A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States

A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States PDF Author: Chad Montrie
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441198687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
A fresh look at the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging current thinking and presenting an innovative perspective.

A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States

A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States PDF Author: Chad Montrie
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441198687
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
A fresh look at the history of environmentalism in the United States, challenging current thinking and presenting an innovative perspective.

Mexican Americans and the Environment

Mexican Americans and the Environment PDF Author: Devon G. Peña
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816550824
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor PDF Author: Rob Nixon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067424799X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
“Groundbreaking in its call to reconsider our approach to the slow rhythm of time in the very concrete realms of environmental health and social justice.” —Wold Literature Today The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly. Using the innovative concept of "slow violence" to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode. In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

The American Environment Revisited

The American Environment Revisited PDF Author: Geoffrey L. Buckley
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442269979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
This innovative book provides a dynamic—and often surprising—view of the range of environmental issues facing the United States today. A distinguished group of scholars examines the growing temporal, spatial, and thematic breadth of topics historical geographers are now exploring. Seventeen original chapters examine topics such as forest conservation, mining landscapes, urban environment justice, solid waste, exotic species, environmental photography, national and state park management, recreation and tourism, and pest control. Commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the seminal work The American Environment: Interpretations of Past Geographies, the book clearly shows much has changed since 1992. Indeed, not only has the range of issues expanded, but an increasing number of geographers are forging links with environmental historians, promoting a level of intellectual cross-fertilization that benefits both disciplines. As a result, environmental historical geographies today are richer and more diverse than ever. The American Environment Revisited offers a comprehensive overview that gives both specialist and general readers a fascinating look at our changing relationships with nature over time.

The Republic of Nature

The Republic of Nature PDF Author: Mark Fiege
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295804149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 601

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Book Description
In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light. Among the historical moments revisited here, a revolutionary nation arises from its environment and struggles to reconcile the diversity of its people with the claim that nature is the source of liberty. Abraham Lincoln, an unlettered citizen from the countryside, steers the Union through a moment of extreme peril, guided by his clear-eyed vision of nature's capacity for improvement. In Topeka, Kansas, transformations of land and life prompt a lawsuit that culminates in the momentous civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education. By focusing on materials and processes intrinsic to all things and by highlighting the nature of the United States, Fiege recovers the forgotten and overlooked ground on which so much history has unfolded. In these pages, the nation's birth and development, pain and sorrow, ideals and enduring promise come to life as never before, making a once-familiar past seem new. The Republic of Nature points to a startlingly different version of history that calls on readers to reconnect with fundamental forces that shaped the American experience. For more information, visit the author's website: http://republicofnature.com/

Green States and Social Movements

Green States and Social Movements PDF Author: John S. Dryzek
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191530301
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
Social movements take shape in relation to the kind of state they face, while over time states are transformed by the movements that they both incorporate and resist. Green States and Social Movements is a comparative study of the environmental movement's successes and failures in four very different states: the USA, UK, Germany and Norway. The history covers the entire sweep of the modern environmental era that begins in 1970. The end in view is a green transformation of the state and society on a par with earlier transformations that gave us first the liberal capitalist state and then the welfare state. The authors explain why such a transformation is now most likely in Germany, and why it is least likely in the United States, which has lost the status of environmental pioneer that it gained in the early 1970s. Their comparative analysis also explains the role played by social movements in making modern societies more deeply democratic, and yields insights into the strategic choices of environmental movements as they decide on what terms to engage, enter or resist the state. Sometimes it makes sense for a movement to act conventionally, as a green party or set of interest groups. But sometimes inclusion can mean co-optation, in which case a movement can instead emphasize action in and through civil society.

Break Through

Break Through PDF Author: Ted Nordhaus
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618658251
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
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Making a Living

Making a Living PDF Author: Chad Montrie
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807877646
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
In an innovative fusion of labor and environmental history, Making a Living examines work as a central part of Americans' evolving relationship with nature, revealing the unexpected connections between the fight for workers' rights and the rise of the modern environmental movement. Chad Montrie offers six case studies: textile "mill girls" in antebellum New England, plantation slaves and newly freed sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta, homesteading women in the Kansas and Nebraska grasslands, native-born coal miners in southern Appalachia, autoworkers in Detroit, and Mexican and Mexican American farm workers in southern California. Montrie shows how increasingly organized and mechanized production drove a wedge between workers and nature--and how workers fought back. Workers' resistance not only addressed wages and conditions, he argues, but also planted the seeds of environmental reform and environmental justice activism. Workers played a critical role in raising popular consciousness, pioneering strategies for enacting environmental regulatory policy, and initiating militant local protest. Filled with poignant and illuminating vignettes, Making a Living provides new insights into the intersection of the labor movement and environmentalism in America.

Dumping In Dixie

Dumping In Dixie PDF Author: Robert D. Bullard
Publisher: Avalon Publishing - (Westview Press)
ISBN: 0813344271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
To be poor, working-class, or a person of color in the United States often means bearing a disproportionate share of the country’s environmental problems. Starting with the premise that all Americans have a basic right to live in a healthy environment, Dumping in Dixie chronicles the efforts of five African American communities, empowered by the civil rights movement, to link environmentalism with issues of social justice. In the third edition, Bullard speaks to us from the front lines of the environmental justice movement about new developments in environmental racism, different organizing strategies, and success stories in the struggle for environmental equity.

From the Ground Up

From the Ground Up PDF Author: Luke W. Cole
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 9780814715376
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Cole (director, California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation's Center on Race, Poverty, and the Environment) and Foster (law, Rutgers University) examine the movement for environmental justice in the United States. Tracing the movement's roots and illustrating the historical and contemporary causes of environmental racism, they combine their analysis with a narrative account of struggles from around the country--including those in Kettleman City, California, Chester, Pennsylvania, and Dilkon, Arizona. In so doing, they consider the transformative effects this movement has had on individuals, communities, and environmental policy. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR