Tim Weiskel
[ Other recent papers, manuscripts, notes, & talks:]
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TIMOTHY C. WEISKEL, graduated magnum cum laude from Yale University. He trained as a social anthropologist and an historian as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Following field work in West Africa he received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and returned to the United States to teach anthropology and history at Williams College, Yale University and Harvard.
Dr. Weiskel has had field experience in Syria, Lebanon and throughout West Africa from Senegal to Gabon. In 1966-67 he worked as the West Africa Representative for the volunteer organization Operation Crossroads Africa, Inc. He returned to West Africa for further work among the Baule peoples of the central Ivory Coast. His field work and archival research on the history and anthropology of the Ivory Coast peoples led to the publication of French Colonial Rule and the Baule Peoples: Resistance and Collaboration, 1889-1911 (Oxford University Press, 1980). Since then he has published several broader articles on the ecological legacy of European colonialism and modern development strategies.
Over the last several decades he has worked on the environmental implications of public policy choices, and he is principal author of the recent work, Environmental Decline and Public Policy: Pattern, Trend and Prospect (1992), based upon testimony he presented to the United States Senate in support of legislation to limit carbon emissions in September of 1988. Most recently research concentrates upon belief systems within cultures and how core cultural beliefs can either facilitate change or block change over time.
In particular, he has examined how dominant belief systems serve to impede or enable different cultures to perceive the changing environmental challenges that confront us all as a human family. To pursue this work he co-founded The Climate Talks Project in 2001 along with Professor William Moomaw of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. This group has convened scholars, business leaders, NGO activists, journalists and concerned citizens to discuss effective means of mobilizing civil society to respond to the evolving global climate crisis.
Dr. Weiskel currently teaches online courses on global climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice in the Sustainability program through Harvard's Extension School. These courses focus upon the ideological and conceptual barriers to transforming our current industrial culture based upon metaphors of continuous consumption and perpetual growth into new cultural forms based instead upon metaphors of stability, justice and global sustainability.
From 2008 through 2013 Dr. Weiskel taught an annual "Global Climate Update" course for graduate students and public health officials at The Cyprus International Institute (CII) for the Environment and Public Health as part of an advanced degree program established by the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in cooperation with the Harvard School of Public Health.
Inspired by the life-long example of Bill Coffin and the impressive achievements of fellow classmate, Daniel Yergin (Yale, '68), who's Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) has enabled his clients and the wider world to understand energy issues over the last quarter century, Weiskel convened the Cambridge Climate Research Associates (CCRA). In addition, Dr. Weiskel founded Food-Matters.TV and maintains the online weblog Transition-Studies providing over 28,000 links to news stories, documents, movies and current information to students, fellow faculty and concerned citizens working to live sustainably on our finite planet.
Through these organizations Dr. Weiskel consults with individuals, groups and institutions to create on site and online training programs for schools, universities, corporations, municipalities, and national governments. The goal is to assist these organizations in analyzing the climate impact of global carbon consumption and help them envision the necessary transitions that must now be undertaken to enable the human community to move to a post carbon-fueled world.
https://independent.academia.edu/TWeiskel
TIMOTHY C. WEISKEL, graduated magnum cum laude from Yale University. He trained as a social anthropologist and an historian as a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford and the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Following field work in West Africa he received his D.Phil. from Oxford University and returned to the United States to teach anthropology and history at Williams College, Yale University and Harvard.
Dr. Weiskel has had field experience in Syria, Lebanon and throughout West Africa from Senegal to Gabon. In 1966-67 he worked as the West Africa Representative for the volunteer organization Operation Crossroads Africa, Inc. He returned to West Africa for further work among the Baule peoples of the central Ivory Coast. His field work and archival research on the history and anthropology of the Ivory Coast peoples led to the publication of French Colonial Rule and the Baule Peoples: Resistance and Collaboration, 1889-1911 (Oxford University Press, 1980). Since then he has published several broader articles on the ecological legacy of European colonialism and modern development strategies.
Over the last several decades he has worked on the environmental implications of public policy choices, and he is principal author of the recent work, Environmental Decline and Public Policy: Pattern, Trend and Prospect (1992), based upon testimony he presented to the United States Senate in support of legislation to limit carbon emissions in September of 1988. Most recently research concentrates upon belief systems within cultures and how core cultural beliefs can either facilitate change or block change over time.
In particular, he has examined how dominant belief systems serve to impede or enable different cultures to perceive the changing environmental challenges that confront us all as a human family. To pursue this work he co-founded The Climate Talks Project in 2001 along with Professor William Moomaw of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. This group has convened scholars, business leaders, NGO activists, journalists and concerned citizens to discuss effective means of mobilizing civil society to respond to the evolving global climate crisis.
Dr. Weiskel currently teaches online courses on global climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice in the Sustainability program through Harvard's Extension School. These courses focus upon the ideological and conceptual barriers to transforming our current industrial culture based upon metaphors of continuous consumption and perpetual growth into new cultural forms based instead upon metaphors of stability, justice and global sustainability.
From 2008 through 2013 Dr. Weiskel taught an annual "Global Climate Update" course for graduate students and public health officials at The Cyprus International Institute (CII) for the Environment and Public Health as part of an advanced degree program established by the Cyprus University of Technology (CUT) in cooperation with the Harvard School of Public Health.
Inspired by the life-long example of Bill Coffin and the impressive achievements of fellow classmate, Daniel Yergin (Yale, '68), who's Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) has enabled his clients and the wider world to understand energy issues over the last quarter century, Weiskel convened the Cambridge Climate Research Associates (CCRA). In addition, Dr. Weiskel founded Food-Matters.TV and maintains the online weblog Transition-Studies providing over 28,000 links to news stories, documents, movies and current information to students, fellow faculty and concerned citizens working to live sustainably on our finite planet.
Through these organizations Dr. Weiskel consults with individuals, groups and institutions to create on site and online training programs for schools, universities, corporations, municipalities, and national governments. The goal is to assist these organizations in analyzing the climate impact of global carbon consumption and help them envision the necessary transitions that must now be undertaken to enable the human community to move to a post carbon-fueled world.
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What is the meaning of this label on these centuries of maps?
First, they have affirmed the "unity of humankind.." That is, humans are a single biological species capable of interbreeding for more than the last million years in Earth's evolutionary history
Second, despite this biologically based unity, humans are also a cultural species, principally capable of learning about the world and one another through culture, language and symbol systems.
In short, the human species is a biological entity whose behavior is largely determined by its culture.
The existential tension between our biological unity and our cultural diversity is at the core of understanding who humans are and how they are capable of behaving throughout all of the history of the species on Earth.
The large questions that needs to be understood are these:
"Why are we so culturally diverse?"
"Where do cultures (languages, symbol systems, behavioral habits, etc.) come from?"
"How do they change?"
"What factors facilitate or inhibit the change of cultures -- and therefore the long-term patterns of behavior throughout human history?
This article explores the importance of the "lived eco-niche" that gives rise to the wide variety of cultures in human history. As with all species in an Earth's ecosystem, humans live within a variety of eco-niches. It is the variety of their lived experiences within those different eco-niches that can account over time for the variety of cultures over time. Following the insights of Benjamin Lee Whorf on "Language, Thought and Reality," this article explores the human experiences of "Language, Thought and Behavior" specifically examining the cultural experience of ecological boundaries and their ideological representation in "white-settler" cultures and the impact of these cultural habits in recent global history.
In the processes, major cultural institutions --including ancient and venerable universities, like Oxford, Cambridge, Bolognia, the Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale, etc. each with global scholarly reputations to uphold and defend -- are being scrutinized with great intensity to account for the deficiencies in the hundreds of years of their formal curricula concerning “world history.” These universities and their associated museums, libraries and departmental “special collections” have become the subject of intensified scrutiny as different groups of indigenous and migrant peoples are seeking to reexamine and reassess images of themselves in the very earliest forms of documentation including portolan maps, manuscript pictures, printed maps and images.
In academic circles we are only now beginning to argue that we need to get smart about how we manage and manipulate the world. It’s about time, don’t you think? The appeal for smart growth has been slow in coming, but the consequences of “stupid” growth (unrestrained growth, aimless growth, anarchic growth) are becoming too apparent to ignore. Clearly the appeal for smart growth is the wave of the future. After all, who could possibly be against it, if all it is contrasted with is stupid growth? No one would deny that smart growth is an ethical imperative. All we need bicker about from now on is, who gets to call what smart?
What is the meaning of this label on these centuries of maps?
First, they have affirmed the "unity of humankind.." That is, humans are a single biological species capable of interbreeding for more than the last million years in Earth's evolutionary history
Second, despite this biologically based unity, humans are also a cultural species, principally capable of learning about the world and one another through culture, language and symbol systems.
In short, the human species is a biological entity whose behavior is largely determined by its culture.
The existential tension between our biological unity and our cultural diversity is at the core of understanding who humans are and how they are capable of behaving throughout all of the history of the species on Earth.
The large questions that needs to be understood are these:
"Why are we so culturally diverse?"
"Where do cultures (languages, symbol systems, behavioral habits, etc.) come from?"
"How do they change?"
"What factors facilitate or inhibit the change of cultures -- and therefore the long-term patterns of behavior throughout human history?
This article explores the importance of the "lived eco-niche" that gives rise to the wide variety of cultures in human history. As with all species in an Earth's ecosystem, humans live within a variety of eco-niches. It is the variety of their lived experiences within those different eco-niches that can account over time for the variety of cultures over time. Following the insights of Benjamin Lee Whorf on "Language, Thought and Reality," this article explores the human experiences of "Language, Thought and Behavior" specifically examining the cultural experience of ecological boundaries and their ideological representation in "white-settler" cultures and the impact of these cultural habits in recent global history.
In the processes, major cultural institutions --including ancient and venerable universities, like Oxford, Cambridge, Bolognia, the Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale, etc. each with global scholarly reputations to uphold and defend -- are being scrutinized with great intensity to account for the deficiencies in the hundreds of years of their formal curricula concerning “world history.” These universities and their associated museums, libraries and departmental “special collections” have become the subject of intensified scrutiny as different groups of indigenous and migrant peoples are seeking to reexamine and reassess images of themselves in the very earliest forms of documentation including portolan maps, manuscript pictures, printed maps and images.
In academic circles we are only now beginning to argue that we need to get smart about how we manage and manipulate the world. It’s about time, don’t you think? The appeal for smart growth has been slow in coming, but the consequences of “stupid” growth (unrestrained growth, aimless growth, anarchic growth) are becoming too apparent to ignore. Clearly the appeal for smart growth is the wave of the future. After all, who could possibly be against it, if all it is contrasted with is stupid growth? No one would deny that smart growth is an ethical imperative. All we need bicker about from now on is, who gets to call what smart?