Publication date:

27 March 2001

Length of book:

320 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780742502642

Carole L. Crumley has brought together top scholars from across anthropology in a benchmark volume that displays the range of exciting new work on the complex relationship between humans and the environment. Continually pursuing anthropology's persistent claim that both the physical and the mental world matter, these environmental scholars proceed from the holistic assumption that the physical world and human societies are always inextricably linked. As they incorporate diverse forms of knowledge, their work reaches beyond anthropology to bridge the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities, and to forge working relationships with non-academic communities and professionals. Theoretical issues such as the cultural dimensions of context, knowledge, and power are articulated alongside practical discussions of building partnerships, research methods and ethics, and strategies for implementing policy. New Directions in Environment and Anthropology will be important for all scholars and non-academics interested in the relation between our species and its biotic and built environments. It is also designed for classroom use in and beyond anthropology, and students will be greatly assisted by suggested reading lists for their further exploration of general concepts and specific research. Learn more about the author at the University of North Carolina Anthropology Department web pages.
As review articles, all the essays are informative and potentially useful, pointing the way towards work that could be followed up in more detail. In this sense, they serve their purpose as introductions to environmental anthropology and its various subfields. In particular, Tsing's analysis of the relations among environmental history, science studies, political ecology, and cultural anthropology in the creation of particular strands of interdisciplinary scholarship is insightful, especially when paired with Dove's demonstration of and reflections on interdisciplinary borrowing in ecological anthropology.... [This book] highlights some important developments in the field, and it forcefully advocates anthropology's engagement in environmental discourse. Some chapters, those of Sponsel, Dove, and Ingerson, in particular, will become central to my course reading lists, while some others might be recommended as useful illustrations.