| The Problem of Nature: Environment and Culture in Historical Perspective Contributor(s): Arnold, David (Author) |
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ISBN: 063119021X ISBN-13: 9780631190219 Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell OUR PRICE: $49.45 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 1996 Annotation: This book considers how nature - in both its biological and environmental manifestations - has been invoked as a dynamic force in human history. It shows how historians, philosophers, geographers, anthropologists and scientists have used ideas of nature to explain the evolution of cultures, to understand cultural difference, and to justify or condemn colonization, slavery and racial superiority. It examines the central part that ideas of environmental and biological determinism have played in theory, and describes how these ideas have served in different ways at different times as instruments of authority, identity and defiance. The book shows how powerful and problematic the invocation of nature can be. "The Problem of Nature" covers a whole cycle of environmental history and its interpretation, from the Black Death in the fourteenth century, the first European voyages of discovery and the opening of the American frontier through to the imperialism of the nineteenth century and the example of India under colonial rule. David Arnold shows how both the natural environment and ideas about nature have changed radically over the last five centuries. The author describes the profound influence that historical and social theory and the biological sciences have had upon each other. He shows how the outcomes of their interaction not only informed and shaped the European impact upon the world and on itself, but how crucial they are to American conceptions of the society and history of the United States. He provides provocative answers to the questions of what role the environment should have in the conceptualization of time and place; and of how far societies and their histories can beunderstood from the perspectives of natural and biological sciences. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Human Geography - Science | Life Sciences - Ecology - Science | Environmental Science (see Also Chemistry - Environmental) |
| Dewey: 304.209 |
| LCCN: 96-2054 |
| Series: New Perspectives on the Past |
| Physical Information: 0.65" H x 5.96" W x 8.95" (0.71 lbs) 208 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This work shows how historians, geographers and philosophers have invoked nature in its various manifestations - climate, topography, vegetation, wildlife and disease - as a dynamic force in human history. In particular, it shows how ideas of geographical and biological determinism have played a major part in social, historical and geographical theory and explanation, and just how problematic this invocation of nature can be. |