Life and Death Matters: Human Rights, Environment, and Social Justice, Second Edition - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1598743392 ISBN 13: 9781598743395

Publisher: Routledge, 2012

Synopsis

The first edition of Life and Death Matters was a breakthrough text, centralizing the experiences of those on the front lines of environmental crises and forging new paradigms for understanding how crises emerge and how different groups of actors respond to them. This second edition, fully updated with both expanded and new chapters, once again provides a benchmark for the field and opens important pathways for further research. Authors reassess the state of scholarship and grassroots activism in a new century when social and environmental systems are being reconceptualised within post-9/11 security and biosecurity frameworks, when global warming and resource scarcity are not fears but realities, when global power and politics are being realigned, and when ecocide, ethnocide, and genocide are daily tragedies. This bold new edition of Life and Death Matters will be a widely used textbook and essential reading for students, scholars, and policy makers.

About this title

Review:

Praise for the First Edition: aJohnstonas aim of moving beyond an examination of how particular human groups become victims to how (and why) such groups successfully and unsuccessfully act in response to environmental crisis is a valuable addition to the theoretical and applied literature.a!The cases are extremely diversea!.By painting with such a broad brush, Johnston makes clear that the relationships between human rights and environmental justice are not bounded locally (e.g., to particular grassroots efforts) or nationally (e.g., to environmental justice movements with particular nations), but must be considered in some broader, international/global contexta!.I look forward to using the book this spring in my upper-division undergraduate course on environmental social movements.aaSusan Stonich, American Anthropologist

"Praise for the First Edition: Johnston's aim of moving beyond an examination of how particular human groups become victims to how (and why) such groups successfully and unsuccessfully act in response to environmental crisis is a valuable addition to the theoretical and applied literature. . . . The cases are extremely diverse. . . . By painting with such a broad brush, Johnston makes clear that the relationships between human rights and environmental justice are not bounded locally (e.g., to particular grassroots efforts) or nationally (e.g., to environmental justice movements with particular nations), but must be considered in some broader, international/global context. . . . I look forward to using the book this spring in my upper-division undergraduate course on environmental social movements." --American Anthropologist

"This stunning book is the single most compelling, comprehensive resource on human rights and the environment. It is essential reading for social scientists, policymakers, environmentalists, human rights activists, practitioners, and anybody else concerned with this urgent topic."

-Gregory Button, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"Johnston and her authors systematically navigate through the complex landscape of national and international governance and environmental justice constellations to address the essential questions of our times: how do such crises form and ulcerate? who pays the price? and who is reaps its benefits? With its rigorous writing, substantive data, and analyses tempered by passion, scholars, students, and all others concerned with human environmental rights will find this book to be a prime example of scholar advocacy at its best."- Irene J. Klaver, University of North Texas

"Life and Death Matters represents socially aware, well informed, relevant and humane anthropology at its best. With deep expertise and a readily accessible style authors use case-specific experience to tell the alarming collective story of how neoliberal development and military conflict contributes to the deterioration of the environment and the increasingly precarious situation of its most vulnerable human inhabitants."- Hugh Gusterson, George Mason University

"From climate change to China's rise as a global superpower, the human rights, environment and social justice focus in this second edition is critical and timely, demonstrating how human rights and environmental crises emerge and re-emerge and drawing attention to the many pressing issues resulting from the intersect of warfare and environmental change."- Benedict Colombi, University of Arizona

This stunning book is the single most compelling, comprehensive resource on human rights and the environment. It is essential reading for social scientists, policymakers, environmentalists, human rights activists, practitioners, and anybody else concerned with this urgent topic.

-Gregory Button, University of Tennessee, Knoxville"

""Life and Death Matters" connects seemingly disparate phenomena economic development, global tourism, climate change, modern warfare and nuclear militarism to consider how biodegenerative catastrophes displace people, contaminate ecosystems, harm human health, and compromise cultural integrity. This book dissects the controlling processes that impede efforts to create a more habitable planet. Its long-term depth and cross-cultural breadth demonstrate how anthropological perspectives can lead to a more lucid understanding of the perils that threaten us all. Critical anthropology at its finest!"- Roberto J. Gonzalez, San Jose State University"

"From climate change to China s rise as a global superpower, the human rights, environment and social justice focus in this second edition is critical and timely, demonstrating how human rights and environmental crises emerge and re-emerge and drawing attention to the many pressing issues resulting from the intersect of warfare and environmental change."- Benedict Colombi, University of Arizona"

About the Author:

Barbara Rose Johnston is Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Political Ecology and winner of the Lourdes Arizpe Award for her outstanding contributions in the application of anthropology to environmental issues and discourse. Some of her many important publications are Who Pays the Price?: The Sociocultural Context of Environmental Crisis (1994); Life and Death Matters: Human Rights and the Environment at the End of the Millennium (1997; 2nd ed forthcoming 2008); Disappearing Peoples: Indigenous Groups and Ethnic Minorities in South and Central Asia (2007); and The Consequential Damages of Nuclear War: The Rongelap Report (forthcoming 2008). Holly M. Barker is the former senior advisor to the Republic of the Marshall Islands Ambassador to the United States, and now teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. She is author of Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World (Wadsworth 2004).

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1598743392
• ISBN 13: 9781598743395
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 488
• Editor: Johnston Barbara Rose