GoW
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 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. So 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).
http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/bin/litcrit.out.pl?au=ste-73
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.
Social Documentation as change agent: Photography (eg Dorothea Lange) Lange Collection Sample: unemployed
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.
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Bread-Years-Agribusiness-California/dp/1565848772
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.
Migration (environmental refugees) People can also be forced from their land by drought/famine/civil war (often these are interrelated).
http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/refugee/reviewF.php
Droughts (and even floods) will be made more frequent and severe by climate change.
Global Warming/Water Scarcity
Desertification/topsoil loss http://www.usembassy-china.org.cn/sandt/MongoliaDust-web.htm
Labor: In the novel, we see union organizing emerging as an important counter-balance to increasing corporate exploitation. Currently, the UFW is working to protect workers from pesticide poisoning. In doing so they protect the rerst of us, not just from toxins on our food, but airborne and waterborne toxins. In fact, UCSC 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
New Deal/Green Deal
Human Rights/ Environmental Rights
Micro-loans
Activism/Change Agent
Economics/Globalization
