Luigi Manca (editor) - Interdisciplinary Essays on Environment and Culture: One Planet, One Humanity, and the Media

Interdisciplinary Essays on Environment and Culture

Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Series Editor : Douglas A. Vakoch, California Institute of Integral Studies, USA

Advisory Board

Joni Adamson, Arizona State University, USA; Mageb Al-adwani, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia; Bruce Allen, Seisen University, Japan; Hannes Bergthaller, National Chung-Hsing University, Taiwan; Zlia Bora, Federal University of Paraba, Brazil; Izabel Brando, Federal University of Alagoas, Brazil; Byron Caminero-Santangelo, University of Kansas, USA; Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington University, USA; Simo Farias Almeida, Federal University of Roraima, Brazil; Julia Fiedorczuk, University of Warsaw, Poland; Camilo Gomides, University of Puerto RicoRio Piedras, Puerto Rico; Yves-Charles Grandjeat, Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3 University, France; George Handley, Brigham Young University, USA; Isabel Hoving, Leiden University, The Netherlands; Idom Thomas Inyabri, University of Calabar, Nigeria; Serenella Iovino, University of Turin, Italy; Adrian Ivakhiv, University of Vermont, USA; Daniela Kato, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, China; Petr Kopeck, University of Ostrava, Czech Republic; Mohammad Nasser Modoodi, Payame Noor University, Iran; Patrick Murphy, University of Central Florida, USA; Serpil Oppermann, Hacettepe University, Turkey; Rebecca Raglon, University of British Columbia, Canada; Anuradha Ramanujan, National University of Singapore, Singapore; Christian Schmitt-Kilb, University of Rostock, Germany; Marian Scholtmeijer, University of Northern British Columbia, Canada; Heike Schwarz, University of Augsburg, Germany; Murali Sivaramakrishnan, Pondicherry University, India; Scott Slovic, University of Idaho, USA; J. Etienne Terblanche, North-West University, South Africa; Julia Tofantuk, Tallinn University, Estonia; Jennifer Wawrzinek, Free University of Berlin, Germany; Cheng Xiangzhan, Shandong University, China; Yuki Masami, Kanazawa University, Japan; Hubert Zapf, University of Augsburg, Germany

Ecocritical Theory and Practice highlights innovative scholarship at the interface of literary/cultural studies and the environment, seeking to foster an ongoing dialogue between academics and environmental activists.

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Interdisciplinary Essays on Environment and Culture

One Planet, One Humanity, and the Media

Edited by

Luigi Manca and Jean-Marie Kauth

LEXINGTON BOOKS

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All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

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ISBN: 978-1-4985-2890-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

eISBN: 978-1-4985-2889-4

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Luigi Manca and Jean-Marie Kauth

Kit OToole

Federico Francioni

Joaqun Montero

Chris Birks

Luigi Manca

Steve Macek

Craig Stark

Marian Mesrobian MacCurdy

Maria Lucia Piga

Francesco Villa

Pierpaolo Duce

Timothy W. Marin

Elizabeth Dobbins

Martin J. Tracey

Jean-Marie Kauth

Anne Marie Smith

Elizabeth Kubek

Jean-Marie Kauth

William Scarlato

A project of this scope incurs many debts. First of all, we are happy to acknowledge our many talented contributors who attended the conference, wrote chapters, and completed reviews. Thanks are owed to Benedictine Universitys Faculty Development Committee for funding the research-planning conference, as well as to Megan Benham for helping to organize it. We are grateful to Teresa Parker, Benedictine University Archivist, for her help in selecting and producing several of the images used in the book, and to all the artists whose images grace these pages. Thank you to Lindsey Porambo at Lexington Books, who answered endless questions, and Doug Vakoch, the editor of this series. And finally, we would like to thank our families for their patience as we completed the collection on a tight deadline.

One Planet, One Humanity, and the Media

Luigi Manca and Jean-Marie Kauth

This book is a collection of essays about the media, the environment, and the whole of humanity at the brink of extinction. As the demands of overpopulation and of an unsustainable consumer economy dry up existing natural resources and destroy vital ecosystems that we need to survive, the corporate-controlled media saturate worldwide audiences with a barrage of seductive images and narratives to stimulate over-consumption and to distract us from the consequences of rampant consumerism, while remaining silent about the systematic destruction of the environment and of our future. Thus, the challenge urgently facing all of us today is that, as Umberto Eco wrote, [a] democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflectionnot an invitation for hypnosis (1979).

The book attempts to relate the discussion about social justice and universal human rights to the discussion about the destruction of the environment. The profits coming from the systematic, short-sighted, and irresponsible exploitation of the worlds resources remain pretty much in the hands of a small group of privileged elites, mostly in the more economically developed countries, while the large majority of humans are not sharing the benefits but, on the contrary, are the ones who are hit the hardest by the problems created by an out-of-control consumer economy.