Featured Books & eBooks - Social & Environmental Justice
Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualism by Call Number: HM881 .M84ISBN: 9781608465705Publication Date: 2016From Superstorm Sandy to Hurricane Katrina, the destructive power of climate change is impossible to deny, and yet we are told that 'buying green' will somehow end global warming. Confronting Injustice seeks to draw out the structural roots of man-made climate change and argues that today's activists must focus on mass collective action—like the recent mass mobilization for climate justice in New York—and abandon hopeless consumer-based 'solutions' and individualistic approaches to activism.
Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability & Peace by ISBN: 9781623170417Publication Date: 2015World-renowned environmental activist and physicist Vandana Shiva calls for a radical shift in the values that govern democracies, condemning the role that unrestricted capitalism has played in the destruction of environments and livelihoods. She explores the issues she helped bring to international attention—genetic food engineering, culture theft, and natural resource privatization—uncovering their links to the rising tide of fundamentalism, violence against women, and planetary death. Struggles on the streets of Seattle and Cancun and in homes and farms across the world have yielded a set of principles based on inclusion, nonviolence, reclaiming the commons, and freely sharing the earth's resources. These ideals, which Dr. Shiva calls "Earth Democracy," serve as an urgent call to peace and as the basis for a just and sustainable future.
Environmental Justice: Concepts, Evidence & Politics by Call Number: GE220 .W35ISBN: 9780415589734Publication Date: 2012Environmental justice has increasingly become part of the language of environmental activism, political debate, academic research and policy making around the world. It raises questions about how the environment impacts different people’s lives. Does pollution follow the poor? Are some communities far more vulnerable to the impacts of flooding or climate change than others? Are the benefits of access to green space for all or only for some? This book explores the diversity of ways in which environment and social difference are intertwined and how the justice of their interrelationship matters.
Quicklist
Rosa, Eugene. Human Footprints on the Global Environment: Threats to Sustainability. (2010) - eBook
Leach, Melissa; Ian Scoones; & Andy Stirling. Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice. (2010) - eBook
Vanderheiden, Steve. Atmospheric Justice: A Political Theory fo Climate Change. (2008) - QC981.8.C5 V355
Carruthers, David. Environmental Justice in Latin America: Problems, Promise, and Practice. (2008) - eBook
Hossay, Patrick. Unsustainable: A Primer for Global Environmental and Social Justice. (2006) - GE42 .H67
Hill, Mary (Ed.). The Environment. (2006) - GE195 .E557
References
Allin, Craig (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Environmental Issues. (2000) - Ref GE10 .E52
Web Resources
Security & Sustainability Forum. Movement & Field Building - Climate Justice & Adaptation. (2018)
Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing Story of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe by Call Number: HD2368.U6 L66ISBN: 9781620970089Publication Date: 2015When jobs can move anywhere in the world, bosses have no incentive to protect their workers or the environment. The laws that protect us from rapacious behaviour remain tied to national governments. In Out of Sight, Erik Loomis follows the thread that runs from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 to the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, in 2013. The truth is that our systems of production are just as dirty and abusive as they were during the industrial revolution, but the ugly side of manufacturing is now hidden in faraway places.
No Such Thing As a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation & the Price of Philanthropy by Call Number: HV97.B5 M34ISBN: 9781784780838Publication Date: 2015The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000—nearly 5,000 emerged in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before. In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope—and notes now the businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve.
The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous Peoples Meet by Call Number: GN380 .L555ISBN: 9780670022519Publication Date: 2011For forty years Eugene Linden has explored global environmental issues in books and for publications ranging from National Geographic and Time to Foreign Affairs. Linden's diverse assignments have brought him to ragged edges of the globe, the sites where modernity, tradition, and wildlands collide. In this introspective study, Linden recounts his adventures at this slippery and fast-changing frontier and offers an intimate look at creatures and cultures as they encounter and try to adapt to globalization.
Quicklist
Kohn, Margaret. Political Theories of Decolonization: Postcolonialism and the Problem of Foundations. (2011) - JV152 .K65
Amsden, Alice. Escape form Empire: The Developing World's Journey Through Heaven and Hell. (2007) - HF1413 .A48
Johansen, Bruce. Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Issues: An Encyclopedia. (2003) - GF50 .J65
Bigelow, Bill & Bob Peterson (Eds.). Rethinking Globalization: Teaching for Justice in an Unjust World. (2002) - HM671 .R478
Hoogvelt, Ankie. Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development. (2001) - HF1413 .H66
Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. (2001) - JV51 .Y68
Tucker, Richard. Insatiable Appetite: The United States & the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World. (2000) - HD1417 .T83
Blood and Earth: Modern Slavery, Ecocide, and the Secret to Saving the World by ISBN: 9780812995763Publication Date: 2016Blood and Earth is a gripping account of the deadly link between slavery and environmental destruction. Social scientist, human rights activist, and journalist Kevin Bales set off on a fascinating and moving journey that took him into the lives of modern day slaves and along a supply chain that leads directly to the cell phones in our pockets. He discovered solutions that redeemed both the lives of the slaves in the world's most threatened places and the environments they live in. This is a clear-eyed, inspiring, and profoundly hopeful book that brings us dramatic stories from the world's environmental and human rights hotspots and offers solutions to our most pressing crises.
Threadbare: Clothes, Sex, & Trafficking by Call Number: HD9940.A2 M656ISBN: 9781621067399Publication Date: 2016From the sweatshops of Cambodia to the traditional ateliers of Vienna, from the life of a globetrotting supermodel to the warehouses of large clothing retailers, from the second-hand clothing industry to the politics of the sex trade, Threadbare paints a concerning picture of human rights in a globalised world, as well as offering a practical guide to a growing problem few truly understand. With beautifully illustrated images by The Ladydrawers, Threadbare tackles these troubling issues in a unique way and gives visage to those often left invisible.
Life Interrupted: Trafficking into Forced Labor in the United States by Call Number: HD8081.A5 B74ISBN: 9780822356240Publication Date: 2014Life Interrupted introduces us to survivors of human trafficking who are struggling to get by and make homes for themselves in the United States. Having spent nearly a decade following the lives of formerly trafficked men and women, Denise Brennan recounts in close detail their flight from their abusers and their courageous efforts to rebuild their lives. At once scholarly and accessible, her book links these firsthand accounts to global economic inequities and under-regulated and unprotected workplaces that routinely exploit migrant laborers in the United States.
From Human Trafficking to Human Rights: Reframing Contemporary Slavery by Call Number: HT867 .F676ISBN: 9780812222760Publication Date: 2013Over the last decade, public, political, and scholarly attention has focused on human trafficking and contemporary forms of slavery, but has not sufficiently interrogated how these practices are rooted in structural issues in the global economy, human security, U.S. foreign policy, and labor and gender relations. Alison Brysk and Austin Choi-Fitzpatrick reframe the discourse and enumerate the myriad ideological and institutional barriers to justice.
The Anti-Slavery Project: From the Slave Trade to Human Trafficking by Call Number: HT993 .Q83ISBN: 9780812243338Publication Date: 2011Every country in the world has now abolished slavery, yet millions of people continue to find themselves subject to contemporary forms of slavery, such as human trafficking, wartime enslavement, and the worst forms of child labor. In The Anti-Slavery Project, historian and human rights expert Joel Quirk examines the evolution of political opposition to slavery from the mid-eighteenth century to the present day and offers an innovative study in the attempt to understand and eradicate these ongoing human rights abuses.
Quicklist
Watkins, Christine (Ed.). Child Labor & Sweatshops. (2011) - HD6231 .C4546
Bales, Kevin. Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today. (2009) - HQ314 .B34
Bales, Kevin. Slavery Today. (2008) - HT867 .B375
Zaccar, Edwin (Ed.). Sustainable Consumption, Ecology & Fair Trade. (2007) - eBook
Hapke, Laura. Sweatshop: The History of an American Idea. (2004) - HD2339.U6 H37
Moran, Theodore. Beyond Sweatshops: Foreign Direct Investment and Globalization in Developing Countries. (2002) - HD5710.75.D44 M67
Featherstone, Liza. Students Against Sweatshops. (2002) - HD2337 .F43
Louie, Miriam Ching Yoon. Sweatshop Warriors: Immigrant Women Workers Take on the Global Factory. (2001) - HD6057.5.U5 L68
Schoenberger, Karl. Levi's Children: Coming to Terms with Human Rights in the Global Marketplace. (2000) - HD9940.U6 L457
Williams, Mary (Ed.). Child Labor & Sweatshops. (1999) - HD6231 .C455
Ross, Andrew (Ed.). No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers. (1997) - HD8039.C6 N6
Sustainability Through the Lens of Environmental Sociology by ISBN: 9783038426608Publication Date: 2018Our planet is undergoing radical environmental and social changes. Current levels of consumption are unsustainable, inequitable, and inaccessible to the majority of humans. Understanding and attaining sustainability is a crucial matter at a time when our planet is in peril—environmentally, economically, socially, and politically. Since its official inception in the 1970s, environmental sociology has provided a powerful lens to understanding the challenges, possibilities and modes of sustainability.
Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor by Call Number: PR9080.5 .N59ISBN: 9780674049307Publication Date: 2011The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of “slow violence” to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode.
The International Handbook of Environmental Sociology by ISBN: 9781848440883Publication Date: 2010More than a decade has passed since the first edition of the Handbook was published to considerable acclaim, and environmental sociology has since become firmly established as a critical social science discipline. This thoroughly revised second edition is a major interdisciplinary reference work comprising more than 25 original essays authored by leading scholars, many of whom are intimately involved in national, regional or global environmental policy processes. It marks some of the changes and continuities in the field of environmental sociology, and highlights today's substantive concerns and theoretical debates.
Quicklist
Barry, John. Environment & Social Theory. (2007) - eBook
Gould, Kira. Women in Green: Voices of Sustainable Design. (2007) - Chapters Available in PDF
Haenn, Nora & Richard Wilk. The Environment in Anthropology: A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living. (2006) - eBook
Blau, Judith & Keri Iyall Smith (Eds.). Public Sociologies Reader. (2006) - HM585 .P835
Hannigan, John. Environmental Sociology. (2006) - eBook
Buttel, Frederick; S. P. J. Mol; & Gert Spaargaren. Governing Environmental Flows: Global Challenges to Social Theory. (2006) - eBook
Environmental Racism and Classism by Call Number: GE220 .E59ISBN: 9781534500402Publication Date: 2017This compelling anthology illustrates the myriad ways that poor and minority communities suffer physically, emotionally, and financially from living in toxic environments. With no political clout and few available resources, these victims find themselves abandoned by the environmental movement and bullied by environmental policies. However, a burgeoning environmental justice movement aims to reclaim environmental protection as a basic right.
Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States by Call Number: GE230 .Z56ISBN: 9781479826940Publication Date: 2016From the age of Thomas Jefferson to the Memphis Public Workers strike of 1968 through the present day, ideas about race and waste have shaped where people have lived, where people have worked, and how American society's wastes have been managed. Clean and White offers a history of environmental racism in the United States, focusing on corrosive stereotypes and pervasive constructions of race and hygiene.
Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town by Call Number: TD427.P65 S68ISBN: 9781469611716Publication Date: 2014In the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city's historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston's battles for environmental justice, exposing how systemic racial and class inequalities reinforced during the Jim Crow era played out in these intense contemporary social movements.
Quicklist
David, Emmanuel & Elaine Enarson (Ed.). Women of Katrina: How Gender, Race, and Class Matter in an American Disaster. (2012) - HV636 2005.G85 W66
Yu-wen Shen Wu, Jean & Thomas Chen (Eds.). Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader. (2010) - E184.A75 A8419
Abbott, Elizabeth. Sugar: A Bittersweet History. (2008) - TX560.S9 .A23
The Politics of Fair Trade: Moving Beyond Free Trade and Protection by ISBN: 9780199337644Publication Date: 2018Fair trade is more than just labels on specialty coffee products, and it’s not just protectionism in disguise. Rather, fair trade is opposition to unrestricted trade based on sincere concerns about environmental and labor conditions abroad. Academics and policymakers are ill equipped to deal with fair trade concerns because they wrongly assume trade preferences run along a single dimension from free trade to protection. This book introduces a multidimensional theory of trade policy preferences, arguing that people can oppose trade for different and unrelated reasons.
Fair Trade from the Ground Up: New Markets For Social Justice by Call Number: HF1379.L563ISBN: 9780295991726Publication Date: 2012In contrast to the free trade status quo, Fair Trade relies on informed consumers to choose more direct supply chains that minimize the role of middlemen, offering economic justice and social change as a viable and sustainable alternative to charity. But does it work? Fair Trade from the Ground Up documents achievements at both the producer and the consumer ends of commodity chains and assesses prospects for future growth.
Quicklist
Miller, Debra (Ed.). Fair Trade. (2010) - HF1379 .F337
Bacon, Christopher. Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Fair Trade, Sustainable Livelihoods and Ecosystems in Mexico and Central America. (2008) - eBook
Stiglitz, Joseph. Fair Trade for All: How Trade Can Promote Development. (2005) - HF1413 .S85
Wild, Antony. Coffee: A Dark History. (2004) - TX415 .W5
Energy Democracy: Advancing Equity in Clean Energy Solutions by ISBN: 9781610918510Publication Date: 2017A global energy war is underway. It is man versus nature, fossil fuel versus clean energy, the haves versus the have-nots, and, fundamentally, an extractive economy versus a regenerative economy. . The climate and environmental impacts of fossil combustion are particularly magnified and debilitating for low-income communities and communities of color that live closest to toxic sites, are disproportionately impacted by high incidences of asthma, cancer and rates of morbidity and mortality, and lack the financial resources to build resilience to climate change. Energy democracy is a way to frame the international struggle of working people, low income communities, and communities of color to take control of energy resources from the energy establishment and use those resources to empower their communities—literally providing energy, economically, and politically.
Global Energy Justice: Problems, Principles & Practices by Call Number: HD9502.A2 S6763ISBN: 9781107041950Publication Date: 2014We need new ways of thinking about, and approaching, the world's energy problems. Global energy security and access is one of the central justice issues of our time, with profound implications for happiness, welfare, freedom, equity, and due process. This book combines up-to-date data on global energy security and climate change with fresh perspectives on the meaning of justice in social decision-making. Benjamin K. Sovacool and Michael H. Dworkin address how justice theory can help people to make more meaningful decisions about the production, delivery, use, and effects of energy.
Web Resources
Security & Sustainability Forum. Energy Democracy. (2018)
Security & Sustainability Forum. Ending Energy Poverty. (2017)
Environmental Health Ethics by Call Number: RA566 .R47ISBN: 9781107023956Publication Date: 2012Environmental Health Ethics illuminates the conflicts between protecting the environment and promoting human health. In this study, David B. Resnik develops a method for making ethical decisions on environmental health issues. He applies this method to various issues, including pesticide use, antibiotic resistance, nutrition policy, vegetarianism, urban development, occupational safety, disaster preparedness and global climate change. Resnik provides readers with the scientific and technical background necessary to understand these issues. He explains that environmental health controversies cannot simply be reduced to humanity versus environment and explores the ways in which human values and concerns—health, economic development, rights and justice—interact with environmental protection.
An Ecology of Happiness by Call Number: QC911 .F83ISBN: 9780226466675Publication Date: 2012We know that our gas-guzzling cars are warming the planet, our pesticides and fertilizers are turning rivers toxic, and that the earth has run out of space for the mountains of unrecycled waste our consumption has left in its wake. We've heard many accounts about our impacts—as humans, as a society—on the natural world, but this is not a one-sided relationship. Lost in these dire and scolding accounts has been the impact on us and our well-being. You sense it while walking on a sandy beach, or in a wild, woody forest, or when you catch sight of wildlife, or even while gardening in your backyard. Could it be that the natural environment is an essential part of our happiness? Yes, says Eric Lambin. Using a very different strategy in addressing environmental concerns, he asks us to consider that there may be no better reason to value and protect the health of the planet than for our own personal well-being.
American Sunshine: Diseases of Darkness & the Quest for Natural Light by Call Number: QC911 .F83ISBN: 9780226262819Publication Date: 2012In the second half of the nineteenth century, American cities began to go dark. Hulking new buildings overspread blocks, pollution obscured the skies, and glass and smog screened out the health-giving rays of the sun. Doctors fed anxieties about these new conditions with claims about a rising tide of the "diseases of darkness," especially rickets and tuberculosis. Before long, social reformers, medical professionals, scientists, and a growing nudist movement proffered remedies for America’s new dark age. Architects, city planners, and politicians made access to sunlight central to public housing and public health, and entrepreneurs, dairymen, and tourism boosters transformed the pursuit of sunlight and its effects into a commodity. Within this historical context, Daniel Freund sheds light on important questions about the commodification of health and nature and makes an original contribution to the histories of cities, consumerism, the environment, and medicine.
The Silent Epidemic: Coal and the Hidden Threat to Health by Call Number: TD195.C58 L63ISBN: 9780262017893Publication Date: 2012We will not find "exposure to burning coal" listed as the cause of death on a single death certificate, but tens of thousands of deaths from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and other illnesses are clearly linked to coal-derived pollution. As politicians and advertising campaigns extol the virtues of "clean coal," the dirty secret is that coal kills. In The Silent Epidemic, Alan Lockwood, a physician, describes and documents the adverse health effects of burning coal and examines each aspect of its production—from mining, transporting, burning, and disposal—each of which generates significant health concerns.
Quicklist
McGillivray, Mark; Indranil Dutta; & David Lawson (Eds.). Health Inequality & Development. (2011) - RA418.5.P6 H426
Chivian, Eric & Aaron Bernstein. Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. (2008) - QH541.15.B56 S96
Link, Kurt. Understanding New, Resurgent, and Resistant Diseases: How Man and Globalization Create and Spread Illness. (2007) - RA643 .L56
Web Resources
Security & Sustainability Forum. Climate Justice Changes Health: Local, Tribal, Global, and Generational. (2017)
Security & Sustainability Forum. Integrating Environment and Health. (2016)
Security & Sustainability Forum. Healthy Cities in the Era of Climate Change. (2016)
What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City by ISBN: 9780399590856Publication Date: 2019Paced like a scientific thriller, What the Eyes Don't See reveals how misguided austerity policies, broken democracy, and callous bureaucratic indifference placed an entire city at risk. In this riveting account by Dr. Mona Hanna-Atisha, who, alongside a team of researchers, discovered dangerous levels of lead in the city’s water, the author reveals tale of hope amid catastrophe, the story of a city on the ropes that came together to fight for justice, self-determination, and the right to build a better world for their—and all of our—children.
Toxin Solution: How Hidden Poisons in the Air, Water, Food, and Products We Use Are Destroying Our Health--And What We Can Do to Fix It by Call Number: RA1250 .P59ISBN: 9780062427458Publication Date: 2017Dr. Joe Pizzorno is convinced that lifelong good health rests on two key determinants: your exposure to toxins and your body’s ability to process or expel them. While lifestyle, diet, and genetics all play a major role in well-being, many symptoms of declining health and chronic disease are rooted in toxic overload—our exposure to a barrage of chemicals, heavy metals, radiation, electromagnetic frequencies, and pollution that are the byproducts of modern life.
Lead Wars: The Poltiics of Science and the Fate of America's Children by Call Number: RA1231.L4 M365ISBN: 9780520273252Publication Date: 2013In this incisive examination of lead poisoning during the past half century, Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner focus on one of the most contentious and bitter battles in the history of public health. Lead Wars details how the nature of the epidemic has changed and highlights the dilemmas public health agencies face today in terms of prevention strategies and chronic illness linked to low levels of toxic exposure. This text chronicles the obstacles faced by public health workers in the pro-business, anti-regulatory climate that took off in the Reagan years and that stymied efforts to eliminate lead from the environments and the bodies of American children.
Is It Safe?: BPA and the Struggle to Define the Safety of Chemicals by Call Number: RA1242.P44 V64ISBN: 9780520273573Publication Date: 2012Traces of bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical used in plastics production, are widely detected in our bodies and environment. Is this chemical—and its presence in the human body—safe? Author Sarah Vogel explores how the meaning of the safety for industrial chemicals has been historically contested by trade associations, lawyers, politicians, and citizen activists, and drawing on archival research and extensive interviews, she reveals the roots of the contemporary debate over BPA.
- Living DownstreamBased on the acclaimed book by ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, this award-winning documentary follows Sandra during one pivotal year as she travels across North America, working to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links.
Quicklist
McCormick, Sabrina . No Family History: Environmental Links to Breast Cancer. (2009) - RC280.B8 M3556
Girdner, Eddie & Jack Smith. Killing Me Softly: Toxic Waste, Corporate Profit, and the Struggle for Environmental Justice. (2002) - GE220 .G57
Rahm, Dianne (Ed.). Toxic Waste and Environmental Policy in the 21st Century United States. (2002) - TD1040 .T687
Radetsky, Peter. Allergic to the Twentieth Century: The Explosion in Environmental Allergies--From Sick Buildings to Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. (1997) - RC585.R275
Resilience for All: Striving for Equity Through Community-Driven Design by ISBN: 9781610918923Publication Date: 2018Within the United States, people of color are disproportionally more likely to live in environments with poor air quality, in close proximity to toxic waste, and in locations more vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events. In many vulnerable neighborhoods, structural racism and classism prevent residents from having a seat at the table when decisions are made about their community. In an effort to overcome power imbalances and ensure local knowledge informs decision-making, a new approach to community engagement is essential. In Resilience for All, Barbara Brown Wilson looks at less conventional, but often more effective methods to make communities more resilient. She takes an in-depth look at what equitable, positive change through community-driven design looks like in four different communities.
Resilience, Community Action and Societal Transformation: People, Place, Practice, Power, Politics & Possibility in Transition by ISBN: 9781856232975Publication Date: 2017Resilience, Community Action and Societal Transformation is a unique collection bridging research, theory and practical action to create more resilient societies. It includes accounts from people and organizations on the front line of efforts to build community resilience; cutting-edge theory and analysis from engaged scholar-activists; and commentary from sympathetic researchers. Its content ranges from first-hand accounts of the Transition Movement in the UK, Canada and Spain, to theoretical reflections on resilience theory and the shifts in mindsets and perspectives required for transitions to sustainability.
Surviving Sudden Environmental Change by Call Number: CC81 .S87ISBN: 9781607321675Publication Date: 2012Archaeologists have long encountered evidence of natural disasters through excavation and stratigraphy. In Surviving Sudden Environmental Change, case studies examine how eight different past human communities—ranging from Arctic to equatorial regions, from tropical rainforests to desert interiors, and from deep prehistory to living memory—all faced and coped with such dangers. Many disasters originate from a force of nature, such as an earthquake, cyclone, tsunami, volcanic eruption, drought, or flood. But that is only half of the story; decisions of people and their particular cultural lifeways are the rest. Sociocultural factors are essential in understanding risk, impact, resilience, reactions, and recoveries from massive sudden environmental changes. By using deep-time perspectives provided by interdisciplinary approaches, this book provides a rich temporal background to the human experience of environmental hazards and disasters.
The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times by Call Number: HN49.C6 H664ISBN: 9781603583923Publication Date: 2011In contrast to the ever-worsening stream of information about climate change, the economy, and resource depletion, the Transition Companion focuses on solutions, on community-scale responses, on meeting new people, and on having fun. Drawing on the experience of one of the most fascinating experiments under way in the world, this book tells inspiring tales of communities working for a future where local economies are valued and nurtured; where lower energy use is seen as a benefit; and where enterprise, creativity, and the building of resilience have become cornerstones of a new economy.
Quicklist
Verchick, Robert. Facing Catastrophe: Environmental Action for a Post-Katrina World. (2010) - GE180 .V47
Kronik, Jakob & Dorte Verner. Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change in Latin America and the Caribbean. (2010) - GF514 .K76
Roaf, Sue (Ed.). Transforming Markets in the Built Environment: Adapting to Climate Change. (2010) - eBook
Web Resources
Security & Sustainability Forum. Disaster Response Lessons Learned in Texas. (2019)
Security & Sustainability Forum. Rebuilding in Puerto Rico: Universities as Leaders in Community Resilience. (2018)