Baptized with the Soil
Baptized with the Soil

Author: Kevin M. Lowe

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0190463813

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In the early twentieth century, many Americans were troubled by the way agriculture was becoming increasingly industrial and corporate. Mainline Protestant churches and cooperative organizations began to come together to promote agrarianism: the belief that the health of the nation depended on small rural communities and family farms. In Baptized with the Soil, Kevin M. Lowe offers for the first time a comprehensive history of the Protestant commitment to rural America. Christian agrarians believed that farming was the most moral way of life and a means for people to serve God by taking care of the earth that God created. When the Great Depression hit, Christian agrarians worked harder to keep small farmers on the land. They formed alliances with state universities, cooperative extension services, and each other's denominations. They experimented with ways of revitalizing rural church life--including new worship services like Rural Life Sunday, and new strategies for raising financial support like the Lord's Acre. Because they believed that the earth was holy, Christian agrarians also became leaders in promoting soil conservation. Decades before the environmental movement, they inspired an ethic of environmental stewardship in their congregations. They may not have been able to prevent the spread of industrial agribusiness, but their ideas have helped define significant and long-lasting currents in American culture.

Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition
Wendell Berry and the Agrarian Tradition

Author: Kimberly K. Smith

Publisher: University Press of Kansas

Published: 2014-01-17

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 0700619690

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Farmer and conservationist Wendell Berry has published more than thirty books, making his name a household word among environmentalists. From his Kentucky farm, Berry preaches and practices stewardship of the land as he seeks to defend the value and traditions of farm life in an industrial capitalist society. A central figure in the greening of American agrarianism, Berry has been an advocate of small farming and traditional values who has tirelessly reminded readers that sustainable agriculture is more than a catchphrase. Kimberly Smith now reveals the depth of his ideas and their relevance for American social and political theory. Berry's central teaching focuses on the fragility of our natural and social worlds; Smith's timely book revisits the problem of living a meaningful life in a world filled with both deadly perils and unimagined possibilities. Hers is the first book to explore the implications of this central tenet and other key aspects of Berry's thought, as well as his overall contribution to environmental theory and politics. Smith shows how the many strands of Berry's thought can be woven together into a coherent agrarian philosophy. Focusing on his relationship to the American agrarian and environmental traditions, she examines how Berry's ecological agrarianism derives from the concept of "grace," or living in concert with nature and society. Along the way, she defends his social theory against accusations of utopianism, shows how his moral theory subverts the notion of rugged individualism usually associated with farming, and reviews his political theory's argument for decentralized democracy. By assessing Berry's reformulation of democratic agrarianism, Smith goes beyond any previous critiques of his writing, and her exploration of Berry's moral vision shows that such vision is more relevant as America continues to move further away from its agrarian past.

Natural Visions
Natural Visions

Author: Finis Dunaway

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016-12-20

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 022645424X

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Walden Pond. The Grand Canyon.Yosemite National Park. Throughout the twentieth century, photographers and filmmakers created unforgettable images of these and other American natural treasures. Many of these images, including the work of Ansel Adams, continue to occupy a prominent place in the American imagination. Making these representations, though, was more than a purely aesthetic project. In fact, portraying majestic scenes and threatened places galvanized concern for the environment and its protection. Natural Visions documents through images the history of environmental reform from the Progressive era to the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, showing the crucial role the camera played in the development of the conservation movement. In Natural Visions, Finis Dunaway tells the story of how visual imagery—such as wilderness photographs, New Deal documentary films, and Sierra Club coffee-table books—shaped modern perceptions of the natural world. By examining the relationship between the camera and environmental politics through detailed studies of key artists and activists, Dunaway captures the emotional and spiritual meaning that became associated with the American landscape. Throughout the book, he reveals how photographers and filmmakers adapted longstanding traditions in American culture—the Puritan jeremiad, the romantic sublime, and the frontier myth—to literally picture nature as a place of grace for the individual and the nation. Beautifully illustrated with photographs by Ansel Adams, Eliot Porter, and a host of other artists, Natural Visions will appeal to a wide range of readers interested in American cultural history, the visual arts, and environmentalism.

A Dictionary of Geography, Second Edition
A Dictionary of Geography, Second Edition

Author: F. J. Monkhouse

Publisher: Transaction Publishers

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 0202361314

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The geographer seeks to describe the diverse features of the earth's surface, to explain if possible how these features have come to be what they are, and to discuss how they influence the distribution of man with his diverse activities. Geography therefore stands transitionally yet centrally between the natural sciences, the social studies, and the humanities. While in its concept and content it is an integrated whole, of necessity it impinges on the associated disciplines, and inevitably makes use of a wide range of kindred terminology. In compiling the 3,400 entries for this dictionary, the main criterion for inclusion has been usage. Geographical textbooks and periodicals have been systematically combed, and where a term has been used in a specific geographical context, or in a specialist sense which differs from general practice or popular usage, it has been included. Foreign words are listed where they have been accepted into English geographical literature, especially where no satisfactory translation exists. Cross-references are freely given, printed in small capitals, where it is necessary to assist the user in tracing cognate and supplementary entries, or where the meaning of the word thus shown is essential to the understanding of the entry. The emphasis throughout is on specific factual information, conveniently accessible on a strict alphabetical basis, rather than a bare definition. Statistical material and formulae are appended, where it would seem helpful, in the form of tables under the relevant entries. Since this dictionary is neither a gazetteer nor a compendium of current affairs, lists of countries and capitals, regional names and international groupings are not included, since these can be found conveniently elsewhere. The five hundred and seventy-two additional entries to this dictionary, together with a few minor modifications to the existing material, are the result of extensive correspondence and discussion since the appearance of the first edition. This edition, originally published in 1970, has continuing relevance as a resource for professionals. F. J. Monkhouse was formerly chair of geography at the University of Southampton. Throughout his career he was also visiting professor at the University of Illinois, University of Maryland, Queen's University, and the Miami University(Ohio). His books include The Countries of North-Western Europe and The Lake District.

The Greater Plains
The Greater Plains

Author: Brian Frehner

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2021-07

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1496227077

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The Greater Plains tells a new story of a region, stretching from the state of Texas to the province of Alberta, where the environments are as varied as the myriad ways people have inhabited them. These innovative essays document a complicated history of human interactions with a sometimes plentiful and sometimes foreboding landscape, from the Native Americans who first shaped the prairies with fire to twentieth-century oil regimes whose pipelines linked the region to the world. The Greater Plains moves beyond the narrative of ecological desperation that too often defines the region in scholarly works and in popular imagination. Using the lenses of grasses, animals, water, and energy, the contributors reveal tales of human adaptation through technologies ranging from the travois to bookkeeping systems and hybrid wheat. Transnational in its focus and interdisciplinary in its scholarship, The Greater Plains brings together leading historians, geographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists to chronicle a past rich with paradoxical successes and failures, conflicts and cooperation, but also continual adaptation to the challenging and ever-shifting environmental conditions of the North American heartland.

The World of Organic Agriculture
The World of Organic Agriculture

Author: Minou Yussefi-Menzler

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-09-23

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1136535233

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The new edition of this annual publication (previously published solely by IFOAM and FiBL) documents recent developments in global organic agriculture. It includes contributions from representatives of the organic sector from throughout the world and provides comprehensive organic farming statistics that cover surface area under organic management, numbers of farms and specific information about commodities and land use in organic systems. The book also contains information on the global market of the burgeoning organic sector, the latest developments in organic certification, standards and regulations, and insights into current status and emerging trends for organic agriculture by continent from the worlds foremost experts. For this edition, all statistical data and regional review chapters have been thoroughly updated. Completely new chapters on organic agriculture in the Pacific, on the International Task Force on Harmonization and Equivalence in Organic Agriculture and on organic aquaculture have been added. Published with IFOAM and FiBL

Nature's New Deal
Nature's New Deal

Author: Neil M. Maher

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0195306015

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Neil M. Maher examines the history of one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's boldest and most successful experiments, the Civilian Conservation Corps, describing it as a turning point both in national politics and in the emergence of modern environmentalism.