John W. Bennett - Böcker

A study of a rural region and plural society, this book is a distinctive contribution to anthropology, in that it brings the conceptual framework of that discipline to bear on a contemporary agrarian society and its historical development, rather than on peasant or tribal peoples; cultural ecology, in that it shows the nature of the adaptations of four distinctive social groups to the environment of the Canadian Great Plains; the study of social and economic change, as it describes cultural patterns and mechanisms that are relevant to agrarian development the world over; and North American studies, in as much as it deals with community life in the classic sequence of settlement of the Western Plains.The book is, focused throughout on the adaptation of human societies to their environment. Four groups are described: the Cree Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of the area who have lost all organic relationship to natural resources and who have devised ingenious methods for manipulating the social environment; ranchers, whose specialized production is based upon resources used in their natural state; homestead farmers, whose maladjusted small-farm economy, after initial setbacks, achieved a degree of stability through interventions by government in their adaptations to nature and the market economy; and the Hutterian Brethren, whose adaptation consisted primarily of the introduction to the region of a new kind of social organization.This book combines the anthropological concept of culture and the framework of ecology in the study of a modern social milieu; it focuses on a region rather than on a single culture, people, or community, so that the interplay of several social groups can be appreciated; and it elaborates contemporary anthropological and ecological theory in a manner that makes it applicable to the understanding of contemporary agrarian societies.John W. Bennett was emeritus professor of anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis. He served as president of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Applied Anthropology, and was a member of the editorial boards of the Annual Review of Anthropology and Reviews in Anthropology. Among his books are The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation (1976, 2005), Classic Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1944-1996 (1997), and Human Ecology as Human Behavior: Essays in Environmental and Development Anthropology (1995).

The most comprehensive and contemporary source available on socialist economic systems, this book employs economic data from eight East European countries and Russia to provide readers with a thorough, accurate picture of formerly Communist economies. J. Wilczynski carefully analyzes the major focal points of socialistic economics: planning and market, profit, production and growth, accumulation, consumption, labor, land, pricing, money and banking, fiscal policy and control, domestic and foreign trade, and international economics.The treatment of the subject is objective and constructive; when comparisons are made with capitalist economies both the strengths and weaknesses of socialism are brought out. This is not, however, a book on comparative economic systems but rather a complete discourse on the actual principles of socialist economics. Controversial issues such as the role of planning and the market, profit, rates of growth, the consumer's place, labor incentives, pricing, and controls are particularly well done.This book can be used as a guide to the economics of formerly communist regimes and as text for courses in developmental economics and comparative economic systems. It is well written by a scholar intimate with the plans, policies, and failures of communist economies from the close of The Second World War to the demise of Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Written during the height of the ecology movement, The Ecological Transition is a stunning interdisciplinary work. It combines anthropology, ecology, and sociology to formulate an understanding of cultural-environmental relationships. While anthropologists have been studying relationships between humans and the physical environment for a very long time, only in the last thirty years have questions inherent in these relationships broadened beyond description and classification. For example, the concept of environment has been extended beyond the physical into the social.Although anthropologists have adopted many of the concepts that Bennett develops in the book, he also feels that the central issues have never been addressed, either by anthropologists or by people in related disciplines. The most important of these, in Bennett's opinion, is the failure to incorporate a respect for the environmental in contemporary culture, which would allow making exceptions in certain human practices in order to protect the environment. His point in The Ecological Transition is that a basic cultural change in modern civilization is necessary to achieve this end.Both a theoretical and a practical work, The Ecological Transition emphasizes the relationships between human culture, the physical environment, technology, and social policy. The Ecological Transition is a challenging volume that makes us face the consequences of human behavior in the modern world: its effect on pollution, natural resources, agriculture, the economy, and population, to name just a few areas. The book remains a significant contribution to the discourse on social, economic, and environmental problems. While the book was first published in 1976, it still reads as a contemporary tract.

This "anthropological history" tells the story of homesteading and community organization in the Canadian-American West through personal reminiscences and locally written histories. John W. Bennett and Seena B. Kohl interpret those stories through the lenses of history and social science, and they present a view of settlement experience as one phase of the evolving postfrontier society and culture of western North America. Settling the Canadian-American West, 1890–1915 contains a synthesis of Canadian and U.S. settlement experiences giving, to the extent possible, equal space to both sides of the international boundary. The experiences of people in these adjacent territories were virtually identical, with emigrant populations from the same countries and socioeconomic strata. Among other aspects of the homesteading experience, the authors explore the "interactive adaptation" that developed in the West. Networks of mutual aid, reverently remembered by the voices found in these pages, eased the inevitable hardships.

Human interaction with the natural environment has a dual character. By turning increasing quantities of natural substances into physical resources, human beings might be said to have freed themselves from the constraints of low-technology survival pressures. However, the process has generated a new dependence on nature in the form of complex "socionatural systems," as Bennett calls them, in which human society and behavior are so interlocked with the management of the environment that small changes in the systems can lead to disaster. Bennett's essays cover a wide range: from the philosophy of environmentalism to the ecology of economic development; from the human impact on semi-arid lands to the ecology of Japanese forest management. This expanded paperback edition includes a new chapter on the role of anthropology in economic development.Bennett's essays exhibit an underlying pessimism: if human behavior toward the physical environment is the distinctive cause of environmental abuse, then reform of current management practices offers only temporary relief; that is, conservationism, like democracy, must be continually reaffirmed. Clearly presented and free of jargon, Human Ecology as Human Behavior will be of interest to anthropologists, economists, and environmentalists.

A study of a rural region and plural society, this book is a distinctive contribution to anthropology, in that it brings the conceptual framework of that discipline to bear on a contemporary agrarian society and its historical development, rather than on peasant or tribal peoples; cultural ecology, in that it shows the nature of the adaptations of four distinctive social groups to the environment of the Canadian Great Plains; the study of social and economic change, as it describes cultural patterns and mechanisms that are relevant to agrarian development the world over; and North American studies, in as much as it deals with community life in the classic sequence of settlement of the Western Plains.The book is, focused throughout on the adaptation of human societies to their environment. Four groups are described: the Cree Indians, the aboriginal inhabitants of the area who have lost all organic relationship to natural resources and who have devised ingenious methods for manipulating the social environment; ranchers, whose specialized production is based upon resources used in their natural state; homestead farmers, whose maladjusted small-farm economy, after initial setbacks, achieved a degree of stability through interventions by government in their adaptations to nature and the market economy; and the Hutterian Brethren, whose adaptation consisted primarily of the introduction to the region of a new kind of social organization.This book combines the anthropological concept of culture and the framework of ecology in the study of a modern social milieu; it focuses on a region rather than on a single culture, people, or community, so that the interplay of several social groups can be appreciated; and it elaborates contemporary anthropological and ecological theory in a manner that makes it applicable to the understanding of contemporary agrarian societies.John W. Bennett was emeritus professor of anthropology at Washington University, St. Louis. He served as president of the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Applied Anthropology, and was a member of the editorial boards of the Annual Review of Anthropology and Reviews in Anthropology. Among his books are The Ecological Transition: Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation (1976, 2005), Classic Anthropology: Critical Essays, 1944-1996 (1997), and Human Ecology as Human Behavior: Essays in Environmental and Development Anthropology (1995).

Written during the height of the ecology movement, The Ecological Transition is a stunning interdisciplinary work. It combines anthropology, ecology, and sociology to formulate an understanding of cultural-environmental relationships. While anthropologists have been studying relationships between humans and the physical environment for a very long time, only in the last thirty years have questions inherent in these relationships broadened beyond description and classification. For example, the concept of environment has been extended beyond the physical into the social.Although anthropologists have adopted many of the concepts that Bennett develops in the book, he also feels that the central issues have never been addressed, either by anthropologists or by people in related disciplines. The most important of these, in Bennett's opinion, is the failure to incorporate a respect for the environmental in contemporary culture, which would allow making exceptions in certain human practices in order to protect the environment. His point in The Ecological Transition is that a basic cultural change in modern civilization is necessary to achieve this end.Both a theoretical and a practical work, The Ecological Transition emphasizes the relationships between human culture, the physical environment, technology, and social policy. The Ecological Transition is a challenging volume that makes us face the consequences of human behavior in the modern world: its effect on pollution, natural resources, agriculture, the economy, and population, to name just a few areas. The book remains a significant contribution to the discourse on social, economic, and environmental problems. While the book was first published in 1976, it still reads as a contemporary tract.

The most comprehensive and contemporary source available on socialist economic systems, this book employs economic data from eight East European countries and Russia to provide readers with a thorough, accurate picture of formerly Communist economies. J. Wilczynski carefully analyzes the major focal points of socialistic economics: planning and market, profit, production and growth, accumulation, consumption, labor, land, pricing, money and banking, fiscal policy and control, domestic and foreign trade, and international economics.The treatment of the subject is objective and constructive; when comparisons are made with capitalist economies both the strengths and weaknesses of socialism are brought out. This is not, however, a book on comparative economic systems but rather a complete discourse on the actual principles of socialist economics. Controversial issues such as the role of planning and the market, profit, rates of growth, the consumer's place, labor incentives, pricing, and controls are particularly well done.This book can be used as a guide to the economics of formerly communist regimes and as text for courses in developmental economics and comparative economic systems. It is well written by a scholar intimate with the plans, policies, and failures of communist economies from the close of The Second World War to the demise of Communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Classic anthropology is Bennett''s label for the work produced by anthropologists between 1915 and 1955. In this book, Bennett criticises classic anthropology for ne glecting the contemporary world and modern societies. '