This exciting book offers to make good the deficit by exploring how human activity and planetary processes impact upon each other. The book:

• Provides a much needed in-depth inquiry into the volatile relationship between human life and the physical earth

• Considers the social and political implications of consistently thinking of the earth as a dynamic planet

• Asks what we can learn from natural catastrophes and from those who have lived through them

• Offers an inter-disciplinary perspective bringing together insights from sociology, geography, philosophy and earth / life sciences.

The result is a landmark work that will be of interest to readers across the social sciences and humanities as well as environmental studies and disaster studies.