Nature and Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective

About this book

Nature and Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective presents 20 essays which explore diverse cultural interpretations of the earth's surface. Contrasted with each other and with the potentially cosmopolitan culture of science, these detailed studies of ways in which different cultures conceptualise nature appear in the context of global environmental change.
Understanding across cultural lines has never been more important. This book shows how individual cultures see their own histories as offering protection for nature, while often viewing others as lacking such ethical restraints. Through such writing a discourse of understanding and common action becomes possible. The authors come from the places they discuss, and offer passionate as well as scholarly visions of nature within their cultural homes. Audience: This volume is of interest to academics and professionals working in the fields of cultural geography, environmental history, environmental studies, history of environmental ideas, environmental education, landscape and literature, nature and culture. It can be used for courses in the above-mentioned areas and seminars in comparative literature. It can also be used as a complimentary text to provide cultural context to literary readings, and for seminars on cultural aspects of the environment.

Contents

Preface. Contributors.Part I: Nature, Home and Horizon. Ideas of Nature in the Western World; C. Glacken. Ideas of Nature in East Asian Lands; H. Nakamura. Japan's Traditional View of Nature and Interpretation of Landscape; M. Senda. Indian Attitude Towards Nature; R.C. Pandeya. Nature and Cosmic Integrity: A Search in Hindu Geographical Thought; R.P.B. Singh. World Views of Arab Geographers; H. Hanafi. Perspectives on the Contributions of Arabs and Muslims to Geography; E.-S. El-Bushra, M.M. Muhammadain. Part II: Official Versus Folk Visions. Cosmos and Hearth in China; Y.-F. Tuan. Interplay of State and Local Concern in the Management of Natural Resources: Hydraulics and Forestry in Spain, 1855-1936; J. Gomez Mendoza, N. Ortega Cantero. The Real Country and the Legal Country: Spanish Ideals and Mayan Realities in Colonial Mesoamerica; W.G. Lovell. Popular and Official Appraisals of Australian Natural Resources: Some Evidence for Australia; R.L. Heathcote. God Thine Earth is Burning: Nature Attitudes and the Latvian Drive for Independence; E.V. Bunkse. Arctic Worlds and the Geography of Imagination; N.C. Doubleday. Part III: Narrative Imagination in the Landscape. A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative; W. Cronon. Invented and Academic Tradition: Conventions in Geographical Thought about New England; M.J. Bowden. Writing 'God's Fine Wilderness': John Muir in the Mountains of California; L. Wallin. Contested Visions: Nature, Culture and the Morality of Landscape in the Scottish Highlands; C.W.J. Withers. The Narrative Creation of Place: Examples of Yeats; P. Sheeran. Farmers, Foresters, Gypsies, Guests: Narratives of Swedish Cultural Identity; A. Buttimer. Waking the Dead: Exploring Mexican and Arctic Spaces; J. Moss.

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