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.

Various international and cross-cultural partnerships have been established, often with impressive speed, to facilitate the protection of natural resources and the environment. However, many problems exist within these partnerships. This book is based on these difficulties.

Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures consists of about 25 essays dealing with the environmental knowledge and beliefs of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. In addition to articles surveying Islamic, Chinese, Native American, Aboriginal Australian, Indian, Thai, and Andean views of nature and the environment, among others, the book includes essays on Environmentalism and Images of the Other, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Worldviews and Ecology, Rethinking the Western/non-Western Divide, and Landscape, Nature, and Culture. The essays address the connections between nature and culture and relate the environmental practices to the cultures which produced them. Each essay contains an extensive bibliography. Because the geographic range is global, the book fills a gap in both environmental history and in cultural studies. It should find a place on the bookshelves of advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, and scholars, as well as in libraries serving those groups.

Today human ecology has split into many different sub-disciplines such as historical ecology, political ecology or the New Ecological Anthropology. The latter in particular has criticised the predominance of the Western view on different ecosystems, arguing that culture-specific world views and human-environment interactions have been largely neglected. However, these different perspectives only tackle specific facets of a local and global hyper-complex reality. In bringing together a variety of views and theoretical approaches , these especially commissioned essays prove that an interdisciplinary collaboration and understanding of the extreme complexity of the human-environment interface(s) is possible.

During the 1960s and 1970s, rapidly growing environmental awareness and concern created unprecedented demand for ecological expertise and novel challenges for ecological advocacy groups such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). This book reveals how, despite their vast scientific knowledge and their attempts to incorporate socially relevant themes, IUCN experts inevitably struggled to make global schemes for nature conservation a central concern for UNESCO, UNEP and other intergovernmental organizations.

Following upon the first two volumes in this series, which dealt with a broad spectrum of topics in the environment and behavior field, ranging from theoretical to applied, and including disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and professionally oriented approaches, we have chosen to devote sub sequent volumes to more specifically defined topics. Thus, Volume Three dealt with Children and the Environment, seen from the combined perspective of researchers in environmental and developmental psy chology. The present volume has a similarly topical coverage, dealing with the complex set of relationships between culture and the physical environment. It is broad and necessarily eclectic with respect to content, theory, methodology, and epistemological stance, and the contributors to it represent a wide variety of fields and disciplines, including psy chology, geography, anthropology, economics, and environmental de sign. We were fortunate to enlist the collaboration of Amos Rapoport in the organization and editing of this volume, as he brings to this task a particularly pertinent perspective that combines anthropology and ar chitecture. Volume Five of the series, presently in preparation, will cover the subject of behavioral science aspects of transportation. Irwin Altman Joachim F. Wohlwill ix Contents Introduction 1 CHAPTER 1 CROSS-CULTURAL ASPECTS OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN AMOS RAPOPORT Introduction 7 Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Environmental Design 10 The Relationship of Culture and Environmental Design . . . . . . . . . 15 The Variability of Culture-Environment Relations 19 Culture-Specific Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Designing for Culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Implications for the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 CHAPTER 2 CROSS-CULTURAL RESEARCH METHODS: STRATEGIES, PROBLEMS, ApPLICATIONS RICHARD W.

Cultural and spiritual bonds with ‘nature’ are among the strongest motivators for nature conservation; yet they are seldom taken into account in the governance and management of protected and conserved areas. The starting point of this book is that to be sustainable, effective, and equitable, approaches to the management and governance of these areas need to engage with people’s deeply held cultural, spiritual, personal, and community values, alongside inspiring action to conserve biological, geological, and cultural diversity. Since protected area management and governance have traditionally been based on scientific research, a combination of science and spirituality can engage and empower a variety of stakeholders from different cultural and religious backgrounds. As evidenced in this volume, stakeholders range from indigenous peoples and local communities to those following mainstream religions and those representing the wider public. The authors argue that the scope of protected area management and governance needs to be extended to acknowledge the rights, responsibilities, obligations, and aspirations of stakeholder groups and to recognise the cultural and spiritual significance that ‘nature’ holds for people. The book also has direct practical applications. These follow the IUCN Best Practice Guidelines for protected and conserved area managers and present a wide range of case studies from around the world, including Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas.