Sustainability And Communities Of Place

The concept of sustainability holds that the social, economic, and environmental factors within human communities must be viewed interactively and systematically. Sustainable development cannot be understood apart from a community, its ethos, and ways of life. Although broadly conceived, the pursuit of sustainable development is a local practice because every community has different needs and quality of life concerns. Within this framework, contributors representing the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, geography, economics, law, public policy, architecture, and urban studies explore sustainability in communities in the Pacific, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and North America. Contributors: Janet E. Benson, Karla Caser, Snjezana Colic, Angela Ferreira, Johanna Gibson, Krista Harper, Paulo Lana, Barbara Yablon Maida, Carl A. Maida, Kenneth A. Meter, Dario Novellino, Deborah Pellow, Claude Raynaut, Thomas F. Thornton, Richard Westra, Magda Zanoni

Drawing upon interdisciplinary research conducted across various universities within the United Kingdom, this book offers insights into how local initiatives can enhance sustainable development and engage people in creating better places in which to live. Demonstrating how to embed sustainability in all levels of education, this account contains imaginative, practical, and accessible ways in which communities and built-environment professionals are working towards a more sustainable future. Themes such as sustainable development, community coherence, conflict resolution, planning, and environmental management will interest those in a variety of fields, including architecture, urban design, and geography.

The authors of these four chapters examine the various dynamics of local political processes in communities across three continents. These scholars explicitly examine how the structure of political opportunities in different localities affects the mobilization necessary to recognize and ameliorate environmental problems. We anticipate that this volume furthers the cross-pollination of ideas between community sociologists and environmental sociologists. Ultimately, the heightened and sustained communication between these two groups of scholars may lead to emergent theoretical, methodological, and substantive insights that may contribute to the discipline of sociology more generally." -- Publisher's website.

Educators who work with pre-service teachers understand the significant role they play in mentoring the next generation of teachers. Those who have "walked the talk" and been classroom teachers themselves, working with students daily over the course of a school year, can share powerful stories on transformative teaching. To fully prepare tomorrow's teachers, educators need to mix theory about best practice with the reality of teaching in classrooms. Cases on Emotionally Responsive Teaching and Mentoring provides a collection of case studies from former classroom teachers who now work with pre-service teachers to provide an understanding of the expectations and outcomes of teaching through actual K-12 teaching experiences. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as cultural identity, teacher development, and learner diversity, this book is ideally designed for pre-service teachers, mentors, educators, administrators, professors, academicians, and students seeking current research on the diverse nature of schools, children, and learning and applying concepts to best suit the profession.

A Dynamic Balance illuminates the importance of understanding the social dimension of sustainability as it examines the links between social capital and sustainable development within the overall context of local community development. Looking at case studies in both Australia and Canada, it draws upon lessons that can be learned to reconnect large urban centres and smaller communities. Given the number of small communities in both countries struggling to diversify from single-resource economies in a context of increasing globalization, the analysis touches on several critical public policy issues. This is a timely and provocative call for reconciliation and reconnection within and between communities.

This book explores how religious groups work to create sustainable relationships between people, places and environments. This interdisciplinary volume deepens our understanding of this relationship, revealing that the geographical imagination—our sense of place—is a key aspect of the sustainability ideas and practices of religious groups. The book begins with a broad examination of how place shapes faith-based ideas about sustainability, with examples drawn from indigenous Hawaiians and the sacred texts of Judaism and Islam. Empirical case studies from North America, Europe, Central Asia and Africa follow, illustrating how a local, bounded, and sacred sense of place informs religious-based efforts to protect people and natural resources from threatening economic and political forces. Other contributors demonstrate that a cosmopolitan geographical imagination, viewing place as extending from the local to the global, shapes the struggles of Christian, Jewish and interfaith groups to promote just and sustainable food systems and battle the climate crisis.

Collaboration between experts and the public is vital for effective community engagement aimed at improving the lives of the most vulnerable in society, whether at the local or global level. Using case-based and theoretical chapters that examine rural and urban communities of practice, this volume illustrates how participatory researchers and students, as well as policy and community leaders, find ways to engage with the broader public when it comes to global sustainability research and practice.