| Bitter Shade: The Ecological Challenge of Human Consciousness Contributor(s): Dove, Michael R. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0300251742 ISBN-13: 9780300251746 Publisher: Yale University Press OUR PRICE: $37.62 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: February 2021 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Science | Environmental Science (see Also Chemistry - Environmental) - Psychology | Social Psychology - Social Science | Anthropology - Cultural & Social |
| Physical Information: 1.3" H x 6.2" W x 9.4" (1.28 lbs) 312 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: A seminal anthropological work on the paradoxical relationship between human consciousness and the environment This book asks an age-old question about the relationship between human consciousness and the environment: How do we think about our own thoughts and actions? How can we transcend the exigencies of daily life? How can we achieve sufficient distance from our own everyday realities to think and act more sustainably? To address these questions, Michael R. Dove draws on the results of decades of research in South and Southeast Asia on how local cultures have circumvented the "curse of consciousness"--the paradox that we cannot completely comprehend the ecosystem of which we are part. He distills from his ethnographic, ecological, and historical research three principles: perspectivism (seeing oneself from outside oneself), metamorphosis (becoming something that one is not), and mimesis (copying something that one is not), which help a society to transcend the hubris and myopia of everyday existence and achieve greater insight into its ecosystem. |