ABSTRACT
A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.
Henry Melvill, Golden Lectures for 1855
INTRODUCTION
Physical, economic, social, cultural, technological, political, and ideological influences are constantly impinging on us, as we absorb and filter the impact of the world around us. Our values and conflicts, as well as the innermost sense of our identities, are intertwined with our experiences in and relationships to our human and nonhuman environments. People react emotionally when they get a good job, when they are “downsized,” when they become homeless due to natural disasters or to lack of affordable housing, when their marriages are not sanctioned because they are gay, and when violence permeates neighborhoods, schools, and families.
