The Human Relationship With Nature

by Peter H. Kahn, Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780262112406
• ISBN10: 026211240X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Mit Pr

Summary

Winner of Outstanding Book Award, 2000, Moral Development and Education, American Educational Research Association. Winner of the 2000 Book Award from the Moral Development & Education Group of the American Educational Research Association Urgent environmental problems call for vigorous research and theory on how humans develop a relationship with nature. In a series of original research projects, Peter Kahn answers this call. For the past eight years, Kahn has studied children, young adults, and parents in diverse geographical locations, ranging from an economically impoverished black community in Houston to a remote village in the Brazilian Amazon. In these studies Kahn seeks answers to the following questions: How do people value nature, and how do they reason morally about environmental degradation? Do children have a deep connection to the natural world that gets severed by modern society? Or do such connections emerge, if at all, later in life, with increased cognitive and moral maturity? How does culture affect environmental commitments and sensibilities? Are there universal features in the human relationship with nature? Kahn's empirical and theoretical findings draw on current work in psychology, biology, environmental behavior, education, policy, and moral development. This scholarly yet accessible book will be of value to practitioners in the social science and environmental fields, as well as to informed generalists interested in environmental issues and children.

Author Biography

Peter H. Kahn, Jr., is Research Scientist in the Department of Psychology at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, and Codirector of The Mina Institute in Covelo, California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	xiii
Introduction	1	(8)
The Biophilia Hypothesis: Empirical Support and Amplifying Evidence	9	(16)
The Biophilia Hypothesis: Conceptual Difficulties and Empirical Limitations	25	(20)
The Psychological Framework: Structure and Development	45	(18)
Obligatory and Discretionary Morality	63	(14)
Structural-Developmental Methods	77	(18)
The Houston Child Study	95	(20)
The Houston Parent Study	115	(14)
The Prince William Sound Study	129	(18)
The Brazilian Amazon Study	147	(20)
The Portugal Study	167	(26)
Epistemology, Culture, and the Universal	193	(18)
Environmental Education	211	(18)
Appendixes	229	(24)
References	253	(24)
Index	277