ABSTRACT
In The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx (2000) describes two “kingdoms of force”—the pastoral ideal and the industrial modes of economic production and consumption. These two kingdoms of force represent a contested terrain of diverse epistemologies that shape human behavior and social identity. For Marx, pastoral heritage is a mode of consciousness-not simply a matter of expression but a matter of thought and behavior that shape relationships between human beings and nature. As an historian and literary critic of mechanistic society, Marx contends that modern experience is grounded in the tug-of-war between contrasting epistemologies of place: we long for a return to the past ecological state, while the impacts of techno-industrialism continue to transform the lifegiving values of place. For Marx, human beings live in a “middle landscape” situated between pastoral heritage and a burgeoning mechanical area that represents two kingdoms of force that are actively shaping society and nature. Marx maintains that a “redemptive journey” is needed by members of industrial society to restore a more intimate relationship with the natural landscape and with place.
