People and Nature: An Introduction to Human Ecological Relations - Paperback

by Emilio F. Moran (Author)

Now updated and expanded, People and Nature is a lively, accessible introduction to environmental anthropology that focuses on the interactions between people, culture, and nature around the world.

• Written by a respected scholar in environmental anthropology with a multi-disciplinary focus that also draws from geography, ecology, and environmental studies
• Addresses new issues of importance, including climate change, population change, the rise of the slow food and farm-to-table movements, and consumer-driven shifts in sustainability
• Explains key theoretical issues in the field, as well as the most important research, at a level appropriate for readers coming to the topic for the first time
• Discusses the challenges in ensuring a livable future for generations to come and explores solutions for correcting the damage already done to the environment
• Offers a powerful, hopeful future vision for improved relations between humans and nature that embraces the idea of community needs rather than consumption wants, and the importance of building trust as a foundation for a sustainable future

Back Jacket

Now updated and expanded, People and Nature is a lively, accessible introduction to environmental anthropology written by a respected scholar in the field. Concise yet multi-disciplinary, it focuses on the interactions between people, culture, and nature around the world and brings together insights from a range of fields, including geography, ecology, and environmental studies.

As with the first edition, it explains key theoretical issues in the field, as well as the most important research, at a level appropriate for readers coming to the topic for the first time. It also addresses new and evolving issues of importance, including climate change, population change, the rise of the slow food and farm-to-table movements, and consumer-driven shifts in sustainability. The author uses examples--both historical and contemporary--to bring the narrative to life and imbue it with the sense of urgency it deserves. He discusses the challenges we face in ensuring a livable future for generations to come and explores solutions for correcting the damage already done to our environment. In doing so, he offers a powerful and hopeful vision for the future in which improved relations between humans and nature allow us to embrace the idea of community needs rather than consumption wants, and the importance of building trust as a foundation for a sustainable future.

Author Biography

Emilio F. Moran is John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor at the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations, the Center for System Integration and Sustainability, and the Department of Geography at Michigan State University, USA. Until 2012, he was Distinguished Professor and the James H. Rudy Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, USA. He is the author of ten books, fifteen edited volumes, and more than 190 journal articles and book chapters, which address human interaction with the environment under conditions of change. Most recently, he is the author of Environmental Social Science: Human-Environment Interactions and Sustainability(Wiley Blackwell, 2010). He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2010.