Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New EnglandWith the arrival of European explorers and settlers during the seventeenth century, Native American ways of life and the environment itself underwent radical alterations as human relationships to the land and ways of thinking about nature all changed. This colonial ecological revolution held sway until the nineteenth century, when New England's industrial production brought on a capitalist revolution that again remade the ecology, economy, and conceptions of nature in the region. In Ecological Revolutions, Carolyn Merchant analyzes these two major transformations in the New England environment between 1600 and 1860. In a preface to the second edition, Merchant introduces new ideas about narrating environmental change based on gender and the dialectics of transformation, while the revised epilogue situates New England in the context of twenty-first-century globalization and climate change. Merchant argues that past ways of relating to the land could become an inspiration for renewing resources and achieving sustainability in the future. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 82
Page xvi
... society and nature . From feminist theory , the idea of social reproduction goes a long way to explain the gendered activi- ties of everyday life . The production and reproduction of everyday On Derrida and the text , see Demeritt ...
... society and nature . From feminist theory , the idea of social reproduction goes a long way to explain the gendered activi- ties of everyday life . The production and reproduction of everyday On Derrida and the text , see Demeritt ...
Page xvii
... society in the New England landscape ( Chapter 3 ) . Native women's horticulture succumbed to male - dominated plow agriculture , and corn mother consciousness gave way to the male God of Puritan religion . Settlers incorporated the ...
... society in the New England landscape ( Chapter 3 ) . Native women's horticulture succumbed to male - dominated plow agriculture , and corn mother consciousness gave way to the male God of Puritan religion . Settlers incorporated the ...
Page 2
... society , and human consciousness . New material structures and technologies - maps , plows , fences , clocks , and chemicals- were imposed on nature . The relations between men and women through which daily life was maintained and ...
... society , and human consciousness . New material structures and technologies - maps , plows , fences , clocks , and chemicals- were imposed on nature . The relations between men and women through which daily life was maintained and ...
Page 3
... society's ecology , pro- duction , reproduction , and forms of consciousness ; the processes by which they broke down ; and an analysis of the new relations between the emergent colonial or capitalist society and nonhuman nature . Two ...
... society's ecology , pro- duction , reproduction , and forms of consciousness ; the processes by which they broke down ; and an analysis of the new relations between the emergent colonial or capitalist society and nonhuman nature . Two ...
Page 4
... society come in conflict with the existing relations of production .... Then begins an epoch of social revolution . With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed . " 4 ...
... society come in conflict with the existing relations of production .... Then begins an epoch of social revolution . With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed . " 4 ...
Contents
1 | |
27 | |
The Capitalist Ecological Revolution | 147 |
APPENDIXES | 281 |
Notes | 297 |
Bibliography | 337 |
Index | 377 |
Other editions - View all
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England Carolyn Merchant Limited preview - 1989 |
Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England Carolyn Merchant Limited preview - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
Abenaki acres Agricultural Agroecology Almanac American animals Astronomical Diary beans beaver biological reproduction Boston bushels capitalist ecological revolution cattle changes colonial ecological revolution colonists commodities Connecticut consciousness corn cosmos cows crops culture Diary earth ecofeminism ecological revolution Economy edited eighteenth century elites energy England Farmer English Environmental History ethic European farm female fertility fields fish forest Fur Trade garden Gluskabe grain Hampshire harvest human hunting Ibid improvement Island John John Winthrop labor land livestock Maine male manure Massachusetts meadows mechanistic Merchant mills mother native Americans nature nature's nonhuman Old Farmer's Almanac Oxford County pasture Penobscot percent Petersham plants plowing polycultures Population production and reproduction Puritan quotation Rhode Island River salt shaman sheep social soil southern New England subsistence symbols Thoreau tillage tion towns transformation trees tribes ture University Press vegetable Vermont wild wilderness William women wood woodland yields York