Book ID: CBB485483706

The Usufructuary Ethos: Power, Politics, and Environment in the Long Eighteenth Century (2020)

unapi

Who has the right to decide how nature is used, and in what ways? Recovering an overlooked thread of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century environmental thought, Erin Drew shows that English writers of the period commonly believed that human beings had only the "usufruct" of the earth—the "right of temporary possession, use, or enjoyment of the advantages of property belonging to another, so far as may be had without causing damage or prejudice." The belief that human beings had only temporary and accountable possession of the world, which Drew labels the "usufructuary ethos," had profound ethical implications for the ways in which the English conceived of the ethics of power and use. Drew’s book traces the usufructuary ethos from the religious and legal writings of the seventeenth century through mid-eighteenth-century poems of colonial commerce, attending to the particular political, economic, and environmental pressures that shaped, transformed, and ultimately sidelined it. Although a study of past ideas, The Usufructuary Ethos resonates with contemporary debates about our human responsibilities to the natural world in the face of climate change and mass extinction.

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Authors & Contributors
Generali, Dario
Schleper, Simone
Giovanni Santucci
Taylor, Dorceta E.
Alessia Castagnino
Michela di Macco
Concepts
Science and society
Environmental protection
Environmentalism
Natural philosophy
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Science and politics
Time Periods
20th century
18th century
17th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, late
Places
Italy
United States
Europe
South Carolina (U.S.)
Naples (Italy)
Hawaii (U.S.)
Institutions
International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN)
School of Milan
United Nations Environment Programme
Arcadia
UNESCO
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