ESPM 50AC Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Donald Worster, Carolyn Merchant, Environmental History

• School: Berkeley
• Department: Environmental Science, Policy, And Management
• Course: ESPM 50AC
• Professor: Worthy Ken

Document Summary

Environmental history and new orleans: racial geography in new orleans, elevation & race. Environmental history: the study of social & environmental change over time. How have patterns of socioeconomic organization & ideas about nature shaped spatial relationships between nature & society in new orleans: class & vulnerability, nature/society/culture: worster framework. Donald worster: analytical framework for environmental history: nature: the non-human world. Natural resources: materials occurring in nature that are useful to humans: social organization: social institutions, economy, infrastructure, etc. Modes of production: adaptive strategies for engaging natural limits and opportunities: technology & division of labor, culture: learned systems of meaning that shape perception & behavior. Beliefs, ideas, knowledge, language, values, norms, laws, religion, myth, etc. Dialectical interaction: synthesis sets stage for future limits & opportunities. Cultural & social forms of adapti(cid:374)g to (cid:374)ature"s li(cid:373)its & opportu(cid:374)ities: Instrumental (active subject > passive object) > control. Carolyn merchant: ecology, production: subsistence/market; extinction, processing, exchange, reproduction: biological & social, consciousness.