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 (here are extensive resources on the Dust Bowl), 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. Here are some Study questions.

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 and was a critique of real events. You can find out more on how the book was received in its historical context by looking at Paul Wartzman's new book Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of The Grapes of Wrath Ch. 1 Ch. 3 on Steinbeck's reaction. Google books link

Wartzman has a brief section on Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, a Socialist who ran for governor as a Democrat. He was defeated by an early and innovative propaganda and dirty tricks campaign by the newspaper (Hearst) and movie industry (MGM) among others.

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.

Rain: A Dust Bowl Story is a blog of several hundred poems.

More Dust Bowl Resources.

Social Documentation as change agent: Photography (e.g., Dorothea Lange) Lange Collection Sample: unemployed

Depression photos

Newly discovered color photographs

Labor camp photos

Contemporary examples

Migrant Mother, the story behind this very famous photo, icon of the Great Depression.

David Bacon writes and photographs migrant labor, for example Blueberry workers in Maine

Images That Changed the World TEDtalk video

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.

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.

Hunger in California

Global food crisis studied by Raj Patelin Stuffed and Starved video interview and discussed in videos. Colbert Report

Ironically/tragically, today in US kids of migrant laborers are going hungry (audio). (December 10, 2009) Nearly a million migrant children crisscross the U.S. with their families, from harvest to harvest and from job to job. In North Carolina, migrant families struggle to find work, and many rely on schools for food and clothing. The people who run the state's migrant program say living conditions and financial hardships for laborers are the worst in memory.

More info from Bread for the World.org

Review of book The End of Food

A Seat at the Table is a game/simulation from Oxfam.

Economics/Globalization

Great Depression overview

Great Depression resources (some video)

Sub-prime loans, the cause of our current financial crisis, clearly explained in This American Life story (audio).

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

Short video overview.

Overview with links

Overview with reference to Katrina

David Bacon's Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)

Bacon's Photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US: Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006). See also Transnational Working Communities project

The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (University of California, 2004)

Images

2009 UN study on how climate change will affect migration. See also a comprehensive but readable 2007 UN report.

Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting provides a view from Bangladesh, a nation already reeling from the impact of climate change.12/09 See also Bangladesh 5/10 article.

For two decades photojournalist David Bacon has documented the connections between labor, migration, and the global economy. In his new book, Illegal People, Bacon examines the many ways globalization uproots people in Latin America and Asia, driving them to migrate. (World Affairs Council audio interview, one hour mp3 download)

Migrant construction labor TEDtalk video

UCSC alum Cary Joji Fukunaga has created a Sundance award winning film about migration, Sin Nombre. Interview

Often people are forced off farms and have to migrate to large cities to live in slums to work in factories. This is documented by Ed Burtynsky (video).

Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities, finds the world’s squatter sites -- where a billion people now make their homes -- to be thriving centers of ingenuity and innovation. He takes us on a tour. (Migration) TEDtalk video

Stewart Brand on squatter cities. TEDtalk video

Against All Odds is a game from the UN that gives some insights.

Human Rights/ Environmental Rights

Video of talk on relations between human rights and the environment

Soil loss was a significant factor in the Rwanda genocide

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."

World Health Organization map of 150K of people who are killed annually by climate change. Link to study pdf

UC research on CA drought 7/09

Desertification]/Topsoil Loss Desertification occurs when too much vegetation is removed to keep the desert from 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.

Architecture student Magnus Larsson details his bold plan to transform the harsh Sahara desert using bacteria and a surprising construction material: the sand itself (based on UC Davis research). See also Great Green Wall Sahara TEDtalk video.

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 slums in huge capital cities.

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 and Delores Huerta (recent audio interview ), is working to protect workers from pesticide poisoning. See also here. In doing so they protect the rest of us, not just from toxins on our food, but airborne and waterborne toxins. Randy Shaw argues they set the stage for later social movements from environmentalism to the Obama campaign. Shaw is the author of "Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW, and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century." Audio interview UCSC has extensive oral histories of local farmworkers and activists (including Helen Hosmer , who knew Dorthea Lange). UCSC's Melanie 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.

Davis Bacon has written extensively on migrant farmworkers

Public Works and Public Good: When the economic and banking systems failed in 1929, 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).