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The Human Scaffold

How Not to Design Your Way Out of a Climate Crisis
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
In The Human Scaffold by Josh Berson, the author explores the interconnectedness of human existence and the natural world. Through the narrative, Berson investigates how humans have evolved to construct social and environmental structures that support well-being and survival. The book delves into the significance of these frameworks and examines the roles they play in shaping human identity and adaptability in a rapidly changing world.
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?

You might enjoy this book if you're fascinated by how humans adapt to and shape their environments through technology, culture, and biological evolution. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of humanity's interactions with the natural world, making it ideal for those interested in anthropology, ecology, and the intricate connections between our species and the planet.

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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Humanity has precipitated a planetary crisis of resource consumption—a crisis of stuff. So ingrained is our stuff-centric view that we can barely imagine a way out beyond substituting a new portmanteau of material things for the one we have today.

In The Human Scaffold, anthropologist Josh Berson offers a new theory of adaptation to environmental change. Drawing on niche construction, evolutionary game theory, and the enactive view of cognition, Berson considers cases in the archaeology of adaptation in which technology in the conventional sense was virtually absent. Far from representing anomalies, these cases exemplify an enduring feature of human behaviour that has implications for our own fate.

The time has come to ask what the environmental crisis demands of us not as consumers but as biological beings. The Human Scaffold offers a starting point.

Series: Great Transformations

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  • The Human Scaffold
    Humanity has precipitated a planetary crisis of resource consumption—a crisis of stuff. So ingrained is our stuff-centric view that we can barely imagine a way out beyond substituting a new portmanteau of material things for the one we have today. In The Human Scaffold, anthropologist Josh Berson offers a new theory of adaptation to environmental change. Drawing on niche construction,...
    Paperback
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    Available
    Ships in 3-4 weeks
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    In this succinct yet ample work, Zhao Tingyang, one of China’s most distinguished intellectuals, provides a profoundly original philosophical interpretation of China’s story and also develops a Chinese worldview for the future. Over the past few decades, the question Where did China come from? has absorbed the thoughts of many of China's best historians. Zhao, keenly aware of the persistent...
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Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?

Berson's The Human Scaffold showcases the author's brilliant and eccentric insights, offering an analytical look into how contemporary culture is overwhelmed by excessive consumption and resource depletion. His eloquent descriptions have been praised for their incisiveness, and there is a call for more of his astute contributions.

Book Hero reading reviews

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780520380493

Publisher: University of California Press

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 23 March 2021

Country: United States

Imprint: University of California Press

Illustration: 9 illustrations

Audience: Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 18.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 210.0mm

Weight: 272g

Pages: 248

About the Author

Josh Berson has held appointments at two Max Planck Institutes—Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and the History of Science—and at the Berggruen Institute, where he was inaugural USC Berggruen Fellow in the Transformations of the Human. He is the author of The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food and Computable Bodies: Instrumented Life and the Human Somatic Niche.

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