The giant Asian monsoon has formed a diverse climate and natural environment. The Asian monsoon climate manifests itself in manifold ways depending not just on the latitude or altitude of an area but also on physical conditions such as topography and vegetation and even the size of its human population. Likewise, the livelihoods of people in the affected area are diverse. This book focuses on nature and agriculture, food, and climate and culture as an excellent framework for understanding the relationship between humans and the environment in complex Monsoon Asia. Through the discussions in this book, what the authors have sought to demonstrate is that the livelihoods in Monsoon Asia demonstrate unique forms in a limited environment, while the Asian monsoon climate has one of the largest movements of any natural phenomenon on a macroscopic scale. These manifest forms are diverse both on a time scale and on a spatial scale and are extremely diversified in limited regions. Such diversity is not only due just to the effects of the natural environment but also results from social and cultural forces. In this area of Monsoon Asia, traditional and religious social norms are becoming entangled with “new” economic and political norms brought in from the outside world by globalization.

This volume seeks to foreground a “borderless” history and geography of South, Southeast, and East Asian littoral zones that would be maritime-focused, and thereby explore the ancient connections and dynamics of interaction that favoured the encounters among the cultures found throughout the region stretching from the Indian Ocean littorals to the Western Pacific, from the early historical period to the present. Transcending the artificial boundaries of macro-regions and nation-states, and trying to bridge the arbitrary divide between (inherently cosmopolitan) “high” cultures (e.g. Sanskritic, Sinitic, or Islamicate) and “local” or “indigenous” cultures, this multidisciplinary volume explores the metaphor of Monsoon Asia as a vast geo-environmental area inhabited by speakers of numerous language phyla, which for millennia has formed an integrated system of littorals where crops, goods, ideas, cosmologies, and ritual practices circulated on the sea-routes governed by the seasonal monsoon winds. The collective body of work presented in the volume describes Monsoon Asia as an ideal theatre for circulatory dynamics of cultural transfer, interaction, acceptance, selection, and avoidance, and argues that, despite the rich ethnic, linguistic and sociocultural diversity, a shared pattern of values, norms, and cultural models is discernible throughout the region.

The Asian monsoon and associated river systems supply the water that sustains a large portion of humanity, and has enabled Asia to become home to some of the oldest and most productive farming systems on Earth. This book uses climate data and environmental models to provide a detailed review of variations in the Asian monsoon since the mid-Holocene, and its impacts on farming systems and human settlement. Future changes to the monsoon due to anthropogenically-driven global warming are also discussed. Faced with greater rainfall and more cyclones in South Asia, as well as drying in North China and regional rising sea levels, understanding how humans have developed resilient strategies in the past to climate variations is critical. Containing important implications for the large populations and booming economies in the Indo-Pacific region, this book is an important resource for researchers and graduate students studying the climate, environmental history, agronomy and archaeology of Asia.

Entangled Lives is a case study in environmental history, multispecies history, more-than-human history, posthumanism, and environmental humanities. Its main objective is to foreground that history is co-created, but that its contours are locally specific.

This book introduces an innovative approach to sustainable and regenerative mountain development. Transdisciplinary to biophysical and biocultural scales, it provides answers to the "what, when, how, why, and where" that researchers question on mountains, including the most challenging: So What! Forwarding thinking in its treatment of core subjects, this decolonial, non-hegemonic volume inaugurates the Series with contributions of seasoned montologists, and invites the reader to an engaging excursion to ascend the rugged topography of paradigms, with the scaffolding hike of ambitious curiosity typical of mountain explorers. Chapter 8 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

After more than 30 years, The Book of Fructans represents the first and most comprehensive coverage of fructans generated by pioneer glycoscientists from the field. It outlines the fundamentals of all fructan types, their terminology, chemical and structural-functional features, biosynthetic enzymes that make and break them, their presence and possible roles in nature, their evolutionary aspects and their microbial, enzymatic, and plant-based production. Additional sections cover the applications of fructans, specifically, the agro/chemical and biomedical applications, health, pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications, fructans in food and feed, fructan nanotechnology, the immunomodulatory and antiviral effects of fructans and the perspectives for fructans in circular economies and sustainable societies. Intended for scientists, entrepreneurs, academicians and students working in related fields, this book will be a useful resource for all who wish to learn more about these extraordinary carbohydrates. - Combines all aspects of fructans in a single volume - Covers fundamentals, applications and society - Introduces 'Fructans for Life' concepts

This volume of interdisciplinary essays brings together leading academics from the fields of history, economic history, politics and sociology to review and take forward a series of debates on the role of culture in social explanation. The book is aimed at those involved in cultural studies, but is particularly concerned with the relationship between the economic and the cultural. The contributors suggest that the boundaries of production and consumption are themselves cultural constructs, formed by changing conceptions of economic and cultural explanation, but offer very different approaches to resolving the problems created by this.