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Postcolonial nations often grapple with the intricate balance between development and environmental sustainability. This study adopts a postcolonial ecocritical framework to explore the nuanced relationship between these themes in Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s Wizard of the Crow. Through detailed textual analysis, it investigates how the novels depict the ecological consequences of colonial and neocolonial practices in postcolonial Africa. By comparing the authors’ depictions of progress and ecological awareness, the study offers fresh insights into the dilemmas and opportunities African nations face in their pursuit of sustainable development. While Mda’s novel vividly illustrates the environmental damage wrought by colonial and neocolonial forces, Ngũgĩ’s work presents diverse and conflicting perspectives on development. Both novels ultimately advocate for critical reflection on the environmental impacts of progress, encouraging readers to envision alternative futures that harmonize community welfare with environmental preservation. By analyzing the journeys of characters like Kamiti, Nyawira, Camagu, and Qukezwa—who embody ecological awareness—the study highlights the authors’ engagement with Africa’s environmental challenges, advocating for a more equitable and sustainable path forward.

The numbness to human loss becomes ordinary. Indifference to human affairs seems normal after experiencing the global lockdown. Bringing up empathy becomes the most challenging task in architectural design studios after the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining otherness solidified after a global pandemic would be a way to revive empathy and to engage more in architectural design studios. The physiological disparity between the modern and the vernacular environments narrows down with the revival of Najdi architecture, the Salmani architecture style, and the Diriyah Gate Project in Riyadh, KSA. The disparity is caused by intangible factors such as speed, density, and tension but the revival focuses heavily on the tangible, formal expression. The architectural elements in the vernacular Najdi architecture have different meanings and roles beyond being a decorative motif. The feeble values of the vernacular undermined by touristic images are challenged by a series of radical design projects not to be generalized again by picturesque replicas of the past. Seeing the lost, the ecological sensibility of a community or collective that embraced the harshest land with full respect, might not be visual but is instead radically experiential, like a serendipitous breeze in Riyadh. This paper introduces a series of studio works that challenge how to bring back the living structure, in the harshest environment, to daily life through experimental and speculative design processes. It proposes how a community is called on to guard the environmental landscape, again defying the visual interpretation of Najdi architecture in a political landscape dominated by high fence walls.

The erosion of metaphysics that began in Modernity has led to the discredit of the whole project of natural theology as a means to reach God, establish the classical divine attributes, and account for divine action. After the deconstruction of classical metaphysics propelled by thinkers associated with the Protestant tradition and by philosophers affiliated with the Nietzschean critique, it may appear that only an apophatic approach to God would then be possible. However, the attempt to establish a consensual foundation for the theological discourse has not lost its relevance. In this sense, the attempts to revitalize natural theology are most welcome. It would be naive, however, to think that approaches to natural theology based on classical metaphysics will easily gather consensus. This will not happen. The departing point for a renewed and credible approach to natural theology cannot be the theoretical universal reason associated with Modernity, which is no longer acknowledged as a common ground. As such, a viable approach to natural theology has to find a new consensual starting point. The goal of this article is to argue that the emergence of a new ecological urgency and sensibility, which nowadays gather a high degree of consensus, offers an opportunity for the renewal of natural theology. It is our aim: (i) to show the extent to which God grounds the intrinsic value of nature, which, as such, deserves respect, and (ii) to suggest that the reverence for nature may naturally lead contemporary human beings to God.

The first book-length study to address Moore’s significance to the Gothic, this volume is also the first to provide in-depth analyses of his spoken-word performances, poetry and prose, as well as his comics and graphic novels. The essays collected here identify the Gothic tradition as perhaps the most significant cultural context for understanding Moore’s work, providing unique insight into its wider social and political dimensions as well as addressing key theoretical issues in Gothic Studies, Comics Studies and Adaptation Studies. Scholars, students and general readers alike will find fresh insights into Moore’s use of horror and terror, homage and parody, plus allusion and adaptation. The international list of contributors includes leading researchers in the field and the studies presented here enhance the understanding of Moore’s works while at the same time exploring the ways in which these serve to advance a broader appreciation of Gothic aesthetics.

Sociology of imaginary in French context was born thanks to the recovery of the theories of the anthropologist Gilbert Durand for the study of social phenomena by Michel Maffesoli. Concerning the food, the analysis of the imaginary regimes by Durand places the archetype of nourishment within the mystical structures of imagination. It's possible, through alimentary practices, to discover the cultural axes of a society and its imaginary. According to Maffesoli, eating together is a social act of communion, it is a communication process and a relational exchange. Nowadays, postmodern imaginary is making its way toward a new ecological alimentary wisdom, which Maffesoli calls eco-sophia. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The first book-length study to address Moore's significance to the Gothic, this volume is also the first to provide in-depth analyses of his spoken-word performances, poetry and prose, as well as his comics and graphic novels.

Forest fire is a ubiquitous disaster which has a long-term impact on the local climate as well as the ecological balance and fire products based on remote sensing satellite data have developed rapidly. However, the early forest fire smoke in remote sensing images is small in area and easily confused by clouds and fog, which makes it difficult to be identified. Too many redundant frequency bands and remote sensing index for remote sensing satellite data will have an interference on wildfire smoke detection, resulting in a decline in detection accuracy and detection efficiency for wildfire smoke. To solve these problems, this study analyzed the sensitivity of remote sensing satellite data and remote sensing index used for wildfire detection. First, a high-resolution remote sensing multispectral image dataset of forest fire smoke, containing different years, seasons, regions and land cover, was established. Then Smoke-Unet, a smoke segmentation network model based on an improved Unet combined with the attention mechanism and residual block, was proposed. Furthermore, in order to reduce data redundancy and improve the recognition accuracy of the algorithm, the conclusion was made by experiments that the RGB, SWIR2 and AOD bands are sensitive to smoke recognition in Landsat-8 images. The experimental results show that the smoke pixel accuracy rate using the proposed Smoke-Unet is 3.1% higher than that of Unet, which could effectively segment the smoke pixels in remote sensing images. This proposed method under the RGB, SWIR2 and AOD bands can help to segment smoke by using high-sensitivity band and remote sensing index and makes an early alarm of forest fire smoke.

This article brings the study of China’s environment and society down to earth, through a micro-sociological inquiry into everyday environmental sensibilities under the Chinese state’s ecological civilization framework. We empirically investigate the impact of ecological civilization on everyday life from the vantage point of China’s zero-Covid period (2020-2022). During this period, the state’s top-down approach to managing the environment and society was implemented in an airtight fashion, resulting in outcomes that illustrate both the promises and perils of ecological civilization. We organize ethnographic evidence into three clusters: human-to-non-human interactions, human-to-object relations, and human-to-human sociality. Our findings portray a touchless, ultrasanitized, tech-ubiquitous, and ecologically monotonous urban experience. The eco-civilized configuration of contemporary China negates some of the most basic human instincts about the environment. Ecological civilization therefore is a denaturalizing and dehumanizing project that self-aggrandizes as being both ecologically sound and civilizationally advanced.

In Mexico, 142 sites covering almost nine million hectares are listed as Ramsar wetlands. Given the complaints of local inhabitants regarding water quality, and the interest of the federal government for setting up a plan for wetlands protection, we evaluated the ecological condition of a wetland in rural Oaxaca, Mexico. Existing water quality data were compiled and analyzed. Among the parameters of interest were temperature, pH, DO, N, P, and fecal contamination. Even though microbial contamination was a primary concern, a more important worry to local users was the presence of pesticides in water due to inadequate disposal of empty containers and runoff from upstream farmlands. Public meetings with water users, researchers, and local and federal personnel were held to get the opinion about strategies for protection of the wetlands. Outcomes of the decision meetings using a decision-support system highlighted that to preserve the wetlands, the implementation of riparian vegetation (buffer zone) and the management of surface water should be considered as conservation practices. Law enforcement would improve the watershed and wetlands' health for preventing further deterioration. Because of the success in getting public participation and input, the approach will likely be replicated in other parts of the country.