People and Nature: An Introduction to Human Ecological Relations

Exceedingly welcome, highly readable and very much up to date, People and Nature plumbs the complex environmental challenge we have created, but also lights the ways forward to reconciliation between humanity and the environment.

Thomas E. Lovejoy, George Mason University
Addresses the reciprocal interactions between people and nature, highlighting the current urgency of many global situations there are no truly global solutions, instead, the author discusses the large variety of possible pathways and strategies we, as a society, can take to achieve sustainability. The second edition adds and expands discussion of the challenges to sustainability, the crisis of the growing human population, and climate change. People and Nature fills an ever–increasing need in addressing our current global environmental problems tied to past, current and future societal issues and behaviors. 

Jane Southworth, University of Florida
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.

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.

Preface to the Second Edition

Acknowledgements

1. Human Agency and the State of the Earth

Introduction

Can one conceive of ecosystems without human agents?

Human agency: individuals making a difference

Overwhelming evidence for concern with the condition of the Earth system

Looking back and looking forward

2. A Reminder: How Things Were. . . .

The study of human ecological relations

The contemporary study of environmental issues

The evolution of human environment interactions

Hunter–gatherers: Setting our preferences

How did we decide to become farmers?

Herding and farming: An uneasy relationship

More food for the masses

3. The Great Forgetting

Earth transformations in prehistory

The archaeology of environmental change

The urban industrial revolution and the unleashing of Prometheus

The contemporary situation: Human–dominated ecosystems

4. The Web of Life: Are We In It?

The web of life and trophic relations: Thinking ecologically

Ecosystem productivity and net primary production

Land use and long term disturbance

5. What Makes People Do That?

Learning, adaptation, and information

Mitigation and the cautionary principle

Transforming the face of the Earth: Making better decisions

6. Population and the environment

Theories about Population

The Demographic Transition

Aging and International Flows of Labor

Addressing the Needs of 10 Billion People

Changing the Population and environment nexus

7. Rebuilding Communities and Institutions

Community in human evolution

What is sacred in human evolution?

Tragedies of the commons

Institutions and self–organization

Bioregionalism, deep ecology, and embedding people in nature

8. Can We Learn When We Have Enough?

Material boys and material girls

Patterns of consumption in developed countries

Patterns of consumption in developing countries

A feeding frenzy and a crisis in public health

Burning fossil fuels instead of calories

Do we have enough material goods now?

9. Quality of Life: When Less Is More

Resource abundance versus resource scarcity

When less is more

The scale of the problem and the scale of the solution

Restoring our balance: Valuing community and trust, rather than more stuff

Are we happier when we have more?

Index