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The Toxic Ship

The Voyage of the Khian Sea and the Global Waste Trade

By Simone M. Müller. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

In 1986 the Khian Sea, carrying thousands of tons of incinerator ash from Philadelphia, began a two-year journey, roaming the world's oceans in search of a dumping ground. Its initial destination and then country after...

Fukushima Futures

Survival Stories in a Repeatedly Ruined Seascape

By Satsuki Takahashi. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Both before and after the 2011 "Triple Disaster" of earthquake, tidal wave, and consequent meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, anthropologist Satsuki Takahashi visited nearby communities, collecting accounts of life and livelihoods along...

An Ecological History of Modern China

By Stevan Harrell

Is environmental degradation an inevitable result of economic development? Can ecosystems be restored once government officials and the public are committed to doing so? These questions are at the heart of An Ecological History of...

Ecologies of Empire in South Asia, 1400-1900

By Sumit Guha. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

The perception, valuation, and manipulation of human environments all have their own layered histories. So Sumit Guha argues in this sweeping examination of a pivotal five hundred years when successive empires struggled to harness lands...

Sustaining Natures

An Environmental Anthropology Reader

By Sarah R. Osterhoudt, K. Sivaramakrishnan

Environmental anthropology is at its best when firmly grounded in respectful and systematic ethnographic research and writing that spotlights uncommon perspectives on widely recognized issues confronting the world. Intentionally crafted for undergraduate course use in...

Insect Histories of East Asia

By David A. Bello, Daniel Burton-Rose

Interactions between people and animals are attracting overdue attention in diverse fields of scholarship, yet insects still creep within the shadows of more charismatic birds, fish, and mammals. Insect Histories of East Asia centers on...

Bellwether Histories

Animals, Humans, and US Environments in Crisis

By Susan Nance, Jennifer Marks

A multispecies history of the globalized United States, Bellwether Histories reveals how animals have been ensnared in colonialism, capitalism, and environmental destruction as human decisions created and perpetuated untenable and unequal interspecies relationships. The collection's...

Settler Cannabis

From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California

By Kaitlin Reed

Young countercultural back-to-the-land settlers flocked to northwestern California beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, unregulated cannabis production proliferated on Indigenous lands. As of 2021, the California cannabis economy was valued at $3.5 billion....

Inside the World of Climate Change Skeptics

By Kristin Haltinner. Dilshani Sarathchandra

As wildfires rip across the western United States and sea levels rise along coastal cities from Louisiana to Alaska, some people nevertheless reject the mainstream scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change. What leads people to...

The Camphor Tree and the Elephant

Religion and Ecological Change in Maritime Southeast Asia

By Faizah Zakaria. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

What is the role of religion in shaping interactions and relations between the human and nonhuman in nature? Why are Muslim and Christian organizations generally not a potent force in Southeast Asian environmental movements? The...

Between the Tides in Washington and Oregon

Exploring Beaches and Tidepools

By Ryan P. Kelly, Terrie Klinger, and John J. Meyer

A spectacular variety of life flourishes between the ebb and flow of high and low tide. Anemones talk to each other through chemical signaling, clingfish grip rocks and resist the surging tide, and bioluminescent dinoflagellates—single-celled...

The Cultivated Forest

People and Woodlands in Asian History

By Ian M. Miller, Bradley Camp Davis, Brian Lander, John S. Lee

Forests have histories that need to be told. This examination of wood and woodlands in East and Southeast Asia brings together case studies from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sumatra to explore continuities in the...

Spawning Modern Fish

Transnational Comparison in the Making of Japanese Salmon

By Heather Anne Swanson. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Since the mid-nineteenth century, agricultural development and fisheries management in northern Japan have been profoundly shaped by how people within and beyond Japan have compared Hokkaido's landscapes to those of other places, as part of efforts...

Governing Water in India

Inequality, Reform, and the State

By Leela Fernandes

Intensifying droughts and competing pressures on water resources foreground water scarcity as an urgent concern of the global climate change crisis. In India, individual, industrial, and agricultural water demands exacerbate inequities of access and expose...

Oceanographers and the Cold War

Disciples of Marine Science

By Jacob Darwin Hamblin

Oceanographers and the Cold War is about patronage, politics, and the community of scientists. It is the first book to examine the study of the oceans during the Cold War era and explore the international...

Turning Land into Capital

Development and Dispossession in the Mekong Region

By Philip Hirsch, Kevin Woods, Natalia Scurrah, Michael B. Dwyer, K. Sivaramakrishnan

In Southeast Asia reversals of earlier agrarian reforms have rolled back "land-to-the-tiller" policies created in the wake of Cold War–era revolutions. This trend, marked by increased land concentration and the promotion of export-oriented agribusiness at...

Upland Geopolitics

Postwar Laos and the Global Land Rush

By Michael B. Dwyer. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

In the twenty-first century, land deals in the Global South have become increasingly prevalent and controversial. Transnational access to arable land in impoverished "land-rich" countries in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia highlights the...

Charged

A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future

By James Morton Turner. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

To achieve fossil fuel independence, few technologies are more important than batteries. Used for powering zero-emission vehicles, storing electricity from solar panels and wind turbines, and revitalizing the electric grid, batteries are essential to scaling...

The River That Made Seattle

A Human and Natural History of the Duwamish

By BJ Cummings

With bountiful salmon and fertile plains, the Duwamish River has drawn people to its shores over the centuries for trading, transport, and sustenance. Chief Se’alth and his allies fished and lived in villages here and...

Communist Pigs

An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall

By Thomas Fleischman. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

The pig played a key role in the German Democratic Republic's attempts to create a modern, industrial food system built on communist principles. By the mid-1980s, East Germany produced more pork per capita than West...