The Intemperate Rainforest

Braun (geography, U. of Minnesota) provides a new viewpoint on the complex cultural, political, and intellectual forces involved in the forest policies of British Columbia. Employing poststructuralist theory and using the 1993 protests over logging in Clayoquot Sound as his starting point, Braun assesses the colonial thinking behind 19th- century forest policies, the struggles of native peoples to regain their spaces, the assertion of so-called rational forest management as a new version of colonialism, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee's use of nature photography to promote their notion of pristine wilderness, ecotourism, and the continued impact of the vision of early 20th-century painter Emily Carr. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

National parks occupy a prominent place in the Canadian imagination, yet we are only beginning to understand how their visual representation has shaped and continues to inform our perceptions of ecological issues and the natural world. J. Keri Cronin draws on historical and modern postcards, advertisements, and other images of Jasper National Park to trace how various groups and the tourism industry have used photography to divorce the park from real environmental threats and instead package it as a series of breathtaking vistas and adorable-looking animals. Manufacturing National Park Nature demonstrates that popular forms of picturing nature can have ecological implications that extend far beyond the frame of the image.

Temagami’s Tangled Wild traces the processes and power relationships through which the Temagami area of northeastern Ontario has become emblematic of Canadian wilderness. In this sophisticated analysis, Jocelyn Thorpe uncovers how struggles over meaning, racialized and gendered identities, and land have made Temagami a site of wild Canadian nature. Despite the fact that the Teme-Augama Anishnabai have for many generations understood the region as their homeland rather than as a wilderness, the forestry and tourism industries, as well as Canadian law, have refused to acknowledge this claim. Instead, the concept of wilderness has been employed to aid in Aboriginal dispossession and to create a home for non-Aboriginal Canadians on Native land. An eloquent critique and engaging history, Temagami’s Tangled Wild challenges readers to acknowledge how colonial relations are embedded in our notions of wilderness, and to reconsider our understanding of the wilderness ideal.

Postcolonialism is a book that examines the influence of postcolonial theory in critical geographical thought and scholarship. Aimed at advanced-level students and researchers, the book is a lively, stimulating and relevant introduction to ‘postcolonial geography’ that elaborates on the critical interventions in social, cultural and political life this important subfield is poised to make. The book is structured around three intersecting parts – Spaces, 'Identity'/hybridity, Knowledge – that broadly follow the trajectory of postcolonial studies since the late 1970s. It comprises ten main chapters, each of which is situated at the intersections of postcolonialism and critical human geography. In doing so, Postcolonialism develops three key arguments. First, that postcolonialism is best conceived as an intellectually creative and practical set of methodologies or approaches for critically engaging existing manifestations of power and exclusion in everyday life and in taken-as-given spaces. Second, that postcolonialism is, at its core, concerned with the politics of representation, both in terms of how people and space are represented, but also the politics surrounding who is able to represent themselves and on what/whose terms. Third, the book argues that postcolonialism itself is an inherently geographical intellectual enterprise, despite its origins in literary theory. In developing these arguments and addressing a series of relevant and international case studies and examples throughout, Postcolonialism not only demonstrates the importance of postcolonial theory to the contemporary critical geographical imagination. It also argues that geographers have much to offer to continued theorizations and workings of postcolonial theory, politics and intellectual debates going forward. This is a book that brings critical analyses of the continued and omnipresent legacies of colonialism and imperialism to the heart of human geography, but also one that returns an avowedly critical geographical disposition to the core of interdisciplinary postcolonial studies.

"This book clearly outlines key concepts that all geographers should readily be able to explain. It does so in a highly accessible way. It is likely to be a text that my students will return to throughout their degree." - Dr Karen Parkhill, Bangor University "The editors have done a fantastic job. This second edition is really accessible to the student and provides the key literature in the key geographical terms of scale, space, time, place and landscape." - Dr Elias Symeonakis, Manchester Metropolitan University "An excellent introductory text for accessible overviews of key concepts across human and physical geography." - Professor Patrick Devine-Wright, Exeter University Including ten new chapters on nature, globalization, development and risk, and a new section on practicing geography, this is a completely revised and updated edition of the best-selling, standard student resource. Key Concepts in Geography explains the key terms - space, time, place, scale, landscape - that define the language of geography. It is unique in the reference literature as it provides in one volume concepts from both human geography and physical geography. Four introductory chapters on different intellectual traditions in geography situate and introduce the entries on the key concepts. Each entry then comprises a short definition, a summary of the principal arguments, a substantive 5,000-word discussion, the use of real-life examples, and annotated notes for further reading. Written in an accessible way by established figures in the discipline, the definitions provide thorough explanations of all the core concepts that undergraduates of geography must understand to complete their degree.

The act of eating defines and redefines borders. What constitutes “American” in our cuisine has always depended on a liberal crossing of borders, from “the line in the sand” that separates Mexico and the United States, to the grassland boundary with Canada, to the imagined divide in our collective minds between “our” food and “their” food. Immigrant workers have introduced new cuisines and ways of cooking that force the nation to question the boundaries between “us” and “them.” The stories told in Food Across Borders highlight the contiguity between the intimate decisions we make as individuals concerning what we eat and the social and geopolitical processes we enact to secure nourishment, territory, and belonging. Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University..

DIVEthnography and critique of conservationist efforts in Papua New Guinea, focusing on the misunderstandings, mistranslations, and complexities that arise in the discourse between conservation/biologists and local people./div

The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology presents a comprehensive and authoritative examination of the rapidly growing field of political ecology. Located at the intersection of geography, anthropology, sociology, and environmental history, political ecology is one of the most vibrant and conceptually diverse fields of inquiry into nature-society relations within the social sciences. The Handbook serves as an essential guide to this rapidly evolving intellectual landscape. With contributions from over 50 leading authors, the Handbook presents a systematic overview of political ecology’s origins, practices and core concerns, and aims to advance both ongoing and emerging debates. While there are numerous edited volumes, textbooks, and monographs under the heading ‘political ecology,’ these have tended to be relatively narrow in scope, either as collections of empirically based (mostly case study) research on a given theme, or broad overviews of the field aimed at undergraduate audiences. The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology is the first systematic, comprehensive overview of the field. With authors from North and South America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere, the Handbook of Political Ecology provides a state of the art examination of political ecology; addresses ongoing and emerging debates in this rapidly evolving field; and charts new agendas for research, policy, and activism. The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology introduces political ecology as an interdisciplinary academic field. By presenting a ‘state of the art’ examination of the field, it will serve as an invaluable resource for students and scholars. It not only critically reviews the key debates in the field, but develops them. The Handbook will serve as an excellent resource for graduate and advanced undergraduate teaching, and is a key reference text for geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, environmental historians, and others working in and around political ecology.