Midterm Exam Review: Units I & II: Some important themes

ESPM 50AC
K. Worthy

As the syllabus says, the midterm exam will have some combination of true-false, multiple-choice, short answer,
identification, and essay questions that cover all the course materials including lectures, readings, films, and
discussions. The midterm exam tests all material up to and including the previous day of lecture.

Below is a “roundup” of some of the most important terms and concepts from the course leading up to the
midterm. First, look at these hints about the process of studying:

1. Review all the readings, particularly your markups and the summaries you wrote (as advised by the
“Important Reading Guide”).
2. Be sure you can identify the thesis or key points and main argument of all readings and lectures.
3. Review all your notes from discussion, lecture, and films.
4. Go through the reading reflection questions and review them, particularly the ones you didn't answer, but
also review your own RRs to refresh your memory.
5. Invent some of your own questions about the material and see if you can come up with a thesis and some
points from the readings to support them.
6. Study together in partners or with groups.
7. Go through all the terms, concepts, and themes in the review sheet. Perhaps use the sheet to question study
partners.

1. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

a. Four main findings
b. Major ecosystem changes and problems
2. racial geography in New Orleans
a. elevation & race
b. class & vulnerability
c. marginality
3. Different kinds of divisions in New Orleans: race, class, & nature (levees)
4. African Americans in N.O. & incorporation / racism / uneven geographies & mutual segregation of risk
& race
5. Kelman: environmental & social segregation and racialized geography of risk
6. Nature / Society divide
7. Faubourg Treme
8. Levees-only approach & role of levees
9. Site vs. Situation
10. significance of Mississippi River for transportation
a. & the geographic “situation” of New Orleans
b. versus the “site” of New Orleans
11. intersubjective vs. instrumental relationships
a. between people
b. between people & nature
12. Identity & power
a. & Social constructions: culture, race, gender, etc.
13. property: private, state, common
a. role of these in natural resource management
b. usufructory rights
c. property as a bundle of rights and obligations
d. property as a social process
e. control rights, use rights, and other rights and obligations
14. John Locke’s conception of property
a. labor & nature (sweat & soil)
b. means for accumulating wealth (little piece of yellow metal)

K. Worthy, ESPM 50AC: Midterm exam review sheet p. 1 Version: 2018-06-14

 15. land tenure; sovereignty
16. Jeffersonian democracy & land & the agrarian myth
17. Jeffersonian Yeoman farmer, significance of
18. Mercantilism in the fur trade, etc.
a. Territorial expansion
b. Transfer of energy from one region to another (Europe or Eastern cities)
19. Manifest destiny / expansion
20. social construction of (inventing) the Indian
a. I should be able to put up one of the images of Native Americans & you identify the social
construction & perhaps something about the political context, symbolism, incorporation
b. six phases, overlapping
c. images of the noble savage, brutal savage, conquered, dependent, ecological, independent
Indian
d. Krech & Anderson & debate on the “ecological Indian”
21. Gendered divisions of labor
a. in different cultures
22. Distinguishing between Indian & settler conceptions and uses of landscapes
a. Settler: Protestantism, labor, God, property
i. Competitive individualism (as praise to God), dualism (Nature/Society)
b. Subsistence vs. Market production
c. Production for accumulation (Settler)
d. Production for reproduction (Indian) & sustainability
23. settler culture: Protestantism & competitive individualism
24. Cronon: Private P = Ideology of conquest: why?
25. Fredrick Jackson Turner & the frontier narrative & the social construction of an American character
a. The narrative of White man’s progress
26. Three successive frontier narratives
27. backwoodsman vs. pioneer
28. symbolism & function of fences in colonial New England
a. & conflict between Native Americans & European settlers
29. Agrarian Myth vs. Corn Mother Myth
30. Corn, Beans, Squash (“three sisters”) horticulture
31. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)
32. Apostacization (giving up traditional belief when it no longer can function to describe/prescribe the
world)
a. Conflict with new social organization of hunting
b. Conflict with European diseases
c. Conflict with changes in N
33. Dependency
a. accompanying incorporation into mercantilist, then market economy
i. & wages or trade
b. causes of growing dependence of Indian groups on colonial economies and, later, U.S.
government
34. Revolutionary Values: property, social contract, & exclusion (Deloria)
a. Contradiction in founding of U.S.
35. active vs. passive role of Indian tribes in their changing fates during colonization
36. mode of production (examples of)
37. agroecology
a. corn, beans, squash complex & complementarity: structural, ecological, nutritional
38. patchwork biodiversity in New England
a. spatial & temporal diversity
39. types of racial & class incorporation into society
a. Separatist models; assimilationist models; pluralist models
40. the colonial fur trade; key animal (& keystone species)
41. change in mode of production of Micmacs in Maine during colonial period

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 42. mobility of colonial & U.S. capital & labor
43. fire & indigenous (Native American) natural resource management (ex. Yurok)
a. vs. European-American scientific natural resource management
i. e.g. scientific forest management on and near Yurok lands
44. Allotment of Indian lands
45. Indian removal & the trail of tears
46. Six historical phases of U.S. federal Indian policy (general characteristics)
a. General Allotment (Dawes) Act of 1887
b. Indian Reorganization Act
c. Etc.

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