Scientists and policymakers are beginning to understand in ever-increasing detail that environmental problems cannot be understood solely through the biophysical sciences. Environmental issues are fundamentally human issues and must be set in the context of social, political, cultural, and economic knowledge. The need both to understand how human beings in the past responded to climatic and other environmental changes and to synthesize the implications of these historical patterns for present-day sustainability spurred a conference of the world's leading scholars on the topic. The Way the Wind Blows is the rich result of that conference.
Articles discuss the dynamics of climate, human perceptions of and responses to the environment, and issues of sustainability and resiliency. These themes are illustrated through discussions of human societies around the world and throughout history.
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Tables
- Notes on the Contributors
- 1. Climate, History, and Human Action
- PART 1: Climate, Environment, and Human Action
- 2. Climate Variablility During the Holocene: An Update
- 3. Complexity Theory and Sociocultural Change in the American Southwest
- PART 2: Social Memory
- 4. Environmental Perception and Human Responses in History and Prehistory
- 5. Social Memory in Mande
- 6. Memories, Abstractions, and Conceptualization of Ecological Crisis in the Mande World
- 7. From Garden to Globe: Linking Time and Space with Meaning and Memory
- 8. Chinese Attitudes Toward Climate
- PART 3: Cultural Responses to Climate Change
- 9. Three Rivers; Subregional Variations in Earth System Impacts in the Southwestern Maya Lowlands
- 10. The Lowland Maya Civilization: Historical Consciousness and Environment
- 11. Social Responses to Climate Change Among the Chumash Indians of South-Cetnral California
- PART 4: History and Contemporary Affairs
- 12. Global Change, History, and Sustainability
- 13. Land Degradation as a Socionatural Process
- Index
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