Potential Essay References review

John Locke

Labor & Nature
You own something when you mix your labor with nature (e.g., picking an apple, tilling a field).

Accumulation
In nature, you can only own what you can use before it spoils. Money (gold/silver) allows unlimited accumulation of wealth because it doesn't spoil.

Pairs with agrarian Myth, Ideal Citizen is the Yeoman Farmer, which is someone that acts as the backbone of the farm improving it with their labor, and therefore making it their property

David Krech

Argues "Ecological Indian" is a myth; Natives only conserved nature due to low population/tech.

Anderson

Argues Natives actively managed nature (TEK) using fire/pruning to ensure sustainability.

William Cronon

Cronon argues that the English colonists didn't just conquer the land with guns; they conquered it with legal definitions of property.

• Settlers defined "property" by "improvements" (fences/barns). Since Natives didn't build these, settlers argued the land was "waste" and legally free to take.

Frederick Jackson Turner

Argued the frontier experience made Americans unique (rugged, democratic).

Jefferson’s ideal citizen

Yeoman Farmer - an independent, family farmer who owns his land. Viewed as the backbone of democracy (virtuous, self-reliant).

Micmacs in Maine

Shifted from subsistence hunting to commercial beaver hunting for trade, leading to food insecurity and dependency.

Garrett Hardin & "Tragedy of the Commons"

Theory: Individuals will inevitably destroy shared resources to maximize personal gain.
a. Malthus: Hardin relied on Malthus’s 18th-century idea that population growth outstrips food supply.

• b. Critique: Hardin described "open access" (no rules), not a true Commons (community rules).

Ostrom’s Framework

• Proved communities can sustainably manage resources if they have clear boundaries, rules, and monitoring.

Millenium Ecosystem Assessment

• Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly in the last 50 years than in any comparable time in history.

• These changes brought economic gains but at the cost of ecosystem degradation (loss of biodiversity, services).

• Degradation of ecosystem services could grow worse in the first half of this century.

• Reversing degradation requires significant changes in policies, institutions, and practices.

Ari Kelman

Environmental & Social Segregation

You cannot separate the "social" segregation of people from the "environmental" segregation of nature. Attempting to segregate nature (via levees) reinforced the racial segregation of the city.

Faubourg Treme

• he oldest African American neighborhood in the U.S.

• Significance: A cultural heart of New Orleans (jazz, brass bands). It was physically divided by the construction of I-10 (infrastructure racism) and damaged by Katrina, threatening Black cultural heritage.

Donald Worster

Frameworks for Environmental History

• Level 1: Nature (Ecology)

  • The physical environment itself—the soil, climate, water, and biological webs.

  • Example in Katrina: The Mississippi Delta, the wetlands, the hurricanes, and the low elevation.

• Level 2: Modes of Production (Economy/Technology)

  • How a society organizes its labor, technology, and tools to extract resources from nature.

  • Example in Katrina: Capitalism. The economy required New Orleans to be a port city. We built levees (technology) to channel the river for shipping and commerce (production), ignoring the natural flow of the river.

• Level 3: Ideology (Culture/Cognition)

  • The ideas, myths, laws, and values that justify the mode of production.

  • Example in Katrina: The idea of "Man conquering Nature" or the belief that technology can solve all problems (The "Levees-only" mindset).

Summary of Worster: Nature limits us $\leftrightarrow$ Economy tries to exploit Nature $\leftrightarrow$ Culture tells us it's okay to do so.

Carolyn Merchant

Adds Gender and Reproduction to the worster framework. How the domination of nature is linked to the domination of women and minorities.

Ecology, Production, Consciousness, then also Reproduction and Gender. Who is reproducing, and how r they being raised
Main Ideas: Merchant analyzes the shift from the "Corn Mother" (Native) worldviews to "Colonial" worldviews. She contrasts the Native "mimetic" relationship with nature (reciprocity) against the European "instrumental" relationship (extraction).

Chang, Iris - The Chinese in America (2003)

• Core Argument: Chinese immigrants were crucial to the West (1/12th of CA population) but treated as "Sojourners" (temporary visitors) to deny citizenship.

• Key Terms: "Model Workers" (cheap/hardworking) vs. "Threats" (unassimilable); Community Builders (benevolent associations); 240-lb Gold Nugget.

Saxton, Alexander - The Indispensable Enemy (1971)

• Core Argument: Anti-Chinese sentiment was the glue that united white labor unions.

• Key Terms: "Mingled Acceptance and Exclusion" (accepted for menial tasks, excluded from skilled trades); Scapegoating (blamed for economic downturns).

Macpherson, C.B. - Property: Mainstream and Critical Positions (1978)

• Core Argument: Property is not a "thing," but a social relationship and a set of enforceable rights agreed upon by society.

Deloria Jr., Vine - We Talk, You Listen (1970) / God Is Red

• Core Argument: Western law separates property from personhood, while Indigenous thought links them.

• Key Terms: "No Property = No Standing" (without owning things, you have no legal voice); Income Methods (hunting/fishing rights) are property.

Mann, Charles C. - 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (2005)

• Core Argument: Debunks the "Pristine Myth." The Americas were densely populated (90-112m) and actively managed before Columbus.

• Key Terms: Demographic Calamity (disease traveled ahead of settlers); Terra Preta (man-made fertile soil in Amazon); "World's Largest Garden."

Takaki, Ronald - Strangers from a Different Shore (1989)

• Takaki presents Asian American history not as a "model minority" success story, but as a struggle against an "internal colonial" structure where Asian labor was exploited while their bodies were excluded from the body politic.

Chan, Sucheng - This Bittersweet Soil (1986)

• Core Argument: Chinese immigrants found a niche in Truck Gardening (vegetables) because it required low capital and quick turnover.

• Key Terms: Dietary Adaptation (ate cheap local beans, imported expensive cultural items like tea/gin).

Rohe, Randall - "After the Gold Rush: Chinese Mining in the Far West" (1982)

• Core Argument: Identified Hydraulic Mining as the most environmentally destructive extraction method.

• documents the shift of Chinese labor into hydraulic mining and the subsequent environmental devastation.

Miller, Joaquin - "Environmental Deterioration in the Gold Country" (1890) Merchants Major Problems

• Core Argument: Literary inversion depicting white miners as "Savages" for murdering the landscape, contrasted with Native harmony.

• Key Terms: 1890 Retrospective; Silence of Nature.

Federal Agent - "Report on the Impact of Mining on Indians" (1853) Merchants Major Problems

• Core Argument: Mining destroyed the Native food web (oaks/salmon), causing starvation.

• Key Terms: Resource Competition; Used to justify Removal/Reservations.

Hayhoe, Katherine - Saving Us (2021)

• Core Argument: Facts don't convince climate denialists; connecting to their Values does.