Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2010 12:57 am Post subject: Cronon and Merchant
Please actively read "Using Environmental History" by William Cronon and "Interpreting Environmental History" by Carolyn Merchant (pp.7-12). Also look through the quotes on pp.13-16.
Please post about these readings. You may post about whatever in the readings calls to you, but also please connect or contrast one of the quotes with the readings thus far and explain why and how you draw these ties.
So this reading for some reason I found a lot easier than last nights reading (probably because I wasn't sick while doing it). I was extremely interested in Carolyn Merchant's piece. I wouldn't consider myself a crazy feminist, but ever since taking US Feminism (which I think everyone should take) I've been really interested on how things relate to sex. I found it extremely interesting at how Merchant looks at sex equality has changed over time. For example she talks about how in gatherer-hunter communities both women and men collected and hunted food so the production of food was either equal or dominated by women, and now the production of food is dominated by males and communities are dominated by males and women are suppose to be the "moral mothers" and raise children. On page 15 I really liked Carolyn Merchant's quote "Within the carious acts of the ecodrama should be included scenes in which men's and women's roles come to center stage and scenes in which nature 'herself' is an actress" I guess I have now become a Carolyn Merchant fan or something because I didn't read the authors of the quotes when I read them, but when I came across this quote I fell in love with it and laughed when I realized who wrote it. ANYWHO BACK ON TOPIC. What I think Merchant is trying to get across in this quote is that in the play of life humans and nature play equal roles in what happens to this earth (is earth capitalized or lower cased?). Humans can destroy the earth, but so can the earth destroy itself- we shouldn't take all the credit.
I've just realized I've said absolutely nothing William Cronan's piece! I found it kinda silly how he mentioned both Worster and Merchant in his. To say the truth, I didn't get what Cornan was saying at all. Especially when he started talking about the clock thing... After he wrote about that I was just lost completely. Can anyone explain to me his whole clock metaphor?
Worster talked a lot about the definition of environmental history and it’s purpose in last night’s reading. Cronen though, made things really clear when he discussed the relationship between environmental history and environmentalism. He talked about environmentalists’ romantic impulse to see humanity, especially industrial humanity, as being opposed to nature. They view nature as cyclical, and natural time as cyclical time, whereas humanity runs in linear and destructive time. Nature is self-healing, while humanity is unstable.
Cronen clarifies that while many environmental historians may have environmentalist goals, the purpose of environmental history itself is not to reach the utopian vision of natural, cyclical time. “Our task, after all, far from trying to escape from history into nature, is to pull nature itself into the stream of human history.”
Like Cronen’s students, I too feel somewhat hopeless after studying this stuff. When we study political movements, impoverished countries, wars, or most any kind of other history, there’s usually a lesson to be learned and more importantly a goal to work for. Studying environmental history, I’m not sure what the goals are. Should we act to conserve? Or is our waste just part of nature? Is our warming of the climate just a bigger, more intricate cycle the planet was destined to go through? Everything is so ‘big picture’ that I don’t know what to think.
Perhaps this is another reason as to why environmental history is so new. Few people wanted to study and document a history 1) they couldn’t clearly define their role in and 2) was so grand that it couldn’t offer a clear lesson.
The first reading by Cronon somewhat bored me and some parts lost me. I found the 4th sectino interesting when he wrote about how historians not making predictions, but making parables. I think a lot of people believe what they are told and yes you can predict what is going to happen in the future based off of previous events, but because nobody yet has been able to see the future, anything can change and anything can happen.
I enjoyed reading merchant's though. I never really thought race, class, and gender could be placed in this subject, but once she described it it made sense. I have always known that the environment changed once euopeans cameover and then africans, but i never looked at it from an "environmental history" perspective. America today and the environment we live in would be completely different if Native Americans were not here first and Africans soon to follow. Not only were there different foods here and brought over from Africa, but the slaves did work to make the environment what it is today. (cash crops). These people shifted the land and nature took its course from there.
I didnt understand fully why she briefly wrote about the rituals and traditions that Native Americans and Africans. To me it seemed somewhat random.
Merchant when writing about the difference in classes at the end wrote "In reading environmental history, therefore, it is important to ask who is writing, what they are advocating, and from what class or environmental perspective they are making their argument." I think this is so important, i think we all have brought this up when questioning the definition of environmental history.
Emily- Are you talking about the cyclical time versus linear time thing? Because, if so, I couldn't explain it to you, I didn't really get what he was trying to say about that either. Or were you talking about the sacred versus historical time? Or.. something else about a clock? Ahah I don't know...
I thought Carolyn Merchant's piece was easier to get through, but I don't think I learned very much from it. I feel like everything she said was pretty basic. I mean, there were a few things that were nice to have clarified, but overall, she was just sort of stating the obvious. Maybe I've just already learned about the subjects she covered, but did anyone else find what she said to be new information? I sort of assumed the part about the American culture coming from Native and African Americans. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think most people probably did. The class topic wasn't new information. The gender topic was a little helpful though, I hadn't really realized the part about how women are so central to the environmental movement. I'm guessing Merchant is a hard-core feminist though, because she made a big point of saying that women are good and men are bad. I think she may have exaggerated a little in the gender area.
This guy was so annoying with his weird metaphors and his lesson-plan layout.
Though I didn't like Cronon's writing style, or some of his views, I think I took in a lot more knowledge from reading his essay. I didn't know very much about most of his topics and I thought he made some good points, like when he wrote about how environmental historians want to be able to not only help us understand the past, but the future as well. However, a lot of his writing was also very confusing and there was a good portion of it that I didn't understand. For instance, the time things, or his views on predictions. At some points, it seemed like he was really confident in determinism and being able to predict outcomes for the future, and then in other parts, he seemed to be saying that he couldn't actually predict anything and that he would actually make up predictions and just hope that they would come true. He also said, "...whatever we do in nature, we can never know in advance all the consequences of our actions." Isn't that what determinism is supposed to be? If determinism is the belief that all actions and events result from other actions, events, or situations, than should you not be able to determine what the consequences of our actions will be?
“It is in the midst of this compromised and complex situation- the reciprocal influences of a changing nature and a changing society- that environmental history must find its home.”
-Richard White
To me this quote connects well with the introduction to “Using Environmental History.” I think that White and Cronon probably have similar views regarding the definition of environmental history. Cronon wrote: “According to the standard terms of dualism, nature is assumed to be stable, balanced, homeostatic, self-healing, purifying and benign, while modern humanity, in contrast, is assumed to be environmentally unstable, unbalanced, disequilibrating, self-wounding, corrupting, and malign.” Environmental History seems to mostly examine the interaction between humans and nature, and a lot of the time it seems that humans and nature are at odds. Cronon also wrote: “Stories about the past lives of such people teach us how difficult it is to act in ways that benefit humanity and nature both- and yet how crucial it is to try.” This is why environmental history has become increasingly more important and more recognized as an actual study. It can allow us to see what humans have done in the past and the consequences, this allows us to better understand how we should interact with nature and what we can do that will allow for the best possible outcome for both ourselves and the environment.
As for “Interpreting Environmental History” I felt like Merchant had some good points, especially about Native Americans and African slaves. From what Merchant wrote I thought that both groups affected the environment greatly. But I felt like most of the other things that she wrote about like gender and class and how they interacted with the environment was sort of forced. Like that there was not really much of a connection but that she was trying to make one. But, that’s just how I felt.
Like the last two readings, I found one of them to be more content based while the other was more method based. Carolyn Merchant's piece, in this respect, was similar to Jared Diamond's based on her linking race, gender, and class into environmental history, while William Cronon's was more closely related to Donald Worster's because he was concentrating on the broad points of what makes environmental history what it is.
I did not like Cronon's piece. From the beginning of it I disagreed with him saying that "environmental past teaches the hopelessness of the environmental future" and that it was his responsibility to "resist such a conclusion." If it's the conclusion that many people come to, that humans are dooming the planet, then people shouldn't try to make light of that. I do, however, agree with his "linear and cyclical" statements, but I put some pretty grim meaning behind it. I was thinking that the only part of the human body that isn't cyclical was cancer. It grows without any means to recycle its energy back into the body and with an indefinite end. In my opinion, cancer can be compared to the linear human history on earth. We are organisms that have kind of hit the breaking point. We have turned from functioning body cells into over-reproducing consuming machines. I think that any optimism about human impact on the planet is a step in the wrong direction.
I did, however, like Carolyn Merchant's essay. I really got a sense for straight to the point and raw environmental history from reading it. The connections she made between socioeconomic influences, environmental impacts, and the shaping of America brought some new stuff to light for me.
Oh I forgot to do the quote thing. Okay so here's my quote:
"There is little history in the study of nature, and there is little nature in the study of history. I want to show how we can remedy that cultural lag by developing a new perspective on the historian's enterprise, one that will make us Darwinians at last."
This just basically means that when studying nature, there isn't very much about history, and when studying history, you won't find very much information about nature. These two subjects aren't often considered together. The author, Donald Worster, wants to show how we can change this by somehow creating a new perspective. A perspective that makes us Darwinians, or, I guess he means Naturalists.
As I was not in school today and do not have the packet I did not do the reading. I am responding purley to other people's posts.
One thing that has come up for the past two days in both forums is the question of how are people connected to nature and is there such a thing as something being inherently bad for the planet?
I feel that with enough thought anything can be boiled down to the point that it no longer matters or that there is no right or wrong. It is true that earth can still sustain life better than it could in the past and that using naturall resources is not bad for everything. However we as humans want to live as a race for a long time simply because we are humans. We feel that it is bad to destroy other specias because we are human. Everything we do that is detrimental to our or other species procriation is a choice that we make. We could chose to make other choices. So if the choices we make hurt us as a race why not try to do something about it? We can do whatever we want and in the end will only hurt ourselves.
I only got to read Cronon’s piece. He was expressing the high level
of difficulty to be found in humans attempting to act in a way that
will be beneficial to both the human race and to nature. This got me
thinking about how hard of a task that is, and actually, it seems to
be impossible to maintain a consistently beneficial relationship. We
will hurt the world, just as it hurts us with tsunamis, earthquakes,
epidemics, etc., like we were talking about in class today. Perhaps
these “damages” must be inflicted, like a system of checks and balances.
Another point that he brought up was about farsightedness. Though we
can work to determine it as much as possible, “we can never know in
advance all the consequences of our actions.” It is a somewhat off-
putting notion. At this point in time questioning the ability of
human intelligence to conquer anything it takes on seems almost
unheard-of. I completely agree that this humility we can gain from
our lack of knowledge “should make us more critical of our own
certainty and self-righteousness.” There is a continuously
disintegrating respect for the environment we inhabit, and people like
Cronon should be listened to when they that our lack of knowledge and
complete mastery of the land is not a negative thing, it is a force to
teach us how to act in our surrounding environment.
"Environmental history... refer[s] to the past contact of man with his total habitat.... The environmental historian like the ecologist [s]hould think in terms of wholes, of communities, of interrelationships, and of balances." Roderick Nash
This statement fits in well with the article by Carolyn Merchant. She discusses all of the different interactions that need to be explored, all of the relationships and topics people should look at. This fits with the quote, which says that everything needs to be looked at. They both suggest that history is best when everything is viewed. The difficulty I have in accepting this opinion is that an overabundance of variables complicates a situation too much for meaningful analysis. If there is less to study, it is easier to draw conclusions.
I am confused by Cronon's statement "recognizing the historical contingency of all knowledge helps us guard against the dangers of absolute, de-contextualized 'laws' or 'truths' which can all too easily obscure the diversity and subtlety of environments and cultures alike"
He seems to be saying that any knowledge we obtain is faulty, because we can only observe what is around us through the bias of ourselves. I do not disagree with the presence of the bias, but I am not sure if he is trying to use it to refute all scientific evidence, or just absolute statements without scientific backing? I see that there is a bias present, but it seems a bit extreme to say that there can be no laws, when science has determined that there are in fact almost certain undeniable truths. As we gain more knowledge, we refine what we know, but science does turn up fact, not opinion.
I agree with Stefan, especially on the dislike of Willy Cronon's piece. I was a bit taken aback when I read the beginning pages. That it was his, "responsibility both as a teacher and as someone who cares about the future" to avoid coming to the conclusion of the hopeless environmental past teaching the environmental future really sort of annoyed me. What right does he have to sugarcoat some of the facts and truths about our envirnmental future so as not to upset the poor little college students? It took me a while to get through his piece b/c i had become so cynical.
I'm not sure if it is just me (because I think I am pretty gosh darned wrong), but at one point, I thought that Willy was trashing on Merchant. "Her, 'Radial Ecology', though less historical, is still more activist than in its efforts to intervene in contemporary political struggles. Even scholars whose work has been less explicitly political have conciously sought to make it relevant to contemporary environmental cocnerns".
So this might concern the author below the quote, but oh well.
I think that if I am right in saying this, then he has a sort of dislike of environmental activists. From reading about his feel-good approach to teaching environmental history, he might have a dislike of other historians who go out to educate the masses about the consequences of our actions and how much we need to change, not sugarcoating anything.
But then again, I could be waaaaaaaaaaaaaay off.[/i]
I looked at the quote “Environmental History was…born out of a moral purpose, with strong political commitments behind it, but also became, as it matured, a scholarly enterprise that had neither any simple, nor any single, moral or political agenda to promote. Its principal goal became one of deepening our understanding of how humans have been affected by their natural environment through time and, conversely, how they have affected that environment and with what results” – Donald Worster, The Ends of the Earth. I was confused why Cronon mentions Worster as being someone “whose unflinching moral vision has never failed to produce works of history that are also passionately committed to change,” considering that Worster’s quote sort of contradicts Cronon’s description of Worster’s dedication to change. In Worster’s quote, it seems that he is saying that environmental history is used to only give humans perspective about the environments affects on them and vice versa, nothing about changing anything, (unless the change is implied).
On a completely different note, I don’t think I agree with Travis’s statement that less information makes for an easier conclusion. I don’t think you can make any conclusions if you deliberately ignore some components of any subject, because you won’t get the full picture of the issue. For a strange and random example, if I’m trying to make a conclusion about the state of the world, I couldn’t just look at Switzerland and then assume the rest of the world is just as fine and dandy as the Swiss. I would need to include every part of the world into my deduction.
Sorry for posting 19 minutes after I’m supposed to. I was afraid that people would shoot down my thoughts again.
I did not mean to say that a general conclusion can be achieved more easily with less data. I meant that a meaningful conclusion can be achieved more easily.
As an example, if I record 300 different variables in an open system over the course of a year, I may be able to draw some conclusion when I analyze the data. But if I record 3 variables, I can more easily compare these points. The second method trades breadth for strength.
In terms of history, I am not saying that a complete picture can be drawn by looking at a smaller window. I am instead suggesting that investigating only areas that are related to your interest will provide clearer and more meaningful results than a general investigation.
Worster quoted Aldo Leopold when he said that enviromental history is the "ecological interpretation of history." Cronon says that "human beings are not the only actors who make history. Other creatures do too, as do large natural processes." So I think that Cronon and Worster are like-minded on this front. And then later Cronon insists that the most important contribution an environmental historian can make is to "offer parables about how to interpret what may happen." This is Cronon's faith in what environmental history can offer. which not surprisingly ties in with worster's belief that environmental history was born out of a moral purpose. So then my question now is, what makes environmental history so much more important than say the history of WW2? Of course Carolyn Merchant's article addresses this question. Merchant talks about the effects of the environment on gender, race, and class. Merchant talked about how the dynamic of the nomadic people forced the gender dynamic to change.
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