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• W4376543809 abstract "398 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England. By Carolyn Merchant. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Pp. xv+ 379; illustrations, maps, notes, appendixes, bibliog­ raphy, index. $34.95 (cloth); $13.95 (paper). Environmental history is a new field of study that merits the attention of scholars interested in science and technology. A number of talented people are working in environmental history, including Carolyn Merchant, whose work has played an important role in forging the field. Her earlier book, The Death ofNature (1980), focused on nature and gender during the Scientific Revolution. In her most recent book, Ecological Revolutions, Merchant builds on her earlier concerns by exploring the relationship among ecology, science, and gender in New England between 1600 and 1860. In Merchant’s view, two ecological revolutions—what she defines as “major transformations in human relations with nonhuman nature” (pp. 2—3)—define the period under study. The first revolution began with the arrival of the Europeans, who brought with them new plants, animals, and diseases, as well as a culture that tended to view the natural world as a set of commodities. European settlement, Mer­ chant argues, transformed the ecology of the region by destroying the Native American’s relationship with nature and substituting a far more commercial orientation toward the natural world. The capitalist ecological revolution, Merchant’s second topic of study, began in the late 18th century. Contradictions and tensions internal to New England agriculture, she believes, were at the root of this ecological revolution. An imbalance between the forces of pro­ duction and reproduction spurred the shift to the capitalist mode of production. Soil exhaustion, inheritance customs, and population growth conspired to force a radical change in the system of social and ecological relations. “Patriarchy,” as she puts it, “had come into conflict with ecology” (p. 187). But Merchant is not only interested in changes at the material level of life and culture. She is also concerned with consciousness, with the way New Englanders understood their relationship with the natural world during these periods of ecological revolution. To unpack this relationship, she examines maps, almanacs, and other printed mate­ rials that suggest how people made use of scientific knowledge in their dealings with nature. The cosmos of 18th-century New Englanders, she determines, was an animate one that tended to view even “rocks and minerals as living, growing things” (p. 143). The capitalist revolution, however, witnessed the demystification of nature and the substitution of a mechanized understanding of the natural world. Nature was more and more conceived of as an instrument in the service of economic development. In many respects this book is a striking achievement. It makes both a theoretical and empirical contribution to the environmental history TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 399 of New England. It explains how the ecological order changed and posits a theory for why it changed in the way it did. Indeed, the book’s theorizing about ecological and social change—especially its integra­ tion of gender into the analysis—is a signal contribution. But Mer­ chant’s quest for theoretical rigor may have come at the expense of a more nuanced, richly textured narrative. There are painfully few people making history in this book. One reads about systems—social, ecological, and cosmological—but little sense is conveyed of how these ecological revolutions changed the structure and substance of peo­ ple’s everyday lives. Still, Merchant has written a stimulating book that raises new and interesting questions for historians of technology. What was the ecological impact of technological change? How, if at all, did change or crisis in the ecological order fuel the search for new technologies? By introducing the concepts of ecology and gender into her analysis, Merchant has enriched our understanding of the relationship be­ tween technology and culture. Theodore Steinberg Dr. Steinberg is assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan and postdoctoral scholar, Michigan Society of Fellows. He is the author of Nature Incorpo­ rated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England (Cambridge University Press, in press). Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography. By Michael Williams. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xxii..." @default.
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• W4376543809 title "Ecological Revolutions: Nature, Gender, and Science in New England by Carolyn Merchant" @default.
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