Life and Death Matters - 9781598743395

"Life and Death Matters represents socially aware, well informed, relevant and humane anthropology at its best. With deep expertise and a readily accessible style authors use case-specific experience to tell the alarming collective story of how neoliberal development and military conflict contributes to the deterioration of the environment and the increasingly precarious situation of its most vulnerable human inhabitants. With the environment at the top of the global political agenda, this book could not be more timely."---Hugh Gusterson, George Mason University

"Barbara Rose Johnston and her authors systematically navigate through the complex landscape of national and international governance and environmental justice to address the essential questions of our times: How do such crises form? Who pays the price and reaps the benefits? With its rigorous writing, substantive data, and analyses tempered by passion, this book is a prime example of scholar-advocacy at its best."---Irene J. Klaver, University of North Texas and UNESCO water/culture advisor

"This stunning book is the single most compelling, comprehensive resource on human rights and the environment." ---Gregory Button, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

"Life and Death Matters connects seemingly disparate phenomena---the rush to economic development, global tourism, climate change, modern warfare, and the damages wrought by nuclear militarism---to consider how biodegenerative catastrophes displace people, contaminate ecosystems, harm human health, and compromise cultural integrity. Authors dissect the controlling processes that impede efforts to create a more habitable planet. The book's long-term depth and cross-cultural breadth demonstrate how anthropological perspectives can lead to a more lucid understanding of the perils that threaten us all. Critical anthropology at its finest!" ---Roberto J. Gonzalez, San Jose State University

The first edition of Life and Death Matters was a breakthrough text, centralizing those on the front lines of environmental crises around the world and forging new paradigms for understanding how crises emerge and how different groups respond. This second edition, fully updated with both expanded and new chapters, again provides a benchmark for the field. It opens pathways for further research in new century when social and environmental systems are being reconceptualised within post-9/11 security frameworks, when global warming and resource scarcity are not fears but realities, and when ecocide and ethnocide are daily tragedies.