The Human Scaffold: How Not to Design Your Way Out of a Climate Crisis"Humanity has precipitated a planetary crisis of resource consumption--a crisis of stuff. Indeed, so accustomed are we to living with stuff, it has become difficult to imagine ways out of the environmental crisis that do not come down to substituting a new package of material artifacts (perhaps with a smaller carbon footprint) for those we have today. In The Human Scaffold, anthropologist and philosopher Josh Berson offers a new theory of adaptation to environmental change. Drawing on niche construction, evolutionary game theory, and the enactive view of cognition, Berson considers cases in the archaeology of adaptation in which technology in the conventional, that is, material, sense was virtually absent. Far from being isolated events, these cases exemplify a pervasive feature of human cultural evolution with implications for our own time. In a time when more and more of us are reconsidering our relationship to stuff, we need to ask what the environmental crisis demands of us not as consumers but as biological beings. The Human Scaffold offers a starting point"-- |
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The Human Scaffold: How Not to Design Your Way Out of a Climate Crisis Josh Berson Limited preview - 2021 |
The Human Scaffold: How Not to Design Your Way Out of a Climate Crisis Josh Berson Limited preview - 2021 |
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activity adaptive animals Anthropology appear archaeological artifacts Australia become behavior body challenge chapter clear climate clothing cognitive cold complexity concept continue culture describe dimension discussion distinct early effects enactive environment environmental episodic evidence evolution evolutionary experience fact fire fitness horizons human imagine implicated individual instance kind land landscape late learning least less living look material mean mind models nature niche observed offer past pattern perhaps period plants plastic Pleistocene population present question reason record relationship represent response risk role running scaffold scale Sciences selection sense serve shape signaling simply skill sleep social Society sound Southwest space strategy stress stuff suggests Tasmanians technological term theory things tion tool transmission treadmill unfolds urban writing
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Human Scaffold: How Not to Design Your Way Out of a Climate Crisis Volume 2 of Great Transformations |
| Author | Josh Berson |
| Publisher | Univ of California Press, 2021 |
| ISBN | 0520380495, 9780520380493 |
| Length | 256 pages |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |