Nature, Technology, and Society: The Cultural Roots of the Current Environmental Crisis - Softcover

Ferkiss, Victor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0814726178 ISBN 13: 9780814726174

Publisher: NYU Press, 1994

Synopsis

A valuable and documented source.

--ChoiceFerkiss has navigated an exceedingly complex course through our philosophical history, tracing the lineage of ideas about nature and technology as they evolved from ancient times through Taoism, industrialism, Marxism, and several other `isms.'
>--Sierra MagazineOffers a colorful, concise, and well-written survey of formal thought on the role of science and technology.

--Policy CurrentsWorldwide in its scope and reach, Ferkiss's book encompasses ethics and technology, society, and international relations--a true renaissance perspective. It is written clearly and without trepidations.
--Amitai Etzioni, author of The Moral Dimension
A valuable overview of conceptions of nature, science, and technology since ancient times. Anyone concerned with global environmental issues will benefit from its temperate, even- handed treatment of the hundreds of thinkers who have participated in great age-old debate over the human conquest of the earth and its resources.
--W. Warren Wagar, Distinguished Teaching Professor, SUNY, Binghamton
A fine book . . . an excellent source book [and] a valuable reference work, one of those books that belong on the shelf, near at hand, in the collection of any serious student of environmentalism and the history of technology. It will be consulted often.
--Walter Rosenbaum, University of Florida, author of Environmental Politics and PolicyAn extraordinary achievement--a dazzling scholarly tour de force that is so clearly and elegantly written that readers are gripped by the superb story [Ferkiss] tells. It is the story of what may be the central issue of our time--humanity's relationship with nature. . . . Perhaps no scholar on earth is better equipped to tell this story. . . . [Ferkiss] exhibits an extraordinary command of the subject as he takes readers on a fascinating guided tour through Western and Eastern culture, beautifully summarizing and judiciously commenting on the changing attitudes shown by people ranging from Buddhists to Nazis, from the ancient Greeks to today's Earth Firsters and ecotopians .... A genuine treat.
--Edward Cornish, President, World Future Society
A fine book...it reaches broadly and deeply into our cultural roots, bringing religion, theology, popular culture, science, folklore, natural history and much else into the discussion...an excellent source book [and] a valuable reference work, one of those books that belong on the shelf, near at hand, in the collection of any serious student of environmentalism and the history of technology. It will be consulted often.
-- Walter Rosenbaum, University of Florida, author of Environmental Politics and PolicyWhile all human societies have enlisted technologies to control nature, the last hundred years have witnessed the technological exploitation and destruction of natural resources on an unprecedented scale. As environmental groups and the scientific community sound the alarm about deforestation, global warming and ozone depletion, the obvious question arises: how did we get where we are today? Victor Ferkiss here sets out to answer this central question, emphasizing that we cannot escape from our present environmental predicament unless we understand the ideas which have created it.
Tracing the development of cultural attitudes toward the environment and technology over almost the whole span of human civilization, this book is distinctive both in its comprehensiveness, and in its attempt to place side by side influential thinkers and movements with varied views on these issues.
In this extraordinary book Ferkiss asks the basic questions concerning humans and their relationship to the environment. He traces cultural attitudes towards the environment from early mankind to the present day. This book is distinguished in its comprehensiveness, as well as in its attempt to place influential thinkers and movements with varied views side-by-side.

About this title

About the Author:

VICTOR FERKISS is Professor Emeritus of Government, Georgetown University and the author of Technological Man and The Future of Technological Civilization.

Review:

"Haverty-Stacke offers a significantly more nuanced, complicated, and messier take on this trajectory, showing that radicalism has been an ongoing, endogenous part of American political culture and a vital component of twentieth-century politics and expressions of nationalism. She can make this argument so persuasively because of her focus on broad, vernacular politics, created as much in the street as in formal political processes... Forgetting the history of May Day is not just about forgetting earlier alternatives to the present day, but also about forgetting that radicalisms- of nearly every variety- are as American as apple pie."-American Historical Review,

"Haverty-Stacke marches through the post-Haymarket U. S. history of May Day with a determined step. In the long march across a century and more, she doesn't allow her interpretive feet stray too far from her designated path... Like Marx's burrowing 'old mole', May day certainly digs its way into apparent oblivion in specific periods when the tide of history seems to turn against those who speak boldly against oppression. It has been buried in the past, as Haverty-Stacke shows, but it is unlikely to remain permanently underground."-Labour History Review,

"Haverty-Stacke recounts how after WW II, American labor avoided contact with the communists and May Day celebrations. Instead, more workers and their unions became active in the new Labor Day holiday. This readable book, which blends US labor, political, and cultural history, can be used as a companion to any US history or labor history text."
-"Choice",

""America's Forgotten Holiday" details the long and proud history of May Day and compels us to recall both its contested meanings and wonder at the forces and motives of those who have obliterated our memory of it. Haverty-Stacke ties together the study of memory with that of public space while nimbly navigating the troubled, sectarian waters of communist and anti-communist history."
-Daniel J. Walkowitz, New York University

"Donna Haverty-Stackes "America's Forgotten Holiday offers a welcome reminder that not many generations ago, May Day brought more outbursts of idealism than new home construction, more social solidarity than consumerism, and the hopes for a democratic future that we need ever more urgently in the torrents of imperial wars today."
-Paul Buhle, Brown University

About this edition

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0814726178
• ISBN 13: 9780814726174
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 341