Nature's Edge, livre ebook

Leading environmental thinkers investigate the complexities of boundary formation and negotiation at the heart of environmental problems.

Leading environmental thinkers investigate the complexities of boundary formation and negotiation at the heart of environmental problems.

Nature's Edge brings together leading environmental thinkers from the natural sciences, geography, political science, religion, and philosophy to explore the complex facets of boundary formation and negotiation at the heart of our environmental problems. The contributors provide a fresh look at how our lives depend on the lines drawn and ask how those lines must be reinscribed, blurred, or even erased to prepare for a sustainable future.

Resolving environmental problems calls for the negotiation of multiple, intersecting boundaries-natural, social, political, geographical, and ethical. From the differentiation of species to the formation of communities and moral values, environmental theorists are constantly confronted with a palimpsest of thresholds and mappings: Can nature and culture be divided? Are natural divisions discovered or created? How do political borders and moral economies shape community-building and social transformation?

Acknowledgments

An Introduction to the Problem of Boundaries in Ecological Theory and Practice
Charles S. Brown

Part I: The Human/Nature Divide and the Nature of Boundaries

1. Boundaries and Darwin: Bridging the Great Divide
Max Oelschlaeger

2. Lamarck Redux: Temporal Scale as the Key to the Boundary Between the Human and Natural Worlds
J. Baird Callicott

3. The Ethical Boundaries of Animal Biotechnology: Descartes, Spinoza, and Darwin
Strachan Donnelley

4. Cutting Nature at the Seams: Beyond Species Boundaries in a World of Diversity
Jon Jensen

5. Respect for Experience as a Way into the Problem of Moral Boundaries
Charles S. Brown

6. Boundarylessness: Introducing a Systems Heuristic for Conceptualizing Complexity
Beth Dempster

Part II: Community, Values, and Sustainability

7. Boundaries on the Edge
Irene J. Klaver

8. Remapping Land Use: Remote Sensing, Institutional Approaches, and Landscape Boundaries
Firooza Pavri

9. Boundaries, Communities, and Politics
Anna L. Peterson

10. The Moral Economy and Politics of Water in the Arid American West
T. Clay Arnold

11. The Need for a Taxonomy of Boundaries
Wes Jackson and Jerry Glover

12. How to do Things with Food: A Plea for Multiple Ontologies
Bruce Hirsch

13. Culture and Cultivation: Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Agriculture
Ted Toadvine

Notes on Contributors
Index