Citizenship Across the Curriculum

9 Local Environmental History and the Journey to Ecological Citizenship

9 Local Environmental History and the Journey to Ecological Citizenship Michael B. Smith I feel as if I have gained a stronger sense of ownership of the area. To spend four years at a college or university and not gain any knowledge on the institution’s environment would truly seem like an incomplete college experience. Before I came to Ithaca, like most freshmen I presume, my historical understanding of the area was virtually nonexistent. As embarrassing as it may be, my knowledge of Ithaca was extremely limited; I knew that Cornell, as an Ivy League school, had to be old and that Ithaca College was established a bit more recently, and that the area was prime for outdoor enthusiasts like myself. [My research into twentieth-century urban planning in Ithaca] has created a new connection with the city. This new relationship will likely foster a greater sense of ownership the next time I stroll through downtown, for I will be fairly cognizant of the e√orts behind the sidewalks I tread on or the flowering trees I admire. —adam, rr, S08∞ 166 ⭈ michael b. smith The problem of living in a place without understanding or even knowing the first thing about its natural and human history is not unique to college students, though they are usually among the most transient inhabitants of the towns and cities, of the watersheds and bioregions that host them. One can be a good citizen in many ways without comprehending the complex local historical and ecological forces that shape everyday life. But without at least contemplating those connections, we are unlikely to develop a culture prepared to adapt to the significant ecological changes that will be a hallmark of the twenty-first century. Over the past three years I have discovered that local environmental history projects help my students develop connections and commitments to their host community in a way few other learning experiences can, especially in the humanities . As the epigraph that opens this chapter demonstrates, students have not only been able to better understand the community in historical and ecological context, but they have learned to see their community di√erently, to feel a√ection and respect for it. Each of these transformations is a precondition for a more highly developed capacity for citizenship I and other scholars call ecological citizenship (Dobson 2003; Light 2002).≤ The local environmental history project I have developed as a partnership between the History Center of Tompkins County (New York) and my environmental history course has produced abundant evidence of transformation, evidence that suggests that such projects should be an essential part of teaching citizenship across the curriculum. Declarations of Interdependence As the second industrial revolution played out over the course of the twentieth century, it became clear that Aldo Leopold was right when he argued that we are citizens of more than a human-created polity. Leopold’s was one of many twentieth-century voices issuing declarations of interdependence, expanding the notion of rights and responsibilities to include what he called ‘‘the land’’ (by which he meant nonhuman nature) (Leopold 1970/1949). As Donald Worster (1994) has observed, their moral emphasis focused not on relations among humans alone but on relations among all things. Leopold hoped that by helping people recognize that our connection to and dependence upon nonhuman nature was inescapable, we would reach a new stage of ethical development that would benefit all life. Leopold noted that the education system played a vital role in the inculcation of values necessary for a healthy, sustainable society. But, Leopold argued, ‘‘the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our education and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of the land,’’ a consciousness he believed was a precondition for what he called ‘‘biotic citizenship’’ (261). The trends he identified in the Local Environmental History and the Journey to Ecological Citizenship ⭈ 167 mid-1940s have only become more pronounced in the decades since, especially the mediated nature of our interaction with the world and the fundamental ‘‘placelessness’’ of the digital landscape: Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen, and by innumerable physical gadgets. He has no vital relation to it; to him it is the space between cities on which crops grow. Turn him loose for a day on the land, and if the spot does not...