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 76
Page xviii
... crops found in the landscape and the arrows , guns , plows and barns produced from its resources are real , material entities interacting according to the laws of ecology . As Marx put it : " Just as plants , animals , stones , air ...
... crops found in the landscape and the arrows , guns , plows and barns produced from its resources are real , material entities interacting according to the laws of ecology . As Marx put it : " Just as plants , animals , stones , air ...
Page 12
... crops , livestock , or pests , may be added . Human populations may increase or decrease through immigration and emigration , births and deaths , with implications for other spe- cies . The results alter habitat diversity and ...
... crops , livestock , or pests , may be added . Human populations may increase or decrease through immigration and emigration , births and deaths , with implications for other spe- cies . The results alter habitat diversity and ...
Page 32
... crops do not do well in them . Brown podzolic soils ( now reclassified as alfisols and spodosols ) are less acid . Alfisols , found in deciduous forests , recycle calcium , thereby reduc- second forest type as the glaciers retreated ...
... crops do not do well in them . Brown podzolic soils ( now reclassified as alfisols and spodosols ) are less acid . Alfisols , found in deciduous forests , recycle calcium , thereby reduc- second forest type as the glaciers retreated ...
Page 33
... crops . On the sandy coastal soils of Cape Cod , Rhode Island , and Connecticut , pitch pine contributed charcoal , turpentine , and tar . Concord naturalist Henry David Thoreau ( 1817-62 ) first perceived the succession of plant forms ...
... crops . On the sandy coastal soils of Cape Cod , Rhode Island , and Connecticut , pitch pine contributed charcoal , turpentine , and tar . Concord naturalist Henry David Thoreau ( 1817-62 ) first perceived the succession of plant forms ...
Page 40
... crops , culture , discipline , and government . Clothed in skins and eating wild meat , they took on the characteristics of the beasts on which they fed . As European elite culture set itself increasingly above nature as represented by ...
... crops , culture , discipline , and government . Clothed in skins and eating wild meat , they took on the characteristics of the beasts on which they fed . As European elite culture set itself increasingly above nature as represented by ...
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 - 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