Consumption and Waste in American Environmental History is an accessible introduction to the consumption experience, wasting practices, and disposal history of the United States, spanning precontact to the present.
Consumption and Waste in American Environmental History is an accessible introduction to the consumption experience, wasting practices, and disposal history of the United States, spanning precontact to the present.
Centered around concise case studies, the book confronts consumption and consumerism and assesses the impact of solid and hazardous wastes from political, economic, social, and especially environmental perspectives. The overarching relationship among consumption, waste, and climate change is woven throughout the book, identifying key questions and themes in United States environmental history. Each chapter explores a specific element of consumption and waste, including the commodification of humans and animals; depletion of resources; the role of immigrants, women, and people of color in sanitation services and as sanitary and environmental activists; salvaging and recycling; environmental justice; e-waste; plastics; space junk; and more.
With a broad chronology and a variety of relevant topics, this volume is an engaging resource for undergraduate and graduate students in American history, environmental history, and sustainability studies.
Introduction Part 1: Precontact
1. Middens in Precontact America Part 2:
Pre-Industrial America
2. The Great American Bison Extermination
3. Yankee
Whaling in the 19th Century
4. Pigs and Horses in the Cities
5. African
Slaves in Antebellum Plantations
6. Deforestation in Early Pennsylvania
7.
Marshes as Wastelands in Early Louisiana Part 3: The Industrial Revolution
and Urbanization
8. Immigrants and Garbage: Scow Trimmers, Rag Pickers, and
the Juvenile Street Cleaning League
9. Municipal Housekeeping: Sanitary
Reform and Gender Roles
10. The Goodwill and the Salvation Army: Recycling
Goods and Saving Souls
11. The Great Gatsby and the Valley of Ashes Part 4:
The Modern Consumer Culture
12. Slaughter of the Little Pigs: New Deal
Planned Scarcity
13. The Fresno Sanitary Landfill
14. Salvaging, Recycling,
and Rationing as Patriotism in World War II
15. The Berkeley Pit: On Buttes
Richest Hill on Earth
16. Consumerism and Planned Obsolescence
17. Garbage
Grinders in Suburbia Part 5: Into the New Frontier
18. The 1968 New York City
and Memphis Garbage Strikes
19. The Crying Indian and Greenwashing
20. Women,
Civic Activism, and Love Canal
21. Warren County and Environmental Justice
22. The Mobro 4000: Barge to Nowhere Part 6: The 21st Century
23. Yucca
Mountain and Nuclear Waste
24. E-Waste in the Electronics Age
25. Fresh
Kills, 2001: From Landfill to Cemetery
26. Plastics in the Oceans
27. Space
Junk Postscript: Zero Waste and the Circular Economy
Martin V. Melosi is Cullen Professor Emeritus of History and Founding Director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston, USA. He is the author or editor of twenty-three books and more than 100 articles and book chapters in the fields of environmental, urban, energy, and public history.
Rohkem infot Taylor & Francis e-raamatute kohta