William Cronon - Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

More Praise forUncommon Ground

An intellectually pathbreaking book. Uncommon Ground is loaded with fresh and provocative essays that probe our conceptions of nature, historicizing the divorce of the natural from the human that plagues contemporary environmentalism. It succeeds brilliantly in showing that nature is a human constructionromanticized in parks and wilderness preserves, commercialized in ecoshops and resort attractions. It argues convincingly that what we have constructed we can reconstructby ending the divorce and attending to the myriad roles that nature plays in our metropolitan lives.

Daniel J. Kevles, Koepfli Professor of the Humanities,
California Institute of Technology

This is a groundbreaking, deeply felt, and deeply thoughtful book. Uncommon Ground goes a long way toward reinventing our understanding of humanitys impact on natureand how nature has meanwhile been reinventing us.

Tony Hiss, author of The Experience of Place

A major intellectual watershed. Whether discussing the rainforest or the shopping mall, Uncommon Ground is a luxuriant garden of new and challenging ideas about the social construction of nature. Most importantly, as an uncompromising critique of an increasingly reactionary Wilderness metaphysics it frames a vision of a more inclusive, and populist, environmental politics.

Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz

An extraordinary feat from some of the foremost environmental thinkers of our time.

Yi-Fu Tuan, J. K. Wright and Vilas Professor, University of Wisconsin

UNCOMMON GROUND

Rethinking the Human Place in Nature

William Cronon, editor

W. W. Norton & Company / New York / London

The seminar and conferences from which this book emerges were sponsored by the University of Californias Humanities Research Institute with the support of a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation.

The publisher and authors gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint The Albino Gorilla from Mr. Palomar, by Italo Calvino, copyright 1983 by Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a., Torino, English copyright 1985 Harcourt Brace & Company, reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company and Reed Consumer Books, on pp. 8183.

Copyright 1996, 1995 by William Cronon

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

First published as a Norton paperback 1996

Book design by JAM DESIGN.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uncommon ground : toward reinventing nature / William Cronon, editor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-393-03872-6

ISBN 0-393-31511-8 pbk.

ISBN 978-0-393-24252-2 (e-book)

1. EnvironmentalismCongresses. 2. Environmental policyUnited StatesCongresses. I. Cronon, William.

GE195.U53 1995

363.7dc20 952147

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110

www.wwnorton.com

W. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

Castle House, 75/76 Wells Street, London W1T 3QT

Contents

William Cronon

William Cronon

Anne Whiston Spirn

Candace Slater

Carolyn Merchant

Richard White

Jennifer Price

Susan G. Davis

Michael G. Barbour

Jeffrey C. Ellis

James D. Proctor

Giovanna Di Chiro

Donna J. Haraway

Kenneth R. Olwig

N. Katherine Hayles

Robert P. Harrison

Foundations of burned houses overlooking Laguna Canyon fire area

Give the Canyons a Break! Wilderness at Work

Ansel Adams, Campus Park, the Commons, and Library
Administration Building, University of California at Irvine, shortly after construction

Snails on garden walkway, University Hills, Irvine, California

Entering Mountain Lion Country: A Risk

The park at the heart of the campus: an Irvine tree tour

Thomas Cole, Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, 182728

Traffic congestion at Yosemite, 1980

Biltmore Forest prior to improvement

Biltmore Forest, 1893

Biltmore entrance drive under construction, ca. 1890s

Biltmore entrance drive

The Fens and Boston, ca. 1925

The Fens and Boston, 1983

Constructing the Riverway, 1892

The Riverway, 1920

Vacant land on floodplain in inner-city neighborhood, Boston, 1985

Brazil Creates Reserve for Imperiled Amazon Tribe

Battle over Rich Brazilian Lands

McDonalds rain forest policy

Lucas Cranach, Adam and Eve

John Gast, American Progress

Emanuel Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way

Domenico Tojetti, Progress of America

George Willoughby Maynard, Civilization

The Nature Company store front at Cherry Creek Mall, Denver, Colorado

Putting on a price tag

Stop the Chainsaw Massacre: The Indictment

The Yellow Ribbon

Principles of Environmental Justice

Save an Endangered Species: You!

Gorilla group in Akeley African Hall

OncoMouse

An unholy alliance

Virtual Eve

Merced River in Yosemite Valley

Lucas Cranach, Das Goldene Zeitalter

The eighteenth-century landscape garden at Stourhead, in England

Yosemite church

Experiencing the meadow in Yosemite

Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer ber dem Nebelmeer

The Los Angeles River, 1994

De-meandering and re-meandering a Danish river

(a) An unregulated heathland stream

(b) A regulated stream on reclaimed heath

(c) An anti-Heath Society political cartoon

Scattered through this book are albums of found objects: texts, images, photographs, advertisements, and so on, each of which seems to us to raise provocative questions about the different meanings of nature in the modern world. Aside from a paragraph at the start of each album, we have generally chosen to let these found objects speak for themselves, with little or no editorial commentary. We encourage you to peruse them at your leisure, lingering long enough to consider their intended and unintended meanings, their juxtapositions with adjacent images, and their relation to the arguments we offer in our essays.

ALBUM: UNNATURAL NATURE

The Nations Most Ironic Nature Park

Texts from a scenic calendar: Introduction

Texts from a scenic calendar: April, A History

Texts from a scenic calendar: June, Education

Texts from a scenic calendar: August, Recreation

Texts from a scenic calendar: December, Lessons Learned

Arsenal Billions Away from Being Picnic Site

20 Bald Eagles Dare to Roost at Arsenal

ALBUM: SUBLIME NATURE

Herman Moll, The Falls of Niagara, 1732

Arthur Lumley, Niagara Seen with Different Eyes, 1873

American Falls running dry, February 16, 1909

American Falls Dewatered

Virtual Niagara under construction

Virtual Niagara: present state of American Falls

Virtual Niagara: proposed reconstruction of American Falls

ALBUM: SYMBOLIC NATURE

Eagles in the Service of Wealth and Power

Emperor Neros apotheosis

Nazi eagle

Great Seal of the United States, one-dollar bill

Seal, Central Intelligence Agency

U.S. Express Mail eagle

CITGO: You Can Feel the Pride

Ronco Raptor Matic

The Little House at the Bottom of the Sea

Other Worlds Do Exist: Arizona

The natural cereal box: Heritage Os