Message-ID: <199512071606.LAA210422@atlanta.american.edu> Date: Thu, 7 Dec 1995 08:06:00 -0800 From: mailto:khm1@AXE.HUMBOLDT.EDU> Subject: Island Press: The Value of Life To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
For Immediate ReleaseContact: Lisa Magnino at mailto:ipress@igc.apc.org
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LIONS AND TIGERS AND BEARS... ...we need them more than you think we do
One of today's hottest topics is values -- family values, societal values, and educational values, among others. Until now, few have taken a close look at how our values are an outgrowth of our relation to nature, and in turn, affect the survival of the earth's nature and wildlife.
Stephen Kellert's The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and Human Society is the first work to pinpoint the basic values that represent people's diverse need to affiliate with nature. Kellert views these nine basic values as inherent tendencies, integral to being fully human, and considers the large scale loss of species on earth as a threat to human beings' physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual well-being.
Kellert's twenty years of research shows that the relationship between humans and nature involves biologically-based, inherent human tendencies, greatly influenced by culture, learning, and experience. The Value of Life illustrates these relationships:
* among diverse age, gender, education, socioeconomic, geographic, and ethnic groups * in relation to different human-animal activities * in response to varying species * among varying cultures. After evaluating these relationships, Kellert analyzes their impact on current ecological problems and applies them to current policy issues, such as the conservation and protection of endangered species and biodiversity. He argues humans must not allow issues such as property rights and economic development to supersede their fundamental need to affiliate with nature. Rather, he encourages us to celebrate our dependence on nature and living diversity in the quest to achieve a richer, varied, and more complete existence.
Stephen Kellert is professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is co-editor, with Edward O. Wilson, of The Biophilia Hypothesis (Island/Shearwater, 1993).
The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and Human Society By Stephen R. Kellert 280 pages; figures, tables, index Cloth: $24.95 ISBN: 1-55963-317-4 January 15, 1996 A Shearwater Book
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