The Grapes of Wrath

We will be using John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to structure our exploration of the environment. If you've read the book before, re-read it not as a work of literature but as a documentary of people who are reacting to economic and ecological forces, and then try to imagine what the current version of the novel would be: a family in Guatemala who can't make a living raising corn, or one in Africa fleeing a civil war brought on by competition for land or water?

In the spirit of College 8, we encourage you to buy a used copy of the book (even one that's marked up is fine, as long as there's room for you to add your comments). Any edition will do, though the most common version is the one we'll use, a paperback published by Penguin (it's 455 pages, so try to find a copy that has about that to make it easy to follow along in class). Most towns have a used bookstore, and you can get used books online as well. If you want a new copy, you might try an independent rather than a corporate chain bookstore.

The study of the environment is important for its own sake (or rather, for ours, since our lives and all life depend on it), but it's also useful for learning how to think about systems (biology, economics) and especially how these interact on one another. Thus we want to use the novel as a way into these environmental issues and their interrelationships.

Issues:

Literature: beauty is important in fiction and poetry, but it was also an important impetus to earlier waves of environmental movement. John Muir and others thought the beauty of nature could recharge the spiritual batteries of poor people who lived in crowded and poor conditions in the cities. But literature also spurred social movements: Uncle Tom's Cabin, The Jungle, Silent Spring (the last non-fiction, but used literary techniques).

literary resources

Even though Grapes of Wrath is fiction, it was based closely on real events (Steinbeck short biography was trained as a biologist, as you can tell by his careful detailed descriptions of plants and people). Dorothea Lange also documented the lives of Okie Dust Bowl refugees, and also sought to affect political policy. More Dust Bowl Resources.

Social Documentation as change agent: Photography (eg Dorothea Lange) Lange Collection Sample: unemployed

Depression photos

Labor camp photos

Food

Another key issue explored in the novel is agriculture. We see the shift from family farms to corporate agribusiness, and the hunger of the dispossessed. These conditions continue today on a global scale.

book on History of Agribusiness in California

Food scarcity

More than 862 million people in the world go hungry.

In developing countries nearly 16 million children die every year from preventable and treatable causes. Sixty percent of these deaths are from hunger and malnutrition.

In the United States, 11.7 million children live in households where people have to skip meals or eat less to make ends meet. That means one in ten households in the U.S. are living with hunger or are at risk of hunger.

More info from Bread for the World.org

Agro-Ecology (pesticides). Agribusiness works on very large scales, using machinery wherever possible to reduce labor costs. It uses pesticides and a great deal of fossil fuels (some oil companies bought large amounts of agricultural land in California to get tax writeoffs). UCSC has been an important center for research in returning to more sustainable community-based organic agriculture. Often, small scale farmers cannot economically compete with large subsidized farms. These people are frequently forced off the land, and have to seek work elsewhere, often moving to slum in huge capital cities.

Economics/Globalization

Migration (environmental refugees) People can also be forced from their land by drought/famine/civil war (often these are interrelated).Link

Human Rights/ Environmental Rights

Micro-loans One way of helping very poor people that has been extraordinarily success if giving them access to capital (in Grapes of Wrath, the banks were able for foreclose/take the farms because the farmers could not repay their loans and had put the land up as collateral). Micro-loans do not require collateral, but allows people to be more productive by buying materials in bulk or tools). More info, including a biography of founder Muhammad Yunus, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (another recent winner in environmental activist Wangari Maathai, reflecting the growing awareness that peace, justice and the environment are inextricably linked).

Global Warming/Water Scarcity The debate about if it's real is over (prolonged by fossil fuel companies using many of the same tactics and PR firms used by the tobacco industry), but the one about what to do continues. Water will probably be a bigger challenge than oil in this century; some are already using the term "peak water."

Desertification]/Topsoil Loss Desertification occurs when too much vegetation is removed to keep the desert form encroaching. recent example in Mongolia (Here are striking images). A more widespread general and on-going problem is Topsoil loss, the Dust Bowl being only one dramatic example.

Labor: In the novel, we see union organizing emerging as an important counter-balance to increasing corporate exploitation. Currently, the United Farms Workers (UFW) organized by Cesar Chavez, is working to protect workers from pesticide poisoning. In doing so they protect the rest of us, not just from toxins on our food, but airborne and waterborne toxins. In fact, UCSC's DuPuis argues that we must not allow businesses to pollute the air and water because no one "owns" them (traditionally, to prove damage to a particular person or property is the only way to get legal protection, as in a car accident). This bring us to thinking about public good.

Public Works and Public Good: When the economic and banking systems failed, the government had a alphabet soup of programs to help people recover, providing food shelter and jobs--most notably, the Works Progress Administration (WPA). This was a major component of FDR's New Deal.

New Deal/Green Deal Some people feel that the climate change crisis is one that is as significant faced by the US in WWII and requires the same kind of mobilization of people and resources as the Great Depression (and on an international scale). Mark Hertsgaard has proposed a Global Green Deal, creating good "green collar" jobs (such as installing insulation and solar panels, which allow people to move up from manual labor to skilled and even professions, for example electrical engineering).

Activism/Change Agent Many people are rising to the challenges presented by the environmental issues noted above, as well as others). Some are scholars (many at UCSC) and business people who are doing research and R&D on sustainable technologies. Others are citizens, many of whom are concerned with issues of environmental justice. Another kind of important kind of change agent is the social entrepreneur, who uses social networks and sometimes market forces to improve human well-being.