Shopping Our Way to Safety

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 1452913471
Total Pages : 339 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (529 download)

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Book Synopsis Shopping Our Way to Safety by : Andrew Szasz

Download or read book Shopping Our Way to Safety written by Andrew Szasz and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2007-11-15 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Not long ago, people did not worry about the food they ate. They did not worry about the water they drank or the air they breathed. It never occurred to them that eating, drinking water, satisfying basic, mundane bodily needs might be a dangerous thing to do. Parents thought it was good for their kids to go outside, get some sun. “That’s all changed now.” —from the Introduction Many Americans today rightly fear that they are constantly exposed to dangerous toxins in their immediate environment: tap water is contaminated with chemicals; foods contain pesticide residues, hormones, and antibiotics; even the air we breathe, outside and indoors, carries invisible poisons. Yet we have responded not by pushing for governmental regulation, but instead by shopping. What accounts for this swift and dramatic response? And what are its unintended consequences? Andrew Szasz examines this phenomenon in Shopping Our Way to Safety. Within a couple of decades, he reveals, bottled water and water filters, organic food, “green” household cleaners and personal hygiene products, and “natural” bedding and clothing have gone from being marginal, niche commodities to becoming mass consumer items. Szasz sees these fatalistic, individual responses to collective environmental threats as an inverted form of quarantine, aiming to shut the healthy individual in and the threatening world out. Sharply critiquing these products’ effectiveness as well as the unforeseen political consequences of relying on them to keep us safe from harm, Szasz argues that when consumers believe that they are indeed buying a defense from environmental hazards, they feel less urgency to actually do something to fix them. To achieve real protection, real security, he concludes, we must give up the illusion of individual solutions and together seek substantive reform. Andrew Szasz is professor and chair of the department of sociology at the University of California at Santa Cruz and author of the award-winning EcoPopulism (Minnesota, 1994).

Society and the Environment

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 0429974256
Total Pages : 366 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Society and the Environment by : Michael Carolan

Download or read book Society and the Environment written by Michael Carolan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Society and the Environment examines today's environmental controversies within a socio-organizational context. After outlining the contours of 'pragmatic environmentalism', Carolan considers the pressures that exist where ecology and society collide, such as population growth and its associated increased demands for food and energy. He also investigates how various ecological issues, such as climate change, are affecting our very own personal health. Finally, he drills into the social/structural dynamics (including political economy and the international legal system) that create ongoing momentum for environmental ills. This interdisciplinary text features a three-part structure in each chapter that covers 'fast facts' about the issue at hand, examines its wide-ranging implications, and offers balanced consideration of possible real-world solutions. New to this edition are 'Movement Matters' boxes, which showcase grassroots movements that have affected legislation. Discussion questions and key terms enhance the text's usefulness, making Society and the Environment the perfect learning tool for courses on environmental sociology.

The Better World Shopping Guide: 6th Edition

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Publisher : New Society Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1550926594
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (59 download)

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Book Synopsis The Better World Shopping Guide: 6th Edition by : Ellis Jones

Download or read book The Better World Shopping Guide: 6th Edition written by Ellis Jones and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2017-10-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Small enough to fit in your pocket, this practical little book will help you change the world as you shop! While we strive to make our vote count every four years, few of us realize that our most immediate power to shape the world is squandered on a daily basis. Every dollar we spend has the potential to create social and environmental change. In fact, it already has. The world that exists today is in large part a result of our purchasing decisions. The Better World Shopping Guide rates hundreds of products and services from A to F, so you can quickly tell the "good guys" from the "bad guys" and ensure your money is not supporting corporations that make decisions based solely on the bottom line. Drawing on decades of meticulous research, this completely revised and updated sixth edition will help you find out who actually "walks the talk" when it comes to: Environmental sustainability Human rights Community involvement Animal protection Social justice Small enough to fit in a back pocket or handbag and organized in a user-friendly format, The Better World Shopping Guide helps you reward companies who are doing good, penalize those involved in destructive activities, and change the world as you shop! Ellis Jones, PhD is the award-winning, bestselling author of five previous editions of The Better World Shopping Guide , and co-author of The Better World Handbook . A scholar of social responsibility, global citizenship, and everyday activism, he has dedicated himself to uncovering practical ways for people to make a difference in the world. He currently teaches at Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA.

Society and the Environment

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040013279
Total Pages : 427 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Society and the Environment by : Michael S Carolan

Download or read book Society and the Environment written by Michael S Carolan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-04-18 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourth edition of Society and the Environment centers its discussion on realistic solutions to the problems that persist and examines current controversies within a socio‐organizational context, shifting focus away from simply explaining what is wrong with the world around us. Introducing this “pragmatic environmentalism,” Carolan discusses the complex pressures and variables that exist where ecology and society collide, with population growth, the increase in demands for food and energy, and transportation and its outsized influence on urban and community patterns. With further attention given to the social phenomena and structural dynamics driving today’s environmental problems, the book concludes with an important reflection on truly sustainable solutions and what constitutes meaningful social change. Each chapter in this interdisciplinary text follows a three‐part structure beginning with an overview of what is wrong and why. This leads into a discussion on each issue’s wide‐ranging implications and, finally, a balanced consideration of realistic solutions. Featuring updated and expanded examples, discussion points, and coverage of recent developments, including the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, “booming” national economies and wealth distribution, growing global interest in environmental justice—with particular focus on the links between injustice and race and inequality—climate change, and renewable energy, this new edition remains an essential companion for courses on environmental sociology and sustainability.

Building Something Better

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 1978823703
Total Pages : 231 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (788 download)

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Book Synopsis Building Something Better by : Stephanie A. Malin

Download or read book Building Something Better written by Stephanie A. Malin and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2022-04-15 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the turmoil of interlinked crises unfolds across the world—from climate change to growing inequality to the rise of authoritarian governments—social scientists examine what is happening and why. Can communities devise alternatives to the systems that are doing so much harm to the planet and people? Sociologists Stephanie A. Malin and Meghan Elizbeth Kallman offer a clear, accessible volume that demonstrates the ways that communities adapt in the face of crises and explains that sociology can help us understand how and why they do this challenging work. Tackling neoliberalism head-on, these communities are making big changes by crafting distributive and regenerative systems that depart from capitalist approaches. The vivid case studies presented range from activist water protectors to hemp farmers to renewable energy cooperatives led by Indigenous peoples and nations. Alongside these studies, Malin and Kallman present incisive critiques of colonialism, extractive capitalism, and neoliberalism, while demonstrating how sociology’s own disciplinary traditions have been complicit with those ideologies—and must expand beyond them. Showing that it is possible to challenge social inequality and environmental degradation by refusing to continue business-as-usual, Building Something Better offers both a call to action and a dose of hope in a time of crises.

Better Safe Than Sorry

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520296680
Total Pages : 268 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (22 download)

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Book Synopsis Better Safe Than Sorry by : Norah MacKendrick

Download or read book Better Safe Than Sorry written by Norah MacKendrick and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How toxic are the products we consume on a daily basis? Whether it’s triclosan in toothpaste, formaldehyde in baby shampoo, endocrine disruptors in water bottles, or pesticides on strawberries, chemicals in food and personal care products are of increasing concern to consumers. This book chronicles how ordinary people try to avoid exposure to toxics in grocery store aisles using the practice of “precautionary consumption.” Through an innovative analysis of environmental regulation, the advocacy work of environmental health groups, the expansion of the health-food chain Whole Foods Market, and interviews with consumers, Norah MacKendrick ponders why the problem of toxics in the U.S. retail landscape has been left to individual shoppers—and to mothers in particular. She reveals how precautionary consumption, or “green shopping,” is a costly and time-intensive practice, one that is connected to cultural ideas of femininity and good motherhood but is also most available to upper- and middle-class households. Better Safe Than Sorry powerfully argues that precautionary consumption places a heavy and unfair burden of labor on women and does little to advance environmental justice or mitigate risk.

A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health

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Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1118786920
Total Pages : 536 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (187 download)

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Book Synopsis A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health by : Merrill Singer

Download or read book A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health written by Merrill Singer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health presents a collection of readings that utilize a medical anthropological approach to explore the interface of humans and the environment in the shaping of health and illness around the world. Features the latest ethnographic research from around the world related to the multiple impacts of the environment on health and of societies on their environments Includes contributions from international medical anthropologists, conservationists, environmental experts, public health professionals, health clinicians, and other social scientists Analyzes the conditions of cultural and social transformation that accompany environmental and ecological impacts in all areas of the world Offers critical perspectives on theoretical and methodological advancements in the anthropology of environmental health, along with future directions in the field

Our Oldest Task

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022632639X
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (263 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Oldest Task by : Eric T. Freyfogle

Download or read book Our Oldest Task written by Eric T. Freyfogle and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-08-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a book about nature and culture,” Eric T. Freyfogle writes, “about our place and plight on earth, and the nagging challenges we face in living on it in ways that might endure.” Challenges, he says, we are clearly failing to meet. Harking back to a key phrase from the essays of eminent American conservationist Aldo Leopold, Our Oldest Task spins together lessons from history and philosophy, the life sciences and politics, economics and cultural studies in a personal, erudite quest to understand how we might live on—and in accord with—the land. Passionate and pragmatic, extraordinarily well read and eloquent, Freyfogle details a host of forces that have produced our self-defeating ethos of human exceptionalism. It is this outlook, he argues, not a lack of scientific knowledge or inadequate technology, that is the primary cause of our ecological predicament. Seeking to comprehend both the multifaceted complexity of contemporary environmental problems and the zeitgeist as it unfolds, Freyfogle explores such diverse topics as morality, the nature of reality (and the reality of nature), animal welfare, social justice movements, and market politics. The result is a learned and inspiring rallying cry to achieve balance, a call to use our knowledge to more accurately identify the dividing line between living in and on the world and destruction. “To use nature,” Freyfogle writes, “but not to abuse it.”

Eco-Types

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691239568
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis Eco-Types by : Emily Huddart Kennedy

Download or read book Eco-Types written by Emily Huddart Kennedy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why acknowledging diverse eco-social relationships can help us overcome the political polarization that undermines our ability to protect the environment When we picture the ideal environmentalist, we likely have in mind someone who dedicates herself to reducing her own environmental footprint through individual choices about consumption—driving a fuel-efficient car, for example, or eating less meat, or refusing plastic straws. This is a benchmark that many aspire to—and many others reject. In Eco-Types, Emily Huddart Kennedy shows that there is more than one way to care about the environment, outlining a spectrum of eco-social relationships that range from engagement to indifference. Drawing on three years of interviews and research, Kennedy describes five archetypal relationships with the environment: the Eco-Engaged, often politically liberal, who have an acute level of concern about the environment, a moral commitment to protect it, and the conviction that an individual can make a difference; the Self-Effacing, who share the Eco-Engaged’s concerns but not the belief in their own efficacy; the Optimists, often politically conservative, who are confident in their relationship with the environment, doubt the severity of environmental problems, and resent insinuations that they don’t care; the Fatalists, who are pessimistic about environmental decline and feel little responsibility to adopt environment-friendly habits; and the Indifferent, who have no affinity for any part of the environmental movement. Kennedy argues that when liberals feel they have a moral monopoly on environmental issues, polarization results. If we are serious about protecting the planet, we must acknowledge that we don’t all need to care about the environment in the same way.

Sociology in Action

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Publisher : SAGE Publications
ISBN 13 : 1544356439
Total Pages : 618 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (443 download)

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Book Synopsis Sociology in Action by : Kathleen Odell Korgen

Download or read book Sociology in Action written by Kathleen Odell Korgen and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2020-01-07 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors are proud sponsors of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award—enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop. Wake up your introductory sociology classes! Sociology in Action helps your students learn sociology by doing sociology. Sociology in Action will inspire your students to do sociology through real-world activities designed to increase learning, retention, and engagement with course material. Packed with new activities and thought-provoking questions to help explain key concepts, the Second Edition of this innovative bestselling text immerses students in an active learning experience that emphasizes hands-on work, application, and learning by example. Every chapter has been thoroughly revised to reflect current events, social changes, and the latest research. Two new chapters expand coverage of health care, politics, and the economy. The comprehensive Activity Guide that accompanies the text provides everything you need to assign, carry out, and assess the activities that will best engage your students, fit the format of your course, and meet your course goals. This title is accompanied by a complete teaching and learning package. Digital Option / Courseware SAGE Vantage is an intuitive digital platform that delivers this text’s content and course materials in a learning experience that offers auto-graded assignments and interactive multimedia tools, all carefully designed to ignite student engagement and drive critical thinking. Built with you and your students in mind, it offers simple course set-up and enables students to better prepare for class. Assignable Video with Assessment Assignable video (available with SAGE Vantage) is tied to learning objectives and curated exclusively for this text to bring concepts to life. LMS Cartridge (formerly known as SAGE Coursepacks): Import this title’s instructor resources into your school’s learning management system (LMS) and save time. Don’t use an LMS? You can still access all of the same online resources for this title via the password-protected Instructor Resource Site. SAGE Lecture Spark Designed to save you time and ignite student engagement, these free weekly lecture launchers focus on current event topics tied to key concepts in Sociology.

Our Chemical Selves

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Publisher : UBC Press
ISBN 13 : 0774828366
Total Pages : 437 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (748 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Chemical Selves by : Dayna Nadine Scott

Download or read book Our Chemical Selves written by Dayna Nadine Scott and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chemicals found in homes, schools, and workplaces are having devastating consequences on human health and the environment. Our Chemical Selves examines the gender dynamics associated with these everyday toxic exposures. Written by leading researchers in science, law, and public policy, the chapters in Our Chemical Selves reveal that while exposures to chemicals are pervasive and widespread, people from low-income, racialized, and Indigenous communities face a far greater risk of exposure. At the same time, the risks associated with these exposures (and the burdens of managing them) rest disproportionately on the shoulders of women. This collection hones in on the “political economy of pollution” by critically examining the system that manufactures the chemicals and the social, political, and gender relations that enable harmful chemicals to continue being produced and consumed. It also demonstrates the urgent need to revise existing approaches to the regulation of toxics, including Canada’s current Chemicals Management Plan.

Buying Power

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Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226298663
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (262 download)

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Book Synopsis Buying Power by : Lawrence B. Glickman

Download or read book Buying Power written by Lawrence B. Glickman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-06-10 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive history of consumer activism, Buying Power traces the lineage of this political tradition back to our nation’s founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon. Taking the Boston Tea Party as his starting point, Lawrence Glickman argues that the rejection of British imports by revolutionary patriots inaugurated a continuous series of consumer boycotts, campaigns for safe and ethical consumption, and efforts to make goods more broadly accessible. He explores abolitionist-led efforts to eschew slave-made goods, African American consumer campaigns against Jim Crow, a 1930s refusal of silk from fascist Japan, and emerging contemporary movements like slow food. Uncovering previously unknown episodes and analyzing famous events from a fresh perspective, Glickman illuminates moments when consumer activism intersected with political and civil rights movements. He also sheds new light on activists’ relationship with the consumer movement, which gave rise to lobbies like the National Consumers League and Consumers Union as well as ill-fated legislation to create a federal Consumer Protection Agency.

Weighing In

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 0520949757
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis Weighing In by : Julie Guthman

Download or read book Weighing In written by Julie Guthman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-11-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Weighing In takes on the "obesity epidemic," challenging many widely held assumptions about its causes and consequences. Julie Guthman examines fatness and its relationship to health outcomes to ask if our efforts to prevent "obesity" are sensible, efficacious, or ethical. She also focuses the lens of obesity on the broader food system to understand why we produce cheap, over-processed food, as well as why we eat it. Guthman takes issue with the currently touted remedy to obesity—promoting food that is local, organic, and farm fresh. While such fare may be tastier and grown in more ecologically sustainable ways, this approach can also reinforce class and race inequalities and neglect other possible explanations for the rise in obesity, including environmental toxins. Arguing that ours is a political economy of bulimia—one that promotes consumption while also insisting upon thinness—Guthman offers a complex analysis of our entire economic system.

Environmental Skepticism

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317142187
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (171 download)

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Book Synopsis Environmental Skepticism by : Peter J. Jacques

Download or read book Environmental Skepticism written by Peter J. Jacques and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-06 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Environmental skepticism' describes the viewpoint that major environmental problems are either unreal or unimportant. In other words, environmental skepticism holds that environmental problems, especially global ones, are inauthentic. Peter Jacques describes, both empirically and historically, how environmental skepticism has been organized by mostly US-based conservative think tanks as an anti-environmental counter-movement. This is the first book to analyze the importance of the US conservative counter-movement in world politics and its meaning for democratic and accountable deliberation, as well as its importance as a mal-adaptive project that hinders the world's people to rise to the challenges of sustainability. Specific consideration is given to the threat of the counter-movement to marginalized people of the world and its philosophical implications through its commitment to a 'deep anthropocentrism'.

Buying into Fair Trade

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Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 0814725368
Total Pages : 199 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (147 download)

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Book Synopsis Buying into Fair Trade by : Keith R. Brown

Download or read book Buying into Fair Trade written by Keith R. Brown and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stamped on products from coffee to handicrafts, the term “fair trade” has quickly become one of today’s most seductive consumer buzzwords. Purportedly created through fair labor practices, or in ways that are environmentally sustainable, fair-trade products give buyers peace of mind in knowing that, in theory, how they shop can help make the world a better place. Buying into Fair Trade turns the spotlight onto this growing trend, exploring how fair-trade shoppers think about their own altruism within an increasingly global economy. Using over 100 interviews with fair-trade consumers, national leaders of the movement, coffee farmers, and artisans, author Keith Brown describes both the strategies that consumers use to confront the moral contradictions involved in trying to shop ethically and the ways shopkeepers and suppliers reconcile their need to do good with the ever-present need to turn a profit. Brown also provides a how-to chapter that outlines strategies readers can use to appear altruistic, highlighting the ways that socially responsible markets have been detached from issues of morality. A fascinating account of how consumers first learn about, understand, and sometimes ignore the ethical implications of shopping, Buying into Fair Trade sheds new light on the potential for the fair trade market to reshape the world into a more socially-just place. Keith Brown is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Subsistence Agriculture in the US

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Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000193802
Total Pages : 132 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (1 download)

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Book Synopsis Subsistence Agriculture in the US by : Ashley Colby

Download or read book Subsistence Agriculture in the US written by Ashley Colby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on ethnography and interviews with subsistence food producers, this book explores the resilience, innovation and creativity taking place in subsistence agriculture in America. To date, researchers interested in alternative food networks have often overlooked the somewhat hidden, unorganized population of household food producers. Subsistence Agriculture in the US fills this gap in the existing literature by examining the lived experiences of people taking part in subsistence food production. Over the course of the book, Colby draws on accounts from a broad and diverse network of people who are hunting, fishing, gardening, keeping livestock and gathering and looks in depth at the way in which these practical actions have transformed their relationship to labor and land. She also explores the broader implications of this pro-environmental activity for social change and sustainable futures. With a combination of rigorous academic investigation and engagement with pressing social issues, this book will be of great interest to scholars of sustainable consumption, environmental sociology and social movements.

Anxious Eaters

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231549806
Total Pages : 498 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Anxious Eaters by : Janet Chrzan

Download or read book Anxious Eaters written by Janet Chrzan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes fad diets so appealing to so many people? How did there get to be so many different ones, often with eerily similar prescriptions? Why do people cycle on and off diets, perpetually searching for that one simple trick that will solve everything? And how did these fads become so central to conversations about food and nutrition? Anxious Eaters shows that fad diets are popular because they fulfill crucial social and psychological needs—which is also why they tend to fail. Janet Chrzan and Kima Cargill bring together anthropology, psychology, and nutrition to explore what these programs promise yet rarely fulfill for dieters. They demonstrate how fad diets help people cope with widespread anxieties and offer tantalizing glimpses of attainable self-transformation. Chrzan and Cargill emphasize the social contexts of diets, arguing that beliefs about nutrition are deeply rooted in pervasive cultural narratives. Although people choose to adopt new eating habits for individual reasons, broader forces shape why fad diets seem to make sense. Considering dietary beliefs and practices in terms of culture, nutrition, and individual psychological needs, Anxious Eaters refrains from moralizing or promoting a “right” way to eat. Instead, it offers new ways of understanding the popularity of a wide range of eating trends, including the Atkins Diet and other low- or no-carb diets; beliefs that ingredients like wheat products and sugars are toxic, allergenic, or addictive; food avoidance and “Clean Eating” practices; and paleo or primal diets. Anxious Eaters sheds new light on why people adopt such diets and why these diets remain so attractive even though they often fail.