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In Ghostworkers and Greens, Adam Tompkins reveals a history of unexpected cooperation between farmworker groups and environmental organizations. Tompkins shows that the separate movements shared a common concern about the effects of pesticides on human health.
"In The Defoliation of America, Amy M. Hay profiles the attitudes, understandings, and motivations of grassroots activists who rose to fight the use of phenoxy herbicides (commonly known as the Agent Orange chemicals) in various aspects of American life during the post-WWII era. First introduced in 1946, these chemicals mimic hormones in broadleaf plants, causing them to, essentially, grow to death while grass, grains, and other monocots remain unaffected. By the 1950s, millions of pounds of chemicals were produced annually for use in brush control, weed eradication, other agricultural applications, and forest management. The herbicides allowed suburban lawns to take root and become iconic symbols of success in American life. The production and application of phenoxy defoliants continued to skyrocket in subsequent years, encouraged by market forces and unimpeded by regulatory oversight. By the late 1950s, however, pockets of skepticism and resistance had begun to appear. The trend picked up steam after 1962, when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring directed mainstream attention to the harm modern chemicals were causing in the natural world. But it wasn't until the Vietnam War, when nearly 40 million gallons of Agent Orange and related herbicides were sprayed to clear the canopy and destroy crops in Southeast Asia, that the long-term damage associated with this group of chemicals began to attract widespread attention and alarm. Using a wide array of sources and an interdisciplinary approach, The Defoliation of America is organized in three parts. Part 1 (1945-70) examines the development, use, and responses to the new chemicals used to control weeds and remove jungle growth. As the herbicides became militarized, critics increasingly expressed concerns about defoliation in protests over US imperialism in Southeast Asia. Part 2 (1965-85) profiles three different women who, influenced by Rachel Carson, challenged the uses of the herbicides in the American West, affecting US chemical policy and regulations in the process. Part 3 (1970-95) revisits the impact and legacies of defoliant use after the Vietnam War. From countercultural containment and Nixon's declaration of the "War on Drugs" to the toxic effects on American and Vietnamese veterans, civilians, and their children, it became increasingly obvious that American herbicides damaged far more than forest canopies. With sensitivity to the role gender played in these various protests, Hay's study of the scientists, health and environmental activists, and veterans who fought US chemical regulatory policies and practices reveals the mechanisms, obligations, and constraints of state and scientific authority in midcentury America. Hay also shows how these disparate and mostly forgotten citizen groups challenged the political consensus and were able to shift government and industry narratives of chemical safety"--
From Benjamin Franklin’s campaign to combat pollution at the Philadelphia’s docks in the 1750s to the movement against climate change today, American environmentalists have sought to protect the natural world and promote a healthy human society. In This Green and Growing Land, historian Kevin Armitage shows how the story of American environmentalism—part philosophy, part social movement--is in no small way a story of America itself, of the way citizens have self-organized, have thought of their communities and their government, and have used their power to protect and enrich the land. Armitage skillfully analyzes the economic and social forces begetting environmental change and emphasizes the responses of a variety of ordinary Americans—as well as a few well-known leaders—to these complex issues. This concise and engaging survey of more than 250 years of activism tells the story of a magnificent American achievement—and the ongoing problems that environmentalism faces.
"A startling exposé of the invisible human workforce that powers the web--and how to bring it out of the shadows. Hidden beneath the surface of the internet, a new, stark reality is looming--one that cuts to the very heart of our endless debates about the impact of AI. Anthropologist Mary L. Gray and computer scientist Siddharth Suri unveil how the services we use from companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Uber can only function smoothly thanks to the judgment and experience of a vast human labor force that is kept deliberately concealed. The people who do 'ghost work' make the internet seem smart. They perform high-tech, on-demand piecework: flagging X-rated content, proofreading, transcribing audio, confirming identities, captioning video, and much more. The shameful truth is that no labor laws protect them or even acknowledge their existence. They often earn less than legal minimums for traditional work, they have no health benefits, and they can be fired at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. An estimated 8 percent of Americans have worked in this 'ghost economy,' and that number is growing every day. In this unprecedented investigation, Gray and Suri make the case that robots will never completely eliminate 'ghost work' and the unchecked quest for artificial intelligence could spark catastrophic work conditions if not stopped in its tracks. Ultimately, they show how this essential type of work can create opportunity--rather than misery--for those who do it." --Descripción del editor.
Provides a solid foundation for understanding American agricultural history and offers new directions for research A Companion to American Agricultural History addresses the key aspects of America’s complex agricultural past from 8,000 BCE to the first decades of the twenty-first century. Bringing together more than thirty original essays by both established and emerging scholars, this innovative volume presents a succinct and accessible overview of American agricultural history while delivering a state-of-the-art assessment of modern scholarship on a diversity of subjects, themes, and issues. The essays provide readers with starting points for their exploration of American agricultural history—whether in general or in regards to a specific topic—and highlights the many ways the agricultural history of America is of integral importance to the wider American experience. Individual essays trace the origin and development of agricultural politics and policies, examine changes in science, technology, and government regulations, offer analytical suggestions for new research areas, discuss matters of ethnicity and gender in American agriculture, and more. This Companion: Introduces readers to a uniquely wide range of topics within the study of American agricultural history Provides a narrative summary and a critical examination of field-defining works Introduces specific topics within American agricultural history such as agrarian reform, agribusiness, and agricultural power and production Discusses the impacts of American agriculture on different groups including Native Americans, African Americans, and European, Asian, and Latinx immigrants Views the agricultural history of America through new interdisciplinary lenses of race, class, and the environment Explores depictions of American agriculture in film, popular music, literature, and art A Companion to American Agricultural History is an essential resource for introductory students and general readers seeking a concise overview of the subject, and for graduate students and scholars wanting to learn about a particular aspect of American agricultural history.
Agricultural history has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, in part because the agricultural enterprise promotes economic and cultural connections in an era that has become ever more globally focused, but also because of agriculture's potential to lead to conflicts over precious resources. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History reflects this rebirth and examines the wide-reaching implications of agricultural issues, featuring essays that touch on the green revolution, the development of the Atlantic slave plantation, the agricultural impact of the American Civil War, the rise of scientific and corporate agriculture, and modern exploitation of agricultural labor.
An exploration of the elaborate relationship between farmers, aerial sprayers, agriculturalists, crop pests, chemicals, and the environment. The controversies in the 1960s and 1970s that swirled around indiscriminate use of agricultural chemicals—their long-term ecological harm versus food production benefits—were sparked and clarified by biologist Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). This seminal publication challenged long-held assumptions concerning the industrial might of American agriculture while sounding an alarm for the damaging persistence of pesticides, especially chlorinated hydrocarbons such as DDT, in the larger environment. In Chemical Lands: Pesticides, Aerial Spraying, and Health in North America’s Grasslands since 1945 David D. Vail shows, however, that a distinctly regional view of agricultural health evolved. His analysis reveals a particularly strong ethic in the North American grasslands where practitioners sought to understand and deploy insecticides and herbicides by designing local scientific experiments, engineering more precise aircraft sprayers, developing more narrowly specific chemicals, and planting targeted test crops. Their efforts to link the science of toxicology with environmental health reveal how the practitioners of pesticides evaluated potential hazards in the agricultural landscape while recognizing the production benefits of controlled spraying. Chemical Lands adds to a growing list of books on toxins in the American landscape. This study provides a unique Grasslands perspective of the Ag pilots, weed scientists, and farmers who struggled to navigate novel technologies for spray planes and in the development of new herbicides/insecticides while striving to manage and mitigate threats to human health and the environment.
Children are the future. Or so we like to tell ourselves. In the wake of the Second World War, Americans took this notion to heart. Confronted by both unprecedented risks and unprecedented opportunities, they elevated and perhaps exaggerated the significance of children for the survival of the human race. Razing Kids analyzes the relationship between the postwar demographic explosion and the birth of postwar ecology. In the American West, especially, workers, policymakers, and reformers interwove hopes for youth, environment, and the future. They linked their anxieties over children to their fears of environmental risk as they debated the architecture of wartime playgrounds, planned housing developments and the impact of radioactive particles released from distant hinterlands. They obsessed over how riot-riddled cities, War on Poverty era rural work camps and pesticide-laden agricultural valleys would affect children. Nervous about the world they were making, their hopes and fears reshaped postwar debates about what constituted the social and environmental good.
Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites is for anyone who wants to better understand the environment that surrounds us and sustains us, who wants to become a better steward of that environment, and who wants to share lessons learned with others. The process starts by focusing attention on the environment – the physical space that constitutes the largest three-dimensional object in museum collections. It involves conceptualizing spaces and places of human influence; spaces that contain layer upon layer documenting human struggles to survive and thrive. This evidence exists in natural environments as well as city centers. The process continues by adopting an environment-centric view of the spaces destined to be interpreted. This mind-set forms the basis for devising research plans that document how humans have changed, destroyed, conserved and sustained spaces over time, and the ways that the environment reacts. Interpretation built on this evidence then becomes the basis for minds-on engagement with the places that humans inhabit and the spaces that they have changed and continue to manipulate. Interpreting the Environment at Museums and Historic Sites provides a tool kit designed to help you research environmental history, document evidence of human influence on land and the environment over time, and tailor that knowledge to new public engagement. It proposes a multi-disciplinary approach that requires expertise in the humanities as well as the sciences and social sciences to best understand space and place over time. It incorporates case studies of the theory and method of environmental history to explore how human goals take lasting shape in the environment – creating working environments, getting water, generating and harnessing power, growing food, traveling and trading, building things, and preserving natural landscapes. Features include the Interpreting the Environment Tool Kit to help you launch the good work of interpreting the environment: Raw Materials (the evidence): landscape, ecosystems, artifacts, and the built environment Preparation (methods): thinking like a naturalist/scientist; thinking like a historian; combining approaches Planning (envisioning the goal): proactive message, stewardship, sustainability Partnerships (sharing work): strength in numbers; allying across disciplinary divides; united in efforts to inform the public about their individual and collective effects on the landscape and the environment Potential: educating the public about people and places is part of a world-wide goal with the cumulative effect of saving the planet, one story at a time. A Timeline and Bibliographic essay round out the book’s resources.
The trajectories of pollution in global capitalism, from the toxic waste of early tanneries to the poisonous effects of pesticides in the twentieth century. Through the centuries, the march of economic progress has been accompanied by the spread of industrial pollution. As our capacities for production and our aptitude for consumption have increased, so have their byproducts--chemical contamination from fertilizers and pesticides, diesel emissions, oil spills, a vast "plastic continent" found floating in the ocean. The Contamination of the Earth offers a social and political history of industrial pollution, mapping its trajectories over three centuries, from the toxic wastes of early tanneries to the fossil fuel energy regime of the twentieth century.