Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
An interdisciplinary explanation of why Europeans and people of European descent have come to control so much of the world’s wealth.
Aliases:
food
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, oil imports in Cuba were halved and food imports reduced by up to 80 percent. This film suggests that, given the perceived immanence of peak oil, there is much to be learned from the Cuban experience.
Daniel Philippon on "The Sustainable Food Movement"
Daniel Philippon, Carson Fellow September 2011 to February 2012, talks about his research on the sustainable food movement.
Donald Worster on “Facing Limits: Abundance, Scarcity, and the American Way of Life”
Donald Worster, Carson Fellow from February to July 2011, talks about his research concerning the impact of the discovery of the New World and its resources, both on Western Europe, and the American way of life.
"Jan van Riebeeck as Pioneering Explorer and Conservator of Natural Resources at the Cape of Good Hope (1652–62)"
This article examines of the daily journals covering the first decade of Dutch VOC occupation of South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, and the origins of European exploration, exploitation and conservation of natural resources at the Cape.
"Alpine Milk: Dairy Farming as a Pre-modern Strategy of Land Use"
This paper shows how the story of Alpine milk illustrates that in premodern times food production reflected much more the connection between local land resources and farmer’s skills, tools, and practices—a link that has ceased to exist in the mindset of industrialised societies.
"'The Common Cormorant or Shag Lays Eggs Inside a Paper Bag.' A Cultural Ecology of Fish-eating Birds in Western Australia"
This paper builds a history of the rise of ecological awareness of the Swan River in Perth, Western Australia through the cultural perceptions of fish-eating birds.
"Medieval Slash-and-Burn Cultivation: Strategic or Adapted Land Use in the Swedish Mining District?"
The general view in Swedish historiography of an inherent conflict between iron-making and the practice of slash-and-burn is questioned on the basis of this palaeoecological case study of repeated slash-and-burn cultivation from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries in a mining district of central Sweden.
"Frontier Foods for Late Medieval Consumers: Culture, Economy, Ecology"
This essay considers medieval long distance trades in grain, cattle, and preserved fish as antecedents to today’s globalised movements of foodstuffs.
"Human-Environment Relationships in the Pacific Islands around AD 1300"
This paper traces the history of human-environment interactions in the Pacific Islands during the last millennium, focusing on three main periods: the Little Climatic Optimum, the Little Ice Age, and, in greatest detail, the transition around AD 1300 between the two.