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Anthropocene Encounters: New Directions in Green Political Thinking
by Frank Biermann Eva LövbrandCoined barely two decades ago, the Anthropocene has become one of the most influential and controversial terms in environmental policy. Yet it remains an ambivalent and contested formulation, giving rise to a multitude of unexpected, and often uncomfortable, conversations. This book traces in detail a broad variety of such 'Anthropocene encounters': in science, philosophy and literary fiction. It asks what it means to 'think green' in a time when nature no longer offers a stable backdrop to political analysis. Do familiar political categories and concepts, such as democracy, justice, power and time, hold when confronted with a world radically transformed by humans? The book responds by inviting more radical political thought, plural forms of engagement, and extended ethical commitments, making it a fascinating and timely volume for graduate students and researchers working in earth system governance, environmental politics and studies of the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene in Global Media: Neutralizing the risk (Routledge Studies in Environmental Communication and Media)
by Leslie SklairThis book offers the first systematic study of how the ‘Anthropocene’ is reported in mass media globally, drawing parallels between the use (or misuse) of the term and the media’s attitude towards the associated issues of climate change and global warming. Identifying the potential dangers of the Anthropocene provides a useful path into a variety of issues that are often ignored, misrepresented, or sidelined by the media. These dangers are widely discussed in the social sciences, environmental humanities, and creative arts, and this book includes chapters on how the contributions of these disciplines are reported by the media. Our results suggest that the natural science and mass media establishments, and the business and political interests which underpin them, tend to lean towards optimistic reassurance (the ‘good’ Anthropocene), rather than pessimistic alarmist stories, in reporting the Anthropocene. In this volume, contributors explore how dangerous this ‘neutralizing’ of the Anthropocene is in undermining serious global action in the face of the potential existential risks confronting humanity. The book presents results from media in more than 100 countries in all major languages across the globe. It covers the reporting of key environmental issues, such as the impact of climate change and global warming on oceans, forests, soil, biodiversity, and the biosphere. We offer explanations for differences and similarities in how the media report the Anthropocene in different regions of the world. In doing so, the book argues that, though it is still controversial, the idea of the Anthropocene helps to concentrate minds and behaviour in confronting ongoing ecological (and Coronavirus) crises. The Anthropocene in Global Media will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental studies, media and communication studies, and the environmental humanities, and all those who are concerned about the survival of humans on planet Earth.
The Anthropocene Judgments Project: Futureproofing the Common Law
by Nicole Rogers and Michelle MaloneyThis book is a collection of speculative judgments that, along with accompanying commentaries, pursue a novel enquiry into how judges might respond to the formidable and planetary-scaled challenges of the Anthropocene. The book’s contributors –from Australia, Asia, Europe, and the United Kingdom –take up a range of issues: including multispecies justice, the challenges of intergenerational justice, dimensions of postcolonial justice, the potential contribution of AI platforms to the judgment process, and the future of judging and law in and beyond the Anthropocene. The project takes its inspiration from existing critical judgment projects. It is, however, thoroughly interdisciplinary. In anticipating future scenarios, and designing or adapting legal principles to respond to them, the book’s contributors have been assisted by climate scientists with expertise in future modelling; they have benefitted from the experience of fiction writers in future worldbuilding; and they have incorporated elements of the future worlds depicted in various texts of speculative fiction and artworks. The judgments are, of necessity, speculative and hypothetical in their subject matter. Thus, taken together, they constitute a collaborative experiment in creating the inclusive and radical imaginaries of the future common law. The Anthropocene Judgments Project will appeal to critical and sociolegal academics, scholars in the environmental humanities, environmental lawyers, students, and others with interests in the pressing issues of ecology, multispecies justice, climate change, the intersection of AI platforms and the law, and the future of law in the Anthropocene.
Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction (Posthumanities #50)
by David FarrierHow poetry can help us think about and live in the Anthropocene by reframing our intimate relationship with geological time The Anthropocene describes how humanity has radically intruded into deep time, the vast timescales that shape the Earth system and all life-forms that it supports. The challenge it poses—how to live in our present moment alongside deep pasts and futures—brings into sharp focus the importance of grasping the nature of our intimate relationship with geological time. In Anthropocene Poetics, David Farrier shows how contemporary poetry by Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney, Evelyn Reilly, and Christian Bök, among others, provides us with frameworks for thinking about this uncanny sense of time.Looking at a diverse array of lyric and avant-garde poetry from three interrelated perspectives—the Anthropocene and the “material turn” in environmental philosophy; the Plantationocene and the role of global capitalism in environmental crisis; and the emergence of multispecies ethics and extinction studies—Farrier rethinks the environmental humanities from a literary critical perspective. Anthropocene Poetics puts a concern with deep time at the center, defining a new poetics for thinking through humanity’s role as geological agents, the devastation caused by resource extraction, and the looming extinction crisis.
The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture
by Mark BouldFrom Ducks, Newburyport to zombie movies and the Fast and Furious franchise, how climate anxiety permeates our cultureThe art and literature of our time is pregnant with catastrophe, with weather and water, wildness and weirdness. The Anthropocene - the term given to this geological epoch in which humans, anthropos, are wreaking havoc on the earth - is to be found bubbling away everywhere in contemporary cultural production. Typically, discussions of how culture registers, figures and mediates climate change focus on 'climate fiction' or 'cli-fi', but The Anthropocene Unconscious is more interested in how the Anthropocene and especially anthropogenic climate destabilisation manifests in texts that are not overtly about climate change - that is, unconsciously. The Anthropocene, Mark Bould argues, constitutes the unconscious of 'the art and literature of our time'.Tracing the outlines of the Anthropocene unconscious in a range of film, television and literature - across a range of genres and with utter disregard for high-low culture distinctions - this playful and riveting book draws out some of the things that are repressed and obscured by the term 'the Anthropocene', including capital, class, imperialism, inequality, alienation, violence, commodification, patriarchy and racial formations. The Anthropocene Unconscious is about a kind of rewriting. It asks: what happens when we stop assuming that the text is not about the anthropogenic biosphere crises engulfing us? What if all the stories we tell are stories about the Anthropocene? About climate change?
The Anthropocenic Turn: The Interplay between Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Responses to a New Age (Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature)
by Gabriele Dürbeck Philip HüpkesThis interdisciplinary volume discusses whether the increasing salience of the Anthropocene concept in the humanities and the social sciences constitutes an "Anthropocenic turn." The Anthropocene discourse creates novel conceptual configurations and enables scholars to re-negotiate and re-contextualize long-established paradigms, premises, theories and methodologies. These innovative constellations stimulate fresh research in many areas of thought and practice. The contributors to this volume respond to the proposition of an "Anthropocene turn" from the perspective of diverse research fields, including history of science, philosophy, environmental humanities and political science as well as literary, art and media studies. Altogether, the collection reveals to which extent the Anthropocene concept challenges deep-seated assumptions across disciplines. It invites readers to explore the wealth of scholarly perspectives on the Anthropocene as well as unexpected inter- and transdisciplinary connections.
Anthropogenic Geomorphology: A Guide to Man-Made Landforms
by Denes Loczy József Szabó Lóránt DávidAnthropogenic geomorphology studies society's impact on the geographical environment, and especially on the Earth's surface. This volume provides guidance to students discussing the basic topics of anthropogenic geomorphology. The chapters cover both its system, and its connections with other sciences, as well as the way the subject can contribute to tackling today's practical problems. The book represents all fields of geomorphology, giving an introduction to the diversity of the discipline through examples taken from a range of contexts and periods, and focusing on examples from Europe. It is no accident that anthropogenic geomorphology has been gaining ground within geomorphology itself. Its results advance not only the theoretical development of the science but can be applied directly to social and economic issues. Worldwide, anthropogenic geomorphology is an integral and expanding part of earth sciences curricula in higher education, making this a timely and relevant text.
Anthropogenic Soils (Progress in Soil Science)
by Jeffrey HowardThis book is a state-of-the-art review of the physical, chemical and mineralogical properties of anthropogenic soils, their genesis morphology and classification, geocultural setting, and strategies for reclamation, revitalization, use and management.
An Anthropogenic Table of Elements: Experiments in the Fundamental (Technoscience and Society)
by Timothy Neale Courtney Addison Thao PhanAn Anthropogenic Table of Elements provides a contemporary rethinking of Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, bringing together "elemental" stories to reflect on everyday life in the Anthropocene. Concise and engaging, this book provides stories of scale, toxicity, and temporality that extrapolate on ideas surrounding ethics, politics, and materiality that are fundamental to this contemporary moment. Examining elemental objects and forces, including carbon, mould, cheese, ice, and viruses, the contributors question what elemental forms are still waiting to emerge and what political possibilities of justice and environmental reparation they might usher into the world. Bringing together anthropologists, historians, and media studies scholars, this book tests a range of possible ways to tabulate and narrate the elemental as a way to bring into view fresh discussion on material constitutions and, thereby, new ethical stances, responsibilities, and power relations. In doing so, An Anthropogenic Table of Elements demonstrates through elementality that even the smallest and humblest stories are capable of powerful effects and vast journeys across time and space.
Anthropogenic Tropical Forests: Human–Nature Interfaces on the Plantation Frontier (Advances in Asian Human-Environmental Research)
by Noboru Ishikawa Ryoji SodaThe studies in this volume provide an ethnography of a plantation frontier in central Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Drawing on the expertise of both natural scientists and social scientists, the key focus is the process of commodification of nature that has turned the local landscape into anthropogenic tropical forests. Analysing the transformation of the space of mixed landscapes and multiethnic communities—driven by trade in forest products, logging and the cultivation of oil palm—the contributors explore the changing nature of the environment, multispecies interactions, and the metabolism between capitalism and nature. The project involved the collaboration of researchers specialising in anthropology, geography, Southeast Asian history, global history, area studies, political ecology, environmental economics, plant ecology, animal ecology, forest ecology, hydrology, ichthyology, geomorphology and life-cycle assessment.Collectively, the transdisciplinary research addresses a number of vital questions. How are material cycles and food webs altered as a result of large-scale land-use change? How have new commodity chains emerged while older ones have disappeared? What changes are associated with such shifts? What are the relationships among these three elements—commodity chains, material cycles and food webs? Attempts to answer these questions led the team to go beyond the dichotomy of society and nature as well as human and non-human. Rather, the research highlights complex relational entanglements of the two worlds, abruptly and forcibly connected by human-induced changes in an emergent and compelling resource frontier in maritime Southeast Asia.
Anthropological Perspectives on Environmental Communication (Palgrave Studies in Anthropology of Sustainability)
by Annelie Sjölander-Lindqvist Ivan Murin Michael E. DoveIn the continuous search for sustainability, the exchange of diverse perspectives, assumptions, and values is indispensable to environmental protection. Through anthropological and ethnographic analyses, this collection addresses how interests, values, and ideologies affect dialogue and sustainability work. Drawing on studies from three continents – Europe, North America, and South America – the paradoxes and the plurality of meanings associated with the creation of sustainable futures are explored. The book focuses on how communication practices collide with organizational frameworks, customary practices, livelihoods, and landscape. In so doing, the authors explore the meanings of environmental communication, pushing beyond environmental advocacy rhetoric to emphasize stronger anthropological engagement within communities to achieve more impactful environmental communication practice. Empirically the book’s chapters explore a diverse set of issues, ranging from coastal management in the European north to Native American place naming in Alaska. They further share findings from studies of contaminated land remediation in Sweden, conflicts over water resources in Chile, management of heritage and national parks in Northern Arizona, and cultural transmission in Slovakia.This is an open access book.
Anthropological Perspectives on Intangible Cultural Heritage (SpringerBriefs in Environment, Security, Development and Peace #6)
by Cristina Amescua Lourdes ArizpeA decade after the approval of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), the concept has gained wide acceptance at the local, national and international levels. Communities are recognizing and celebrating their Intangible Heritage; governments are devoting important efforts to the construction of national inventories; and anthropologists and professionals from different disciplines are forming a new field of study. The ten chapters of this book include the peer-reviewed papers of the First Planning Meeting of the International Social Science Council's Commission on Research on ICH, which was held at the Centro Regional de Investigaciones Multidisciplinarias (UNAM) in Cuernavaca, Mexico in 2012. The papers are based on fieldwork and direct involvement in assessing and reconceptualizing the outcomes of the UNESCO Convention. The report in Appendix 1 highlights the main points raised during the sessions.
Anthropologist: Scientist of the People
by Mary BattenProvides an in-depth look at the life of an anthropologist as one explains her field and data gathering processes in relation to her fifteen-year study of the Ache, a tribe of hunter-gatherers living in Paraguay.
Anthropology and Nature (Routledge Studies in Anthropology #14)
by Kirsten HastrupOn the basis of empirical studies, this book explores nature as an integral part of the social worlds conventionally studied by anthropologists. The book may be read as a form of scholarly "edgework," resisting institutional divisions and conceptual routines in the interest of exploring new modalities of anthropological knowledge making. The present interest in the natural world is partly a response to large-scale natural disasters and global climate change, and to a keen sense that nature matters matters to society at many levels, ranging from the microbiological and genetic framing of reproduction, over co-species development, to macro-ecological changes of weather and climate. Given that the human footprint is now conspicuous across the entire globe, in the oceans as well as in the atmosphere, it is difficult to claim that nature is what is given and permanent, while people and societies are ephemeral and simply derivative features. This implies that society matters to nature, and some natural scientists look towards the social sciences for an understanding of how people think and how societies work. The book thus opens up a space for new forms of reflection on how natures and societies are generated.
Anthropology and Risk (Earthscan Risk in Society)
by Asa BoholmDrawing on theory from anthropology, sociology, organisation studies and philosophy, this book addresses how the perception, communication and management of risk is shaped by culturally informed and socially embedded knowledge and experience. It provides an account of how interpretations of risk in society are conditioned by knowledge claims and cultural assumptions and by the orientationof actors based on roles, norms, expectations, identities, trust and practical rationality within a lived social world. By focusing on agency, social complexity and the production and interpretation of meaning, the book offers a comprehensive and holistic theoretical perspective on risk, based on empirical case studies and ethnographic enquiry. As a selection of Åsa Boholm’s publications throughout her career, along with a newly written introduction overviewing the field, this book provides a unified perspective on risk as a construct shaped by social and cultural contexts.This collection should be of interest to students and scholars of risk communication, risk management, environmental planning, environmental management and environmental and applied anthropology.
The Anthropology of Climate Change: An Historical Reader (Wiley Blackwell Anthologies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)
by Michael R. DoveThis timely anthology brings together for the first time the most important ancient, medieval, Enlightenment, and modern scholarship for a complete anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change. Brings together for the first time the most important classical works and contemporary scholarship for a complete historical anthropological evaluation of the relationship between culture and climate change Covers the historic and prehistoric records of human impact from and response to prior periods of climate change, including the impact and response to climate change at the local level Discusses the impact on global debates about climate change from North-South post-colonial histories and the social dimensions of the science of climate change. Includes coverage of topics such as environmental determinism, climatic events as social catalysts, climatic disasters and societal collapse, and ethno-meteorology An ideal text for courses in climate change, human/cultural ecology, environmental anthropology and archaeology, disaster studies, environmental sciences, science and technology studies, history of science, and conservation and development studies
The Anthropology of Climate Change: An Integrated Critical Perspective (Routledge Advances in Climate Change Research)
by Merrill Singer Hans A. BaerIn addressing the urgent questions raised by climate change, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the anthropology of climate change, guided by a critical political ecological framework. It examines the emergence and slow maturation of the anthropology of climate change, reviews the historic foundations for this work in the archaeology of climate change, and presents three alternative contemporary theoretical perspectives in the anthropology of climate change. This second edition is fully updated to include the most recent literature published since the first edition in 2014. It also examines a number of new topics, including an analysis of the 2014 American Anthropological Association’s Global Climate Change Task Force report, a new case study on responses to climate change in developed societies, and reference to the stance of the Trump administration on climate change. Not only does this book provide a valuable overview of the field and the key literature, but it also gives researchers and students in Environmental Anthropology, Climate Change, Human Geography, Sociology, and Political Science a novel framework for understanding climate change that emphasizes human socioecological interactions.
The Anthropology of Resource Extraction (Routledge Studies of the Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development)
by Lorenzo D’AngeloThis book offers an overview of the key debates in the burgeoning anthropological literature on resource extraction. Resources play a crucial role in the contemporary economy and society, are required in the production of a vast range of consumer products and are at the core of geopolitical strategies and environmental concerns for the future of humanity. Scholars have widely debated the economic and sociological aspects of resource management in our societies, offering interesting and useful abstractions. However, anthropologists offer different and fresh perspectives – sometimes complementary and at other times alternative to these abstractions – based on field researches conducted in close contact with those actors (individuals as well as groups and institutions) that manipulate, anticipate, fight for, or resist the extractive processes in many creative ways. Thus, while addressing questions such as: "What characterizes the anthropology of resource extraction?", "What topics in the context of resource extraction have anthropologists studied?", and "What approaches and insights have emerged from this?", this book synthesizes and analyses a range of anthropological debates about the ways in which different actors extract, use, manage, and think about resources. This comprehensive volume will serve as a key reading for scholars and students within the social sciences working on resource extraction and those with an interest in natural resources, environment, capitalism, and globalization. It will also be a useful resource for practitioners within mining and development.
Anthropos and the Material
by Penny Harvey Christian Krohn-Hansen Knut G. NustadThe destructive effects of modern industrial societies have shaped the planet in such profound ways that many argue for the existence of a new geological epoch called the Anthropocene. This claim brings into relief a set of challenges that have deep implications for how relations between the human, the material, and the political affect contemporary social worlds. The contributors to Anthropos and the Material examine these challenges by questioning and complicating long-held understandings of the divide between humans and things. They present ethnographic case studies from across the globe, addressing myriad topics that range from labor, economics, and colonialism to technology, culture, the environment, agency, and diversity. In foregrounding the importance of connecting natural and social histories, the instability and intangibility of the material, and the ways in which the lively encounters between the human and the nonhuman challenge conceptions of liberal humanism, the contributors point to new understandings of the capacities of people and things to act, transform, and adapt to a changing world.
The Anthroposcene of Weather and Climate: Ethnographic Contributions to the Climate Change Debate
by Paul SillitoeWhile it is widely acknowledged that climate change is among the greatest global challenges of our times, it has local implications too. This volume forefronts these local issues, giving anthropology a voice in this great debate, which is otherwise dominated by natural scientists and policy makers. It shows what an ethnographic focus can offer in furthering our understanding of the lived realities of climate debates. Contributors from communities around the world discuss local knowledge of, and responses to, environmental changes that need to feature in scientifically framed policies regarding mitigation and adaptation measures if they are to be effective.
Anticipation, Sustainability, Futures and Human Extinction: Ensuring Humanity’s Journey into The Distant Future (Routledge Research in Anticipation and Futures)
by Bruce E. TonnThis book considers the philosophical underpinnings, policy foundations, institutional innovations, and deep cultural changes needed to ensure that humanity has the best chance of surviving and flourishing into the very distant future. Anticipation of threats to the sustainability of human civilization needs to encompass time periods that span not just decades but millennia. All existential risks need to be jointly assessed, as opposed to addressing risks such as climate change and pandemics separately. Exploring the potential events that are likely to cause the biggest risks as well as asking why we should even desire to thrive into the distant future, this work looks at the ‘biggest picture possible’ in order to argue that futures-oriented decision-making ought to be a permanent aspect of human society and futures-oriented policy making must take precedent over the day-to-day policy making of current generations in times of great peril. The book concludes with a discourse on the truly fundamental bottom-up changes needed in our personal psychologies and culture to support these top-down recommendations. This book is of great interest to philosophers, policy analysts, political scientists, economists, psychologists, planners, and theologians.
Antinuclear Citizens: Sustainability Policy and Grassroots Activism in Post-Fukushima Japan (Anthropology of Policy)
by Akihiro OgawaFollowing the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, tsunamis engulfed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant located on Japan's Pacific Coast, leading to the worst nuclear disaster the world has seen since the Chernobyl crisis of 1986. Prior to this disaster, Japan had the third largest commercial nuclear program in the world, surpassed only by those in the United States and France—nuclear power significantly contributed to Japan's economic prosperity, and nearly 30% of Japan's electricity was generated by reactors dotted across the archipelago, from northern Hokkaido to southern Kyushu. This long period of institutional stasis was, however, punctuated by the crisis of March 11, which became a critical juncture for Japanese nuclear policymaking. As Akihiro Ogawa argues, the primary agent for this change is what he calls "antinuclear citizens"— a conscientious Japanese public who envision a sustainable life in a nuclear-free society. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic research conducted across Japan—including antinuclear rallies, meetings with bureaucrats, and at renewable energy production sites—Ogawa presents an historical record of ordinary people's actions as they sought to survive and navigate a new reality post-Fukushima. Ultimately, Ogawa argues that effective sustainability efforts require collaborations that are grounded in civil society and challenge hegemonic ideology, efforts that reimagine societies and landscapes—especially those dominated by industrial capitalism—to help build a productive symbiosis between industry and sustainability.
Antitauromaquia
by Manuel Vicent El RotoEl escritor Manuel Vicent y el ilustrador El Roto embisten contra una costumbre que despierta pasión y odio por igual en este alegato antitaurino. Esta Antitauromaquia es algo más que una diatriba contra la fiesta nacional. La costumbre primitiva de sacrificar toros en público y convertir esa muerte en una ceremonia moral ha perdido ya toda su estética. La corrida ha quedado solo en un residuo de aquella España negra, zaragatera y triste en la que la crueldad con los animales no se distinguía de la violencia social y política. El espectáculo de la muerte festiva de un toro supone una agresión a la sensibilidad humana. Este es un alegato contra todos los tipos de violencia que se expresan en la fiesta taurina, una liturgia de la tortura que algunos pretenden elevar todavía al rango de cultura porque creen que en España o eres toro o eres matador. Esta Antitauromaquiaes un aviso para que no te toreen. Reseñas:«Su gusto por el detalle no disminuye la contundencia gráfica. Cuando Vicent habla de algo lo ofrece abierto en la mesa de quirófano.»David Trueba, Babelia «El Roto tiene una eterna capacidad de señalar el punto más vulnerable de nuestra sociedad, de acertar siempre con sus demoledoras críticas.»Papel en Blanco
Antropoceno: La política en la era humana
by Manuel Arias MaldonadoEl Antropoceno es una nueva época geológica cuyo rasgo central es el protagonismo de la humanidad, convertida en agente de cambio medioambiental a escala planetaria. Desde una postura original, elegante y sensata, Arias Maldonado aprovecha todas las oportunidades que ofrece el concepto, un excelente marco teórico para el debate sobre la sostenibilidad global, la conservación de las formas y espacios naturales, así como para la moralización de las relaciones entre el ser humano y la naturaleza. La colonización humana del planeta ha terminado por conducirnos a una nueva época geológica: el Antropoceno. Al menos, así lo indica una sólida hipótesis científica según la cual el progresivo acoplamiento de los sistemas sociales y naturales ha hecho de la humanidad el principal agente de cambio medioambiental global. De manera que el Holoceno, bajo cuyas benévolas condiciones climáticas ha prosperado la humanidad, está dejando paso a un nuevo régimen planetario lleno de peligros y oportunidades. Del cambio climático a la extinción de especies, de la urbanización a la reforestación, el Antropoceno es un fenómeno ambiguo: un efecto colateral del progreso humano que despierta a las fuerzas telúricas que operan en el tiempo profundo y nos recuerda que somos criaturas terrenales. En este libro de vocación interdisciplinar, Manuel Arias Maldonado somete a riguroso análisis este novísimo concepto y se pregunta por sus consecuencias políticas. O sea: por los efectos que para la sociedad liberal y la democracia tiene una mutación planetaria que obliga a reorganizar las relaciones socionaturales.
Ants, Galileo, and Gandhi: Designing the Future of Business through Nature, Genius, and Compassion
by Sissel WaageAlthough sustainability efforts in business are still a work in progress, it is increasingly clear that key elements of a new generation of enterprises will be radically different from those of our contemporary modern industrial economy. The core distinctions between what currently exists and what is being created are communicated in this book through the compelling metaphor of Ants, Galileo, and Gandhi.This collection, developed from The Natural Step's conference on Sustainability and Innovation in 2002, provides radical ideas for generating a new perspective on the dynamics of business systems. "Ants" symbolise the lessons to be learned from nature and the dependence of individual beings on broader, complex systems. "Galileo" embodies brilliance in perceiving and proving that the current paradigm is flawed. 'Gandhi' exemplifies exceptional compassion in fighting for fundamental change.All of these attributes are increasingly relevant in a world where, globally, we are experiencing both a steady decline in life-supporting resources and rising demands. Recognition of these challenges is sparking innovation within the private sector where the first glimmers of systemic change can be seen. The book examines the emergence of 21st-century enterprises that recognise their reliance on broad social and ecological systems ("ants"), incorporate sparks of genius rooted in rigorous analyses ("Galileo"), and acknowledge the importance of compassion and determination within any endeavour ("Gandhi").With contributions from Ray Anderson, Gretchen Daily, Karl-Henrik Rob