Averting Disaster Science For Peace In A Perilous Age

Reminiscences from participants in Erice International Seminars on Planetary Emergencies.

The ecology of international security / Charles D. Ferguson. Assessment of RDD event medical response, recovery, and mitigation in a world of one science / Annette Sobel. Defeating religious terrorism - what will it take? / Pervez Hoodbhoy. Terrorism threats due to weapons of mass disturbance / Friedrich Steinhausler. Cell phones, texting, position reporting, and self-assembly in emergency response management / Robert V. Duncan -- 10. Special session : lectio magistralis. Why science is needed in everyday life / Ignazio La Russa -- 11. Climate. Focus : data, mathematical structures and predictions. Carbon dioxide, friend or foe. William Happer. Climate sensitivity : various approaches / Richard S. Lindzen. Climategate and the inquiries / Stephen McIntyre. Energy legislation in the USA / Richard Wilson -- 12. WFS general meeting. PMP reports - debate and conclusions. Permanent monitoring panel on motivations for terrorism / Lord John Alderdice. 2010 progress report of the MCD-2/7 project and 2011 research project. East-Africa AIDS Research Centre at the Uganda Virus Research Institute (UVRI), Entebbe Uganda / Franco M. Buonaguro. Mother and child health PMP : maternal and child mortality is a planetary emergency, report of 2010 activities / Nathalie Charpak, J.G. Ruiz and S.D. Leon-Mendoza. Permanent monitoring panel report on limits of development / Christopher D. Ellis. Pollution permanent monitoring panel - 2010 annual report / Lorne G. Everett. Report of the energy permanent monitoring panel / William Fulkerson, J, Ongena and C. Difiglio. PMP report for cosmic objects / Walter F. Huebner. Annual report permanent monitoring panel on mitigation of terrorist acts / Alan Leigh Moore, Jr. Information security PMP report / Henning Wegener and Jody R. Westby -- 13. Seminar participants -- 14. Ettore Majorana Erice Science for Peace Prize

Is war necessary? In Peace and War prominent anthropologists and other social scientists explore the cultural and social factors leading to war. They analyze the covert causes of war from a cross-cultural perspective: ideologies that dispose people to war; underlying patterns of social relationships that help institutionalize war; and the cultural systems of military establishments. Overt causes of war—environmental factors like the control of scarce resources, advantageous territories, and technologies, or promoting the welfare of people “like” oneself—are also considered. The authors examine anthropologists’ role in policy formation—how their theories on the nature of culture and society help those who deal with global problems on a day-to-day basis. They argue that both covert and overt mechanisms are pushing the world closer to a devastating war and offer strategies to weaken the effects of these mechanisms. This anthropological and historical analysis of the causes of war is a valuable resource for those studying war and those trying to understand the place of social science in framing pacific options.

The aim of this book is to review central concepts in the study of environmental politics and to open up new questions, problems, and research agendas in the field. The volume does so by drawing on a wide range of approaches from critical theory to poststructuralism, and spanning disciplines including international relations, geography, sociology, history, philosophy, anthropology, and political science. The 28 chapters cover a range of global and local studies, illustrations and cases. These range from the Cochabamba conference in Bolivia to climate camps in the UK; UN summits in Rio de Janeiro and Johannesburg to climate migrants from Pacific islands; forests in Indonesia to Dutch energy governance reform; indigenous communities in Namibia to oil extraction in the Niger Delta; survivalist militias in the USA to Maasai tribesmen in Kenya. Rather than following a regional or issue-based (e.g. water, forests, pollution, etc) structure, the volume is organised in terms of key concepts in the field, including those which have been central to the social sciences for a long time (such as citizenship, commodification, consumption, feminism, justice, movements, science, security, the state, summits, and technology); those which have been at the heart of environmental politics for many years (including biodiversity, climate change, conservation, eco-centrism, limits, localism, resources, sacrifice, and sustainability); and many which have been introduced to these literatures and debates more recently (biopolitics, governance, governmentality, hybridity, posthumanism, risk, and vulnerability). Features and benefits of the book: Explains the most important concepts and theories in environmental politics. Reviews the core ideas behind crucial debates in environmental politics. Highlights the key thinkers – both classic and contemporary – for studying environmental politics. Provides original perspectives on the critical potential of the concepts for future research agendas as well as for the practice of environmental politics. Each chapter is written by leading international authors in their field. This exciting new volume will be essential textbook reading for all students of environmental politics, as well as provocatively presenting the field in a different light for more established researchers.