front cover of Creating Citizens
Creating Citizens
Liberal Arts, Civic Engagement, and the Land-Grant Tradition
Edited by Brigitta R. Brunner
University of Alabama Press, 2016
In Creating Citizens, professors and administrators at Auburn University’s College of Liberal Arts recount valuable, first-hand experiences teaching Community and Civic Engagement (CCE). They demonstrate that, contrary to many expectations, CCE instruction both complements the mission of liberal arts curricula and powerfully advances the fundamental mission of American land-grand institutions.
 
The nine essays in Creating Citizens offer structures for incorporating CCE initiatives into university programs, instructional methods and techniques, and numerous case studies and examples undertaken at Auburn University but applicable at any university. Many contributors describe their own rewarding experiences with CCE and emphasize the ways outreach efforts reinvigorate their teaching or research.
 
Creating Citizens recounts the foundation of land-grant institutions by the Morrill Act of 1862. Their mission is to instruct in agriculture, military science, and mechanics, but these goals augmented rather than replaced an education in the classics, or liberal arts. Land-grant institutions, therefore, have a special calling to provide a broad spectrum of society with an education that not only enriched the personal lives of their students, but the communities they are a part of. Creating Citizens demonstrates the important opportunities CCE instruction represents to any university but are especially close to the heart of the mission of land-grant colleges.
 
In open societies, the role and mission of public institutions of higher learning that are supported by public subsidies are perennial subjects of interest and debate. Creating Citizens provides valuable insights of interest to educators, education administrators, students, and policy makers involved in the field of higher education.
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front cover of Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice
Issues, Policies, and Solutions
Edited by Bunyan Bryant
Island Press, 1995

In Environmental Justice, leading thinkers of the environmental justice movement take a direct look at the failure of "top down" public policy to effectively deal with issues of environmental equity.

The book provides a startling look at pressing social and environmental problems and charts a course for future action. Among the topics considered are: the history of the social justice movement the role of the professional in working with community groups methods of dealing with environmental problems at the international level participatory national policy for environmental education, energy, industrial development, and housing and sustainable development.

Contributors include Robert Bullard, Deeohn Ferris, Tom B.K. Goldtooth, David Hahn-Baker, Beverly Wright, Ivette Perfecto, Patrick West, and others.

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Hinduism and Ecology
The Intersection of Earth, Sky, and Water
Christopher Key Chapple
Harvard University Press, 2000

This fourth volume in the series exploring religions and the environment investigates the role of the multifaceted Hindu tradition in the development of greater ecological awareness in India.

The twenty-two contributors ask how traditional concepts of nature in the classical texts might inspire or impede an eco-friendly attitude among modern Hindus, and they describe some grassroots approaches to environmental protection. They look to Gandhian principles of minimal consumption, self-reliance, simplicity, and sustainability. And they explore forests and sacred groves in text and tradition and review the political and religious controversies surrounding India’s sacred river systems.

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front cover of On the Banks of the Ganga
On the Banks of the Ganga
When Wastewater Meets a Sacred River
Kelly D. Alley
University of Michigan Press, 2002
In this rich ethnographic study, Kelly D. Alley sheds light on debates about water uses, wastewater management, and the meanings of waste and sacred power. On the Banks of the Ganga analyzes the human predicaments that result from the accumulation and disposal of waste by tracing how citizens of India interpret the impact of wastewater flows on a sacred river and on their own cultural practices.
Alley investigates ethno-semantic, discursive, and institutional data to flesh out the interplay between religious, scientific, and official discourses about the river Ganga. Using a new outward layering methodology, she points out that anthropological analysis must separate the historical and discursive strands of the debates concerning waste and sacred purity in order to reveal the cultural complexities that surround the Ganga. Ultimately, she addresses a deeply rooted cultural paradox: if the Ganga river is considered sacred by Hindus across India, then why do the people allow it to become polluted?
Examining areas of contemporary concern such as water usage and urban waste management in the most populated river basin in the world, this book will appeal to anthropologists and readers in religious, environmental, and Asian studies, as well as geography and law.
Kelly D. Alley is Associate Professor and Director of Anthropology at Auburn University. In addition to being a prolific writer, she has conducted research on public culture and environmental issues in northern India for over a decade. Alley is currently overseeing a project to ameliorate river pollution problems in India.
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