Trees Are Shape Shifters: How Cultivation, Climate Change, and Disaster Create Landscapes

In Lucca, Italy, people make sense of social and environmental change through cultivation, linking their experiences to the past and larger-scale political questions. Human-transformed landscapes are a harbinger of the experiences we are likely to face, and addressing these disasters will call upon us to think about the human and natural histories of the landscapes we live in.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 320 pages
Publication date: 10 January 2023
Publisher: Yale University Press

In Italy and throughout the Mediterranean region, nearly every stone, tree, and hillside bears the imprint of human activity. Andrew Mathews explores how individuals in Lucca, Italy, comprehend social and environmental change through the cultivation of trees and landscapes, placing climate change within the framework of the Anthropocene. He examines how people perceive climate change rather than through abstract thinking and discussions, but through the care they give to their surroundings.

Maintaining the stability of landscapes by nurturing the forms of trees, rivers, and hillsides serves as a means for individuals to connect their experiences to the past and to broader political concerns. The human-altered landscapes of Italy serve as a foreshadowing of the challenges that we, as a society, will likely face, and addressing these disasters necessitates a reflection on the human and natural histories of the landscapes we inhabit.

Dimension: 235 x 156 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780300260373