Research Catalog

Title

The geography of human conflict : approaches to survival / Neville Brown.

Author

Brown, Neville.

Publication

Brighton ; Portland : Sussex Academic Press, c2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xiii, 386 p. : maps, plan; 26 cm.

Summary

• "Author Neville Brown believes that what we know as "strategic studies" needs urgently to address a clutch of geography-related considerations customarily seen as outside its remit. Climate change is of singular import, security-wise. Moreover, other pressures on our planetary ecology and resource base currently appear as critical, taken collectively. Societal and philosophic contradictions are deeply endemic too, not least within the modern post-industrial nations. Again, the attendant security implications may lend themselves well to geographical interpretations.
• Informing this study throughout will be an awareness of the interactions between Space and Time, addressed not metaphysically but in mundane terms. Then again, while linear distance and bearing are becoming less crucially important, the two-dimensional aspects of geographic space (areas and densities) are becoming more critical. Germane, too, is the medium-term (20 to 30 years?) prospect of biowarfare, displacing nuclear bombs as the most menacing form of mass destruction. The classical Chinese concept of yin and yang is examined as lending itself to singularly fruitful application to conflict limitation in an ever-shrinking world.
• Throughout, a distinction is preserved between those questions the author believes can be answered definitively, and those which as yet can only be aired. For both, historical experience will be evaluated in order to give more depth to the interpretation of modern challenges - actual and predicted. Emphasis will be laid on the development of regional associations strong enough to deal with various aspects of a survival strategy: nuclear deterrence, peacekeeping, arms control, developing economic resources, rural and urban ecology. A final review concludes with how one might hope a planetary community can evolve in the longer term - i.e. up to one or two centuries ahead."--Pub. desc.

Subject

• Geography > Philosophy
• Geography > Social aspects
• Human geography

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Setting a scene -- Acquiring the globe -- Vikings and mongols -- A Eurocentric era, 1492-1942 -- Cold War origins -- Emergent influences -- The Muscovite heartland -- The Soviet experiment -- Peripheral wars -- The Iron Curtain -- Intercontinental deterrence -- The highest frontier -- The strategic revolution -- The age of ecology -- Critical regions -- Survival geography.

ISBN

• 9781845191696 (h/c : alk. paper)
• 1845191692 (h/c : alk. paper)
• 9781845191702 (p/b : alk. paper)
• 1845191706 (p/b : alk. paper)

LCCN

^^2009000073

OCLC

301705211

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library