Changes in the Land Chapter 5 ISS 310 People and Environment Spring 2002 Prof Alan Rudy 1 24 02 1 What is the common relation between population and environmental damage 2 What do you have usufruct rights to and what do you have property rights to Commodities of the Hunt Trade Diseases Property Ecological Change Hunting Commodification Exchange Use Status Wampumeag Accumulation Abstraction Price Sedentarism Early Trade and Diseases Indians eager by 1525 33 years after Diseases 80 90 Mortality Rates Historical Geographic isolation Low population densities No domesticated animals Neither genetic nor acquired resistance Endemic and Acute Hunter gatherer North less than Ag South Smallpox TB Influenza Pneumonia Measles Typhus Dysentery Syphilis Consequences of Diseases Powerfully disrupts kinship patterns interand intra group politics healing religion Facilitates colonial property take over if Indians had improved and thereby owned ag lands but died then those lands could be taken indication of God s will behind Colonist take over Second nature reverts to first nature SMALL GROUPS explain 90 91 Hunting Colonists were too ineffective a hunters to obtain furs by themselves needed Indian men But Indian men were lazy and had inferior technology How could Indians be more efficient and skillful SEE Cronon s ARGUMENT Cronon is BUILDING an argument with the structure of the book ECOLOGY SOCIAL ECOLOGIES Sovereignty and Property ECONOMIC ECOLOGY Indians N and S and Colonists English POLITICAL ECOLOGY Northern and Southern NE Population Hunting Trade Each point adds a layer and refers back Why THAT order N S P E Commodification For Indians from exchange of equivalents use to accumulation of abstractions price 1 Use Euro goods for Indian purposes 2 Trade for Indian purposes Indian Colonist trade grew not due to Indian demand but because of Colonists need to pay debts not supply demand Trade Disease worked against old political and status hierarchies Declining population worked against social sanctions against accumulation Summary of sorts Trade Pop Eco Deregulation Indians Eco Damage for Colonists Game populations Fur Indian need for cloth Rich land from beaver dams Sedentarism Indians Domesticated animals Disease Colonists Normal Env tal Accounts Pop Eco Damage Conclusion Nature ecology Social Relations gender culture etc Political Organization status state etc Economic Structure tech class etc Population numbers trends Health diseases lifespan etc All must be understood in changing relation to one another in order to coherently explore environmental change and respond to crises None alone will do not holism philosophy democracy biotech consumption birth control or medicine alone
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