The book provides a comprehensive overview of current knowledge about "wattles", a large clade of over 1000 species of trees and shrubs in the genus Acacia, most of which are native to Australia. It examines the biology, ecology, evolution, and biogeography of wattles in their native ranges, including the evolutionary forces that have driven past speciation and adaptation to diverse environments, the conservation status, uses and human perceptions of these species. It considers the differe...

Environment: Why Read the Classics? presents six important essays by some of the world's leading environmental thinkers on six of the most emblematic books ever written on the environment. The books – Walden; A Sand County Almanac; Small is Beautiful; Silent Spring; The Limits to Growth; and Our Common Future – taken together have been hugely important in the development of global environmental awareness, activism and policy.The essayists – Viriato Soromenho-Marques, J. Baird Calli...

The project of science has been to provide answers to questions about the world and how it works. Often, this lofty role has been characterised by a narrow and dogmatic scientific training, an unwillingness to communicate to differing stakeholder needs, a refusal to accept and to manage uncertainty, complexity and value commitments, and the reduction of knowledge assessment to colleague peer review on narrowly technical issues. Times have changed. As the world faces increasingly disparate ...

Thomas Berry is one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. Here he presents the culmination of his ideas and urges us to move from being a disrupting force on the Earth to a benign presence. This transition is the Great Work -- the most necessary and most ennobling work we will ever undertake. Berry's message is not one of doom but of hope. He reminds society of its function, particularly the universities and other educational institutions whose role is to guide students into...

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing concern about the social and environmental risks which have come along with the progress achieved through a variety of mutually intertwined modernization processes. In recent years these concerns are transformed into a widely-shared sense of urgency, partly due to events such as the various pandemics threatening livestock, and increasing awareness of the risks and realities of climate change, and the energy and food crises. This sense of ...

This guide to the emerging language of creative industries field is a valuable resource for researchers and students alike. Concise, extensively referenced, and accessible, this this is an exceptionally useful reference work.- Gauti Sigthorsson***, Greenwich University***"There could be no better guides to the conceptual map of the creative industries than John Hartley and his colleagues, pioneers in the field. This book is a clear, comprehensive an...

Global sustainability in the 21st century seems to be an elusive goal. There are too many issues, too many problems—and, increasingly, too many people—to make the major changes required in the time various experts tell us we have left before it’s too late.To create a sustainable future, we need to change the game itself. We cannot simply try to solve our problems one at a time. Instead, we need to reimagine sustainability in all its dimensions—social, cultural, environmental and ec...

From climate change to GM foods, we are increasingly confronted with complex, interconnected social and environmental problems that span disciplines, knowledge bases and value systems. This book offers a transdisciplinary, open approach for those working towards resolving these 'wicked' problems and highlights the crucial role of this 'transdisciplinary imagination' in addressing the shift to sustainable futures. Tackling Wicked Problems provides readers with a framework and practical exam...

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over eighty visionaries-theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturalists, activists, and writers-to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibility to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do. The missing premise of the ar...

Distrusting Educational Technology critically explores the optimistic consensus that has arisen around the use of digital technology in education. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this book shows how apparently neutral forms of educational technology have actually served to align educational provision and practices with neo-liberal values, thereby eroding the nature of education as a public good and moving it instead toward the individualistic tenden...

It is widely recognised that the foreign aid system - which today involves every country in the world - is in need of drastic change. But there are conflicting opinions as to what is needed. Some call for dramatic increases in resources, to meet long-overdue commitments, and to scale up what is already being done around the world. Others point to the flaws in aid, and bang the drum for cutting it altogether - and argue that the fate of poor and vulnerable people be best placed in the hands...

A fully-updated and reworked version of the classic book by Stephen Kemmis and Robin McTaggart, now joined by Rhonda Nixon, The Action Research Planner is a detailed guide to developing and conducting a critical participatory action research project. The authors outline new views on ‘participation’ (based on Jürgen Habermas’s notion of a ‘public sphere’), ‘practice’ (as shaped by practice architectures), and ‘research’ (as research within practice traditions). They provide five ex...