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US Environmental History Class at CSW
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#Post#: 12--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: juliab Date: January 7, 2019, 8:18 pm
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*I was unable to finish the reading because of timing*
I think that I really drew the most from the second set of the
reading. I was fascinated by the path the author took going back
and finding the root causes of disparities between cultures
today. In the past few history classes I’ve taken teachers have
always stressed the importance of finding the right questions
but frankly, I’ve always really struggled with this. I think the
author proves here that this is super important for
environmental history. For example, when pushing past the idea
of disease to the idea of domestication of animals, I’d never
thought about how geographic differences could affect that. But
now looking at it, it makes total sense to me that the Americas
would be at a disadvantage due to it’s more drastic changes in
weather as land nears the equator. Without seeing this path of
questions, I probably wouldn’t have thought to bring animals
into the equation when talking about diseases. This is more
likely due to the fact that I don’t know information about many
diseases from the past, but it opened my eyes to the variety of
information that we can find. This also helped with my
definition of environmental history because it gave me a really
good example that is still very general. It covers most regions
of the world, so it’s easy to begin to understand without great
knowledge of a specific place. Now that we’ve seen the general,
I’m really interested in following those paths that make it more
and more specific and looking at the histories of a much smaller
place, such as a city or maybe even a town.
#Post#: 13--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: kellyf Date: January 7, 2019, 8:20 pm
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[quote author=Cale is not me. link=topic=2.msg7#msg7
date=1546913018]
Hello, it’s me. For this response, my main interest / question
is going to be about why environmentalism never played much of a
role on the way history was told until the 20th century.
[/quote]
I would love to jump on this. My first inclination is arrogance,
specifically in secular (or semi-secular) historical approaches.
(Bringing in God adds a whole other layer.) Humans are the most
important part of history, otherwise there would be no history,
so why focus on anything else? Adding in the environment as an
integral part of how societies grew, rather than the sweat of
man, is contrary to that arrogance of humans being the most
important things on Earth.
#Post#: 14--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: kellyf Date: January 7, 2019, 8:27 pm
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[quote author=alainah link=topic=2.msg11#msg11 date=1546913864]
In class when we were talking about the definition of history
and the past and humans were mentioned as the key components.
Though he is saying that humans were an important factor,
environmental history focuses on the physical environment as the
main idea. After these readings, I am now starting to get an
idea about the study of environmental history in general. It is
about the events surrounding nature and environment such as
natural disasters, weather, farming, epidemics and how those
events affect humans and their way of life.
[/quote]
Let's take it even farther! Environmental History is about
events of nature (catastrophic or not), and the day-to-day
natural surroundings, which affect humans and their way of life;
as well as how humans change such nature by their way of life.
Still feels like there is something missing...
#Post#: 15--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: ccogswell Date: January 7, 2019, 8:50 pm
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I love the idea that environmental history reverses the notion
that humans as a species are in any way above/separate from the
nature they alter (and damage), re-grounding us on our planet.
Perception, ideology, and value - Last year in WAR II my paper
involved extensive research on 16-17th century European
ideologies concerning nature/animals. I learned that extinction
as a concept wasn’t introduced until the late 1800s, and
according to Christianity, all creatures were regulated by God.
Europeans believed if a species had disappeared entirely in a
certain area (whether that be one forest or an entire island),
it was just “hiding” somewhere else. Christianity placed nature
in the hands of man, and I reasoned that this ideology
influenced the extent to which Europeans over hunted and altered
the natural environments they came into contact with in
accordance with the interests of their culture - driving the
Dodo bird to extinction, introducing the mongoose to Barbados to
protect sugar crops from rats and subsequently annihilating the
Barbadian snake population, and introducing the exploitation of
Green turtles are but a few examples. The ecological damage
caused in this time period does directly impact the modern
environmental situation of the places it occured in. Perhaps I
cast the net wide in my connections, but it’s very cool to see
this notion of pas cultural attitudes affecting the current
environment come up again! I’m also thinking about what the
plant life in an area can tell us about what has happened there,
and the choices people present in that space made that lead to
its present condition - I’m pretty sure this type of information
is used to solve murder cases/find missing bodies? Or at least
it’s the same idea?
My takeaway from the reading is that understanding the
conditions of the environment - natural or manmade - in which a
certain events occurred can provide us with so much context. The
story of why something is what it is, or how it became what it
is, is inseparable from what it was like where it was. I’m not
sure if that makes sense outside of my brain, but I hope it
does. Every single condition of the Earth has shaped the
outcomes of history. Europeans carried deadly disease because
they had animals, and they had animals because of the geographic
situation on the continent they inhabited, which was that way
because that was the position the continents somehow ended up in
when the Earth was shifting around a super long time ago? And if
the inclinations of the Earth were even slightly different,
history would be too. This stuff makes my mind spin, but it’s
something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.
#Post#: 16--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: Tommy Is The Person Who I Am Date: January 7, 2019, 8:52 pm
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In reading Worster’s essay, I was particularly intrigued by the
ambiguity it presented in regards to the relationship between
humans and nature. Worster explains that among cultures and
individuals there have been many different views and definitions
of nature, as well as the exclusion of humans from many
scientists’ studies of the ecosystems we inhabit. It seems that
this is both the product of and a contributing factor to the
difficulty of understanding the interaction between nature’s
effect on humans and humans’ perception of nature. Worster uses
the Eskimos as an example to explain how human cultures are
shaped by environmental surroundings — due to their location in
the polar regions, they would have no hope of farming, and they
have rather developed practices and technology to hunt the
wildlife. Worster then presents the question, “What is the best
way to understand the relation of human material cultures to
nature?” (3). I found this to be quite a thought-provoking
question, as it is difficult to say whether technology such as
fishing hooks or sleds are no different from an animal’s claws,
or if humans have developed in such a way that human culture and
resulting technology are completely separate things.
Worster also suggests that certain elements of humans’
perceptions of nature have existed for a long, long time. He
mentions the ancient Hebraic and Greco-Roman concepts of the
relation between nature and man, which both involve humans
holding a level of power over the natural world. He mentions
other, differing views of nature, but connects all of these
views by saying, “no culture has ever really wanted to live in
total harmony with its surroundings” (4). I was quite intrigued
by this. Not only is environmental history complicated by the
ambiguity of cause and effect, it also appears to be shaped by
an eternal struggle between humankind and nature. At the end of
his essay, Worster urges that many disciplines, from sciences to
social sciences, join together to most effectively examine the
human past. Based on my understanding of the complexity of the
field of environmental history as presented in this essay, I
suppose that it only makes sense to further complicate things by
incorporating many other studies. It may be a bit painful to
consider all of these different views of the world at the same
time, but I suppose that to most accurately examine the world
one must be willing to look at its painfully complex nature.
#Post#: 17--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: liamf Date: January 7, 2019, 8:55 pm
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While Diamond’s outlook on how the environment has affected
human history was interesting, an area of the text that I want
to talk about is towards the end of the section “Natural
Environments in the Past”, where Worster brought up an
interesting idea that I had been wondering about when it came to
Environmental History. He talked about how major damage to
organisms or ecosystems is something that can be easily measured
by humans, but that smaller damage that has less of an impact on
the environment (in the short term) is something that isn’t as
easy to measure. I took that to mean that most of the negative
effects observed and measured by humans only sometimes take into
account the smaller, perhaps longer term potential damage that
could be done on the environment. This made sense to me, as long
terms events, such as climate change (which is mainly caused by
smaller events that add up on one another), are unfortunately
ignored by many, for whatever reason that might be. When someone
decides to ignore an environmental event climate change they
normally cite the lack of “evidence” that climate change isn’t
real. I think this idea ties into what Worster is talking about
here, as these smaller events that build up to have a larger
impact are harder to observe and measure individually.
#Post#: 18--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: mayafb Date: January 7, 2019, 8:57 pm
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The study of environmental history seems to be the study of how
humans shape the environment and how the environment shapes
human history. However, according to Worster the separation of
these impacts is impossible. To truly understand the history of
peoples, the planet must be a factor. Therefore, environmental
history truly becomes a different lens through which to observe
history. As Worter argues, viewing history from this holistic
perspective allows for a more comprehensible and accurate
understanding of the past. Without these interactions, an
essential shaper of human experience and existence is lost. The
climate in which we live and participate in dictates the lives
we have. Living in a built environment in the North East United
States means that I deal with the cold and slushy snow (well
maybe not this year).This is an essential part of my experience
and even shapes the culture of my family and the larger Boston
community as well.
When in a new group, you go around the circle saying your name,
where you are from, age, etc. These are all essential parts of
understanding and empathizing with each individual's life. A
story about one person's summer vacation differs immensely based
upon where they reside geographically. You cannot separate the
person from the place. An accent, culture, storyline, or even
lifestyle occasionally are attributes of a person's identity. So
within even looking into personal histories, going back one day
or a hundred years, the environment in which that person or
family lived in shapes their own individual identities.
In this microcosmic way, the study of an individual person
cannot be separated from the land and therefore the study of
peoples, nation, culture or the entirety of the human race
cannot be separated from the land that they reside on.
#Post#: 19--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: jterry2020 Date: January 7, 2019, 8:57 pm
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I noticed that the Donald Worster essay had strong connections
to contemporary situations, mainly in the mentioning of the
motives behind environmental history. Worster states that
environmental history had “neither any simple, nor any single,
moral or political agenda to promote”. I interpreted this not as
Worster saying there are no moral or political agendas within
environmental history, but rather that there are multiple
differing agendas within it. This seems to connect to strongly
to current society (at least American society), in which there
is a large-scale disagreement on the validity of scientific
claims regarding the future of the planet. The essay also
attempts to explain the place of humans in environmental
history. Worster declares that environmental history “rejects
the conventional assumption that people that human experience
has been exempt from ecological constraints, that people are
separate and ‘supernatural’ species’. Later parts of the essay
go on to describe the conflict of ecology and history because of
the undefined location of humans within their ecosystems. I
think that Worster is describing the complex nature humanities
place in environmental history, and historians challenge of
recounting history from a human lense without separating them
from the environment.
#Post#: 20--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: mayafb Date: January 7, 2019, 9:08 pm
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Am I doing this right? Who knows. (EDIT: I did not do it right
and am so confused by this website)
In terms of how the "nature" is defined, I think it is important
to draw attention to the point that it is not even "nature" that
might dictate what the impacts are. I am always wary of using
the word nature to describe the interactions of the planetary
systems and the human existence because it seems to separate
them. I have no idea what word would feel better to me in this
situation. There is something to be said about the connection
and separation of humans to the "natural world." Wow, I really
feel like there is no way for me to write this without sounding
like such a hypocrite. I just am afraid of sounding so
anthropocentric, which undoubtedly I am. I think by the
definition of history explained in class, the human-focused
part, means that we are looking at how to define history by
conspicuously working to look at the human existence as a more
holistic experience rather than one that is based upon a human
to human interaction.
Okay that went all over the place and probably made no sense but
that is my thoughts!
#Post#: 21--------------------------------------------------
Re: Reading #1: Worster and Diamond - Defining Environmental His
tory
By: ccogswell Date: January 7, 2019, 9:26 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[quote author=kellyf link=topic=2.msg13#msg13 date=1546914052]
[quote author=Cale is not me. link=topic=2.msg7#msg7
date=1546913018]
Hello, it’s me. For this response, my main interest / question
is going to be about why environmentalism never played much of a
role on the way history was told until the 20th century.
[/quote]
I would love to jump on this. My first inclination is arrogance,
specifically in secular (or semi-secular) historical approaches.
(Bringing in God adds a whole other layer.) Humans are the most
important part of history, otherwise there would be no history,
so why focus on anything else? Adding in the environment as an
integral part of how societies grew, rather than the sweat of
man, is contrary to that arrogance of humans being the most
important things on Earth.
[/quote]
I agree! Sort of. I think "arrogance" isn't quite the right word
to use here. Sure, certain religions may encourage people to
believe they are entitled/in power over the environment and act
in accordance with that belief, but I don't think these actions
are the product of conceit. Culture is a human response to
nature - religion included, right? The notion that humans are
the most important things on Earth transcends many cultures and
eras, but how separate is this from the religion of these
cultures? Usually it's a deity that places humans in that seat
of power over the environment, and deities are frequently a
reaction/possess some quality related to the environment their
culture inhabits... so is this arrogance, or is it a human
response to the environment itself?
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