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The nutmeg's curse : parables for a planet in crisis / Amitav Ghosh.

by Ghosh, Amitav, 1956-

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University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Climatic changes.

World politics.

Essays -- 21st century.

9780226815459 (hc.)

339 p. : ill., maps ; 23 cm.

Includes bibliographical references, Internet addresses and index.

In his book 'The nutmeg's curse, a parables for a planet in crisis' Amitav Ghosh --one of India's best-known novelist and essayist -- traces contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. He argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation -- of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. --Adapted from the jacket.

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