Dead As Dirt: An Environmental History of the Dead Body

死如泥土：尸体的环境史

• 批准号: 0714566
• 负责人: Ellen Stroud
• 金额: $ 0.76万
• 依托单位: Bryn Mawr College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2006
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2006-08-10 至 2008-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0714566&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.

项目概要Dead As Dirt：《死尸的环境史》是一本研究20世纪美国死尸环境史的书籍，参考了死亡工业的记录和专业文献，尸体的生物学和化学及其处理的历史，尸体处理的法律的历史，以及私人和公共墓地、火葬场、陵墓和殡葬协会的档案收藏。随着这本书跟随美国尸体在二十世纪不断变化的物质旅程，它探索了人类身体与技术，财产，政治和思想历史之间的联系。丧葬习俗和尸体处理技术的变化塑造了美国的环境，景观和生活，就像物质身体本身的变化一样。现代美国的尸体是有毒的：牙齿中的汞，关节中的金属，乳房中的硅树脂，以及胸腔中的电池都使尸体处理变得复杂。通过关注人类遗骸的“自然”，《死如粪土》从重新配置人类在环境历史中的地位中汲取了知识价值，不仅是作为行为者，而且是动态生态系统的组成部分。 学术界以外的许多人--甚至是那些最热衷于环境政治和改革的普通公众--认为人类从根本上是“自然”之外的。“在考虑人类尸体的环境历史时，更广泛的影响Dead As Dirt不仅扩大了环境历史的领域，在该领域与科学和技术的历史之间建立了更强的联系，而且通过为本科生和普通读者提供一个有用的和新颖的框架，将人们（活着的和死去的）视为其环境的组成部分，将产生更广泛的影响。活人在“环境”和“自然”中的地位和作用往往似乎不清楚。相比之下，尸体可以很容易地被理解为一种东西，一种生物实体，它塑造了景观，生态系统和资源网络，它是其中的一部分。尸体的物质生活清楚地表明，人类深深地、不可避免地嵌入了自然系统。