Nature In America Research Articles

Repairing paradise: the restoration of nature in America's national parks

By the turn of the millennium, it had become painfully apparent that the United States had made some serious misjudgments in its interactions with the natural world. The country's treasured national parks, while remaining immensely popular tourist destinations, were not immune to the damage. Preservation alone would no longer be enough; by this time, repair and restoration were necessary. Can the United States reverse the mistaken policies that severely damaged the crown jewels of its national park system? This thoughtful and hopeful book, in turns analytical and personal, investigates that critical question by focusing on four of America's most-loved public paces. In Repairing Paradise , William Lowry, an eminent expert on U.S. natural resource policy, details and assesses four ambitious efforts to reverse environmental damage in the national parks: The reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone Reducing the impact of vehicle traffic in Yosemite Restoring fresh water to the Everglades Removing structural impairments to river flows in the Grand Canyon Repairing Paradise combines authoritative research with extensive personal experience. Lowry has spent time in all four of the parks --observing conditions, talking to the most informed decisionmakers, and taking photos. He deftly combines his field research with solid public policy analysis to paint an instructive portrait of the mission to restore the natural health and glory of some of the world's most wondrous places.

Surviving Incarceration: Two Prison-Based Peer Programs Build Communities of Support for Female Offenders

Both men and women adopt various roles in the inmate subculture to survive the pains of imprisonment. It is assumed that one reason females feel the pains of imprisonment more harshly than males is because of the difficulty in being separated from their family and children. To ameliorate the pains of separation, female inmates re-create their lost family in prison. Recent works have found that the nature of America's female prison “pseudo family” may be evolving, and correspondingly, diminishing in importance. Since one's associates in prison can affect institutional adjustment, being associated with a supportive social network can prevent periods of maladjustment. This exploratory study, based on the narratives of 49 female offenders, examined the effects of two HIV prison-based peer programs on inmate peers in New York State and its unique ability to help these female offenders cope with the pains of incarceration. The author found that such programs provided leadership, support, and guidance for female offenders, and not only created a prosocial environment, but fashioned an entire community. This community continued outside of the prison walls, provided women with emotional support, and subsequently resulted in increased levels of institutional and post-release success. The use of prison-based peer programs creates a positive, conventionally oriented alternative to the traditional female pseudo family and poses significant implications for rehabilitation and reentry initiatives.

Paradise found: nature in America at the time of discovery

Paradise found: nature in America at the time of discovery

Review: Paradise Found: Nature in America at the time of discovery by Steve Nicholls

Why do we find it so hard to believe that past landscapes like pre-colonial North America were teeming with plant and animal life, and what does this mean for future generations?

Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century Robert Francis Saxe Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century. By Jenel Virden. Houndmills, Basingstoke, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. ISBN 978-0-333-72661-7. Maps. Annotated bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 203. £21.99. In this slim volume, Jenel Virden attempts to discuss American participation in the major wars of the twentieth century through the lens of just war theory. In particular, the author provides an overview of the American government's rhetoric during wartime and action on the battlefield, but also expands her focus to investigate the home front in order "to test whether the application of theory to the way governments treat their own citizens during war can provide previously unarticulated insights into the broader issue of just war" (p. 7). This is an admirable approach, as too many histories seek to segment the battlefront from the home front in their discussions of America's wars. And it is as a general primer on America's twentieth century wars that this study succeeds. Chapters on World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War are all laid out identically, each containing sections labeled "The Pre-War Period," "Beginnings," "How the War Was Fought," "US Home Front," and "The Consequences." Virden does an excellent job of synthesizing the voluminous information on the fighting, diplomacy, economics, leadership, rhetoric, and home front issues of all four conflicts. After providing her case studies, she ties all the information together in a chapter simply titled "Conclusions." It is in this chapter where she compares and contrasts the wars, using the idea of just war to critique the wars' origins, how they were fought, their conclusions, and notions of justice on the home front. In these conclusions, Virden makes some controversial assessments, such as her statement that "the targeting or indiscriminate killing of non-combatants… [makes] it difficult if not impossible to suggest the United States fought these [End Page 664] wars justly"(p. 159). Further, after cataloguing numerous injustices on the American home front, she finds that "civil liberties and civil rights, and the American people, became the victims of wartime injustice"(p. 168). In a powerful epilogue, Virden critiques the Bush administration's War on Terror and shows how the detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the mistreatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison, as well as the civil liberties questions raised by the Patriot Act, seem to suggest that America has learned very little from its past conduct in wartime. Much of the information in Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century is quite useful and provocative, and this would be a fine selection for a survey course for undergraduates or someone with a general interest in the topic. In terms of construction, however, I had some reservations. Though the just war theme is the guiding force of the book, just war theory is dealt with substantially only in the introduction and conclusion. Increased discussion throughout the chapters would have linked the sections together concretely and made the author's conclusions even more powerful. For instance, the just nature of America's entry into the wars is dealt with in a complex way, but the comparative discussion of their beginnings is so brief in the "Conclusions" chapter that the implications of the similarities and differences of the wars' origins are never fully realized. With greater attention to just war theory throughout, more time might have been spent on expanding the author's analysis. But this is a criticism that comes from the fact that the questions being raised by the book are numerous and important. If the purpose of Americans and the Wars of the Twentieth Century is to start a conversation, then it has succeeded. Robert Francis Saxe Rhodes College Memphis, Tennessee Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

The idea of nature in America

Daedalus Spring 2008 The idea of nature is–or, rather, was– one of the fundamental American ideas. In its time it served–as the ideas of freedom, democracy, or progress did in theirs–to de1⁄2ne the meaning of America. For some three centuries, in fact, from the founding of Jamestown in 1607 to the closing of the Western frontier in 1890, the encounter of white settlers with what they perceived as wilderness –unaltered nature–was the de1⁄2ning American experience. By the end of that era, however, the wilderness had come to seem a thing of the past, and the land of farms and villages was rapidly becoming a land of factories and cities. By 1920, half the population lived in cities, and as the natural world became a less immediate presence, images of the pristine landscape–chief icon of American nature– lost their power to express the nation’s vision of itself. Then, in the 1970s, with the onset of the ecological ‘crisis,’ the refurbished, matter-of-fact word environment took over a large part of the niche in public discourse hitherto occupied by the word nature. Before the end of the century, the marked loss of status and currency suffered by the idea of nature had become a hot subject in academic and intellectual circles. Reputable scholars and journalists published essays and books about the ‘death’–or the ‘end’–of nature; the University of California recruited a dozen humanities professors to participate in a semester-long research seminar designed to “reinvent nature”;1 and the association of European specialists in American studies chose, as the aim of its turn-of-the-century conference, to reassess the changing role played by the idea of nature in America.2 Leo Marx

The Great Illusion: Chimeras of Isolationism and Realism in Post‐Iraq U.S. Foreign Policy1

In light of the Bush Administration's failures in Iraq, some have foreseen a turn toward a new isolationism or realism in U.S. foreign policy. This article argues that such an ideological reorientation is unlikely. America's level of economic entwinement with others, and its role in maintaining strategic stability in certain regions, present formidable practical barriers to isolationism. Though realism might be a more plausible prospect, the nature of America's historical and ideological journey toward internationalism makes it difficult for a realist approach to gain lasting supremacy. Increased pragmatism, and reduced militarism and adventurism, are likely responses to harsh operational realities. Nevertheless, the core axiom of American strategic thought—the liberal universalist credo that all nations must eventually adopt a baseline of American values and practices for lasting international peace to be achieved—is embedded too widely across the political spectrum to be ousted without a major revolution in American political culture.

The Crude Intentions

America's technological, military, and economic security is growing increasingly vulnerable because of a lack of energy security. As a result, America's need to locate, exploit, and control fuel resources has intensified its engagement of the African continent. The nature of America's relationship with the African continent is being progressively guided by U.S. energy policy. Moreover, this relationship must be analyzed in light of the continuing legacy of European colonialism on the African continent. There is a need to ensure that the majority of African people benefit from activity in Africa's energy sector on a just and sustained basis. Fulfilling this need will require the adoption of a foreign policy that is reflective of Africa's unifying cultural beliefs and values, holds foreign countries and companies who would do business with Africa to a set of standards that disallows Africa's exploitation, and is aligned with African development on African terms.

Culture And Poverty

Scholars have increasingly focused on the ideological motivations for national Progressive Era welfare policies by examining a few eastern or midwestern cities; relief efforts in rural communities and the American West have been largely overlooked. What shaped local Progressive Era relief policies was not new social welfare ideas but, rather, local circumstances-economies, settlement patterns, environmental conditions, religious beliefs, kinship ties, philanthropic practices, and local of�cials' decisions. Because these circumstances varied from county to county, stark differences appear when examining local relief practices. Who received aid, assistance levels, durations on relief, and types of aid varied considerably between two rural Colorado counties, Costilla and Lincoln. Local circumstances also affected attempts to transform annuities and rations on the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Reservation into a form of poor relief. The decentralized nature of America's welfare state allowed these dramatic differences in relief practices to become a de�ning element of the Progressive Era.

Bush, 11 September and the Conflicting Strategies of the ‘War on Terrorism’

This paper demonstrates the remarkably dynamic nature of America's 'War on Terrorism'. It shows the Bush administration's propensity to re-evaluate the terrorist threat and the responses required to deal with that threat. It identifies three distinct and sequential strategies that have been adopted in order to prosecute the War on Terrorism. The 'Counter-terrorism' strategy focused on the terrorists themselves, involved traditional counter-terrorism techniques and lead logically to war in Afghanistan. The second strategy, 'Pre-emption and pre-eminence', represented a step-change in Washington's conceptualisation of the terrorist threat and how to deal with it. The third approach, the 'Forward strategy for the democratisation of the Middle East', seeks to identify both the root causes of and the long term solutions to the War on Terrorism. The article shows how and why American thinking on this subject has evolved in period since 11 September 2001 through these three approaches, and how the tensions between these different strategies have complicated America's task of dealing with the terrorist threat.

Conservation in the Internet Age: Threats and Opportunities

Review: Conservation in the Internet Age: Threats and Opportunities By James N. Levitt (Ed.) Reviewed by Pramod K. Nayar University of Hyderabad, India James N. Levitt (Ed.). Conservation in the Internet Age: Threats and Opportunities. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2002. 364 pp. ISBN 1- 55963-913-X (paper). US$30.00 Recycled, acid-free paper. This volume is an admirable effort in the direction of suggesting the harnessing of technology for conservation purposes. The Internet revolution and conservation are not mutually exclusive or in conflict, as this volume demonstrates. Communication and transport networks also facilitate conservation and new dynamics of regional, demographic, and land use patterns. James Levitt opens the volume with a thorough, informed historical survey of networks and nature in America. Closely reading the development of railways, roadways, and other forms of transport and communication, Levitt pays attention to the ways in which exploration of the landscape and the creation of national parks and forests have frequently engaged with issues of land use, conservation, and human geography. He suggests that the Internet, express delivery systems, and other networks are key enablers of deconcentrating settlement and development patterns. Increased mobility and communication in the last decades of the 20th century radically altered economic expansion. Levitt notes that people who grew prosperous with businesses devoted to contemporary technology have also, in the main, been influential in popularizing novel modes of land use and conservation. Further, Levitt argues that conservationists now have an increased set of administrative, educational, and scientific tools at their disposal. William Mitchell's essay speaks of the loosening of spatial and temporal linkages-what he terms fragmentation and recombination-among urban activities through use of digital telecommunication networks. Such networks, Mitchell suggests, enable extensive distribution of inexpensive decentralized intelligence. We can also adopt new, network-enabled patterns of development to reinvent the traditional neighborhood (the theme of the New Urbanists). Mitchell also sees enormous potential for rural backwaters and smaller communities. Kenneth Johnson's essay deals with the changing dynamics of rural demography. Noting changes in patterns such as the age of people out migrating from rural areas and to retirement destinations, Johnson suggests

Orientalism in America during the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century: Portrayals of Marriage Guides

This study challenges Edward Said and examines the nature of America's Orientalism, focusing on marriage guides during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Three marriage guides that represent the three modalities of this period the medical, the religious, and the pseudo-scientific—reveal that American Orientalism portrayed Europe as well as the Arabs, Islam, the Africans, and the American Indians as the others. Rendering others in these marriage guides took the form of bestowing unique but distorted types of femininity upon the Orient and Europe. In particular, physical deformities, abnormalities in women's sexual organs, the moral corruption of women, and influences on woman's bodies that hindered the preservation of pure American race, were emphasized to signify the characteristics of the Orient. American Orientalism determined the characteristics of American women as well as those of the Orient, justifying the inferiority of both. The examination of marriage guides reveals that American Orientalism was neither a mere extension of European Orientalism, nor a product of American Zionism. It was rather a product of the formation of American identity, whereby non-mainstream persons had to be first defined as others, so as to define the mainstream.

Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America. Mark Stoll

<i>Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America</i>. Mark Stoll

Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America

Protestantism, capitalism, and nature. Beauty and wonder, dominion and stewardship. Capitalists and militants, rationalists and ascetics -- Protestants, capitalists, and nature. God, nature, and the Puritans. Nature's God in the age of reason. Conquest and contemplation. Steam and steel and Christian civilization. Progressive gospels of nature. The twentieth century.

Young John Adams and the New Philosophic Rationalism

URING his retirement years, John Adams was fond of saying that the War of Independence was a consequence of the American Revolution. The real revolution, he declared, had taken place in the minds and hearts of the colonists in the decade or two before I776. What he meant by this evocative statement and how he understood the sources and nature of America's Revolutionary transformation have long intrigued historians. In an i8i8 letter to Hezekiah Niles, Adams left a clue to his meaning. Among other things, he said, there had been a in the people's sentiments of duties and obligations. This great and important alteration in the colonists' religious and moral character forced them to rethink duties and obligations to king and Parliament after imperial authorities began to violate their lives, liberties, and properties.1 How can historians examine or measure the causes and nature of such a phenomenon? We might begin by looking to Adams himself: his early diary records in remarkable detail a radical change in his religious and moral views. If we are to understand how John Adams experienced the coming of the Revolution, we must begin by examining the assumptions and ideas through which he filtered and interpreted events of the day. Historians have commonly described Adams as a Puritan or a neo-Puritan and have equated his diary with the self-exorcising daybooks of his Calvinist forebears.2 Two important attempts to examine Adams's early years agree that his behavior and character traits, his knowledge and ideas, and even his response to the Revolutionary crisis were largely shaped by a strict Calvinist

Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America. By Mark Stoll. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. xii + 276 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $50.00, paper $24.95

<i>Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America</i>. By Mark Stoll. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. xii + 276 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $50.00, paper $24.95

Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America. By Mark Stoll. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. xii + 276 pp. $50.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.

Protestantism, Capitalism, and Nature in America. By Mark Stoll. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. xii + 276 pp. $50.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.

Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America

Protestantism, capitalism, and nature in America

The legacy of the Picturesque at Mount Desert Island: controversies over the development of Acadia National Park

Abstract Mount Desert Island, off the northern coast of Maine, is one of the most significant landscapes in the history of the pursuit of nature in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though similar to other nature resorts in the Northeast of the same period, Mount Desert Island was particularly notable for the rapid rate at which it was transformed from a relatively isolated, even primitive, place in the mid-nineteenth century to one of the most elite summer resorts by the century's end. The Island was further distinguished when, in 1916, it became dedicated in part as the National Park now known as ‘Acadia’; out of all comparable resorts east of the Mississippi River, it was the first to be so recognized. The popularity of the Island as a destination was due largely to factors common to the entire Maine coast; the cool, clean coastal air was made increasingly accessible by improvements in transportation, providing relief from the sweltering summer heat of the nearby urban areas. Yet the characteristic that attracted the most attention, and which was most in keeping with the National Park concept, was quite simply the Island's unique topography: along the entire Atlantic seaboard of the United States, the only mountains to reach the sea are to be found there.

Miracle Under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America.William K. Stevens

Previous articleNext article No AccessNew Biological BooksMiracle Under the Oaks: The Revival of Nature in America. William K. Stevens Alice E. IngersonAlice E. Ingerson Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Quarterly Review of Biology Volume 70, Number 4Dec., 1995 Published in association with Stony Brook University Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/419230 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1995 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.