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Food in Early Modern Europe
Ken Albala
This unique book examines food's importance during the massive evolution of Europe following the Middle Ages.
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The U.S. Forest Service : business as usual
Cathy Bennett
There are two prevailing views today about our forests and natural resources. Both views are considered the "right" view, each position comprising a set of values by which we make decisions and choices about using our natural resources. The "dominant world view," is anthropocentric and agriculturally based, with a strong belief that we can "fix" environmental problems through the use of technology. The key result of this view is a belief in the efficiency of economic expansion and its continued growth. The second view maintains we are part of nature, not masters of it, and that we have developed an arrogant attitude toward nature, believing we have the right to do as we wish regardless of the consequences. The result of this view is a belief in the interconnectedness of all life, thus all life has rights.
This work argues that the "dominant" worldview shaped the policies of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Consistent with this worldview, the USFS management. paradigm was to provide the greatest return, a commodity-driven focus. However, when public values changed towards a more ecocentric view, the USFS should have reevaluated its method of doing business. Instead, it remained entrenched in its management objective- timber production.
After the courts enjoined the USFS against cutting in the Pacific Northwest, aftet struggling with confrontational environmentalists and increased activism within the agency, the USFS attempted to re-write its management paradigm. However even though the policy sounds eco-friendly, the USFS is still mandated by Congress, and forced by appropriations approved by Congress, to cut trees. Different ideologies are accommodated only when they do not conflict with economics. Thus, in spite of changing values, it is still business as usual.
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Dreams of Oil and Fertile Fields: The Rush to Qinghai in the 1950s
Gregory Rohlf
The author considers rural resettlement to Qinghai province during the 1950s as part of the broader state-building effort to support frontier construction, which in turn was part of China's geopolitical reengineering pursued by several generations of Party leaders. The Chaidam basin's oil and the vast pastures of highland areas both appeared to be ready for quick harvest. These natural resources caused the state to seek a gold rush-style migration, setting up many counties and towns in the space of several years. Analysis of the experiences of Youth League-sponsored agricultural resettlers reveals that the expensive program failed to achieve most of its goals and indeed destroyed land and exacerbated food shortages. The regional and gendered dimensions of this movement provide new perspectives from which to view the rapid state building of the 1950s.
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Eating Right in the Renaissance
Ken Albala
Eating right has been an obsession for longer than we think. Renaissance Europe had its own flourishing tradition of dietary advice. Then, as now, an industry of experts churned out diet books for an eager and concerned public. Providing a cornucopia of information on food and an intriguing account of the differences between the nutritional logic of the past and our own time, this inviting book examines the wide-ranging dietary literature of the Renaissance. Ken Albala ultimately reveals the working of the Renaissance mind from a unique perspective: we come to understand a people through their ideas on food.
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Insensible Perspiration and Oily Vegetable Humor: An Eighteenth Century Controversy Over Vegetarianism
Ken Albala
Quack diets are nothing new. Nor have they always been easily dismissed. In eighteenth-century Italy, a virulent controversy arose over a meatless wonder diet. This controversy would eventually play itself out in the field of nutritional theory, as dietary writers crambled to incorporate the latest scientific findings into their recommendations.
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