Posted: November 15th, 2022

Just how green IS, or has been, your chosen consumer good?

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As we’ll be learning through the course, much of the environmental impact of modern American society comes through our voracious demand for “consumer goods,” items that we acquire through purchase. Surrounded by bought goods, from cars to coffee to i-pods, we Americans tend to take for granted any natural origins they may have. Sustained inquiry into just where they came from, into how these origins may have shifted from earlier to more modern times, and into the environmental consequences that have attended their extraction, making and use, can draw illuminating connections between the larger narratives of environmental history and our own contemporary lives. In this assignment, you are to single out an item that you yourself use or know well, whether in your home, neighborhood, school or other place you frequented. The chief requirement is that it be a consumer good, something you yourself did not grow or make but bought. You may choose a type of food (coffee, rice or corn), a grain (wheat or rye), a car, a light bulb, or a detergent soap–anything you acquired through a store or other sale. Write an essay on its environmental history. The environmental or “green” consumer good as sub-option: over the latter part of the twentieth century, the environmental movement of the post-WWII period has ushered in the rise of self-styled “green” commodity markets. New technologies–“hybrid” cars, “green” buildings, “organic” produce–have arisen tailored to a new purportedly more ecological consciousness. In the process, older practices of producing commodities, from pesticide-free farming to the tapping of wind and solar energy have also seen revivals, through claims that are less ecologically damaging than contemporary mainstream practices. Students may select one of these “green” commodities, as well, and write an essay on its history. Here, I will expect critical attention to: just how green IS, or has been, your chosen consumer good?
You’re welcome to be as creative as you’d like in choosing your item, but make sure to keep the focus on your most fundamental task: probing the history that has made your own experience possible. Think about such topics as –whether or not it may have replaced other products or practices that were more, or less, environmentally sustainable
–the natural or raw materials that went into the making of this commodity, and how these materials may have changed over our period of study
–the environmental impacts stemming not just from the culling of materials for your commodity but from its production and use, and the ways in which these impacts may have varied over time
–historical dilemmas of waste and disposal entailed by the usage of your commodity — any interesting relationship its history may have to the history of environmental politics and consumption that we’ll be exploring in the latter part of the semester
In seeking a topic and approach for your essay, you’ll undoubtedly benefit by reading and thinking about your required readings for the semester, especially the Merchant book, with its wealth of sources. The best essays will integrate information from several readings and class lectures with your own personal knowledge and experience, and some additional background reading and research. Some topics will necessitate research more than others, in order to have a factual basis from which to write. Please note: if you choose an item about which we will have a lot to say in class, like the automobile, I’ll expect your own data and discussion to go considerably further than we do in the classroom for a good grade. The main purpose of this assignment is not so much to undertake extensive research, however, as to integrate what you do find out with what you will be learning in class. It is to get you thinking about how familiar material objects are themselves historical documents, reflections of larger historical processes in environmental history. In pulling together your thoughts into an essay, I expect you to draw, in as many ways as you can, upon themes, concepts and trends we discuss. Try to identify and explain how your commodity’s emergence, evolution, and environmental impacts illustrate the larger trends in environmental history you have read or heard about during our semester together. Mapping Out Your Paper: A Possible Outline
The following outline suggests the kinds of questions you might ask about the commodity you choose, and at least one way to organize your answers into an essay format. Not all of these questions will be applicable to your choice of topic, nor should you feel compelled to follow this order. I merely mean to give you a sense of what a good essay might look like. I. Introduction: Encountering Your Choice (1 page)
Begin by sketching your own contacts and experiences with your chosen commodity or practice. Questions you may consider: Ordinarily, does it strike you as being more natural or more artificial? What does it mean to you, or do for you? What do you do with it or to it; or, how exactly do you use it? How about others you know? How representative or unusual are your experiences with it as compared with them or those of other Americans today? Do its users or practitioners ordinarily associate it with the environment or environmentalism? Or not? In your intro, you should then at least suggest the environmental history of this commodity which the rest of the paper will flesh out.
II. Predecessors; Past Uses or Equivalents (1 page or longer, depending on whether, how many, earlier counterparts)
Here is where you begin to connect your topic with the past events and developments we’ve studied. Please try and confine yourself, as much as possible, to the periods covered in this course. For things or practices that are newer, what kinds of predecessors existed in any periods of American environmental history preceding when your commodity was invented, or your practice got its “environmental” connotations? How significantly did these predecessors differ from the commodity or practice as we know it today?
Here you may also have opportunities to consider the environmental dimensions of predecessors in one or more of our past periods:
Where it came from: what raw materials or resources went into its making? What kind of environmental impacts did their extraction or preparation have? What it, or its use, accomplished: did it have any consequences for peoples’ use or views of nature? Were there wastes produced, or any other environmental consequences?
For commodities, what happened to it after usage? III. Past Origins and Patterns (3 or more pages):
In which of our periods of American environmental history had this commodity or practice first taken its modern shape? How, when, where and why? For this and any subsequent periods in which its make-up, usage, or disposal have changed significantly, consider any changes in the following: Where it came from: what raw materials or resources went into its making? What kind of environmental impacts did their extraction or preparation have? What it, or its use, accomplished: did it have any consequences for peoples’ use or views of nature? Were there wastes produced, or any other environmental consequences?
For commodities, what happened to it after usage? IV. Contemporary Origins: Where It Comes from, What Its environmental Impacts Are, Today (1 page)
Where do you find this commodity or practice today? How do people normally acquire it or take it up? If a commodity, found in a market or store, how did it arrive at the point of sale? What is it made of, and where do these materials come from? What journeys and transformations do you imagine (or know) these have undergone prior to its arrival at your doorstep? What happens to it upon disposal? If a practice, how widespread is it? What consequences or impact do you think it has had? How effective has it been? In what ways does it measure up to “environmental” or “green” claims made of it? In what ways not? V. Conclusion (1-2 paragraphs)
What do you think the future of this commodity or practice will be? What do you think should happen to to it, given your consideration of its environmental impacts? What changes or actions might make this preferable future more likely? What does reflection on the environmental history of this commodity or practice suggest about modern Americans’ relationship to the natural world?
Grading Criteria/Goals
–Descriptive coverage of major environmental features and encounter with these
–Analysis of ties to historical periods discussed in class
— Reflection on more built or human-made versus natural origins (as two sides of coin)
–Use of evidence and research
–Organization
–Writing, especially clarity and grammar
While the first three of these apply most directly to the “commodity history” option, I am hoping those of you doing the “environmental practice” or “practitioner” option will be able to extrapolate the counterparts for your choices. But if questions do arise, please ask.
Citations and other guidelines for preparing the paper
Citations: For your sources, I’d like to see proper references, both a footnote, for sources you quote, and a larger bibliography, for all sources you used. Here, you should use a consistent reference form; Thracian or Chicago style is preferred. Suggested Chicago-style formats are below, for footnotes (F) and bibliography (B):
Book
F: 1. Wendy Doniger, Splitting the Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 65. B: Doniger, Wendy. Splitting the Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Online Article
F: Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts, “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network,” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 411, accessed February 28, 2010, doi:10.1086/599247.
B: Kossinets, Gueorgi, and Duncan J. Watts. “Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network.” American Journal of Sociology 115 (2009): 405–50. Accessed February 28, 2010. doi:10.1086/599247
Chapter or other part of a book
F: 5. Andrew Wiese, “‘The House I Live In’: Race, Class, and African American Suburban Dreams in the Postwar United States,” in The New Suburban History, ed. Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 101–2. B: Wiese, Andrew. “‘The House I Live In’: Race, Class, and African American Suburban Dreams in the Postwar United States.” In The New Suburban History, edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, 99–119. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Class Lecture
Sellers, “Land of Elk and Eagle,” History 365 Lecture #3, February 3, 2015.
Web site
F: 11. Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees, “Evanston Public Library Strategic Plan, 2000–2010: A Decade of Outreach,” Evanston Public Library, http://www.epl.org/library/strategic-plan-00.html. B: Evanston Public Library Board of Trustees. “Evanston Public Library Strategic Plan, 2000–2010: A Decade of Outreach.” Evanston Public Library. http://www.epl.org/library/strategic-plan-00.html (accessed June 1, 2005). For more models, see http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
Late papers:. Late papers will be penalized one grade per week unless you are ill (please bring a doctor’s note) or have a major life crisis. Having work due in other classes does not constitute an acceptable excuse. If you do not bring the paper to lecture, please do not leave it in my mailbox, where it may be stolen. Instead slip it under the door of my office, SBS N301A. Plagiarism and other honor code issues: Before you start work, make sure you understand the working definition of plagiarism, “the submission of another’s work as one’s original work without proper acknowledgment of the source.” No cutting and pasting from web sources!!! These are easy for me trace. Also be careful to use proper quotation form and footnotes. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense and will be treated as such in this course. Note: it is a violation of the academic honor code to submit the same paper in two courses without the professor’s consent. PLEASE USE THESE 3 SOURCES IN ADDITON TO OTHERS YOU MAY NEED:
https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-prius-approach https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/environmental-impact https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2516-1083/abe0ad?utm_source=Social+Media&utm_medium=TW&utm_campaign=PRGE-TW+PHL+122221

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