Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability

About this book

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Sustainability is a far-reaching survey of the deep and contemporary history of sustainability. This innovative resource will help to define the history of sustainability as an identifiable field. It provides a unique resource for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars, and delivers essential context for understanding the current state and future path of the sustainability movement.

The history of sustainability is an increasingly important domain within the discipline of history, which draws on an interdisciplinary set of fields, ranging from energy studies, transportation, and urbanism to environmental history, economics, and philosophy. Key sections in this handbook cover the historiography of sustainability, resilience and collapse in historical societies, the deep roots of sustainability (seventeenth century to nineteenth century), the recent history of sustainability (twentieth century to present), and core issues and key debates in sustainability.

This handbook is an invaluable research and teaching tool for those interested in the history and development of sustainability and an essential resource for the many sustainability studies programs that now exist in the world's universities.

Contents

A. Introduction
1. Introduction to the Volume / Jeremy L. Caradonna

B. Historiography of Sustainability
2. Sustainability: A New Historiography / Jeremy L. Caradonna

C. Sustainability, Resilience, and Collapse in Historical Societies
3. What is Sustainable? Some Views from Highlands Papua New Guinea / Andrew Strathern and Pamela J. Stewart
4. Understanding Sustainability Through History: Resources and Complexity / Joseph A. Tainter
5. The Ancient Maya: Sustainability and Collapse? / B. L. Turner II

D. The Roots of Sustainability
6. Sustaining What? Scarcity, Growth, and the Natural Order in the Discourse on Sustainability, 1650-1900 / Gareth Dale
7. Eternal Forest, Sustainable Use: The Making of the Term "Nachhaltig" in 17th and 18th-Century Germany Forestry / Ulrich Grober
8. The Industrial Revolution: Social Costs and Social Change / Emma Griffin
9. Islam and Sustainability: The Norms and the Hindrances / Tarik Masud Quadir

E. The Recent History of Sustainability
10. The US Environmental Movement of the 1960s and 1970s: Building Frameworks of Sustainability / Erik W. Johnson and Pierce Greenberg
11. Sustainable Development and the United Nations / Iris Borowy
12. The Growth Paradigm: History, Hegemony, and the Contested Making of Economic Growthmanship / Matthias Schmelzer
13. A Basis for Systemic Sustainability Measurement: An Update / Simon Bell and Stephen Morse
14. Sustainability and the Reframing of the World City / Stephen Zavestoski
15. Sustainable Transportation: From Feet to Wheels and Machines and Back to Feet / Preston L. Schiller
16. From Hydrology to Hydrosociality: Historiography of Waters in India / Jenia Mukherjee
17. Sustainable Architecture: A Short History / Vandana Baweja
18. Sustainability Studies in Higher Education / Teresa Sabol Spezio

F. Core Issues and Key Debates on Sustainability
19. Climate Change and Its Histories / Hervé Le Treut and Claire Weill
20. The Problem of Economic Growth / Richard Heinberg
21. From (Strong) Sustainability to Degrowth: A Philosophical and Historical Reconstruction / Barbara Muraca and Ralf Döring
22. Sustainability Beyond Growth: Toward an Ethics of Flourishing / John R. Ehrenfeld
23. Business, Sustainability, and the Bottom of the Pyramid / Ana Maria Peredo
24. At the Crossroads: Sustainability and the Twilight of the Modern World / John A. Robinson and David Maggs
25. Rethinking the History of Agriculture with Sustainability in Mind / Jeremy L. Caradonna
26. The Gene Revolution and the Future of Agriculture / Thierry Vrain

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Biography

Jeremy L. Caradonna has a PhD in History and is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria, Canada.