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Among the most far-reaching effects of the modern environmental movement was the widespread acknowledgment that human beings were inescapably part of a larger ecosystem. With this book, Linda Nash gives us a wholly original and much longer history of "ecological" ideas of the body as that history unfolded in California's Central Valley. Taking us from nineteenth-century fears of miasmas and faith in wilderness cures to the recent era of chemical pollution and cancer clusters, Nash charts how Americans have connected their diseases to race and place as well as dirt and germs. In this account, the rise of germ theory and the pushing aside of an earlier environmental approach to illness constituted not a clear triumph of modern biomedicine but rather a brief period of modern amnesia. As Nash shows us, place-based accounts of illness re-emerged in the postwar decades, galvanizing environmental protest against smog and toxic chemicals. Carefully researched and richly conceptual, Inescapable Ecologies brings critically important insights to the histories of environment, culture, and public health, while offering a provocative commentary on the human relationship to the larger world.
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UC_Nash.qxd 8/21/06 12:21 PM INESCAPABLE ECOLOGIES Page i UC_Nash.qxd 8/21/06 12:21 PM Page ii UC_Nash.qxd 8/21/06 12:21 PM Page iii Inescapable Ecologies A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge LINDA NASH UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London UC_Nash.qxd 9/11/06 10:22 AM Page iv University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. Portions of chapters 1 and 2 were previously published in Linda Nash, “Finishing Nature: Harmonizing Bodies and Environments in Late-Nineteenth-Century California,” Environmental History 8 (January 2003): 26 – 52. Environmental History is jointly published by the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society, Durham, NC. Portions of chapter 4 were previously published in Linda Nash, “The Fruits of Ill-Health: Pesticides and Workers’ Bodies in Post – World War II California,” Osiris 19 (2004): 203 – 19 (©2004 by the History of Science Society). University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ©2006 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nash, Linda Lorraine. Inescapable ecologies : a history of environment, disease, and knowledge / Linda Nash. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978 – 0-520 – 24891 – 5 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0 – 520 – 24891 – 0 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-13: 978 – 0-520 – 24887 – 8 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0 – 520 – 24887 – 2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Medical geography — California—History. 2. Environmental health — California — History. 3. Public health — California — History. I. Title. ra807.c2n37 2006 614.4'2794 — dc22 2006002009 Manufactured in the United States of America 15 10 14 13 12 9 8 7 6 11 10 09 5 4 3 2 08 1 07 06 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked post-consumer waste, processed chlorine-free. EcoBook 50 is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/ASTM D5634 – 01 (Permanence of Paper). UC_Nash.qxd 8/21/06 12