Sometimes by accident and sometimes on purpose, humans have transported plants and animals to new habitats around the world. Arriving in ever-increasing numbers to American soil, recent invaders have competed with, preyed on, hybridized with, and carried diseases to native species, transforming our ecosystems and creating anxiety among environmentalists and the general public. But is American anxiety over this crisis of ecological identity a recent phenomenon? Charting shifting attitudes to alien species since the 1850s, Peter Coates brings to light the rich cultural and historical aspects of this story by situating the history of immigrant flora and fauna within the wider context of human immigration. Through an illuminating series of particular invasions, including the English sparrow and the eucalyptus tree, what he finds is that we have always perceived plants and animals in relation to ourselves and the polities to which we belong. Setting the saga of human relations with the environment in the broad context of scientific, social, and cultural history, this thought-provoking book demonstrates how profoundly notions of nationality and debates over race and immigration have shaped American understandings of the natural world.
Spis treści
Acknowledgments
1. Strangers and Natives
Knowing Nature through Nationality
The Naming of Strangers
The Alien Menace: Humanizing Nature and Naturalizing Humans
Our Fellow Immigrants
Strangers on the Land
2. The Avian Conquest of a Continent
Transatlantic Flights
Flying Feathers
The Stranger Finch
There Goes the Neighborhood: Dispossessing the Rightful Tenants of Land and Sky
Standing up for Poor Jack
The Cockney Cousin
The Successful and Exemplary Sparrow
3. Plants, Insects, and Other Strangers to the Soil
Floral Menace and Floral Promise
Strange Fruits: The Enrichment of Nature
Determining Desirability
Shutting the Door on Plant Plunderers
The Menace of Plant Quarantines
A Horticultural Ellis Island
The Rediscovery of Native Value
4. Arboreal Immigrants
Natural Beauty and Foreign Beauty
The Glamor of a Foreign Name
The Tree That Grew in Brooklyn (and Nearly Everywhere Else)
The Strange Career of the Universal Australian
The Tarnished Tree: California’s Raging Eucalyptus Controversy
Eucalyptus Eulogy: The Natural Value of Heritage
Getting Back to (Lost) Nature: Restoring Original California
Landscapes of Purity and Intolerance
5. The Nature of Alien Nation
The Nature of Fear and the Greening of Hate
Wilted Metaphors and Calling Strangers Names
Flora and Fauna That Are Here to Stay
The Globalization of Nature and the Universal Sparrow
The Historian’s Contribution
Notes / 191
Index / 249
O autorze
Peter Coates is Reader in American and Environmental History in the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. Among his books is Nature: Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times (UC Press).
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