Product Description: Our physical ecosystem is not indestructible and we have obligations to hold it in trust for future generations. The same is true of our metaphysical ecosystem - the values, principles, attitudes, beliefs, and shared stories on which we have founded our society...read more

Product Description: Death Talk asks why, when our society has rejected euthanasia for over two thousand years, are we now considering legalizing it? Has euthanasia been promoted by deliberately confusing it with other ethically acceptable acts? What is the relation between pain relief treatments that could shorten life and euthanasia? How do journalistic values and media ethics affect the public's perception of euthanasia? What impact would the legalization of euthanasia have on concepts of human rights, human responsibilities, and human ethics? Can we imagine teaching young physicians how to put their patients to death? There are vast ethical, legal, and social differences between natural death and euthanasia...read more

Water in a Dry Land is a story of research about water as a source of personal and cultural meaning. The site of this exploration is the iconic river system which forms the networks of natural and human landscapes of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. In the current geological era of human induced climate change, the desperate plight of the system of waterways has become an international phenomenon, a symbol of the unsustainable ways we relate to water globally. The Murray-Darling Basin extends west of the Great Dividing Range that separates the densely populated east coast of Australia from the sparsely populated inland. Aboriginal peoples continue to inhabit the waterways of the great artesian basin and pass on their cultural stories and practices of water, albeit in changing forms. A key question informing the book is: What can we learn about water from the oldest continuing culture inhabiting the world’s driest continent? In the process of responding to this question a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers formed to work together in a contact zone of cultural difference within an emergent arts-based ethnography. Photo essays of the artworks and their landscapes offer a visual accompaniment to the text on the Routledge Innovative Ethnography Series website, http://www.innovativeethnographies.net/. This book is perfect for courses in environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, and qualitative methods.

Product Description: A unique and inviting record, this volume explores the Aboriginal Gumbaynggirr people’s experience in maintaining the stories and songs of their New South Wales homeland. By taking up the metaphor of singing to capture a quality of voice, this remarkable record examines the particular qualities inherent in the coastal group’s songs and considers their universal sense of knowledge, understanding, and openness...read more

Product Description: Somerville asks: What does it mean to be human today, when mind-altering scientific breakthroughs are challenging our fundamental ideas of ourselves, how we relate to others and the world around us, and how we find meaning in life? Touching on such controversial subjects as our growing acceptance of new reproductive technologies and the genetic modification of plants and animals, she argues that only if we are willing to undertake a journey of the human imagination will we be able to see, understand, and relate morally to the world around us, allowing us to develop an ethics to guide us...read more