes that motor vehicles, perhaps more than any other machine, embody the social, structural, cultural, and environmental contradictions of the capitalist world system. In addition to highlighting many of the environmental, social, and health, environmental consequences of humanity’s increasing reliance on motor vehicles, particularly private automobiles, this book argues that ultimately we need as a species to move beyond motor vehicles as much as possible but that such an effort will have be part and parcel of creating an alternative world system based on social justice, democratic processes, environmental sustainability, and a safe climate, one termed democratic eco-socialism.