Page 9 - Changing Living Spaces

An Introduction to the Living Spaces Concept

Satosthi Murayama
Kagawa University, Japan

© 2024 Satosthi Murayama
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-399-9.7-28

The demise of old ways of living can cause anguish, and a deep sense
of loss. It is a little like the extinction of older species of animals.
[…] This is an issue of some seriousness, but it is up to the society to
determine what, if anything, it wants to do to reserve old forms of
living, perhaps even at significant economic costs. [Sen 1999, 241]
The aim of this book is to collectively discuss the developmental phas-
es from agricultural societies to industrialized societies and finally to
post-industrial low-carbon societies in the cases of Eurasian economies,
which have followed different developmental pathways towards moder-
nity from early modern times to the present, although with the domi-
nant presence of small, even tiny, landholder structures. Based on the
different economics of environment, we explored changing Living Spaces:
Where have florae, faunae, and humans lived in the past? Where do they
live today? Where will they live in the future?
First, we applied a comparative approach to the ecological foundations
of local case studies. Practices of different economic structures and lev-
els of development can contribute to a broader generalization of mod-
ernization processes on a global scale. Second, we focused on rural areas.
Local natural resource use, economic systems, and pathways to modern-
ization allowed us to identify traditional economic and environmental
management solutions that can serve as models for future rural develop-
ment policy.
A clear difference between the pre-modern economy and the mod-
ern economy is that the latter includes the development of scientific/so-
cio-technological knowledge and global dependence on the use of fossil
fuels. The globalized fossil fuel economy emerged in the second half of the
nineteenth century and is dramatically changing the contemporary world.

Murayama, S., Ž. Lazarević, and A. Panjek, eds. 2024. Changing Living
Spaces: Subsistence and Sustenance in Eurasian Economies from Early Modern
Times to the Present.Koper: University of Primorska Press.

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