Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Food in America's Environmental History


Staking out American 'food history' is a promising way to change perceptions about the place and importance of the 'environment' in American history.  Food connects to the mainstream of 'American history,' and puts standard narratives in a new light: think of food and native America; establishing colonial societies; protests over tea and trade relations swirling through the American Revolution in the economic and political context of an Atlantic world; slaves growing rice and tobacco and the role of food in fighting the Civil War; the long westward conquest and the wholesale reordering of landscapes to support both a new regime of property and food production; immigration, foodways, identity, ethnicity and America as a Melting Pot; progressivism, home economics, and food reform; industrialization and corporate capitalism from Swift to Sunkist and Monsanto; the rise of tourism and consumer culture - especially consumer culture.


excerpted from:
Douglas Cazaux Sackman (Editor)
Wiley-Blackwell, 2014
Outrider Reading Group
The Nature Pages
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
History and American West Titles

Friday, February 7, 2014

Now Reading "Ignoring Nature No More"


For far too long humans have been ignoring nature. As the most dominant, overproducing, overconsuming, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, and invasive species ever known, we are wrecking the planet at an unprecedented rate. And while science is important to our understanding of the impact we have on our environment, it alone does not hold the answers to the current crisis, nor does it get people to act.

In Ignoring Nature No More, Marc Bekoff and a host of renowned contributors argue that we need a new mind-set about nature, one that centers on empathy, compassion, and being proactive.

The Case for Compassionate Conservation
by Marc Bekoff
University Of Chicago Press, 2013

Nature Writing and Natural Histories
Science Writing
The Nature Pages
Outrider Reading Group