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摘要
摘要
By exploring the stages of ecological transformation that took place in New England as European settlers took control of the land, Carolyn Merchant develops a fresh approach to environmental history. Her analysis of how human communities are related to their environment opens a perspective that goes beyond overt changes in the landscape.
Merchant brings to light the dense network of links between the human realm of economic regimes, social structure, and gender relations, as they are conditioned by a dominant worldview, and the ecological realm of plant and animal life. Thus we see how the integration of the Indians with their natural world was shattered by Europeans who engaged in exhaustive methods of hunting, trapping, and logging for the market and in widespread subsistence farming. The resulting "colonial ecological revolution" was to hold sway until roughly the time of American independence, when the onset of industrialization and increasing urbanization brought about the "capitalist ecological revolution." By the late nineteenth century, Merchant argues, New England had become a society that viewed the whole ecosphere as an arena for human domination. One can see in New England a "mirror of the world," she says. What took place there between 1600 and 1850 was a greatly accelerated recapitulation of the evolutionary ecological changes that had occurred in Europe over a span of 2,500 years.
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Merchant's clear, well-documented, and dramatic historical account of changing relationships between people and the natural environment in New England compares favorably with William Cronon's slightly more detailed Changes in the Land (1983); but this book goes much further, both in time (to about 1860) and in themes (nicely integrating worldview and sex roles). Merchant gives an accurate account of the animistic symbiosis that was the basis of indigenous societies, differentiating northern and southern patterns in relation to natural resources, though both emphasized harmonious coexistence between humankind and the rest of the world. The "colonial ecological revolution" (c.1600-1775) saw not only the invasion of people, plants, animals, and pathogens from Europe, but also new ideas, including visual (as contrasted with aural) consciousness, the commoditization of natural resources, extensive farming, and sedentary subsistence. The "capitalist ecological revolution" (c.1775-1860) saw a shift to intensive lumbering, farming, herding, and manufacturing, with mechanistic emphasis on profit and efficiency. Men's work away from home resulted in loss of collaboration with women. In a brief reprise, Merchant hopes for a global ecological revolution that may include many elements of the aboriginal philosophy. Each topic is developed with remarkable skill, insight, and thoroughness, from soil types to land covers, from farmers' almanacs to changes in theology, from Marxism to diet and firewood--and the relevance of each point is woven into an amazingly complex but thoroughly enjoyable fabric. Abundant endnotes; excellent bibliography and index. All readers. D. B. Heath Brown University