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 29
Page 2
... mechanistic science . It split human consciousness into a disem- bodied analytic mind and a romantic emotional sensibility.2 Each of these " ecological revolutions " altered the local ecology , human society , and human consciousness ...
... mechanistic science . It split human consciousness into a disem- bodied analytic mind and a romantic emotional sensibility.2 Each of these " ecological revolutions " altered the local ecology , human society , and human consciousness ...
Page 7
... mechanistic sci- ence . Matter is dead and inert , remaining at rest or moving with uniform velocity in a straight line unless acted on by external forces . Change comes from outside as in the operation of a machine . The world itself ...
... mechanistic sci- ence . Matter is dead and inert , remaining at rest or moving with uniform velocity in a straight line unless acted on by external forces . Change comes from outside as in the operation of a machine . The world itself ...
Page 8
... mechanistic paradigm , the ecological paradigm is a so- cially constructed theory . Although it differs from mechanism by tak- ing relations , context , and networks into consideration , it has no greater or lesser claim to some ...
... mechanistic paradigm , the ecological paradigm is a so- cially constructed theory . Although it differs from mechanism by tak- ing relations , context , and networks into consideration , it has no greater or lesser claim to some ...
Page 9
... mechanistic , has resulted from a socially constructed set of experi- ences sanctioned by scientific authority and a set of social practices and policies . The dominant paradigm in ecology draws heavily on economic metaphors such as ...
... mechanistic , has resulted from a socially constructed set of experi- ences sanctioned by scientific authority and a set of social practices and policies . The dominant paradigm in ecology draws heavily on economic metaphors such as ...
Page 22
... mechanistic science and its use of perspective diagrams , visualization was integrated with numbering . The printing press and perspective art linked the mental to the material through what sociologist of science Bruno Latour called ...
... mechanistic science and its use of perspective diagrams , visualization was integrated with numbering . The printing press and perspective art linked the mental to the material through what sociologist of science Bruno Latour called ...
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