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#Post#: 247--------------------------------------------------
Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental History
By: TeacherRachel Date: February 11, 2019, 5:55 pm
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Please read (actively) Donald Worster's "Doing Environmental
History" and Jared Diamond's, "Predicting Environmental History"
(pp.1-7 in your packets). Post as required. Good luck.
#Post#: 248--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: ebartel2020 Date: February 12, 2019, 4:53 pm
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Part 1: In the first essay Donald Worster writings "...we have
not been and are not truly part of the plant" (Worster 1). I
think it is very hard to argue this because as humans together,
we have formed different communities and created so much for
this plant. The fact that we are running out of the water and
global warming is such an issue because we put to much pressure
on this plant (not sure if pressure is the right word). But,
that does leave me thinking about are we destroying nature?
Part 2: Also on the first page Worster writes "...that people
are a separate and 'supernatural' species" (Worster 1). I can
connect this back to my personal life because throughout my
family, there have been a few we call "psychic" so I was excited
when I got to read that because I can relate it to my life at
home. I think humans are much more capable then we are aware of
and everyone has this psychic tendency, it is just that some
people are more susceptible to it than others.
Part 3: On page eight, in the essay Perception, Ideology, and
Value, the author writes that nature "is not one idea but many
ideas, meanings, thoughts, feelings, all piled on top of one
another, often in most unsystematic fashion." Reading this
opened my eyes to looking at nature defined in a different way.
Nature, as in us humans, not just the environment we live in. I
think this is actually key because when I think nature
(personally) I think about comfort, calm and healthy. So when
talking about nature for humans maybe it is not about our
environment and the outdoors but maybe how we take care of
ourselves and how we use to outside to better ourselves?
#Post#: 249--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: ngood Date: February 12, 2019, 4:58 pm
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Just some misc. thoughts:
The traditional idea of history focuses on the public sphere
(mainly politics), which has generally been the domain of men.
Focusing on the public sphere and not the private sphere (the
domain often assigned to women) unconsciously (or consciously)
ignores the role of women in history.
In a somewhat similar note, efforts to ignore “The Outdoors” in
history can be argued to intersect with classism—when you look
at places and times where work outdoors is done by the working
class or enslaved persons, because their work doesn’t “matter”
as much as Big, Important Men in Politics
Environmental history emerged in the 1970s, and as Worster
notes, the ‘70s saw multiple social movements at once. I think
one specific connection would be the intersection between
environmental history and reactions towards nationalism and
totalitarianism (since environmental history, as Worster argues,
often defies borders) as well as decolonisation efforts
What resources we have about history itself depends on
environmental factors, namely what types of materials survive.
For example, fiber art is hard to find in a well-preserved state
because of the fragility of the material is fragile—meaning that
examples of (an often) female-assigned labor are lost.
#Post#: 250--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: jbass Date: February 12, 2019, 5:25 pm
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Its really is interesting to me the topics that enviromental
historians are looking at in this paper. I never realized, even
though I was aware of, the many enviromental issues that were
also racial issues. Alot of these situations are somewhat lost
to history like we never really think about the native american
land that we took. We only look at how we as Americans came from
England and then had land. It reminds me of microhistory from
Art of Prediction. Looking at the smaller details and the less
powerful people gives a more acurate understanding of how events
actually played out. I never thought about maybe looking at the
enviroment and seeing maybe who controls what land and how it
gets distributed. Looking at that might give a whole new
understanding on how certian events play out.
#Post#: 252--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: smartins2019 Date: February 12, 2019, 6:56 pm
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When I began reading the Worster passage, I honestly was not
following. After getting through it, though, I think that he was
arguing that no one really knows how humans and the environment
have influenced each other. To a certain extent, we know little
about history from before the 1500s. From what I understood,
this reading was saying that the history we are usually taught
is made up of a very small lense. Worster is arguing that in
order to know how our societies (I’m not sure if that’s really
the right word) have developed, we have to keep pushing back our
start date. We have to research not only what happened while
humans have been alive, but what happened before then/ what
caused them to develop. On the other hand, I understood what
Diamond was saying much clearer (although I didn’t always agree
with it). His argument was that the differences in between
race/ethnicity (again, I’m not sure if that’s really the right
way to put it) have essentially had nothing to do with the way
our world/societies have developed, but it was entirely
dependent on where certain ethnicities/ races where born and
what resources they had at their disposal. Although I agree to
this to an extent, I also think that it is important to think
about the difference in cultural values. It seemed that Diamond
was arguing that the Native Americans were unsuccessful in terms
of expanding and colonizing because of where they lived there
were limited resources, but, how do we know that? How do we know
they really just didn’t have any intention of keeping to
themselves and the society that functioned for them! We do,
however, have a pretty wide variety of resources that shows that
the Europeans wanted go out into the world and gain ownership of
pretty much any land/thing they wanted. This may be a bit
biased, but I feel like it’s not unreasonable.
#Post#: 253--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: Ahmed_A Date: February 12, 2019, 7:44 pm
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[font=georgia]It delighted me to read about the intersection
between history and science in the essay, “Doing Environmental
History,” as I firmly believe that the knowledge acquired by the
scientific methods are fundamental in any other scholarly
discipline. In this case, Worster draws an interesting parallel
between environmental history and ecology. He noted that ever
since the theory of evolution was posed by Darwin, ecology
started to study the past as well as the present; in order to
understand the certain traits of various species, they have to
understand the circumstances over time that made those traits
more fit to survive than others. Additionally Worster defined an
ecosystem as “organic and inorganic elements of nature bound
together in a single place” (6), however, ecologist rarely study
humans’ roles in ecosystems, instead, they view them as
“distractions”(6). History, on the other hand, is a discipline
that revolves around humans. Thus, environmental history fits
like the missing puzzle piece that connects ecology and history
in its traditional practice. I suspect that we will delve into a
layer of truth that neither ecology nor conventional history
ever extended to.[/font]
#Post#: 254--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: amacdonald Date: February 12, 2019, 7:54 pm
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Throughout “Doing Environmental History”, Worster introduced
some interesting points about the relationship that humans have
with both ecology and environmental history. He talks about how
“people have depended critically” (5) on plants for medicine,
food, and in some cases shelter. Worster goes on to show,
through Eskimos, how environmental constraints can open new
doors for human populations. I had never before thought about
how an environment can lead to the development of technology. I
also had never thought of technology as something that was used
for “exploiting the environment” (7).
It was also intriguing to read the section about ecosystems. I
noticed how Worster seemed unimpressed that ecosystems are “the
largest generalization in science” (6). Instead, he seemed far
more interested in how small things can cause large disturbances
and how the “ecologist is interested in how such systems go on
functioning in the midst of continual perturbations” (6). In
lots of ways, this reminded me of “The Butterfly Effect”, a
theory that states how a minute and localized change can have a
large and lasting impact on a complex system.
#Post#: 255--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: samfarley Date: February 12, 2019, 7:58 pm
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Both of these articles were very helpful in outlining
environmental history and giving examples of how it can be
useful. The first one, the Worster article, tried to outline how
the studies around environmental history have progressed and how
the parameters of what it means to study history have also
evolved. I thought the point about environmental history as
revisionist history attempting to make history more inclusive
was interesting. Worster mentioned how historians had only
recently started to look into lower class people as opposed to
just the wealthy and the leaders of societies and how that
counts as environmental history, and I hadn’t made the
connection between the history and background of the environment
and people with lesser power in society.
The other point that interested me the most in his argument was
how humans have created the notion of culture, and how strange
it becomes when you try and define it. He also discussed how
hunting is often seen as cheating the system or using advantages
to beat nature, but it can also be seen as nature itself,
because humans are the ones doing it. These little anecdotes
spread throughout the reading were what I found the most
interesting, and it is things like these that I look forwards to
learning about the most. That’s what environmental history seems
like to me at first, looking deeply into history and human
culture and coming up with extremely interesting questions and
ways of analyzing things that you have never thought of before.
The most fascinating part of the two articles to me was how
Diamond analyzed why some cultures on different continents had
been more successful than others. After going deeper and deeper,
one of his arguments was that Asia has prospered more as a
continent in an agricultural sense because it is oriented on a
latitudinal base so different species could spread more easily
across the continent among similar growing conditions. However,
North and South America are on a longitudinal basis, so
organisms couldn’t spread to as much of the continents.
#Post#: 256--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: zwalker2020 Date: February 12, 2019, 8:12 pm
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The first essay was pretty interesting to me because of how the
idea of "the only important subject was politics and the only
important terrain was the nation-state." is described. Donald
Worster states that this idea "emerged from the power and
influence of the nation-state", which came off as vague to me,
since it isn't described further than how these "past politics"
weren't as democratic as politics today, which is something that
anyone would agree with by just looking at governmental
ideologies of the past. I'd like to ask my peers how they
thought this frankly vague ideology came into place, and why it
was popular for such a long time (until relatively recent
years). Worster goes on to talk about environmental history as a
whole, but putting this idea at the very start of his essay
seemed a little out of place, even if he's doing it to try to
give the reader some context on the situation. If this is true
though, I'm not sure why he didn't just start with talking about
how environmental history started in the 1970s and moved on from
there.
The second essay similarly goes back to describe what happened
in the imperial age of the world- but Diamond was a lot clearer
in what he was writing about. At the start of the essay, he
explores the question: "Why were American Indians, Africans, and
Aboriginal Australians not the ones who conquered or
exterminated Europeans and Asians?" Diamond talks about how
technology was a major factor in this, and goes back even
further to connect this question with environmental factors,
such as resources and farm animals, culminating in a conquest
full of horses, guns, and swords. Disease was also a large
factor. This original question was answered by how the Eurasians
had many more animals to domesticate than people of other
cultures, leading to the many resources they could use for
influence and conquest. This was really interesting (and a much
more enjoyable read than the first essay) because of how the
author didn't simply leave the reader in confusion, and answers
his own question. I hadn't really thought that animals, of all
things, were the primary reason why Eurasia had the success it
had in history compared to other continents and cultures.
#Post#: 257--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: nanaafiaba Date: February 12, 2019, 8:27 pm
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Though at first glance it may appear Donald Worster and Jared
Diamond present disparate themes of environmental history in
their essays, to me they communicate a similar message: the
environment directly influences human behavior which in turn
affects environmental conditions once more, generating an
endless cycle.
Diamond composed his thoughts in a very logical manner. He
describes a cause and effect relationship where the mass
domestication of animals and plants in Euroasia allowed for
exposure to diseases and a surplus of food, which in turn meant
that not everybody had to farm and could focus on specific
crafts, which, led to greater advancements in technology for the
Europeans. I found it easy to agree with this notion for it is,
overall, inarguable.
On the other hand, Worster chose to examine the purpose of an
environmental historian, which is to extend the comprehension of
the cyclical relationship between humans and the natural
environment, and how one goes upon completing such goal.
However, Worster then goes on to present a series of debatable
ideas. He specifically states, "Every culture, we should assume,
has within it a range of perceptions and values, and no culture
has ever really wanted to live in total harmony with its
surroundings." However, is this not true? Is it not humanity's
greatest desire to be able to control, for control indicates
power? If humankind was to be in accord with the environment,
what would that mean for the communities we have instituted and
our way of life? How vast is the authority of the environment?
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