Kirjahaku

Sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, humans have transported plants and animals to new habitats around the world. Arriving in ever-increasing numbers to American soil, recent invaders have competed with, preyed on, hybridized with, and carried diseases to native species, transforming our ecosystems and creating anxiety among environmentalists and the general public. But is American anxiety over this crisis of ecological identity a recent phenomenon? Charting shifting attitudes to alien species since the 1850s, Peter Coates brings to light the rich cultural and historical aspects of this story by situating the history of immigrant flora and fauna within the wider context of human immigration. Through an illuminating series of particular invasions, including the English sparrow and the eucalyptus tree, what he finds is that we have always perceived plants and animals in relation to ourselves and the polities to which we belong. Setting the saga of human relations with the environment in the broad context of scientific, social, and cultural history, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how profoundly notions of nationality and debates over race and immigration have shaped American understandings of the natural world.

'Nature' is a deceptively simple and ahistorical term, suggesting intrinsic, unchanging reality. Yet nature has a history too, both in terms of human attitudes and human impacts. Coates outlines the major understandings of 'nature' in the western world since classical times, from nature as higher authority to its more recent meaning of threatened physical space and life forms. Unlike many others, this book places the history of attitudes to nature within the story of human-induced changes in the material environment. And few others take a supranational perspective, or cross the divides between historical eras. A distinctive unifying theme is Coates's interest in how 'green' writers over the last thirty years have interpreted our past dealings with nature, specifically their efforts to diagnose the roots of contemporary ecological problems and their search for ancestors. He concludes with a discussion of the future of nature in the context of developments such as the 'new' ecology, global warming, advances in genetic engineering and research on animal behaviour. Assuming no previous knowledge, Nature provides the reader with an accessible synthesis and introduction to some of environmental history's central features and debates, confirming its status as one of the most enthralling current pursuits within historical studies. This will be essential reading for second-year undergraduates and above in cultural history and environmental history, as well as to the general reader interested in environmental issues.

A guide to the history of nature and the environment. Placing the history of attitudes to nature within the context of human-induced changes in the material environment. Coates also takes a supranational perspective and crosses the divides between historical eras. Aimed at second year undergraduates and above.

In these global times it is a curious and pertinent fact that the life and writings of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi, which since the 12th century have incalculably influenced the metaphysical structure of much Oriental thought and practice, still remain relatively unknown and undiscussed in the Western theoretical architecture of the twenty-first century. His remarks on causality, time, contingency, necessity, epistemology, ontology, ethics and aesthetics alone would entice even the most wary of modernity's intellectual authorities. This book deals with the findings of just some of these authorities modern philosophy, social science and psychology in an open discourse between the ancient and the modern, the traditional and the scientific, the industrial and the personal. It is an invitation to reconsider some of the central and defining ideas of modernity in the light of Ibn 'Arabi's writings on the Unity of Existence. The book will be of interest to academics and students in psychology, sociology and philosophy, and to readers with an academic and/or personal interest in Ibn 'Arabi.

Squirrel Nation is a history of Britain’s two species of squirrel over the past two hundred years. The red squirrel, although rare, is among the most cherished of native species. Grey squirrels, by contrast, are one of the most frequently seen wild creatures in our gardens, parks, towns and countryside, and many Britons consider it to be a foreign interloper, introduced from North America in the late nineteenth century. By examining this animal’s colonization of Britain, Peter Coates also explores timely issues of belonging, nationalism, citizenship and the defence of borders within Britain today. Ultimately, though people are swift to draw distinctions between British squirrels and squirrels in Britain, Squirrel Nation shows that Britain’s two squirrel species have much more in common than at first appears.