FYI. X-posted from H-Environment.
Stefanie Rixecker
ECOFEM Coordinator
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Date sent: Thu, 09 Aug 2001 10:34:01 -0500
From: "H-Environment Editor (Dennis Williams)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Mitchell on Herron and Kirk, eds. _Human/Nature_
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Send reply to: H-NET List for Environmental History
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H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (August, 2001)
John P. Herron and Andrew G. Kirk, ed. _Human/Nature: Biology,
Culture, and Environmental History_. Albuquerque: University of
New Mexico Press, 1999. xiv + 148 pp. 34.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-8263-1915-7; $15.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8263-1916-5.
Reviewed for H-Environment by Charles Mitchell
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, American Studies, Elmira College.
The Nature of the Beast
This collection of essays was born at the New Mexico
Environmental Symposium held in Albuquerque in April 1996. A
group of senior and junior scholars convened to discuss the ways
in which concepts of human nature "shape our understandings of
environmental issues and direct our environmental politics" (p.
1). The symposium culminated in the presentation of formal
papers, eight of which are included in this volume. For those
readers who find this context vaguely familiar: stop scratching
your heads. References to William Cronon's edited collection,
_Uncommon Ground_, are abundant throughout this more recent
volume, and the organizational structure of the New Mexico
Environmental Symposium, as well as its subject, seem to be
consciously patterned on the seminar at University of
California, Irvine, that produced Cronon's book.
The collection is divided into two parts. In Part I, "Biology
and Culture," Dan Flores, Virginia Scharff, Vera Norwood, and
Max Oelschlaeger "focus their discussions on issues of
evolution, biological determinism, and the cultural construction
of nature" (p. 9). In Part II, "Human/Nature Stories," William
deBuys, John Herron, Paul Hirt, and Andrew Kirk "illustrate how
assumptions of human nature manifest themselves in American
culture in general and the politics of environmentalism in
particular" (p. 77). One of the strengths of such a
symposium-generated volume is the opportunity it provides for a
sustained exchange of ideas. Participants might more fully
reflect that exchange--the give and take, the
point-counterpoint, the disagreements--in the published
proceedings. In this case, the opportunity for an intense
exchange of views is never quite realized. While there are
several references to disagreements among the participants and
the "argumentative" quality of some of the essays, evidence of
such ferment is fleeting.
The editors strategically place Dan Flores' "Nature's Children"
first, offering this "meditation on sociobiology" as the "most
iconoclastic and thought-provoking essay" in the collection
because of its conclusion that we are "biologically determined
to a degree that is uncomfortable for many to accept" (9). Yet,
while Flores' essay is certainly thought-provoking, it provokes
little in the way of direct comment in the essays that follow. I
suspect this is because his argument is far more subtle than the
editors' brief summary allows. His call for a reconsideration
of sociobiology follows his conclusion that "environmental
history . . . is going to have to investigate humanness at a
deeper level even than culture or materialist economics to
understand some of the reasons our species interacts with the
world around us the way we do" (p. 19). His reading of
sociobiology is rooted in Reform Darwinism rather than its evil
cousin Social Darwinism, the latter of which serves as a straw
man in several of the other contributors' references to
sociobiology. Flores' claim is simple: we need to take biology
(and psychology) seriously not because they are rigidly
deterministic but because we need to be fully aware of what we
are up against when we are working to change human behavior. To
assume that the causes of the "human assault on the world"--that
is, the environmental crisis in all its manifestations--is a
result simply of acculturation and socialization gone wrong is
to oversimplify both the problem and what is necessary to
address it. In the course of his essay, Flores rather neatly
(and respectfully) debunks much of the romanticizing mythology
that still surrounds discussions of Native American attitudes
toward nature, the supposed ecological purity of paleolithic and
hunter-gatherer societies, and the utopian nostalgia of Deep
Ecology. The challenge he offers, that environmental historians
approach biological human history not as evidence for the
futility of culture but as "an opportunity to let our genes in
on the recognized dangers-and the wondrous potential-of being
animal," seems more rhetorical than argumentative (p. 26). It
is a well-wrought plea for balance between a rigid biological
determinism on the one hand and a just as rigid cultural and
social determinism on the other. Who could argue with that?
Well, certainly not the other contributors to this volume. The
essays that follow, rather than taking up Flores' challenge
directly, are content to give their own spin to the pendulum:
this looks like culture at work, this one appears to be biology,
and that one, well, the jury is still out. Ultimately, the
concept of "human nature" proves to be just as slippery to this
group of scholars as "nature" proved to be to those assembled by
Cronon, and perhaps that is the point. Still, too much time is
spent reinventing the wheel ("Look: another culturally
constructed idea about nature!!"), and too little time is
devoted to exploring the specific issues identified in the
volume's introduction (the way our understanding of
environmental issues and environmental politics are shaped by
our ideas about human nature). One of the premises of this
collection is that our ability to address important
environmental issues--climate change, environmental justice,
extinction-depends upon a more sophisticated understanding of
the concept of human nature. In the end, these essays do not
bring us much closer to that worthy goal.
What _Human/Nature_ does do is to present several pithy
illustrations of thoughtful environmental historians at work. In
addition to Flores' delightful meditation, I look forward to
incorporating Vera Norwood's "Constructing Gender and Nature"
into my next Nature and Culture class. Norwood reads John
Burroughs' and Florence Merriam's observations of birds as a
case study in the way human ideas about gender shape so called
"objective" field observations of natural creatures in their
natural habitat. Merriam's observations focus on female birds,
cooperative behavior, and parenting responsibilities; Burroughs
concentrates on male birds and the value of aggression. Taken
together, these virtual contemporaries concisely--perhaps too
concisely--reflect the very different masculine and feminine
traditions of nature study in the late 19th century. Paul
Hirt's "Dupes, Conspirators, Truth Seekers, and Other Breeds" is
an imaginative reading of the types of human animal that
populate selected environmental histories, including Alston
Chase's _In a Dark Wood_ and Nancy Langston's _Forest Dreams,
Forest Nightmares_. Though far from exhaustive, Hirt's essay
models an exercise in historiographical taxonomy that all
teachers of environmental history ought to practice with their
students.
_Human/Nature_ is neither more nor less than the sum of its
parts. While most of the essays stand as valuable contributions
in their own right, as a collection they do not quite accomplish
the goal of furthering our understanding of "the complicated
social, cultural, political, and historical implications of the
idea of human nature" (p. 3).
Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Dr. Stefanie S. Rixecker, Senior Lecturer
Environmental Management & Design Division
Lincoln University, Canterbury
PO Box 84
Aotearoa New Zealand
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Fax: 64-03-325-3841
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