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
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Page vii
... Corn Mothers to Puritan Fathers 69 4 The Animate Cosmos of the Colonial Farmer 112 PART TWO The Capitalist Ecological Revolution 5 Farm Ecology : Subsistence versus Market 149 6 The Mechanization of Nature : Managing Farms and Forests ...
... Corn Mothers to Puritan Fathers 69 4 The Animate Cosmos of the Colonial Farmer 112 PART TWO The Capitalist Ecological Revolution 5 Farm Ecology : Subsistence versus Market 149 6 The Mechanization of Nature : Managing Farms and Forests ...
Page xiv
... corn planted in an environment prone to periodic cycles of drought and dust storms , a declensionist plot.3 Cronon's analysis caused an earthquake in environmental history . Were all environmental histories inherently declensionist ...
... corn planted in an environment prone to periodic cycles of drought and dust storms , a declensionist plot.3 Cronon's analysis caused an earthquake in environmental history . Were all environmental histories inherently declensionist ...
Page xvii
... corn mother consciousness gave way to the male God of Puritan religion . Settlers incorporated the native corn , beans , and squash triad into their own tetrad of wheat , barley , oats , and rye . Nev- ertheless , native peoples did not ...
... corn mother consciousness gave way to the male God of Puritan religion . Settlers incorporated the native corn , beans , and squash triad into their own tetrad of wheat , barley , oats , and rye . Nev- ertheless , native peoples did not ...
Page 24
... Corn Mother , active spirits Active subjects : animals , trees , rocks Named places Gathering - Hunting- Fishing Female farming : long- fallow / polycultures Preindustrial Society Nature as active vice - regent of God : virgin , mother ...
... Corn Mother , active spirits Active subjects : animals , trees , rocks Named places Gathering - Hunting- Fishing Female farming : long- fallow / polycultures Preindustrial Society Nature as active vice - regent of God : virgin , mother ...
Page 29
... corn and beans between the Saco and Kennebec rivers in Maine at about 44 degrees of latitude . Melting snows and surging rains cut through the underlying granite and me- tamorphic rock and carved out south - flowing rivers - to the ...
... corn and beans between the Saco and Kennebec rivers in Maine at about 44 degrees of latitude . Melting snows and surging rains cut through the underlying granite and me- tamorphic rock and carved out south - flowing rivers - to the ...
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