Lesley Head

Zena Cumpston

Michael-Shawn Fletcher

What do you need to know to prosper as a people for at least 65,000 years? The First Knowledges series provides a deeper understanding of the expertise and ingenuity of Indigenous Australians. Plants are the foundation of life on Earth. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have always known this to be true. For millennia, reciprocal relationships with plants have provided both sustenance to Indigenous communities and many of the materials needed to produce a complex array of technologies. Managed through fire and selective harvesting and replanting, the longevity and intricacy of these partnerships are testament to the ingenuity and depth of Indigenous first knowledges. Plants: Past, Present and Future celebrates the deep cultural significance of plants and shows how engaging with this heritage could be the key to a healthier, more sustainable future. 'Plants: Past, Present and Future calls for new ways of understanding and engaging with Country, and reveals the power and possibility of Indigenous ecological expertise.' - BILLY GRIFFITHS 'An enlightening read on the power of plants and the management practices of Indigenous people.' - TERRI JANKE

Past, Present and Future

Plants

Michael Fletcher

First Knowledges Plants

The Anthropocene is a volatile and potentially catastrophic age demanding new ways of thinking about relations between humans and the nonhuman world. This book explores how responses to environmental challenges are hampered by a grief for a pristine and certain past, rather than considering the scale of the necessary socioeconomic change for a 'future' world. Conceptualisations of human-nature relations must recognise both human power and its embeddedness within material relations. Hope is a risky and complex process of possibility that carries painful emotions; it is something to be practised rather than felt. As centralised governmental solutions regarding climate change appear insufficient, intellectual and practical resources can be derived from everyday understandings and practices. Empirical examples from rural and urban contexts and with diverse research participants - indigenous communities, climate scientists, weed managers, suburban householders - help us to consider capacity, vulnerability and hope in new ways.

Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene

Marie Stenseke

Gunhild Setten

Katarina Saltzman

How are different concepts of nature and time embedded into human practices of landscape and environmental management? And how can temporalities that entwine past, present and future help us deal with challenges on the ground? In a time of uncertainty and climate change, how much can we hold onto ideals of nature rooted in a pristine and stable past? The Scandinavian and Australian perspectives in this book throw fresh light on these questions and explore new possibilities and challenges in uncertain and changing landscapes of the future. This book presents examples from farmers, gardens and Indigenous communities, among others, and shows that many people and communities are already actively engaging with environmental change and uncertainty. The book is structured around four themes; environmental futures, mobile natures, indigenous and colonial legacies, heritage and management. Part I includes important contributions towards contemporary environmental management debates, yet the chapters in this section also show how the legacy of older landscapes forms part of the active production of future ones. Part II examines the challenges of living with mobile natures, as it is acknowledged that environments, natures and people do not stand still. An important dimension of the heritage and contemporary politics of Australia, Sweden and Norway is the presence of indigenous peoples. As is clear in part III, the legacies of the colonial past both haunt and energise contemporary land management decisions. Finally, part IV demonstrates how the history and heritage of landscapes, including human activities in those landscapes, are entwined with contemporary environmental management. The rich empirical content of the chapters exposes the diversity of meanings, practices, and ways of being in nature that can be derived from cultural environmental research in different disciplines. The everyday engagements between people, nature and temporalities provide important creative resources with which to meet future challenges.

Scandinavian and Australian perspectives on peoples and landscapes

Nature, Temporality and Environmental Management

Jennifer Atchison

Plants are fundamental players in human lives, underpinning our food supply and contributing to the air we breathe, but they are easy to take for granted and have received insufficient attention in the social sciences. This book advances understanding of human-plant relations using the example of wheat. Theoretically, this book develops new insights by bringing together human geography, biogeography and archaeology to provide a long term perspective on human-wheat relations. Although the relational, more-than-human turn in the social sciences has seen a number of plant-related studies, these have not yet fully engaged with the question of what it means to be a plant. The book draws on diverse literatures to tackle this question, advancing thinking about how plants act in their worlds, and how we can better understand our shared worlds. Empirically, the book reports original ethnographic research on wheat production, processing and consumption in a context of globalisation, drought and climate change and traces the complex networks of wheat using a methodology of 'following' it and its people. The ethnobotanical study captures a number of moments in the life of Australian wheat; on the farm, at the supermarket, in the lives of coeliac sufferers, in laboratories and in industrial factories. This study demands new ways of thinking about wheat geographies, going beyond the rural landscape to urban and industrial frontiers, and being simultaneously local and global in perspective and connection.

A Human Bio-geography of Wheat

Ingrained

Chris Gibson

Nicholas Gill

Carol Farbotko

Gordon Waitt

ÔThe question Chris Gibson and his colleagues answer in this book is simple: ÒWhy is it not easy being green?Ó In 20 concise, focused and accessible chapters Ð from birthing to dying, from toilets to Christmas Ð they unveil the ambiguities, instabilities and paradoxes of affluent household living in the 21st century. In so doing, they temper the easy rhetoric of sustainable lifestyles with some authentic realities drawn from the affluent world. Earth system science is showing us the deep complexity of our material planet. This book brilliantly reflects back to us the complex materiality of our cultural lives.Õ Ð Mike Hulme, University of East Anglia, UK Contrary to the common rhetoric that being green is ÔeasyÕ, household sustainability is rife with contradiction and uncertainty. Households attempting to respond to the challenge to become more sustainable in everyday life face dilemmas on a daily basis when trying to make sustainable decisions. Various aspects of life such as cars, computers, food, phones and even birth and death, may all provoke uncertainty regarding the most sustainable course of action. Drawing on international scientific and cultural research, as well as innovative ethnographies, this timely book probes these wide-ranging sustainability dilemmas, assessing the avenues open to households trying to improve their sustainability. The authors engage critically, and constructively, with the proposition that households are a key scale of action on climate change. They confront dilemmas of practice and circumstance, and cultural norms of lifestyle and consumerism that are linked to troublesome environmental problems Ð and question whether they can be easily unsettled. The work also illuminates the informal and often unheralded work by households Ð frequently the poorest Ð in reducing their environmental burden. This important book is critical to understanding both the barriers to household sustainability and the ÔunsungÕ sustainability work carried out by householders. Containing a unique combination of science and cultural research, this fascinating book will appeal to researchers and students of environmental science, environmental studies, sustainability studies, climate change adaptation, geography, sociology, cultural studies, science and technology studies, as well as energy studies and housing research. Policy-makers in various levels of government working through sustainability problems, environmental educators, social planners and sustainability officers working for governments, will also find much to interest them in this unique book.

Challenges and Dilemmas in Everyday Life

Household Sustainability

Re-conceptualising human–nature relations

Lesley Head

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