Sean<\/a>, I thought it was a great way to finish up the course. While we could have read this at the beginning of the course to really lay out for everyone what environmental history is, I liked reading at the end as a way to sum up everything we\u2019ve been discussing. The book is quite ambitious, detailing the huge role nature has played in all aspects of America\u2019s entire history. For example, in the first part of the book, Steinberg analyzes the process by which New England\u2019s landscape shifted from its original state of being covered in forest as American agriculture expanded.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
One of the things we\u2019ve been discussing nearly every week is whether the ways Americans have changed the landscape and interacted with nature have been \u201cnatural\u201d or not. I prefer to look at the questions in terms of their economic intentions and consequences. So, consider the example of farming in general. I consider a small-scale farmer who simply looks to support himself through agriculture to be participating in a more \u201cnatural\u201d interaction with nature than a big industrial farm that is creating food that will be sold to the masses. The lone farmer is simply using the natural resources he needs to survive individually\u2014he is himself a part of the food chain. However, once the intention of the interaction with nature is to participate in the capitalist economy (something created purely by humans), I would consider it to no longer be a \u201cnatural\u201d interaction. I am not negatively judging such activity, but I would definitely not consider it all that natural. That kind of interaction between nature and the economy has been my biggest takeaway from the course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week we read Ted Steinberg\u2019s book Down to Earth and like Sean, I thought it was a great way to finish up the course. While we could have read this at the beginning of the course to really lay out for everyone what environmental history is, I liked reading at the end as a … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “A Great Way to Wrap up the Course”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6,8,22,121,161],"class_list":["post-454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agriculture","tag-america","tag-capitalism","tag-new-england","tag-steinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his458-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}