Dead As Dirt: An Environmental History of the Dead Body

死如泥土：尸体的环境史

• 批准号: 0526255
• 负责人: Ellen Stroud
• 金额: $ 4.75万
• 依托单位: Oberlin College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-09-01 至 2007-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0526255&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Dead; Dirt; Environmental; History; Body

Project SummaryDead As Dirt: An Environmental History of the Dead BodyDead As Dirt is a book project examining the environmental history of deadbodies in the twentieth-century United States, drawing on the records and professionalliterature of the death industries, the histories of the biology and chemistry of corpsesand their treatments, the legal history of corpse handling, and archival collections ofboth private and public cemeteries, crematoria, mausoleums and burial societies. As thebook follows the changing material journeys of American corpses over the twentiethcentury, it explores connections between human bodies and histories of technology,property, politics, and thought. Changes in funerary practices and technologies of bodydisposal have shaped American environments, landscapes, and lives, as have changes in material bodies themselves. The modern American corpse is toxic: mercury in teeth,metal in joints, silicone in breasts, and batteries in chests have all made body disposalnewly complex. Intellectual MeritsBy focusing on the "nature" of human remains, Dead As Dirt draws its intellectual merit from reconfiguring the place of people within environmental history, not merely as actors, but as constituent parts of dynamic ecological systems. Many people outside the academy - even those members of the general public most engaged with environmental politics and reform - think of human beings as fundamentally outside of "nature." In considering the environmental history of the human corpse, Broader ImpactsDead As Dirt not only expands the field of environmental history, building stronger connections between that field and the histories of science and technology, but will have a broader impact by offering undergraduates and general audience readers a useful and novel framework for considering people (both living and dead) as literally components of their environments. The place and role of living people in the "environment" and "nature" often seems unclear. A corpse, by contrast, can be easily understood as a thing, as a biological entity, which both shapes and is shaped by the landscapes, ecosystems and resource networks of which it is a part. The material lives of dead bodies make clear that people are deeply and inescapably embedded in natural systems.

项目摘要：作为泥土的身体：作为泥土的身体的环境史是一个图书项目，考察了20世纪美国身体的环境历史，借鉴了死亡行业的记录和专业文献，身体及其处理的生物和化学史，身体处理的法律历史，以及私人和公共墓地、火葬场、陵墓和墓葬协会的档案收藏。由于这本书跟踪了美国身体在20世纪不断变化的物质旅程，它探索了人体与技术、财产、政治和思想的历史之间的联系。葬礼惯例和遗体处理技术的变化塑造了美国的环境、风景和生活，物质遗体本身也发生了变化。现代美国人的身体是有毒的：牙齿中的汞，关节中的金属，乳房中的硅胶，胸部中的电池，这些都使身体处置变得新的复杂。知识价值通过关注人类遗骸的“自然”，《泥土之死》通过重新配置人类在环境历史中的地位，不仅是作为参与者，而且作为动态生态系统的组成部分，获得了知识上的价值。学院之外的许多人--甚至是那些最热衷于环境政治和改革的普通公众--认为人类从根本上来说是“自然”之外的。在思考人类身体的环境历史时，《更广泛的影响》《作为泥土的死亡》不仅扩大了环境历史的领域，在该领域与科技史之间建立了更紧密的联系，而且还将产生更广泛的影响，为本科生和普通读者提供一个有用的、新颖的框架，将人(包括活着的和死亡的)视为其环境的字面组成部分。活着的人在“环境”和“自然”中的地位和作用往往似乎不清楚。相比之下，身体很容易被理解为一个东西，一个生物实体，它既塑造了它所属的景观、生态系统和资源网络，也受到了它的塑造。身体的物质生活清楚地表明，人深深地、不可避免地植根于自然系统中。