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2 books match the query 'Majority'

cover of Environmental Movement in Majority and Minority Worlds: A Global Perspective

Environmental Movement in Majority and Minority Worlds

A Global Perspective

Doyle, Timothy

Rutgers University Press, 2004

Environmental movements are among the most vibrant, diverse, and powerful social movements occurring today, across all corners of the globe. They range dramatically from government lobbyists raising campaign funds to save the North American spotted owl; to “Green Warriors” engaging in guerrilla conflict in the mountains of the Philippines; to small landholders and indigenous peoples vowing to die by meeting the waters of the Narmada River in India as it rises due to its damming. 

Drawing on his primary fieldwork in six countries, environmental researcher Timothy Doyle argues that there is, in fact, no one global environmental movement; rather, there are many, and the differences among them far outweigh their similarities.  Movements in the third world—such as those in India and the Philippines —tend to be oriented around issues of human health, shelter, food security, and survival; while those of the developed world—for example, the United States, England, Germany, and Australia —can afford to focus on post-materialist issues such as wilderness concerns and animal rights. Doyle also demonstrates that the consequences of these campaigns are as wide-ranging as their motives and methods.

Taking a much-needed step beyond the wealth of nation-centered accounts of environmentalism, this book makes an important contribution to studies concerned with global environmental problems and politics.

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cover of Majority of Scoundrels, A: An Informal History of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company

Majority of Scoundrels, A

An Informal History of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company

Don Berry

Oregon State University Press, 2006

With the skill of a historian, Don Berry set his celebrated trilogy of novels—Trask, Moontrap, and To Build a Ship—in pioneer-era Oregon. In A Majority of Scoundrels, he brings the craft of a novelist to his captivating history of the American fur trade.

Berry’s fresh and invigorating narrative captures the peak years (1822-1834) of the fur trade in the Mountain West, the period in which the Rocky Mountain Fur Company grew to be “the greatest name in the mountains.” These were heady times in which trappers and traders explored the far corners of the western country, disputed territory with Native American tribes and the Hudson’s Bay Company, learned the lore of the land, and perfected their drinking, brawling, yarn-spinning, and boasting at the annual rendezvous.

With lively prose and an ear for a good yarn, Berry brings to life the principal trappers—colorful figures including Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass (who miraculously survived the mauling of a bear and came back from death to haunt his fellows), champion liar James P. Beckwourth, Joe Meek, Jedediah Smith, Jim Clyman, and many more. Using their journals, business records, and other sources, Berry laces his back-country narrative with an analysis of the power struggle between the St. Louis businessmen who controlled the trade and the trappers.

A new introduction by historian Stephen Dow Beckham looks beyond the romantic legends of the mountain men to set A Majority of Scoundrels in the context of recent scholarship on the American West. While Beckham demonstrates just how much our sense of history has changed in the almost fifty years since Berry’s work was first published, he also helps readers understand the continuing appeal of the mythology of the fur trade era and the lasting importance of A Majority of Scoundrels.
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