Manning Marable (1999) writes that William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) “was without question the most influential black intellectual in American history” (p. v). Even more, he was a citizen of the world, gaining an international stature rarely achieved (Gates, 1989, p. xii). This year is the centennial of The Souls of Black Folk (Du […]
Archive | Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints
Crises: One After Another for the Life of the System
By John Bellamy Foster on November 1, 2002 in Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints, Exchanges
Our disagreement with our friends, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch, is over three interrelated issues: (1) how and why to analyze a crisis-prone capitalism, (2) the capacity of the state to manage or “contain” crises, and (3) the near-term prospects for capital accumulation. In addition there are significant divergences in empirical assessment between us related […]
Helen Keller and the Touch of Nature: An Introduction to Keller’s The World I live In
By John Bellamy Foster on September 1, 2002 in Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints, Contributions, Introductions
Mark Twain asserted that Helen Keller (1880-1968) was immortal—fellow to Caesar, Homer, and Shakespeare—and would “be as famous a thousand years from now as she is to-day” (Twain, 1924, Vol. 2, p. 297). Elementary school teachers have told the story of Keller’s childhood for more than a hundred years, whereas her activist and intellectual developments […]
George Perkins Marsh and the Transformation of the Earth: An Introduction to Marsh’s Man and Nature
By John Bellamy Foster on June 1, 2002 in Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints, Contributions, Introductions
George Perkins Marsh (1801-1882) stated that his book, Man and Nature, was “a little volume showing the whereas [Carl] Ritter and [Arnold] Guyot think that the earth made man, man in fact made earth” (as cited in Lowenthal, 2000, p. 267). With this position, Marsh inverted a dominant theoretical transformation— both destruction and revitalization— of […]
Environmental Sociology and the Environmental Revolution: A 25th Anniversary Assessment
By John Bellamy Foster on March 1, 2002 in Articles, Comments-Short Articles-Introductions to Archival Reprints
It is a great honor to be asked to respond to articles by individuals who can all be rightly considered to be founders of environmental sociology, legendary figures in the field. If I have something distinctive to add to this symposium, it mostly arises out of my own standpoint as a respresentative of what I […]
William Stanley Jevons and The Coal Question
William Stanley Jevons (1835-1882) is best known as a British economist who was one of the pioneers of contemporary neoclassical economic analysis, with its subjective value theory rooted in marginal utility. His applied economics and theoretical insights marked new points of departure for later economist who would more fully shape the neoclassical tradition. But Jevons […]
Henry Salt, Socialist Animal Rights Advocate: An Introduction to Salt’s ‘A Lover of Animals
Henry S. Salt (1851-1939) remains largely unknown today, despite his central role in social and humanitarian movements throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Salt is briefly mentioned in passing when discussing the history of animal rights activism, but serious consideration of his philosophical position has not been conducted. General interpretations of Salt often […]
Robbing the Earth of its Capital Stock
In his influential Letters to the President on the Foreign and Domestic Policy of the United States, U.S. economist Henry Carey (1858) quoted at length from a talk by an “eminent agriculturist” who had provided rough calculations for the whole United States of the loss of soil nutrients resulting from the failure to recycle organic […]
Introduction to John Evelyn’s Fumifugium
John Evelyn (1620-1706) is perhaps best known today as one of the greatest diarist of the 17th-century England. He is also remembered, however, as one the figures behind the formation of the Royal Society of London in 1662 and the greatest proponent of conservation in his age. In his Sylva, Or a Discourse of Forest-Trees […]
‘William Morris’ Letters on Epping Forest: An Introduction
In the initial entry for this section, we are publishing “Three Letters on Epping Forest” written by William Morris (1834-1896). Morris was an English artist, master craftsperson, designer, poet, socialist, and forerunner of modern ecological thought. His designs for furniture, wallpaper, fabrics, stained glass, and other decorative arts revolutionized Victorian sensibilities and spawned the late […]
