ISS 310: Cronon 13 Review Chapter 4

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ISS 310Cronon 1-3 ReviewChapter 4

• Alan Rudy
• People and Nature
• 1/22/02

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Chapter One Thoreau

• "When I consider," he wrote, "that the nobler
  animals have been exterminated hereI cannot but
  feel as if I lived in a tamed, and, as it were,
  emasculated country."
• Seen in this way, a changed landscape meant a
  loss of wildness and virility that was ultimately
  spiritual in its import, a sign of decline in
  both nature and humanity.

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Ch.1 Ecological Science

• He talks about functionalist, climax ecology
  that models ecologies on organisms.
• How does this model work and why doesnt it work
  for Cronon? (What is functionalism?)
• He also talks about ecosystems ecology and a
  focus on energy flows and disturbance.
• How does this model work and why does Cronon
  prefer it?

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Ch.1 Indians and Settlers

• The destruction of Indian communities in fact
  brought some of the most important ecological
  changes which followed the Europeans' arrival in
  America. The choice is not between two
  landscapes, one with and one without a human
  influence it is between two human ways of
  living, two ways of belonging to an ecosystem.!!

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Ch.2 Merchantable

• Merchantable Commodities
• Discrete Things not Parts of Inter-related System
• Selective/Partial Vision

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Ch.2 Ecosystems

• Whats the role of Forests, Bogs, Marshes, and
  the Seashore in Cronons account?
• Whats the role of Fire?

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Ch.2 Key Quote

• Which species grew where in any particular place
  was thus the result of a cumulative sequence of
  ecological processes and historical events.
• Whereas the natural ecosystem tended towards a
  patchwork of diverse communities arranged almost
  randomly on the landscape its very continuity
  depending on disorder the human tendency was to
  systematize the patchwork and impose a more
  regular pattern on it. (Cronon, pp.32-33)

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Ch.3 Want and Plenty

• they dreamed of a world in which returns to
  labor were far greater than in England
• Misunderstandings about New England?
• Abundant nature -- Scarce society

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Ch.3 Abundance and Movement

• Natural wealth varied across space and time
• Indians moved with abundance/wealth
• occasionally went hungry
• English stayed in one place
• stored food

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Ch.3 Agriculture

• Describe the disorderly Indian agriculture.
• Describe the relationship between agriculture,
  soil depletion, fire, and hunting-gathering

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Ch.3 The Key - Property

• The migratory character, and different gender
  division of labor, of Indian life we seen by the
  English as LAZINESS
• a fact which undermined any already minimal ideas
  Europeans had about Indian rights to New England
  property.
• Ownership should lie in the hands of improvers,
  not wasters.

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Ch.3 Property Rights

• Improvement
• Notice how improvement means ecological
  simplification, private enclosure and the
  concentration of landholdings.

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Ch3 Conclusion

• The everyday, seasonal and annual movements of
  people reflect their social ecological relations.
• Gender, labor, and class relations are part and
  parcel of social ecological processes.
• The kinds of nature people know is related to the
  kinds of social values people have.
• You cant understand environmental problems
  without understanding production relations,
  markets, and property rights -- science is NOT
  enough.