Key overall themes for this unit include:

1. The study of environmental history.
2. Culture as a determinant of human action in ecosystems.
3. Worldview & shared meanings as an essential ingredient of culture.
4. Analysis of cultural signs and symbols (semiotics) of nature.
5. Cultural changes in European history, and ecological degradation.
6. Is a new, ecological, worldview needed in this culture, or not?
7. Religion and environmental problems & solutions

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What is Cronon's view of the lessons of environmental history?  What are their limitations?
• What does Cronon mean by a "dialogue between humanity and nature" (13)? Can you think of examples?
• Cronon comments, "There cannot be people outside of nature; there can only be people thinking they are outside of nature" (19). He aims this comment partly at environmental thinkers who feel nature is best without any people.  What do you think the lessons for environmentalism are?
• What does Worster mean by "Planetary history has been fundamentally environmental history"? (p. 90).
• List the major causes of environmental change discussed by Worster.  How did they each contribute? Why does he reject population increase as an adequate explanation of some of the changes?

• What is environmental history?
• What do YOU hope to gain by studying environmental history?
• From the readings, whose presentation of environmental history did you find more compelling, and why?
• Do you agree or disagree (and why) with Cronon that "all environmental knowledge is culturally constructed and historically contingent - including our own"? (p. 14-16)
• Do you agree or disagree with Worster's identification of the base threat to the earth as our "tendency to let reason outrun the constraints of love and stewardship"? (p. 101)

1. Cronon, William.  "The Uses of Environmental History." Environmental Review (Fall, 1993): 1-22.
2. Worster, Donald.  "The Vulnerable Earth: Toward a Planetary History." Environmental Review (Sum. 1987): 87-103.

2) Nature in cultural belief, image and symbol - Lecture / analysis of examples

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:
Explain LaFreniere's concepts of worldviews & the roles of ideas of history.
Can you explain what kind of categories "cycles, providence & progress" are? Can you explain his examples?  Why do these matter to environmental history?

QUESTIONS FOR CLASS DISCUSSION:
What cultural meanings about the environment are embodied in objects & messages? -- Class members share their findings & analyses.
What are the implications of different assumptions about the meanings of nature & our relation to it?
What does cultural analysis contribute to environmental history?
Do you agree with LaFreniere prescription for "metanoia"?

READINGS:

 LaFreniere, Gilbert F. "World Views and Environmental Ethics." Environmental Review (1985): 307-322.

Notes on semiotics

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What is humanism, and what (in Opie's view) is wrong with it? Do you agree?
• What role does Opie argue escapism played, and how was it expressed?  What was the escape from, and why was it unbearable?
• I invite you to hold some of Cronon's positions about culture up to Opie's remarks about the Renaissance, and ask does Cronon fit them... does nature only have meaning because we grant it one?

• What assumptions about nature underlie an exploitative attitude towards it?
• What other, more complex but promising, analyses of our culture's traditions, are possible?
• Is arrogance the prime environmental vice?  Are environmentalists fatalists?  Or just humble?

1. Opie, John.  "Renaissance Origins of the Environmental Crisis." Environmental Review (Spr. 1987): 3-17.

4) Nash's historical thesis of ethical extension - Lecture & discussion

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• What pattern of historical change in ethics do Leopold and Nash propose?
• Precisely WHAT gets extended in this theory of "ethical extensionism"?
• What points does Leopold make about ethics? Education? Emotion? Economics? "Land"?

• Is there a limit to the logic of extension proposed by the authors?
• What makes Leopold's "The Land Ethic" so powerful?
• In what sense is Leopold's piece essentially ECOLOGICAL?

1. Nash, Roderick. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics. Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1989, Prologue and Ch. 1, pp. 3-32.
2. Leopold, Aldo. "The Land Ethic." In A Sand County Almanac.  New York: Oxford Univ., 1949.

MATERIAL STUDENTS SHOULD KNOW/THINK ABOUT FROM READINGS:

• How does White connect medieval views of humans and nature to science and technology?
• What interpretation of Christianity does White identify as influencing a destructive attitude toward nature?
• Do you agree with White that it is the Judeo-Christian 'dominance' model that has led to our ecological crisis?  Read Genesis 1-3 and compare it with White's analysis.  Is his account a correct interpretation of the text?
• A steward is one who manages the household affairs of another person.  Does a stewardship (or gardener) model of environmental ethics make sense if one does not accept a theistic version of creation?

Debate format:  Each team will open with a brief summary statement of their main points provided by one speaker (5 minutes each side).  Next, each team may respond to the points of the other, and pose questions of each other (other speakers) (10-15 minutes total); the remainder of the time will be devoted to fielding audience questions, and class discussion.

READINGS:

1. White, Lynn. "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis." Science 155 (Mar. 1967): 1203-1207.
2. Tuan, Yi-Fu. "Our Treatment of the Environment in Ideal and Actuality." American Scientist 58 (May-June, 1970), pp. 244-49.

• Use Ch. 4 of Nash's Rights of Nature, on reserve.
• This site has extensive bibliographic citations of works to use as you prepare: "The Lynn White Controversy."
• Link to H-ASEH (Amer. Soc. for Env. History) discussion thread on "Religion and Nature."

•  A Religious Campaign for Forest Conservation Building an Interfaith Forest Ethic (Excellent - includes long list of religions contributing)
• North American Coalition for Christianity and Ecology
• Seattle-based  Earth Ministry
• Target Earth
• Evangelical Environmental Network
•  Wiccan/Pagan Starhawk's Reclaiming  -- see the link to Headwaters forest action
• Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life