This book explores the interdisciplinary pathways that leading environmental psychologists have taken to become educators, researchers, consultants, and professionals in this highly applied and growing field. Environmental psychology examines the transactions between people and the built and natural settings in which they inhabit. Despite this broad scope, few direct avenues to careers in environmental psychology exist, and students must forge varied and individualized routes to becoming scholars and practitioners in this important area of study.
The aim of the book is to serve as an inspiring supplemental resource for students who wish to know more about how leading thinkers established themselves as environmental psychologists. In each chapter, the author describes their inspirations, decisions about undergraduate and graduate courses, particular schools, and professional connections that have made a difference to their careers in environmental psychology. Many undergraduate students are disappointed with the lack of a clear path to becoming an environmental psychologist. A strong need exists for a resource like this book for students (and for others who may be looking to add to their careers) to understand how to gain experience and credentials in the field in different ways. Readers may also be bolstered in their attitude about choosing a niche field like environmental psychology and decide to stick with it if they read the success stories published in this book by leading thinkers who have taken varied and atypical approaches to becoming a professional environmental psychologist.
The book’s chapters are organized in a manner that shows readers how one may come from many different backgrounds and integrate environmental psychology into their education or professional realm. Part I contains chapters in which authors write about how they approached environmental psychology from architecture, urban planning, and geography, while Part II includes chapters from authors who found environmental psychology via cognitive psychology, clinical practice, and neuroscience. Part III has chapters from authors writing from the health sciences and social ecology, while Part IV contains chapters by authors inspired to become environmental psychologists through a general appreciation of nature and eco-conscious living in a variety of settings. Those who find a way to make environmental psychology part of their career are often very passionate individuals who are keen to describe their pathway to doing what they love with the hope that others will follow. This book is likely to advance that outcome

The Spirit of the Laws not only systematizes the foundational ideas of “separation of powers” and “balances and checks,” it provides the decisive response to the question of whether power in the nation-state can be limited in the aftermath of the Westphalian settlement of 1648. It describes a civilizational change through which power becomes domesticated, with built-in resistance to attempts to absolutize (or make total) political power. As such, it is the Bible of modern politics, now made more accessible to English readers than it ever has been.

There have been in English only two prior translations of this work that first appeared in 1748. The deficiencies of those two efforts have been broadly identified in the scholarship. Although the text is still used with regularity in university instruction (having been recovered after a lull in the 1950s and 60s), it deserves – and now receives – a presentation that enhances its usefulness in the analysis both of politics and the philosophical foundations of human life.

Montesquieu’s singularity – the first secular argument against race-based slavery and only the second secular argument against the servitude of women – provides a special heritage for the modern word to preserve and a key to making operational those fundamental insights within the context of sustained political and cultural development. The replacement of blood and tribe with the universal attributes of humanity (while recognizing the highly variable ecologies of communities) constitutes the single-most important moral and political development of the modern world. And The Spirit of the Laws bears a primary responsibility for that accomplishment.

Emerging from the fields of ecological restoration and economics, this interdisciplinary book delivers a clear path to restoring our economies in a way that speaks well to industry groups and business owners, students and the general public, and to policy makers. There are proven relationships between ecology and economics. Giordanengo employs those relationships in an intriguing way and integrates them with global case studies to argue that redesigning economic systems according to ecological principles is necessary to balancing critical social, environmental, and economic goals. For example, he reveals how more obscure ecological principles and theories—succession, evolution, diversity-productivity curves, and so on—can inform the restructuring of economic systems that are resilient, productive, and regenerative.

A variety of students and practitioners have read the first edition, or attended John’s seminars, only to remark “Why haven’t we learned this in our traditional coursework?” or “This book brings so much clarity to the fields of sustainability and environmental sciences.”

Traditional approaches to sustainability focus on the social, environmental, and economic pillars of an economy, while paying little attention to the foundation those pillars rest upon. A comprehensive focus on our economy’s foundational components has been ignored for good reason; we have lacked an understanding of what they are or how they interact with one another. Cross-cutting research between ecological and economic systems reveals three foundational components (i.e., drivers) common to both systems. The effective management of these components is perhaps the most important obstacle to resolving current tensions between society, nature and the global market economy.

The scale at which diversity, energy and trade must be managed is also justified by self-regulating ecosystems such as jungles, prairies, and pine forests. That scale is not global, nor is it hyper local. The economic and ecological rationale agree that the scale of a sustainable economy—the natural geography of humans— is regional. To the contrary, the attempt to manage our economy at a global scale has given rise to chronic social, environmental, and economic symptoms across earth. In highly developed countries such as the United States, these symptoms include flat real wages and productivity growth, a growing wealth gap, degraded environmental conditions, rising social unrest, and more.

The closing chapters outline a natural path for restoring our economies, illuminated by humanities shared experience in ecological restoration. The process of ecosystem recovery following disturbance (i.e., succession) is one such pathway. Unwittingly, developed nations such as the United States mange succession to concentrate wealth into fewer hands, while lowering the economy’s productive capacity, net productivity, and resistance to future disturbances. Economic policies can also move the succession dial toward the productive and diverse center, where wealth and resources are recirculated quickly, new business opportunities are created, and resilience and resistance are fortified—a stout shield in the face of global economic turmoil.

For policymakers, consumers, and industry groups, this book explores root causes of the challenges you face, so that you may take deep correct actions to yield lasting change.

Giordanengo provides critique, but goes further, with clear steps that individuals, businesses, communities, and policymakers can take to start restoring our economies now. From agricultural restoration to regional manufacturing and energy systems, he outlines practical strategies and policy mechanisms for building regenerative economies. Students will find not just theoretical and systems knowledge, but applied economics, ecology, and conservation centered around actionable pathways.

Economic restoration is not only possible—it is our humanitarian duty.

Family law is a site of social conflict and the erasure of non-traditional families. This book explores how conservative religious and progressive queer groups can cooperatively work together to expand family law’s recognition beyond the traditional state-sponsored family. Various religious groups have shown an interest in promoting alternative family structures.

For example, certain Muslim and Mormon communities have advocated for polygamy, in the process aligning with queer groups’ interest in overcoming the engrafting of monogamy into state law. Advocacy by North American religious conservatives for reforms in favor of non-conjugal families and against same-sex marriage overlaps with certain queer efforts to legitimize friendships and non-traditional families more generally.

This book explores these potential areas of queer and religious political cooperation—including limitations and principled reservations to such cooperation. It then looks at additional future arenas of queer and religious political cooperation going beyond family law.

Ultimately, this book aims to locate and systematize seemingly isolated interest convergences between queer and religious groups into a coherent theoretical framework that can also be used on the ground in political work. In challenging dominant narratives of ‘culture wars,’ the book’s analysis is timely and in line with the need to prevent the escalation of social cleavages looming over our increasingly diverse societies. 

Today we face an incredibly complex array of interconnected water issues that cross multiple boundaries: Is water a property or a human right? How do we prioritize between economic utility and environmental sustainability? Do fish have more rights to water than irrigated grain? Can we reconcile competing cultural and religious values associated with water? How much water do people actually need? These questions share two key defining characteristics: (a) competing values, interests and information to frame the problem; and (b) differing views - of how to resolve a problem - are related more to uncertainty and ambiguity of perception than accuracy of scientific information.

These problems - known as complex problems - are ill-defined, ambiguous, and often associated with strong moral, political and professional values and issues. For complex water problems, certainty of solutions and degree of consensus varies widely. In fact, there is often little consensus about what the problem is, let alone how to resolve it. Furthermore, complex problems are constantly changing because of interactions among the natural, societal and political forces involved. The nature of complexity is contingent on a variety of contextual characteristics of the interactions among variables, processes, actors, and institutions. Understanding interactions and feedback loops between and within human and natural systems is critical for managing complex water problems. [NP] This edited volume synthesizes insights from theory and practice to address complex water problems through contingent and adaptive management using water diplomacy framework (WDF). This emerging framework diagnoses water problems, identifies intervention points, and proposes sustainable solutions that are sensitive to diverse viewpoints and uncertainty as well as changing and competing needs. The WDF actively seeks value-creation opportunities by blending science, policy, and politics through a contingent negotiated approach.