ISS 310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Henry David Thoreau, Ecological Collapse, Environmental Determinism
1 Jul 2016
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Document Summary
What was the new world like at the time of columbus" arrival? . No, it a humanized landscape with the imprint of native americans being persistent. Idea of wilderness: pristine untouched nature in a sea of urban industrial modernity (i. e. thoreau, national parks) Social structures that generate unequal exposure to risks by making groups of people more prone to hazards than others. Vulnerability: a measure of the degree and type of exposure to risk. Vulnerability research is concerned with social processes of marginalization that create unequal risks to disaster. Hurricanes, earthquakes and floods are natural events, whether they become disasters depends on social factors. Disasters happen when disasters hit vulnerable people. Environment determines culture (i. e. capabilities superiority and inferiority of human groups. Dismissed influence of human on nature. a. ) Human population growth will exceed carrying capacity of environment. Resulting in starvation, disease and ecological collapse. Assumed scarcity of non-human nature and rapacity of population growth.
