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Sanemori's Revenge: Insects, Eco-System Accidents, and Policy Decisions in Japan's Environmental History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Brett L. Walker
Affiliation:
Montana State University, Bozeman

Extract

Normally we do not think of living organisms as machines or as relays in complex, tightly coupled technological systems. Nonetheless, in recent years this is precisely the manner in which many environmental historians have come to approach the study of certain organisms and their natural or anthropogenic environments. Over the millennia and across the globe, humans have so manipulated certain organisms that they have come to exist solely as parts of technological systems or industrialized chains of production and consumption. Technological artifacts are, of course, only nature refashioned: nonetheless, modern industrialized societies tend to view themselves as gradually distancing themselves from, replacing, or, in some instances, even killing nature with their advanced technologies and gadgetries, when actually they are only refashioning their inseparable relationship to it.

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Articles
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Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 2007

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References

Notes

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