Reddit reviews Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England
We found 10 Reddit comments about Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Paperback with scene of forest and snow.
I have heard the Pre-Columbian Americas described as a biological time bomb, in part because of the reasons you state which is attributed by some to the pleistocene extinction.
Whatever the reason for mass extinction, it is clear that it allowed Europeans to
European agriculture was also different from Native American agriculture in that is used livestock for plowing. This was more rough on the earth (for lack of a better word) which is thought to have selected for more tenacious weeds which, when introduced to the Americas, were invasive.
Read Changes in the Land
Edit:
Read up on the Columbian Exchange.
Wiki, of course, is not most reliable. But in a pinch . . .
Not necessarily. In a very large proportion of so-called “natural” environments humans play a key role in fostering biodiversity. If anything this would result in massive ecosystem collapse.
Ok - a great place to start is Carolyn Merchant's textbook, Major Problems in Environmental History. It's a fantastic mix of documents and essays, and to a certain degree also gives you an idea of what directions the field has come from and where it's going.
If you are interested in any specific sub-genre of environmental history I can give you more detailed recommendations - history of environmentalism, history of conservation, enviro-tech, environment and gender, environment and race, urban environmental history, etc. etc. etc.
If you want to start in the places the field started I would go with William Cronnon's Changes in the Land - it's an environmental history of the colonization of New England, and is still excellent, although it has been disputed, revised, and corrected by a variety of historians on points big and small (as happens with any classic work of history over time!).
Book list:
Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin. The author discusses this same theme of The Great Turning. Argues that people in modern western society are pathologically orientated towards adolescent things, and among our main problems is that few of us mature fully, and few of us can ever be considered elders who guide each other towards a wise way of life. He also argues that we historically have developed equally in both nature and culture, but modern people spend their lives solely in culture, and lack understanding of the natural world.
Future Primal by Louis Herman. The author lays out a big picture view of human history and how the solutions for the future we face can be found in the past among primitive cultures. He links his own personal struggles to the planetary struggles we face, and shows that it is true that the personal and planetary are linked.
The Ascent of Humanity by Charles Eisenstein. Lays out huamn history, and "how the illusion of a seperate self has led to our modern crisises".
Sacred Economics by Charles Eisenstein. Looks at how primitive economies differed from our own, and how we can come to a different understanding of economics and wealth in our own society.
The More Beautiful World our Hearts Know is Possible by Charles Eisenstein. Lays out a vision for what the world could be and how we could organize ourselves in a wiser way.
Limited Wants, Unlimited Means an analysis of the economics of hunter-gatherer societies by an actual Economist. Very in depth look at the different foundational beliefs and practices. This is the most scientific and in depth book I've ever come across on this subject.
Eaarth by Bill McKibben. Goes into great detail on the the stark reality of the effects that climate change have already had and will likely have over the next decades and century. Finsihes by making reccommendations for how to make a life on a rough new planet.
Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. A look at the deep history of our species. This book presents an understanding about what humans are and where we've come from that I think is hard to get anywhere else, really great work.
Blessed Unrest by Paul Hawken. Very similar to the theme of my above post, the author explains how this new movement is much larger than you might think, and could soon become one of the largest cultural movements in all of human history.
Active Hope by Joanna Macy. On "how to deal with the mess we are in without going crazy".
Greening of the Self by Joanna Macy. An exploration into the idea that we are interdependent with the ecology around us.
Natural Capitalism by Paul Hawken and others. A look at how we can start a green industrial revolution.
The Green Collar Economy by Van Jones. Lays out the idea that one solution- work on constructing a sustainable infrastructure- can fix our two biggest problems: the ecological crisis, and the rampant poverty and inequality in our society.
Spiritual Ecology: the cry of the Earth by Thich Nhat Hanh, Joanna Macy, and others. Outlines a spiritual perspective of what is happening to the world, and how we can remedy it, rooted in Buddhist thought.
Changes in the Land by William Cronon. A look at how the ecology of New England has been altered since Europeans first set foot there.
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold. This is one of the classics of nature writing by a great naturalist. I include it here because I think it fits, and shows how much of this in not new thinking. Leopold talks about his experiences in nature and from living off the land, and lays out his own 'land ethic' for how best to coexist in nature.
The Evolving Self: a psychology for the third millennium by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi. Explains the authors view of psychology and how to find meaning in the modern world. Talks about playing an active role in the evolutionary processes of life, and linking that up with your own personal evolution.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimerer. Brings together scientific understanding, indigenous wisdom, and respect for nature and for plants, in a very poetic book.
The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson. Wilson is one of the greatest biologists of our time, and gave us many of the foundational concepts that we use today, such as popularizing the idea of "biodiversity" and the desire to preserve it. Here he talks about the future of life and the challenges we face in preserving the Earths biodiversity.
Half Earth by E.O. Wilson. Here Wilson lays out his strategy for saving the biodiversity of the Earth and preserving it through the hard times it will face in the future, by devoting fully half of the surface of the Earth to wildlife habitats. This book just came out so you might not be able to order a copy yet.
If you know of any other books or media in this sort of genre feel free to post it.
https://www.amazon.com/Changes-Land-Indians-Colonists-Ecology/dp/0809016346
Probably not exactly what you are looking for but this book talks about Native Americans and how they existed prior and during the colonial invasion. He touches on the eating habits of the natives.
A very interesting read nonetheless.
http://www.amazon.com/Changes-Land-Indians-Colonists-Ecology/dp/0809016346/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393820108&sr=1-1&keywords=changes+in+the+land
There are three American history audiobooks I've enjoyed. One was recommended by a friend who is a big American history buff, Braddock's Defeat (https://www.amazon.com/Braddocks-Defeat-Battle-Monongahela-Revolution/dp/B014LJJMM2). It's set about 20 years before revolution and features George Washington working for the British.
Washington's Spies, by Rose, is what the series "Turn" was based on and it's also quite excellent: https://www.amazon.com/Washingtons-Spies-Story-Americas-First/dp/0553383299
Last of the 3 is "Changes in the Land" which is look at how European colonization of New England changed the land. The author weaves interesting material from various domains to paint an interesting story: https://www.amazon.com/Changes-Land-Indians-Colonists-Ecology/dp/0809016346
I'd recommend Cronon's Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England when you're done with 1491, and 1493.
Cronon covers some of the same sort of territory that Mann does, only his focus is New England and in particular the way that inhabitants of New England (both native and European) used the land and changed it.
Go read any ethnography and some books about ethnographic methods.
Some classic ethnographies/etc are
I could probably think of some more decent ones but it's not a bad list to start with.
P2
There are other problems with production-for-profit economies, according to ecosocialists. The system can lead to self-destructive rushes to produce commodities. For example, in a system where we produce for profit, we might build more houses than we have homeless people (as is currently the state of things in the US) or have other boom-bust cycles of overproduction as things remain profitable for various producers up until their collective production leads to a price crash. Presumably, say socialists, if industrial mass society produced for the use-value of the homes, some social planning would avoid the irrational boom-bust action. In addition to resource-wasting overconsumption, there's a problem of overharvesting to feed insatiable far-away markets. The Iroquois in the northeast hunted the beaver almost to extinction in much of its range there. A bit of this had to do with new guns, but much of it was with bows. What changed wasn't the technology so much as the motive. Where before a hunter had no reason to kill more than he needed, he could now kill a whole bunch and trade them for money or wampum that he could spend on things he did need- and the possibility of those demands could be endless. Suddenly, an Iroquois had a reason to go out and kill tons and tons of beavers- and by and large, they did (the book "Changes In the Land" by William Cronon is a fascinating exploration of the development of this and other trends during the settlement of New England. I very much suggest reading it for anyone interested in environmental history or political ecology).
Also, if you produce for exchange values, you can end up with a situation where things are being produced that have exchange-value but little or no use-value. Consider diamonds. There was little popular demand (and little use-value for most people) for diamonds before DeBeers started a campaign to make them the centerpiece of every wedding (restricting supply was also a masterful stroke on their part). Because firms in a market economy have to swim or sink, and keep selling, there is an incentive for them to create new demands and desires where none existed before, because this makes more consumers. It is not good for the economy for you to be satisfied with what you have. It's very much not good for the economy for you to say, "Well, my material needs are basically met, so I'm going to focus on things like friendship, belonging, and personal fulfillment, that I can't really just buy in a store". Companies would rather you believe that those needs can be fulfilled with more consumption, because if you're satisfied, you stop buying- and if you stop buying, investors stop making money, people get laid off, and the economy crashes. Remember that in a market economy, it is more 'rational' to convince a person with disposable income that they need to buy their kid a new cheap gizmo, then manufacture and sell that gizmo to them, than it is to produce bread to feed hungry people who can't pay- the hungry people have a demand but no money to make their demand bear any exchange value, and so don't get to eat, but the person with money has to be squeezed for every last consumer dollar to create more niches for investors. They have to be convinced that they want more things. This is basically what advertising is- a market economy creates a demand for demand. Advertising largely exists to convince you that a diamond is a prerequisite to love, Coca-Cola is a prerequisite to a good time, a watch is a prerequisite to the respect of your peers, a fast car is a prerequisite to the love of a beautiful woman, etc etc. Some of this might even be true, if the advertisers succeed in shaping cultural norms to make it true. In this way, a production for profit economy, because it has to keep selling, profiting, and growing, creates and propagates a consumer culture. The impact of this on the environment, of course, is that more and more natural resources have to be sucked up to feed that consumption and more pollution and waste is churned out. You have an economic system that has to keep growing forever, on a planet with finite resources.
All of this amounts to an 'internal contradiction' in capitalism, according to ecosocialists. In Marxism, which uses dialectical analysis, an internal contradiction is when conflicting tendencies and trends in a system lead to the self-destruction of that system. For example, the rising role of the merchant class that would eventually usurp power from the hereditary gentry was an internal contradiction in feudalism. In capitalism, the 'internal contradiction' laid out by Marx is the conflict between capital and labor (which he observed during his life and which has, in part due to his own writings, raged on since, at times somewhat suppressed by reforms, as environmental degradation can be somewhat suppressed by reforms). Some ecosocialists argue that because capitalism relies on endless growth, is ridden with market failures, encloses commons and commodifies people and the land, creates a consumer culture, and concentrates political power in the hands of an upper class that often resists attempts to fix the environmental problems, that environmental degradation (sometimes called the 'metabolic rift') is a second internal contradiction- that capitalism will undermine the base of ecological resources it needs to survive (and, unfortunately, the same base that all industrial society would need to survive, as well as non-industrial society). The scholar James O'Connor is the main theorist of the 'second contradiction', but I think it makes a great capstone to ecosocialist theory. This theory echoes some (rather under-developed but very important) observations of Marx (who is often painted as an environment-blind industrial development fanatic) regarding of industrial capitalist agriculture on soil fertility. Marx wrote on the subject, and in doing so began to make inroads in critiquing the ecological impact of capitalism, many decades before his time. This work has mostly been fleshed out by later Marxists, though.
TL;DR- Socialists believe that capitalism has enclosed the commons into a market system that is prone to market failures because it does not consider the common ecosystem or the full values and costs of ecological goods. They believe that much of this irrationality comes from the fact that markets produce for exchange-value rather than use-value. They note that markets need endless growth and consumption to remain healthy, and that capitalist societies spread capitalism globally to feed their need for resources and new markets, and that the environmental degradation of this global industrial market system will undermine capitalism and civilization itself.
Section 2: Who Are The Ecosocialists?
Some prominent ecosocialist theorists include John Bellamy Foster, Michael Löwy, Derek Wall, Joel Kovel, and others. There are some groups that promote ecosocialism or similar ideas, including Ecosocialist Network International, the CNS Journal, Ecosocialist Horizons, and the various groups of the Trotskyist Fourth International, which recently embraced eco-socialism. It should be noted that generally speaking, ecosocialism is mostly embraced by Trotskyists and other non-Stalinist Marxists, and ecosocialist theorists are almost universally anti-Stalinist. Most non-Stalinist socialist groups embrace some degree of environmental concern even if they are not ecosocialist.
In addition to these groups, there are some major green party organizations that have formed 'red-green' alliances with social democratic and socialist parties, particularly in Europe. These include coalitions in France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and other nations. In addition, some European political parties have outright merged into green-left parties, like GroenLinks in the Netherlands. In the US, a small red-green political alliance does exist between the Green Party and the International Socialist Organization (a Cliffite Trotskyist activist organization that is the largest socialist group in the US). ISO frequently endorses Green Party candidates and the two groups recently co-sponsored an ecosocialist conference. There is also a red-green alliance between the Industrial Workers of the World and Earth First!- though neither of these groups involve themselves in electoral politics, both preferring direct action. Red-green alliances should not be confused with 'blue-green' alliances in the US and elsewhere, which are alliances between reformist environmental and labor groups.
Some writers who are not 'eco-socialists' per se but do take a social-ecological view on environmental issues are Vandana Shiva (an Indian anti-globalization and anti-privatization writer and proponent of 'Earth Democracy'), Murray Bookchin (who formulated the concept and political program of 'social ecology'), Winona LaDuke (an Anishinaabe indigenous environmental justice activist), and Ariel Salleh (a social ecofeminist)- these are, of course, just a few, and there are many, many more. The social ecofeminist (as opposed to cultural/mystic ecofeminist), indigenous rights, environmental justice, and anti/alter-globalization movements often incorporate views from the social-ecological perspective. Earth First! is a group that often takes a social ecology view along with their deep ecology.
TL;DR- The ecosocialist theorists are largely academics from the first world who identify with Trotskyism and other non-Stalinist forms of socialism, though other thinkers who embrace similar views come from all over the world and many anti/alter-globalization and indigenous rights groups share many of the ecosocialist perspectives on globalization and capitalism. In addition to eco-socialists, there are some political alliances of less-green socialists and less-socialist environmentalists.
Edit: Regarding the role of production for profit in creating a consumer culture: This (as well as the concept of 'green consumption' and its associated greenwashing and consumer culture) should be understood in the light of other developments, including the rise of the mass industrial society over previous close-knit village societies, and the processes of alienation and commodity fetishism.