Circles of Growing and Eating: The Political Ecology of Food and Agriculture

I find useful Duncan's distinctions among modernity (enabling freedom), capitalism (compelling infinite expansion), and industry ("a qualitatively distinct mode of interacting with nature") (Duncan 1996: 29). Yet his insightful proposals for new social forms appropriate to harmonious, conscious management of natural cycles, are limited by his failure to understand the historical importance of the crisis of Neolithic households. Duncan's proposal (1996: 29) to "drop capitalism, control industrialism, but retain modernity" is improved by an appreciation of the importance and decline of households. It is to understand our present situation in an ecohistorical context that we interpret the experience of the long period of householding, from the N eolithic to the industrial era.