Environment and Society in Asia – serie

A plethora of new actors has in recent years entered China’s environmental arena. In Western countries, the linkages and diffusion processes between such actors often drive environmental movements. Through a study of Chinese anti-incineration contention, Chinese Environmental Contention: Linking Up against Waste Incineration investigates how the different contentious actors in China’s green sphere link up, and what this means for environmental contention. It addresses questions such as: What lies behind the notable increase of environmental protests in China? And what are the potentials for the emergence of an environmental movement? The book shows that a complex network of ties has emerged in China’s environmental realm under Hu Jintao. Affected communities across the country have connected with each other and with national-level environmentalists, experts and lawyers. Such networked contention fosters both local campaigns and national-level policy advocacy. Beyond China, the detailed case studies shed light on the dynamics behind the diffusion of contention under restrictive political conditions. Through a study of Chinese anti-incineration contention, this book investigates how the different contentious actors in China's green sphere link up and what this means for environmental contention.First comprehensive study that investigates the diffusion of contention and scale shift in China and systematically analyzes the linkages between different actor groups and sites of contention as potential basis for an environmental movement - One of few comprehensive studies that provide a detailed account of the dynamics behind the diffusion of contention and scale shift in an authoritarian setting - Systematic comparative case study design and large data base collected through ethnographic methods permit systematic in-depth investigation of nine cases in both urban and rural China.

In her detailed retelling of three iconic movements in India, Professor Emerita Krishna Mallick, PhD, gives hope to grassroots activists working toward environmental justice. Each movement deals with a different crisis and affected population: Chipko, famed for tree-hugging women in the Himalayan forest; Narmada, for villagers displaced by a massive dam; and Navdanya, for hundreds of thousands of farmers whose livelihoods were lost to a compact made by the Indian government and neoliberal purveyors of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Relentlessly researched, Environmental Movements of India: Chipko, Narmada Bachao Andolan, Navdanya presents these movements in a framework that explores Hindu Vedic wisdom, as well as Development Ethics, Global Environment Ethics, Feminist Care Ethics, and the Capability Approach. At a moment when the climate threatens populations who live closest to nature – and depend upon its fodder for heat, its water for life, and its seeds for food – Mallick shows how nonviolent action can give poor people an effective voice.

This book presents a new perspective on attempts by the contemporary Chinese government to transform the diverse conditions found in countless rural villages into what the state's social welfare program deems 'socialist new villages'. Lili Lai argues that an ethnographic focus on the specifics of village life can help destabilize China's persistent rural-urban divide and help contribute to more effective welfare intervention to improve health and hygienic conditions of village life.

This book (re)centres women’s situated knowledges as a powerful starting point for analyzing disaster recovery and rethinking the contested concept of resilience. Through an ethnographic account of reconstruction following Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines, it demonstrates how women’s everyday negotiations with loss and personal aspirations form new imaginaries of recovery grounded in a feminist ethics of care.The text offers readers a conceptual understanding of resilience as “lived” and entangled in processes of becoming – directly challenging conventional, often neoliberal, frameworks of recovery. It delivers these insights through evocative writing coupled with women’s photo-mediated narratives. By focusing on women’s everyday practices, embodied labours, and emotional relations, the book draws attention to how recovery is a work of creation, self-formation, and hope amidst loss. This approach provides readers with a lens to view resilience as an open project constantly in the making, offering a critical alternative to technocentric models and a grounded basis for more ethical, care-full reconstruction practices.This book is intended for scholars and students in disaster studies, gender studies, anthropology, development, and environmental studies. Its photo-based methodology will also interest those working with creative social science methods. Crucially, this work provides critical insights for practitioners and policymakers rethinking how communities are governed during and after disasters and how to incorporate perspectives of care in interventions.

The book critically examines consumer advice urging Chinese citizens to change their food consumption habits and explores what it means to eat green in a country facing ecological risks, food safety concerns, and an authoritarian government aiming to create an eco-civilization.Uncovering the political agendas behind this push for consumer responsibility, this book analyses a range of topics such as food waste and alternative food networks, showing how China's environmental authoritarianism mobilizes consumers to adopt greener food practices while restricting civil society-driven approaches to sustainability that do not align with the state’s vision of eco-civilization.Green Eating and Ecological Risk in China is essential reading for advanced students and researchers of Chinese society and politics, environmental sociology and political science, as well as others interested in environmental governance and the greening of consumption and lifestyles under authoritarianism.

This book presents a new perspective on attempts by the contemporary Chinese government to transform the diverse conditions found in countless rural villages into what the state's social welfare program deems 'socialist new villages'.

In this detailed retelling of three iconic movements in India, (Chipko, Narmada and Navdanya) Professor Emerita Krishna Mallick, PhD, gives hope to grassroots activists working toward environmental justice.