“The Ravages of the Axe”: The Meaning of the Tree Stump in Nineteenth-Century American Art

Cikovsky, Nicolai

doi:10.1080/00043079.1979.10787708

Cited by 5 publications

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“…5 On England see Stephen Daniels (1988: 43-45), who argues that by 1800, when England had become ''one of the least wooded of all north European nations,'' planting trees became associated with laying claims to land and ''the association of planting with property was enshrined in law.'' For one anonymous example of Americans' popular interest in trees as witnesses to land claims, see ''Famous Trees'' (Famous Trees 1870), published in Appleton's Journal the year before its feature on Ellis's Traveler's Tree (discussed later); see also Cikovsky 1979;Kammen 1992;and Novak 1995. 6 Russell A. Mittermeier, president of Conservation International, coined the phrase ''flagship species'' as a way of drawing attention to and advertising conservation issues (Meyers 1995 (Dorr 1987: 40), perhaps including these.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Ravenala MadagascariensisSonnerat: The Historical Ecology of a“ Flagship Species” in Madagascar

Feeley‐Harnik¹

2001

Ethnohistory

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Conservationists in Madagascar emphasize the need to educate local farmers about proper land use, while often ignoring the ideas and practices of expatriate residents in past and present debates about Malagasy ecology. The premise of this article is that we need to study both within the same analytical framework to understand the complexities of social-ecological change in Madagascar. The ravinala or ''Traveler's Tree'' (Ravenala madagascariensis), a longtime symbol of Madagascar, serves here as a kind of cultural common ground. Focusing on changing accounts of the tree over time, I argue that the contradictory images of a living, bleeding Eden-found in many popular and scholarly accounts of Madagascarare rooted in religious and political conflicts that are relevant to the country's ecological history. This case study furthers our general understanding of ''the social life of trees'' by showing how people use trees to orient themselves in place and time, to articulate their relations with other living beings in their immediate and more distant surroundings, and to establish and legitimate claims to land.

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Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Ravenala MadagascariensisSonnerat: The Historical Ecology of a“ Flagship Species” in Madagascar

Feeley‐Harnik¹

2001

Ethnohistory

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“…By then Bancroft's symbols of triumphant conquest had become 638 D. Lowenthal emblems of horrendous desecration. The logger's axe and the hewn stump no longer meant the advance of civilization; they now denoted the rape of innocent nature (Cikovsky, 1971;Cox et al, 1985, pp. 144 -147).…”

Section: Cultural Differencesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Living with and looking at landscape

Löwenthal

2007

Landscape Research

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From Arbor Day to the Environmental Sabbath: Nature, Liturgy, and American Protestantism

Schmidt

1991

H. Theolo. Review

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In the past two decades considerable theological energy has been expended in the construction of various ecological theologies and spiritualities. Process theologians, ecofeminists, and theologians of creation, earth, nature, ecology, and land have been elucidating religious perspectives that they hope will help transform human attitudes toward nature and the environment. These writers have sought to reorient Christianity away from anthropocentric views that claim human dominion over nature, premillennial expectations that embrace the destruction of this world, soteriological preoccupations that focus on individual salvation, and otherworldly assumptions that foster alienation from the earth and nature. Some sanguine observers have seen this recent ferment as the greening of American theology or even the greening of the American churches. At the same time, intellectual historians have paid increasing attention to the history of Western ideas about nature and have debated at length the impact of Christianity's theological heritage on the environmental crisis. Specifically, a number of historians have constructed a genealogy of American conservationist and preservationist thought by tracing out a line that includes, among others, George Catlin, Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and Rachel Carson.

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“The Ravages of the Axe”: The Meaning of the Tree Stump in Nineteenth-Century American Art

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Ravenala MadagascariensisSonnerat: The Historical Ecology of a“ Flagship Species” in Madagascar

Ravenala MadagascariensisSonnerat: The Historical Ecology of a“ Flagship Species” in Madagascar

Living with and looking at landscape

From Arbor Day to the Environmental Sabbath: Nature, Liturgy, and American Protestantism

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