Despite globalizing forces, whether economic, political, or cultural, there remain conspicuous differences that divide scholarly communities. How should we understand and respond to those discursive gaps among different traditions and systems of knowledge production? Critical Zone is a book series in cultural and literary studies that is concerned with current critical debates and intellectual preoccupations in the humanities. The series aims to improve understanding across cultures, traditions, discourses, and disciplines, and to produce international critical knowledge. Critical Zone is an expression of timely collaboration among scholars from Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States, and Europe, and conceived as an intellectual bridge between China and the rest of the world. The second volume of Critical Zone, as does its predecessor, consists of two parts. The first part includes original essays that deal with the concept and practice of "empire," as a collective response to the question of how imperial formations and operations, in the past and at present, should be examined in a larger context of international politics and how historical imperialism may be considered in relation to the conditions of our time. Part II includes two sets of translations of essays, first published in Chinese, about two recent debates in China: one on the canonicity of Lu Xun and the other on the problem of how to reform Peking University in the context of globalization. These two groups of translations are led by review essays that contextualize the debates.

Artists and writers portray the disorientation of a world facing climate change. This monumental volume, drawn from a 2020 exhibition at the ZKM Center for Art and Media, portrays the disorientation of life in world facing climate change. It traces this disorientation to the disconnection between two different definitions of the land on which modernizing humans live: the sovereign nation from which they derive their rights, and another one, hidden, from which they gain their wealth—the land they live on, and the land they live from. Charting the land they will inhabit, they find not a globe, not the iconic “blue marble,” but a series of critical zones—patchy, heterogenous, discontinuous. With short pieces, longer essays, and more than 500 illustrations, the contributors explore the new landscape on which it may be possible for humans to land—what it means to be “on Earth,” whether the critical zone, the Gaia, or the terrestrial. They consider geopolitical conflicts and tools redesigned for the new “geopolitics of life forms.” The “thought exhibition” described in this book can opens a fictional space to explore the new climate regime; the rest of the story is unknown. Contributors include Dipesh Chakrabarty, Pierre Charbonnier, Emanuele Coccia, Vinciane Despret, Jerôme Gaillarde, Donna Haraway, Joseph Leo Koerner, Timothy Lenton, Richard Powers, Simon Schaffer, Isabelle Stengers, Bronislaw Szerszynski, Jan A. Zalasiewicz, Siegfried Zielinski Copublished with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

This book invites the reader to look differently at two seemingly mundane resources: soil and water. Water possesses extraordinary properties which form the foundations of life itself. Without water, there would be no life, and without soils, no terrestrial life. The interaction between soils and water is therefore fundamental to the habitability of Earth’s land surface. Through in-depth analyses and experimentation, Soils as a Key Component of the Critical Zone 3 explores the circulation of water in soils. Through its properties, soil directs the path of water, leading it to wet soils or not, be absorbed by plants, infiltrate or runoff, concentrate in certain areas or flood. The potentially catastrophic consequences of such floods are often due to the absence or insufficiency of prevention measures. This book thus shows the ways in which the relationship between water, life and soils is much more than a simple series of interactions or phenomena at interfaces and in fact constitutes a system with definite properties.

Clays and clay minerals are the most abundant natural reactive solids on the Earth's surface. This comprehensive review considers clay science in the context of the Critical Zone - the Earth's permeable near-surface layer. Providing information on clays and clay minerals related to geological, biological and material sciences in the Critical Zone, it's well suited for graduate students and researchers interested in clay science, and environmental and soil mineralogy. The book starts with an introduction to clays and clay minerals, their historic background, and a review of how clay science impacts the Critical Zone. Examples and applications demonstrate how clays regulate habitats and determine the availability of other resources. These examples are supported by quantitative field data, including numerical and graphical depictions of clay and clay mineral occurrences. The book concludes by covering Critical Zone clay geochemistry and clay sequences, including the industrial, synthetic medical and extra-terrestrial world of clay science.

Amid the globalizing forces, whether economic, political, or cultural, there remain conspicuous differences and divergences that divide and antagonize scholarly communities. How should we understand and respond to those discursive gaps among different traditions and systems of knowledge production? Critical Zone is a book series that is envisaged as a forum where communities of critical scholarship can come together to share ideas and participate in the debates that preoccupy the humanities today. The series aims to improve understanding across cultures, traditions, discourses, and disciplines and to produce international critical knowledge. Critical Zone is an expression and an embodiment of timely collaboration among scholars in Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States and Europe and is conceived as an intellectual bridge between China and the rest of the world. Each volume in the series has two sections. The first section contains original articles on a set of related topics by scholars from around the world; the second section includes review essays highlighting one or two issues in regional critical scholarship and translations that reflect intellectual trends and concerns in the region, in particular in China.

Principles and Dynamics of the Critical Zone is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate courses and an essential tool for researchers developing cutting-edge proposals. It provides a process-based description of the Critical Zone, a place that The National Research Council (2001) defines as the "heterogeneous, near surface environment in which complex interactions involving rock, soil, water, air, and living organisms regulate the natural habitat and determine the availability of life-sustaining resources." This text provides a summary of Critical Zone research and outcomes from the NSF funded Critical Zone Observatories, providing a process-based description of the Critical Zone in a wide range of environments with a specific focus on the important linkages that exist amongst the processes in each zone. This book will be useful to all scientists and students conducting research on the Critical Zone within and outside the Critical Zone Observatory Network, as well as scientists and students in the geosciences - atmosphere, geomorphology, geology and pedology.

One third of the world's soils have already been degraded. The burden on the land continues to grow under the combined pressures of demography, urbanization, artificialization and mining, and there are increased demands on agricultural land: changing dietary preferences, land speculation, as well as new demands for agroenergy, fiber, green chemistry, and more. Resulting issues such as soil crusting, water and wind erosion, soil salinization and soil acidity therefore constitute a major threat. The authors of this book present the main processes and factors of soil degradation, different ways to prevent it and methods of rehabilitation. The book also deals with the origin and processes of metallic and organic soil pollution as well as methods of phytoremediation and restoration. It is one of the few books to explore the issue of soil artificialization and urban soil management and to highlight how agricultural and urban waste can be used to amend and fertilize cultivated soils.