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Women And Gender: Useful Categories Of Analysis In Environmental History, Nancy Unger
Women And Gender: Useful Categories Of Analysis In Environmental History, Nancy Unger
History
In 1990, Carolyn Merchant proposed, in a roundtable discussion published in The Journal of American History, that gender perspective be added to the conceptual frameworks in environmental history. 1 Her proposal was expanded by Melissa Leach and Cathy Green in the British journal Environment and History in 1997. 2 The ongoing need for broader and more thoughtful and analytic investigations into the powerful relationship between gender and the environment throughout history was confirmed in 2001 by Richard White and Vera Norwood in "Environmental History, Retrospect and Prospect," a forum in the Pacific Historical Review. Both Norwood, in her provocative contribution …
Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort To Turn Back The Environmental Clock, Nancy Unger
Hetch Hetchy Redux: An Effort To Turn Back The Environmental Clock, Nancy Unger
History
If San Francisco voters pass Measure F on November 6, the city will conduct an $8 million study on the feasibility, costs, and benefits of draining the 300-foot deep reservoir created by the O’Shaughnessy Dam in 1923. The measure’s proponents see it as a first step in restoring Hetch Hetchy Valley, sister valley to Yosemite, to its natural state. That the measure is even on the ballot is a significant indication of the shift in attitudes towards the ongoing conflict between nature preservation and traditional notions of progress.
Introduction: Sex, Sexuality, And Gender As Useful Categories In Environmental History, Nancy Unger
Introduction: Sex, Sexuality, And Gender As Useful Categories In Environmental History, Nancy Unger
History
This book is an effort to explain these kinds of extreme gendered divisions and to offer an enriched understanding of the powerful interplay between environment and sex, sexuality, and gender. The synergy produced by that interplay has been significant throughout American history, but it cannot be adequately understood and appreciated as long as those fields are discussed as discrete entities. The fields of gender and environment are growing, but scholars have seldom joined them together in analysis or heeded historian Carolyn Merchant's call that a gendered perspective be added to conceptual frameworks in environmental history.5 They have not offered a …
From Jook Joints To Sisterspace: The Role Of Nature In Lesbian Alternative Environments In The United States, Nancy Unger
From Jook Joints To Sisterspace: The Role Of Nature In Lesbian Alternative Environments In The United States, Nancy Unger
History
Despite the depth and breadth of Catriona Sandilands's groundbreaking "Lesbian Separatist Communities and the Experience of Nature," with its emphasis on communities in southern Oregon, Sandilands does not consider her article, published in 2002, to be "the last one on the topic." Instead she hopes "fervently that other researchers will enter into the ongoing conversation [about queer landscapes)" (136). This essay is an answer to her invitation to draw further "insight from queer cultures to form alternative, even transformative, cultures of nature" (135). It examines the role of place in the history of American lesbians, particularly the role of nonhuman …
Women For A Peaceful Christmas: Wisconsin Homemakers Seek To Remake American Culture, Nancy Unger
Women For A Peaceful Christmas: Wisconsin Homemakers Seek To Remake American Culture, Nancy Unger
History
In the autumn of 1971, sixteen Madison homemakers, including Nan Cheney and Sharon Stein, began "Women for a Peaceful Christmas" (WPC), a unique attempt to do nothing less than remake American culture. Under the slogan "No More Shopping Days 'Til Peace," WPC organized ostensibly powerless homemakers into a "quiet revolt against 'an economy which thrives on war and the destruction of our earth's resources.'' WPC urged the public (especially women, the sex that did the vast bulk of holiday shopping) to take economic, political, and environmental matters into their own hands. "If you don't want your Christmas celebrations to be …
The Role Of Gender In Environmental Justice, Nancy Unger
The Role Of Gender In Environmental Justice, Nancy Unger
History
Environmental Justice incorporates an inclusive definition of its subject matter, exploring the environmental burdens impacting all marginalized populations and communities. This expansive definition allows for the possibility that populations conventionally viewed as privileged can nevertheless be marginalized and suffer uniquely from environmental injustices. Employing such a definition can also reveal how an ostensibly powerless group can fight for environmental justice on its own terms—and win. Gender has played an important role in environmental justice (and injustice) throughout the history of the United States. Excerpts from my current book project, Beyond “Nature’s Housekeepers”: Gendered Turning Points for American Women in Environmental …
The Case For Cautious Optimism: California Environmental Propositions In The Late Twentieth Century, Marie Bolton, Nancy Unger
The Case For Cautious Optimism: California Environmental Propositions In The Late Twentieth Century, Marie Bolton, Nancy Unger
History
The efficacy of direct democracy throughout California's history continues to be a subject of intense debate, a state-wide phenomenon with an international audience. California boasts the world's fifth largest economy, and plays a leadership role in national, and sometimes even international, politics. British scholar Wyn Grant, studying the politics of air quality management in California, succinctly sums up the burning issue for environmentalists worldwide who are striving to understand the efficacy of California's activists' efforts: in "Direct Democracy in California: Example or Warning?" Grant concludes that although direct democracy has its merits, its history in California ultimately provides more of …