Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

This book is indeed about "rethinking" the environment outside of the usual realms of political advocacy. The editor, William Cronon, is an historian, and this book is the result of a multi-disciplinary conference of scholars working in surprising niches of environmental studies.What makes this anthology so important is that many of the essays in it emphasize that our views of the environment, nature, and wilderness are "narratives" that are entangled with religion, culture, politics, and race--not just science. Cronon's introduction explores the concept of "wilderness" through time to the modern preservationist notion of a pristine, human-free zone, and the quandary that idea presents: wilderness preservation requires that all humans be removed from it.This anthology contains essays about: the "Eden narrative" in Amazonian environmentalism (the Times reported today that the Amazon's indigenous cultures are now extinct); architecture and green space; what the "work" of an environmentalist entails; the role of nationalism in the creation of the park system; a study of the cladistics of ecological thinking in the 1950s; environmentalism as social justice in the inner city, and an essay by Donna Haraway about the role of race and "nature" in science.My favorite essay, way ahead of its time, is by N. Katherine Hayles, "Simulated Nature and Natural Simulations." This essay addresses the epistemological problem in the distinguishing between the natural and the artificial, exemplified by two studies: the classical ethological modeling of animals as machines and the claim or right to aliveness for a-life computer parasites."Uncommon Ground" is just a dip in the waters. Sorely missing from this volume is E.O. Wilson's theory of "biophilia," which has been forgotten by almost everyone but selfish-gene proponents. Also missing is an economist's perspective of how industry's "use value" of a resource explodes beyond the point where it can be gauged in an environmental context. Take Superfund sites or the current oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. A quick profit on a resource--boosting workers for a time--can ultimately destroy their property values, recreational and subsistence use of wildlife, and the priceless and unknown values of ancestral/family claims, biodiversity, and health for decades, if not all time.

This outstanding anthology is more than twenty years old, but nevertheless remains as important as ever. Cronon and the other authors in this anthology demonstrate that what nature "means" or "signifies" is by no means universal, but instead depends on one's historical, cultural, economic, national, and personal perspectives. This anthology helped to generate a lengthy and informative debate about the "social construction" of nature, a debate that continues. Everyone in the field of environmental studies (history, philosophy, literature, anthropology, ecology, etc.) should read this anthology.

I liked the research and historic content of this book. I am in the process of visiting all the National Parks and became curious about “how” the parks, came into existence. Likewise, I hike and bike extensively . . . Across America, and observe things, which I cannot explain. This book, helps me both appreciate nature, as I observe it, while . . . Gaining a deeper perspective about HOW what I observe, has come . . . To . . . Be. This is an eye opening book.

In most of the essays in this book I found ideas I'd never considered that eventually reworked nearly my entire conception of wilderness and mainstream society's relationship with it. I highly recommend this great collection of essays to those who enjoy thinking about our place in this world in new and brilliant ways.

Highly recommend this book; very interesting and informative.

for grad school

Uncommon Ground has done a great job articulating many essays into a collective book on our view of nature. As a researcher and ecologist, I have found the book a wonderful tool for bridging the gap between ideologies in nature and morals.

This anthology of hand-picked articles on the environment and man's relationship with it could be the finest go-to source for students and laymen interested in the subject. The book reflects the diversity and multidisciplinary of issues that make up the environmental crisis. In Uncommon Ground, readers will find thought-provoking pieces that deal with environmental history, natural resource management, popular representations of the natural world as well as social and cultural commentary with a special focus on the man-nature relationship. Alongside textual resources, this edition also includes numerous paintings, photographs, clippings and other items that are relevant to the subject. William Cronon, perhaps the best living writer in the field, is the perfect editor to guide readers through the book. Uncommon Ground is ultimately a coherent, unified narrative that offers a comprehensive discussion on themes introduced in Cronon's lead essay.

Interesting book

Uncommon Ground is made up of sixteen essays grouped in five sections. I will summarize those I subjectively feel are the most significant for environmental history. The book is the result of an interdisciplinary conference held over a semester's time at the University of California at Irving and attended by professors and graduate students from the fields of: environmental history, geography, biology, and other disciplines. Cronon shaped the overall discussion by establishing the guiding principal of the conference - that nature is a human construct shaped by (American-centric) place, time, and culture. One author and participant Donna Haraway, playfully helped frame the topics by suggesting that the participants each bring "found objects: texts, photographs, advertisements, paintings, anything that would exemplify as concretely and vividly as possible the ideas of nature we wished to explore." It is worth noting that after an outcry from environmentalists after the first publication, Cronon changed the book's subtitle from, Toward Reinventing Nature, to Rethinking the Human Place in Nature.In his introduction, Cronon cites the example of one of the Haraway proposed objects brought to seminar by environmental historian Richard White. White brought a tourist brochure from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Denver, Colorado. The arsenal was and continues to be listed as a U.S. EPA "Superfund" site, yet the brochure depicts the site as a wildlife refuge, one which Uncommon Ground characterizes as "the nation's most ironic nature park." This unusual approach to the subject of nature is used throughout the book.Cronon opens with the first chapter titled "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature" in which he argues that a duality has emerged between mankind and nature. He hypothesizes that the Judeo-Christian myth of the Garden of Eden and the supposed expelling of Adam and Eve is a contributing factor to the psychic division between western man and nature. Cronon traces the evolution of attitudes toward the natural world through the European romance movement, to the frontier ethos, the conservation ethic, and modern environmental movement of North America. He posits that it is impossible to address contemporary environmental degradation outside the human (historical) context.Anne Whiston Spirn follows with a chapter dedicated to examining the work of the famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Titled "Constructing Nature: the Legacy of Frederick Law Olmsted," Spirn's article focuses on case studies such as the reforestation of the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, and the construction of the Boston Riverway. She concludes by noting that Olmsted "represented a middle ground - which eroded in the twentieth century - between John Muir's idea of nature as `temple' and Gifford Pinchot's idea of nature as `workshop."Skipping to Carolyn Merchant's article "Reinventing Eden: Western Culture as a Recovery Narrative," the author again addresses the Judeo-Christian story of Genesis. Merchant examines the notion of mankind's fall from "natural" grace and subsequent attempts to reconstruct that edenic paradise in nature. She argues that the "Baconian-Cartesian-Newtonian project is premised on the power of technology to subdue and dominate nature, on the certainty of mathematical law, and on the unification of natural laws into a single framework of explanation." In a theme similar to her article in Environmental History, "Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History," Environmental History 2003 8 (3): 380-394, Merchant further argues that (European) "mercantile capitalism cast America as the site of natural resources, Africa as the source of enslaved human resources, and Europe as the locale of resource management." Merchant accuses the authors of the American frontier narrative as being "privileged elites with access to power and patronage," and advocates of "laissez-faire capitalism, mechanistic science, [and] manifest destiny." As part of her thesis on "recovery" or return to the lost garden of Eden, Merchant critiques environmental sustainability as "a new vision of the recovered garden, one in which humanity will in a relationship of balance and harmony with the natural world ... the end drama envisions a post-patriarchal, socially just ecotopia for the postmillennial world of the twenty-first century."Richard White's chapter on "Are You an Environmentalist or Do You Work for a Living?" addresses the important interface of work and nature. White argues persuasively that in the modern environmental mind, there is a disconnect between work and nature, that nature has become in many urban minds a place of recreation. Unlike the traditional romantic view of nature, White argues that European colonists and immigrants to North America were introduced to nature through work, "backbreaking, enervating, heavy work ... nature was cold, muddy, sharp, tenacious, slippery." White continues, postulating that "environmental writers have edited this out; they have replaced it with a story of first white men at strenuous play or in respectful observation."On a lighter note are Jennifer Price's analysis of the Nature Company (sold in 1996, now owned by Discovery television), in the context of the shopping mall. She quotes a New York Times as asking," is it possible that people in our culture have become so estranged from nature that their only avenue to it is consumerism?" It appears that to many people the answer is yes. Susan G. Davis's study of how Sea World, and its corporate parent Anheuser-Busch, sell its version of nature as "educational" is intriguing - particularly after having taken my own children to witness the same spectacle many years ago.In an intellectually more intense article, Jeffrey C. Ellis focuses in "On the Search for a Root Cause: Essentialist Tendencies in Environmental Discourse." Using the example of global warming, Ellis tries to identify "root causes to the politics of environmentalism." He argues that often American environmentalists end up often disagreeing among themselves and simplify their arguments to an us versus them level of discourse. Ellis cites the example of Barry Commoner confronting Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb) and Garrett Hardin ("The Tragedy of the Commons") at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and accusing them of being Malthusians. Ellis postulates that the American environmental movement began in the 1950s, accelerated in the 1960s, and peaked in the period of 1969-1973 "when environmental concerns were institutionalized in federal and state bureaucracies." He quotes "deep ecologist" Murray Bookchin as stating: "Environmentalists are simply trying to make a rotten society work by dressing it in green leaves and colourful flowers, while ignoring the deep-seated roots of our ecological problems." Ellis concludes by arguing that "the idea that there is a single root cause to any one of these problems [i.e., Global warming, pollution, endangered species, human population growth, exhaustion of natural resources], let alone to all of them taken together, is to put it mildly, absurd. In his parting shot Ellis says "reform environmentalism [mainstream] has proven itself inadequate to the task of halting the deterioration of the earth's ecological systems." I would argue that this could be subject to debate.James Proctor's "Whose Nature? The Contested Moral Terrain of Ancient Forests," looks in detail at the great controversy in the Northwest U.S. surrounding the endangered spotted owl and the preservation of the old-growth forests from the lumber industry. Proctor followed and studied the controversy for a number of years. He invokes the word of Aldo Leopold and environmental ethics to preserve the ancient forests. In a theme reminiscent of Carolyn Merchant's chapter, Ellis quotes Michael Pollan as pointing out that in American folklore "once a landscape is no longer `virgin' it is typically written off as fallen, lost to nature, irredeemable. We hand it over to ... that other sacrosanct American ethic: laissez-faire economics."Giovanna Di Chiro flips traditional environmentalism on its head with his article on environmental justice titled: "Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environmental and Social Justice." Di Chiro suggests that in America, people of color and minority groups are unduly impacted by pollution resulting from the situating of solid waste dump sites and waste incinerators. These facilities have historically often been situated in poorer communities and communities of color. He argues that the environmental justice (EJ) movement originated with acts of civil disobedience in North Carolina in 1982. Di Chiro says the term environmental justice has become synonymous with the expression "environmental racism." Perhaps because of this, Di Chiro arbitrarily dismisses the environmental justice movement that sprang up during the Love Canal debacle in 1979. Di Chiro dedicates three pages to the "Principles of Environmental Justice." The environmental justice (EJ) movement (seen as an outgrowth of the civil rights movement) argues for a new definition of "environment." Di Chiro states that there are "core discrepancies between the environmental justice and mainstream environmental movements. They also represent approaches to understanding nature ... that are very different" from the other essays of the book. He argues that the EJ movement "also produce a distinct theoretical and material connection between human/nature, human/environment relations."The Donna J. Haraway piece "Universal Donors in a Vampire Culture: It's All in the Family: Biological Kinship Categories in the Twentieth Century United States," takes a macro-view of racial typing (among a multitude of variables) in the U.S. through the twentieth century. A professor in the "History of Consciousness" at U.C. Santa Cruz, Haraway charts the evolution of racial attitudes from eugenics and Jim Crow, to post-World War II universalism (UNESCO), and eventually to end-of -century imagined commercial morphing of all races (p. 362). Perhaps Haraway's most interesting contribution to the discussion of nature is her identification of a completely androgenic creating of artificial nature embodied in Dupont Corporation's "OncoMouse." The OncoMouse is a lab mouse cloned from laboratory DNA for the study of cancer. Haraway posits that OncoMouse is "paradigmatic of nature enterprised up," the ultimate product (to date) of genetic engineering. She closes by suggesting that western society has transitioned from racial stereotypes defined by bloodlines and eugenics, to the "New World Order's United Colors of Benetton."Kenneth Olwig's article "Reinventing Common Nature: Yosemite and Mount Rushmore- A Meandering Tales of a Double Nature," focuses on the transfer of the British concepts of the commons and the manor garden to North America. He argues that in the example of Yosemite, American explorers perceived it as a "natural garden," evoking edenic images in a manner similar to Carolyn Merchant's writing. Olwig adds the imprint of nationalism on the landscape in his description of a Mount Rushmore dynamited and jack-hammered into the Black Hills of North Dakota. As previous authors in the book have noted, these examples of nature are "bloodied from the start by the violent eviction of the native Indians." It is not without irony that Olwig observes that not far from Mount Rushmore are Wounded Knee and the Custer State Park. He closes on something of a sidebar with a brief account of meandering rivers being straightened out, and then being re-meandered to rectify that damage - all by human intervention. He does includes a brief description of the environmental impact of stream and river straightening and the rationale for restoring many to their original "natural" state.Katherine Hayles foray into "Simulated Nature and Natural Simulations" ... introduces the reader to virtual reality technology and experience. She builds on this by adding recent neurological research and the impact of the interrelationship between "human eyes and computer brains." She cites the fascinating example of an evolutionary biologist using a sophisticated computer program named "Tierra," to recreate natural evolution and artificially accelerate DNA mutations - resulting in incredible new insights into the evolutionary process itself. The author ponders if this result is "digital ecology?"In the concluding remarks each participant wrote a brief blurb on their overall reaction to the seminar. Some stuck to their chapter arguments and other expounded on their positions. For example. Anne Spin (Landscape Architect) found it odd that a conference on nature was being held "under florescent lights, in a windowless room, against the whistling of the building's ventilation system." Had it been held at a retreat overlooking Big Sur, or in a picturesque setting in the Sierra Nevada, would the analyses and conclusions been different? Regardless, it is certain some of major intellectual discourses and finding of the seminar would not have been impacted by the setting. Jim Proctor's observation that "environmental problems are more than just environmental problems," would have stood. Richard White's closing remark that he was more convinced than ever "of how the made world ... and the unmade world ... have begun to merge and blur in very interesting ways," would survive regardless of surroundings. Finally, William Cronon's closing comment that "we need to think much harder than we usually do about what we mean when we use the word `nature,' and about how we should and should not draw boundaries between the things we call `human' and the things we call `natural."

Excellent