Cronon: Ch. 7: A World of Fields and Fences.

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Cronon Ch. 7 A World of Fields and Fences.

• ISS 310
• People and Environment
• Prof. Alan Rudy
• 1/31/02
• 1. Main Points? What is he talking about? Why?

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Fields and Fences

• Nature, Society, Politics Economics
• Then Nature -- Forestry
• Now Social Nature -- Agriculture
• Hmmm, am I imposing this on the text? is it there
  already?
• Does it help to understand a book to impose order
  on it that may or may not have been what the
  author intended?

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Maize

• Both Indians and English grew corn.
• What was different?
• Spatially -- in communities and in fields
• Temporally -- seasonally re use/property
• year-round ownership rather than seasonal use

4
Mammals

• Both consumed grazing animals.
• What was different?
• Spatially -- in communities and in fields/wild
• Temporally -- seasonally, re use/property
• year-round ownership rather than use after
  killing

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Mammals, ag. and food

• Greatest mammalian differentiation grazing
  mammals hunting wild deer and moose rather than
  growing cattle, oxen, horses, swine, sheep, and
  goats.

6
Mammals and Money

• Most reliable source of income (with a minimum of
  labor) locally, salted to Europe, or shipped to
  Caribbean plantations.
• Regular complaints of Indian theft of livestock
  but its not theft under usufruct.
• This kind of property relies on FENCES
• Cronon suggests that w/o livestock colonists
  might have been limited to Indian-scale
  ecological effects and usufruct based natural
  resource relations.

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Fences, Commons and Mammals

• However, grazing livestock in the commons meant
  that damage done by English livestock to unfenced
  Indian lands legally necessitated payment of
  damages!
• FUNNY, but always on English legal terms (Indians
  had to capture marauding animals ALIVE and HOLD
  them
• HOW? w/o fences?

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Fences, Commons and Mammals II

• The long run effect is that Indians were forced
  to develop fenced agriculture even when the
  English had to build the fences at first (though
  Indians then had to tend for them)
• See sidewalks in the 20th C they put in the
  sidewalks but I have to keep them clear and
  repair them when the citys trees break the
  concrete.)

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Three little piggies...

• SWINE
• Reproduced really fast, will eat virtually
  anything, can be turned out to the woods and fend
  for themselves.
• Swine pops get so high, weed/pest animals, they
  could be killed if caught in fields (by English,
  not Indian, farmers.
• Eventually, open season on feral pigs, repealed,
  recalled, round and round -- finally had to be
  stied.

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and some wolves.

• Wolves bounties (set a price for wild animals
  too little enforcement labor, difficult to figure
  out who pays, and whether anyone has paid
  before)
• Wolves became a reason to drain and clearing
  swamps.
• WHAT?!
• Entire ecological communities were thus
  threatened because they represented an annoyance
  and prejudice to the town both by the miring of
  cattle and sheltering of wolves and vermin.
  (133)

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Wolves and workers

• Whereas most livestock in England had been
  watched over by individual herders, labor was
  scarce enough in New England that only the most
  valuable animals could generally be guarded.

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Labor, Labor, Labor and the Law

• Either fences had to be built and maintained
  (often w/ regulations about such things) or the
  agricultural damaged by semi-domesticated
  privately owned animals had to be dealt with
  AGAIN BECAUSE OF THE SHORTAGE OF LABOR.

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LLL and the Law II

• The regulations necessitated enforcement folks
  going around checking to make sure people kept
  their fences in good repair (large animals can of
  course damage them at will) so that lazy farmers
  with bad fences couldnt make illegitimate
  claims
• Now, is this productive labor? Enforcement of
  fence viability to protect use of the commons by
  private individuals? Did the Indians have these
  issues?

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Key Quote about agriculture, mammals, space and
property.

• Through the agency of the fence viewers and the
  formal litigation of the courts, towns took an
  increasing responsibility not only for enforcing
  the abstract boundaries between adjacent tracts
  of real estate but for guaranteeing that those
  boundaries were marked by the physical presence
  of fences. (135)

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More on quote

• Private property generates abstract plots which
  have to be made real by legislative/juridical
  action and real boundary markers (whether fences
  or other ways)
• THIS IS BECAUSE PRIVATE PROPERTY IS NOT
  REAL/NATURAL IT IS A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
  INDIVIDUALS, SOCIETY AND NATURE WHICH EXISTS IN
  SOME PLACES AND TIMES AND NOT IN OTHERS.
• We make it real by acting as if it always has
  been so, but now you know it hasnt always been
  so.

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More quotes

• Fences thus marked off, not only the map of a
  settlements property rights, but its economic
  activities and economic relationships as well.
  At the center of a familys holdings was its
  house lot nearby were the outbuildings where
  animals spent their winters. Feeding animals in
  the winter necessitated reserving large tracts
  of land for mowing all other lands were
  committed to grazing, including upland woodlots
  where families cut their fuel and lumber.
  (137-138)

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Another quote

• Gender Early land divisions had been done
  communally Later divisions were generally made
  through the abstract mechanism of land
  speculation ignored both the ecological
  characteristics of a given tract of land and its
  intended agricultural...(138)

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Animals, plows and weeds

• Grazing facilitated the introduction of European
  grasses, weeds, woody thorn-bearing plants etc.
  -- adapted to the harsh requirements of
  grazing.
• Weeds grow rapidly, germinate easily and attack
  both ag and wild lands -- changing the
  opportunity structure for indigenous plants
  making some of them pests.
• And weve not even mentioned the plow, which tore
  up whole ecosystems, or over-extended use, soil
  depletion or erosion all tied to ag mammals and
  private property.

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Soil Compaction

• Soil compaction
• harden,
• reduce oxygen,
• curtail root growth,
• exacerbate toxic chemical production/residues,
• reduce carrying capacity for moisture, and
• increased erosion.

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Soil Erosion

• Erosion/watershed changes
• filling in ponds and lakes,
• changing top soil sedimentation rates during
  annual floods,
• streams and small rivers dried up,
• shipping lanes had to be dredged or warfs
  extended,
• shoreline grasslands became shifting dunes, and
• overgrazed small islands disappeared

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Soil Exhaustion and Conclusion

• Soil Exhaustion
• maize monoculture w/o legumes,
• cattle graze unharvested plant material,
• abandoned maize fields grazed rather than
  fallowed, and
• uncollected manure (tried fish ran out due to
  dams, ashes deplete forests for soil, oops.)
• AGAIN, NATURE (SOILS, MAMMALS, PESTS, WATER) IS
  NOT AT FAULT -- ITS ALL ABOUT HOW WE ORGANIZE
  OUR SIDE