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PREFACE 9
a position on them. The chapters Environmental Philosophy and Religion and Ecology
(Judit Farkas) review the worldview that led to the duality of man and nature, and
to the environmental problems rooted in it, on the one hand.On the other, they
survey the religious efforts and philosophical trends that have appeared in reaction
to it. In a similar vein, Tamas Kocsis outlines the pertinent economic question
and possible economic answers in the article Economic Answers to the Challenges
of Environmental Sustainability. Possible links to different fields of the humanities
and the respective questions are discussed in the papers The Environment and
Anthropology (ecological anthropology, Judit Farkas), Green History? What is the
Role of Historians Works on Problems of the Environment in the Past and What Could
It Become? (history, Rébert Balogh), Eco-social Work. New Challenges on the Horizon
of Social Work (social work, Szilvia Nyers), Environmental conflicts, social answers
(political science, Viktor Glied), Basic Problems of Regulation in Environmental
Protection (jurisprudence, Attila Panovics), The Conservation of Nature and
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (ecology, Anna Varga) and The Tragedy and Comedy
of the Commons (human ecology, Andras Takacs-Santa). With a background in
social geography and regional research, Gabor Maté and Gabor Pirisi place two
issues under the microscope: global overpopulation (Gabor Pirisi) and the notion
and significance of regions (Gabor Maté). Environmental problems also affect
such vital human needs as food, an issue addressed by Dorottya Mendly and
Melinda Mihaly in their paper Food Supply as a Global Challenge. In his study
Environmental Justice, Gyula Nagy discusses some more latent consequences of
environmental problems which, however, gravely affect certain social groups. EH
is of the position that the arts are important means of both communicating and
solving these problems. The first large block ends with the chapter Nature, Art,
Activism (Judit Farkas), which introduces several endeavors, trends and artists.
Although the first section also contains Hungarian examples, the second block
titled Communal Answers focuses explicitly on communal examples. The authors
discuss case studies, representing both cities and the countryside, which try to
provide answers not only to ecological but also to social problems. The Old Cottage
project in Késpallag reveals the possibilities of an ecological local development
project for a community center controlled by young people (Pal Géza Balogh —
Luca Kaszds — Rebeka Kiss), the paper on the ecovillages discusses the international
movement with a past of several decades and its adoption in Hungary (Judit
Farkas). Two examples of urban communal responses are examined more closely:
the Transition Towns movement and the communal gardens, both illustrated by
Hungarian examples: the Green Spot Communal Garden in Pécs and the
Transforming Wekerle in Budapest. Andras Takacs-Santa presents the communal
initiatives he launched: the Small Community Program and the Uj Koma Halé.
The book touches on many relevant areas, yet there are several other themes
that should be included but remain absent. Such are psychology, urbanism,
literature, and, among the arts, theater and film . The basic aim of this book is to
acquaint the reader with EH as a framework of several interrelated themes, some
of which it presents in more detail here. A future volume will continue its work
of acquainting readers with more aspects of EH.
Today EH integrates a great many branches of scholarship, but some disciplines
can be pinpointed in which its roots extend deeper. These include literary studies,
cultural geography, history and cultural anthropology. It was no accident that I