Nature and Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective

by Buttimer, Anne; Wallin, Luke

• ISBN13: 9780792356516
• ISBN10: 0792356519
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

Nature and Identity in Cross-Cultural Perspective presents 20 essays which explore diverse cultural interpretations of the earth's surface. Contrasted with each other and with the potentially cosmopolitan culture of science, these detailed studies of ways in which different cultures conceptualise nature appear in the context of global environmental change. Understanding across cultural lines has never been more important. This book shows how individual cultures see their own histories as offering protection for nature, while often viewing others as lacking such ethical restraints. Through such writing a discourse of understanding and common action becomes possible. The authors come from the places they discuss, and offer passionate as well as scholarly visions of nature within their cultural homes. Audience: This volume is of interest to academics and professionals working in the fields of cultural geography, environmental history, environmental studies, history of environmental ideas, environmental education, landscape and literature, nature and culture. It can be used for courses in the above-mentioned areas and seminars in comparative literature. It can also be used as a complimentary text to provide cultural context to literary readings, and for seminars on cultural aspects of the environment.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Contributors	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
PART I NATURE, HOME AND HORIZON
Reflections on the History of Western Attitudes to Nature	1	(18)
Clarence Glacken
Ideas of Nature in East Asian Lands	19	(32)
Hajime Nakamura
Japan's Traditional View of Nature and Interpretation of Landscape	51	(12)
M. Senda
Indian Attitudes Toward Nature	63	(6)
R. C. Pandeya
Nature and Cosmic Integrity: A Search in Hindu Geographical Thought	69	(18)
Rana P. B. Singh
World Views of Arab Geographers	87	(8)
Hassan Hanafi
Perspectives on the Contributions of Arabs and Muslims to Geography	95	(22)
El-Sayed El-Bushra
Muhammad M. Muhammadain
PART II OFFICIAL VERSUS FOLK VISIONS
Cosmos and Hearth in China	117	(20)
Yi-Fu Tuan
Interplay of State and Local Concern in the Management Of Natural Resources: Hydraulics and Forestry in Spain, 1855-1936	137	(14)
Josefina Gomez Mendoza
Nicolas Ortega Cantero
The Real Country and the Legal Country: Spanish Ideals and Mayan Realities in Colonial Guatemala	151	(12)
W. George Lovell
Popular and Official Appraisals of Natural Resources: Some Evidence from Australia	163	(12)
R. L. Heathcote
God, Thine Earth is Burning: Nature Attitudes and the Latvian Drive for Independence	175	(14)
Edmunds Valdemars Bunkse
Arctic Worlds and the Geography of Imagination	189	(12)
Nancy Doubleday
PART III NARRATIVE IMAGINATION IN THE LANDSCAPE
A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative	201	(34)
William Cronon
Invented Tradition and Academic Convention in Geographical Thought About New England	235	(16)
Martyn J. Bowden
Writing ``God's Fine Wilderness'': John Muir in the Mountains of California	251	(20)
Luke Wallin
Contested Visions: Nature, Culture and the Morality of Landscape in the Scottish Highlands	271	(16)
Charles W. J. Withers
The Narrative Creation of Place: Yeats and West-of-Ireland Landscapes	287	(14)
Patrick Sheeran
Farmers, Foresters, Gypsies, Guests: Narratives of Swedish Cultural Identity	301	(38)
Anne Buttimer
Waking the Dead: Exploring Mexican and Arctic Spaces	339
John Moss