Coviability Of Social And Ecological Systems Reconnecting Mankind To The Biosphere In An Era Of Global Change

This book considers the principle of ‘sustainable development’ which is currently facing a growing environmental crisis. A new mode of thinking and positioning the ecological imperative is the major input of this volume. The prism of co-viability is not the economics of political agencies that carry the ideology of the dominant/conventional economic schools, but rather an opening of innovation perspectives through science. This volume, through its four parts, more than 40 chapters and a hundred authors, gives birth to a paradigm which crystallizes within a concept that will support in overcoming the ecological emergency deadlock.

This second volume is the work of more than 55 authors from 15 different disciplines and includes complex systems science which studies the viability of components, and also the study of empirical situations. As readers will discover, the coviability of social and ecological systems is based on the contradiction between humanity, which adopts finalized objectives, and the biosphere, which refers to a ecological functions. We see how concrete situations shed light on the coviability’s determinants, and in this book the very nature of the coviability, presented as a concept-paradigm, is defined in a transversal and ontological ways. By adopting a systemic approach, without advocating any economic dogma (such as development) or dichotomizing between humans and nature, while emphasizing what is relevant to humans and what is not, this work neutrally contextualizes man’s place in the biosphere. It offers a new mode of thinking and positioning of the ecological imperative, and will appeal to all those working with social and ecological systems.

Climate change is reshaping the planet, its ecosystems, and the evolution of human societies. Related impacts and disasters are triggering significant shifts in the inextricably interconnected human and ecological systems with unprecedented potential implications. These shifts not only threaten survival at species and community levels, but are also emerging drivers of conflicts, human insecurity, and displacement both within and across national borders. Taking these shifting dynamics into account, particularly in the Anthropocene era, this book provides an analysis of the climate-conflict-migration nexus from human security and resilience perspectives. The core approach of the volume consists of unpacking the key dynamics of the nexus between climate change, conflict, and displacement and exploring the various local and global response mechanisms to address the nexus, assess their effectiveness, and identify their implications for the nexus itself. It includes both conceptual research and empirical studies reporting lessons learned from many geographical, environmental, social, and policy settings.

This volume is the outcome of an international cooperation between 73 scientists, experts, and practitioners from many countries, disciplines, and professional areas. As a part of a series of CERES publications, the volume attempts to contribute to the scientific debate about the food–biodiversity–climate nexus by developing a comprehensive region-specific and broader global understanding of the linkages between these areas, especially in the context of Global South. Instead of providing only modern science-based solutions for the nexus related challenges, the volume covers case studies that present mixed solutions, offering the use of traditional ecological knowledge in combination with modern science for both resilience and sustainability. This is increasingly instrumental in shaping the needed response options regarding the economic, social, and environmental future of the world. Based on a multi-regional and cross-sectoral analysis, the approach consists of: assessing the different natural and anthropogenic factors currently affecting ecosystems and their services, especially the impacts of climate change; highlighting the different linkages between the state of biodiversity and food systems in many contexts and scales; and exploring the various response mechanisms to effectively manage the implications of such linkages. Most chapters provide inputs for future relevant research and policy agendas.

Sport has come to have an increasingly large impact on daily life and commerce across the globe. From mega-events, such as the World Cup or Super Bowl, to the early socialization of children into sport, the study of sport and society has developed as a distinctly wide-ranging scholarly enterprise, centered in sociology, sport studies, and cultural, media, and gender studies. In The Oxford Handbook of Sport and Society, Lawrence Wenner brings together contributions from the world's leading scholars on sport and society to create the premier comprehensive and interdisciplinary reference for scholars and students looking to understand key areas of inquiry about the role and impacts of sport in contemporary culture. The Handbook offers penetrating analyses of the key ways that today's outsized sport is integrated into the lives of both athletes and fans and increasingly shapes the social fabric and cultural logics across the world. Featuring 85 leading international scholars, the volume is organized into six sections: society and values, enterprise and capital, participation and cultures, lifespan and careers, inclusion and exclusion, and spectator engagement and media. To aid comprehension and comparison, each chapter opens with a brief introduction to the area of research and features a common organizational scheme with three main sections of key issues, approaches, and debates to guide scholars and students to what is currently most important in the study of each area. Written at an accessible level and offering rich resources to further study each topic, this handbook is an essential resource for scholars and students as well as general readers who wish to understand the growing social, cultural, political, and economic influences of sport in society and our everyday lives.

In this comprehensive volume, leading scholars of media and communication examine the nexus of globalization, digital media, and popular culture in the early 21st century. The book begins by interrogating globalization as a critical and intensely contested concept, and proceeds to explore how digital media have influenced a complex set of globalization processes in broad international and comparative contexts. Contributors address a number of key political, economic, cultural, and technological issues relative to globalization, such as free trade agreements, cultural imperialism, heterogeneity, the increasing dominance of American digital media in global cultural markets, the powers of the nation-state, and global corporate media ownership. By extension, readers are introduced to core theoretical concepts and practical ideas, which they can apply to a broad range of contemporary media policies, practices, movements, and technologies in different geographic regions of the world—North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia. Scholars of global media, international communication, media industries, globalization, and popular culture will find this to be a singular resource for understanding the interconnected relationship between digital media and globalization.

This book offers in-depth ethnographic analyses of key informants’ interviews on the ecological urbanism and ecosystem services (ES) of selected green infrastructure (GI) in Yoruba cities of Ile-Ife, Ibadan, Osogbo, Lagos, Abeokuta, Akure, Ondo, among others in Southwest Nigeria. It examines the Indigenous Knowledge System (IKS) demonstrated for wellbeing through home gardens by this largest ethno-linguistic group in Nigeria. This is in addition to the ES of Osun Grove UNESCO World Heritage Site, Osogbo; Biological Garden and Park, Akure; Lekki Conservation Centre, Lagos; Adekunle Fajuyi Park, Ado-Ekiti; Muri Okunola Park, Lagos; and some institutional GI including University of Ibadan Botanical Gardens, Ibadan; Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta Botanical Garden, Abeokuta; and University of Lagos Lagoon Front Resort, Lagos, Nigeria. The study draws on theoretical praxis of Western biophilic ideologies, spirit ontologies of the Global South, and largely, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) to examine eco-cultural green spaces, home gardens, and English-types of parks and gardens as archetypes of GI in Yoruba traditional urbanism, colonial and post-colonial city planning. The book provides methods of achieving a form of modernized traditionalism as means of translating the IKS into design strategies for eco-cultural cities. The strategies are framework, model, and ethnographic design algorithms that are syntheses of the lived experiences of the key informants.