Human culture and the natural environment form an interdependent dialectical system.

Evidence

In seeking to understand how, between 1500 and 1700, the organic conception of the cosmos gave way to a mechanistic model, an ecological perspective is essential. Focusing on early modern Europe as an ecosystem means more than discovering that today’s kind of environmental crisis has occurred in the past. It means a special sensitivity to the dialectical relationship between human behavior and institutions, on the one hand, and the natural environment, on the other. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 251

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s method shift: ecosystem/ecological history rather than nature-culture dualism — foundational vocabulary for the eco-justice course.
• XREF: The dialectical human-nature model, and the critique of nature-culture dualism, resonates across the polyad’s ecofeminism and settler-colonial threads. — connects to: Every landscape, from city to wilderness, is both cultural and natural — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 82; Environmental problems require cultural analysis, not just scientific study — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 234; Land-based cultures tied their survival ethics to maintaining the land’s carrying capacity. — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1425 (+12 more)
• ADDENDUM: The ground-up history of environmental resource control directly parallels the trees-as-infrastructure essay’s concern with land and living systems as infrastructure.

Broader Connections

• Human culture originates in the socially mediated relation between man and nature #corroborates (0.90)
• Human cultures historically vary with their material or productive basis #expands (0.90) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 861
• Human mastery over nature dialectically increases human dependency on matter. #expands (0.78) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 495
• Abstract systems do not colonise the life-world but interact dialectically with it #expands (0.78) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 347
• Social and cultural structures overdetermine our natural human constitution. #qualifies (0.72)
• Cultural formations are momentary equilibria of old and new social relations #expands (0.72) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1412