With a Foreword by Barbara Kingsolver. A compelling worldview with advocates from around the globe, agrarianism challenges the shortcomings of our industrial and technological economy. Not simply focused on farming, the agrarian outlook encourages us to develop practices and policies that promote the health of land, community, and culture. Agrarianism reminds us that no matter how urban we become, our survival will always be inextricably linked to the precious resources of soil, water, and air. Combining fresh insights from the disciplines of education, law, history, urban and regional planning, economics, philosophy, religion, ecology, politics, and agriculture, these original essays develop a sophisticated critique of our culture's current relationship to the land, while offering practical alternatives. Leading agrarians, including Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon, Brian Donahue, Eric Freyfogle, and David Orr, explain how our goals should be redirected toward genuinely sustainable communities. These writers call us to an honest accounting and correction of our often destructive ways. They suggest how our society can take practical steps toward integrating soils, watersheds, forests, wildlife, urban areas, and human populations into one great system—a responsible flourishing of our world and culture.

With an introduction by Barbara Kingsolver, this collection of essays from leaders in the community is an excellent introduction to the agrarian philosophy. A compelling worldview with advocates from around the globe, agrarianism challenges the shortcomings of our industrial and technological economy. Not simply focused on farming, the agrarian outlook encourages us to develop practices and policies that promote the health of land, community, and culture. Agrarianism reminds us that no matter how urban we become, our survival will always be inextricably linked to the precious resources of soil, water, and air. Combining fresh insights from the disciplines of education, law, history, urban and regional planning, economics, philosophy, religion, ecology, politics, and agriculture, these original essays develop a sophisticated critique of our culture’s current relationship to the land, while offering practical alternatives. Leading agrarians, including Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon, Brian Donahue, Eric Freyfogle, and David Orr, explain how our goals should be redirected toward genuinely sustainable communities. These writers call us to an honest accounting and correction of our often destructive ways. They suggest how our society can take practical steps toward integrating soils, watersheds, forests, wildlife, urban areas, and human populations into one great system—a responsible flourishing of our world and culture.

In this remarkable anthology, 15 essays--from Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, and others--call upon people to celebrate the gifts of the earth through honest work and respect for the land.

Farmer, poet, essayist, and environmental writer Wendell Berry is acclaimed for his ideas regarding the values inherent in an agricultural society. Place, community, good work, and simple pleasures are but a few of the values that form the bedrock of Berry's thought. While the notion of reverence is central to Berry, he is not widely known as a religious writer. However, the moral underpinnings of his work are rooted in Christian tradition, articulating the tenet that faith and stewardship of the land are not mutually exclusive. In Wendell Berry and Religion, editors Joel J. Shuman and L. Roger Owens probe the moral and spiritual implications of Berry's work. Chief among them are the notions that the earth is God's provisional gift to mankind and that studying how we engage material creation reflects important truths. This collection reveals deep, thoughtful, and provocative conversations within Berry's writings, illuminating the theological inspirations inherent in his work.

This book examines the theology and ethics of land use, especially the practices of modern industrialized agriculture, in light of critical biblical exegesis. Nine interrelated essays explore the biblical writers' pervasive concern for the care of arable land against the background of the geography, social structures, and religious thought of ancient Israel. This approach consistently brings out neglected aspects of texts, both poetry and prose, that are central to Jewish and Christian traditions. Rather than seeking solutions from the past, Davis creates a conversation between ancient texts and contemporary agrarian writers; thus she provides a fresh perspective from which to view the destructive practices and assumptions that now dominate the global food economy. The biblical exegesis is wide-ranging and sophisticated; the language is literate and accessible to a broad audience.

Written by both well-established and rising new scholars, Radical Future Pasts seeks to open up new possibilities for the practical application of political thought. Unlike conventional "state of the discipline" collections, this volume does not summarize where the field of political theory has been. Rather than accept traditional versions of the political past, the contributors reinterpret both canonical and current texts to demonstrate how politics can be theorized and applied in new ways.

As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the earth's ability to provide for its inhabitants grows increasingly precarious as we attempt to achieve sustainable development. In The Agrarian Vision: Sustainability and Environmental Ethics, Paul B. Thompson articulates a new agrarian philosophy, emphasizing the vital role of agrarianism in modern agricultural practices. Thompson, a highly regarded voice in environmental philosophy, unites concepts of agrarian philosophy, political theory, and environmental ethics to illustrate the importance of creating and maintaining environmentally conscious communities. Thompson describes the evolution of agrarian values in America, following the path blazed by Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck, and Wendell Berry. Providing a pragmatic approach to ecological responsibility and commitment, The Agrarian Vision is a significant, compelling argument for the practice of a reconfigured and expanded agrarianism in our efforts to support modern industrialized culture while also preserving the natural world.

Agriculture and philosophy have been parts of a whole across history and remain so. Philosophy informs wellbeing and contentment amidst the vagaries of existence, the primary concern of which has always been security of food. Science, once known as natural philosophy, is a major means of philosophical advance today. Agricultural science is presented as comprising all of these components. The philosophical quest to be at ease in nature extends from pre-historical times into our unknown future, and employs diverse vehicles to convey insights across generations via myths, legends religion, academic study and ritual practices. Expressing esoteric concepts has employed agricultural metaphor across the historical era as it has been our most common interaction with nature. Continuing as our most widespread human interaction within nature, agriculture’s role in creating civilization, and later its writing, eventually led to an urban separation from nature including food production. Unifying the philosophy, agriculture and agricultural science across cultures and traditions from pre-agricultural times through the European Enlightenment to today, this work builds on neglected ancient insights. Perhaps the most profound of these insights is that our thoughts and actions may be seen as an integral part of nature. Rather than being independent agents with free will, our fears and guilt may be seen as active forces in the dynamics of nature itself, which includes our procurement of food. This conception offers a wider interaction than can be comprehended from current popular approaches.

Completing a comprehensive history of America's land-grant universities begun in Science as Service, the thirteen original essays in Service as Mandate examine how these great institutions both changed and were changed by the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

In 2014, The Urban Education Collaborative at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte hosted its first biennial International Conference on Urban Education (ICUE) in Montego Bay, Jamaica. In 2016, the second hosting of the conference took place in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Additionally, in 2018, the third hosting of the conference took place in Nassau, Bahamas. These solution-focused conferences brought together students, teachers, scholars, public sector and business professionals as well as others from around the world to present their research and best practices on various topics pertaining to urban education. With ICUE’s inspiration, this book is a response to the growing need to highlight the multifaceted aspects of urban education particularly focusing on common issues and solutions in urban environments (e.g., family and community engagement, student academic achievement, teacher preparation and professional development, targeted instructional and disciplinary interventions, opportunity gaps, culturally-relevant and sustaining practices, etc.). Additionally, with this book, we seek to better understand the challenges facing urban educators and students and to offer progressive initiatives toward resolutions. This unique compilation of work is organized under four major themes all targeted at critically addressing concerns that may inhibit the success of urban learners and providing solutions that have implications for curriculum design, development, and delivery; teacher preparation and teaching diverse populations; career readiness and employment; and even more nuanced issues related to foster care, undocumented students and mental health, sustainable consumption, childhood marriage, food deserts, and marine life and urban communities.