Utopian use of nature for community need contrasted with capitalist profit-driven exploitation
Evidence
In both these communal societies, natural resources were utilized only for items necessary to the community as a whole. Nature was not raped for profits, the methodology on which the rising capitalist economy was to increasingly depend. The needs of the community took precedence over the special interests of the merchant class. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 403
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Directly supports the trees-as-infrastructure and sacrifice articles: here the anti-exploitative communal stewardship of nature is set against the rising capitalist ‘rape’ methodology the book’s core thesis traces.
- QUESTION: The metaphor ‘nature was not raped for profits’ — Merchant’s shorthand for what she elsewhere analyzes at length; worth noting the term does real rhetorical work in the ecofeminist account.
- XREF: connects to: Sustainable communities never interfere with natural systems’ self-regeneration — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 123; Disregard of environmental costs is structural to profit-seeking, not individual bad character — Adam Rome, The Bulldozer in the Countryside:…, 1052; Capitalist profit control of resources harmed environmental quality versus peasant subsistence control. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 254 (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Postmodern nature imagery memorializes a nature already systemically eliminated by capitalism
#qualifies(0.80) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 396 - Commons function as social resources binding communities together, not just property rights.
#expands(0.75) — Emil Sandström and Ann-Kristin Ekman and Karl-Johan Lindholm, Commoning in the periphery – The role…, 10