Search Results (6)

Human migration has driven transformative shifts in agricultural systems by reshaping how communities relate biologically and culturally to the land. Migration demands the reconfiguration of preexisting human–environment relationships, a process central to agricultural history. Understanding adaptation strategies is essential for land studies as it highlights the impact of cultural persistence on agricultural practices and the potential challenges in integrating migrant rural knowledge with local ecological systems. In the late 19th century, a significant migration wave occurred from the Veneto region in northeastern Italy to southern Brazil, significantly impacting Brazilian agri-food production. This study investigates the biocultural adaptation strategies employed by the first Veneto communities in their new Brazilian environment. Data for this research were derived from the letters sent by Veneto migrants from Brazil in the initial wave of Italian migration (1877–1894). Utilising Critical Discourse Analysis and Sentiment Analysis of migrants’ letters, we explored the Veneto settlers’ perceptions of the Brazilian landscape, agri-food production practices, and culinary traditions. Our findings show that the Brazilian environment was perceived as predominantly negative, particularly in the wilderness areas. The initial Venetian migrant settlement exhibited no genuine biocultural adaptation strategies. Instead, they deliberately resisted Brazilian influences, striving to reproduce Veneto’s agricultural model verbatim in their new surroundings. The study also opens a new trajectory in historical ethnobiology, thus suggesting new potential applications of the analysis of migrants’ letters. Full article

In recent years, discourses on photography have undergone a transformative shift from a focus on the individual photograph’s connection to memory, pastness, loss, and death towards exploring photographic imagery as shared, networked, and continuously circulating in a ubiquitous present. The general claim for the temporal dimension in this shift is that photography is no longer seen as a mere witness or reservoir of the past but instead points to or participates in an active present. Against this claim, the article argues for broadening the perspective, drawing on resources across C.P. Snow’s “two cultures”—the arts and humanities vs. the natural sciences—to develop a better conception of time and a more varied and useful selection of photographic practices. In this connection, the article provides a reading of Paul Ricoeur’s compound concept of “the third time”, cutting across the two cultures. Drawing on insights from Patrick Maynard and Kelley Wilder, basic premises for photographic practices in the natural sciences are brought into the discussions of the discursive shift from a preoccupation with photography and the past to an interest in photography and the present. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better ground for navigating intricate questions about the relationship between photography and time. Full article

In response to the present ecological crisis, new approaches to environmental conservation and management are being developed in Europe. One of the axes considered by nature protection stakeholders since the 2000s is to encourage the return of the wilderness. This has led to the deployment of a variety of initiatives, mainly led by civil and non-profit organisations. The objective here, through the analysis of the discourses of stakeholders—from semi-directive interviews—and the initiatives developed in Western Europe, is to understand how the multitude of projects carried out throughout Europe constitutes a proposal for new environmental management practices. Indeed, the studied initiatives introduce a paradigm shift by reflecting a will to go beyond the mere preservation of nature in order to contribute to a global territorial transition. To this end, the studied projects propose to create both a social and interspecies link around their sites, but also to ensure the development of virtuous economic forms in the territories. Full article

In the management of protected nature areas, arguments are being raised for increasingly integrated approaches. Despite an explicit ambition from the responsible managing governmental agencies, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and Swedish National Heritage Board, attempts to initiate and increase the degree of integrated nature and cultural heritage conservation management in the Swedish mountains are failing. The delivery of environmental policy through the Swedish National Environmental Objective called Magnificent Mountains is dependent on increased collaboration between the state and local stakeholders. This study, using a group model building approach, maps out the system’s dynamic interactions between nature perceptions, values and the objectives of managing agencies and local stakeholders. It is identified that the dominance of a wilderness discourse influences both the objectives and management of the protected areas. This wilderness discourse functions as a barrier against including cultural heritage conservation aspects and local stakeholders in management, as wilderness-influenced objectives are defining protected areas as environments “untouched” by humans. A wilderness objective reduces the need for local knowledge and participation in environmental management. In reality, protected areas depend, to varying degrees, on the continuation of traditional land-use practices. Full article

By the late seventeenth century, Puritan leaders in colonial America were bemoaning what they perceived to be the betrayal of New England’s godly “errand into the wilderness.” In election sermons they mourned the community’s backsliding from its global mission as a “city upon a hill.” Such doomsday rhetoric echoed the lamentations of decline intoned by ancient Hebrew prophets such as Jeremiah. Yet this “Jeremiad” discourse characteristically reached beyond effusions of doom and gloom toward prospects of renewal through a conversion of heart. It blended warnings of impending catastrophe with hope for recovery if the erring souls it addressed chose to repent. This twofold identity of the Puritan Jeremiad, gradually refashioned into the American Jeremiad, has long resonated within and beyond this nation’s literary culture. Featured in creative nonfiction, jeremiad expression surfaces in various forms. And with rise of the modern environmental movement, a prophetic subspecies identifiable as “Green Jeremiad” has lately emerged. The essay reflects on how, especially in an Anthropocene era, Green Jeremiads dramatize the crisis of spirit and faith that undergird challenges to earth’s geophysical health and survival. What saving graces might temper the chilling reminders of imminent peril composed by authors such as Rachel Carson, Bill McKibben, Barbara Kingsolver, and Elizabeth Kolbert? Full article

In the medieval Chinese context, snakes and tigers were viewed as two dominant, threatening animals in swamps and mountains. The animal-human confrontation increased with the expansion of human communities to the wilderness. Medieval Chinese Buddhists developed new discourses, strategies, rituals, and narratives to handle the snake issue that threatened both Buddhist and local communities. These new discourses, strategies, rituals, and narratives were shaped by four conflicts between humans and animals, between canonical rules and local justifications, between male monks and feminized snakes, and between organized religions and local cultic practice. Although early Buddhist monastic doctrines and disciplines prevented Buddhists from killing snakes, medieval Chinese Buddhists developed narratives and rituals for killing snakes for responding to the challenges from the discourses of feminizing and demonizing snakes as well as the competition from Daoism. In medieval China, both Buddhism and Daoism mobilized snakes as their weapons to protect their monastic property against the invasion from each other. This study aims to shed new light on the religious and socio-cultural implications of the evolving attitudes toward snakes and the methods of handling snakes in medieval Chinese Buddhism. Full article