Hybrid Nature by Daniel Schneider

Hybrid Nature by Daniel Schneider

A history of of the industrial ecosystem that focuses on the biological sewage treatment plant as an early example.

Biological sewage treatment, like electricity, power generation, telephones, and mass transit, has been a key technology and a major part of the urban infrastructure since the late nineteenth century. But sewage treatment plants are not only a ubiquitous component of the modern city, they are also ecosystems--a hybrid variety that incorporates elements of both nature and industry and embodies multiple contradictions. In Hybrid Nature, Daniel Schneider offers an environmental history of the biological sewage treatment plant in the United States and England, viewing it as an early and influential example of an industrial ecosystem.

The sewage treatment plant relies on microorganisms and other plants and animals but differs from a natural ecosystem in the extent of human intervention in its creation and management. Schneider explores the relationship between society and nature in the industrial ecosystem and the contradictions that define it: the naturalization of industry versus the industrialization of nature; the public interest versus private (patented) technology; engineers versus bacterial and human labor; and purification versus profits in the marketing of sewage fertilizer. Schneider also describes biotechnology's direct connections to the history of sewage treatment, and how genetic engineering is extending the reaches of the industrial ecosystem to such natural ecosystems as oceans, rivers, and forests. In a conclusion that shows how industrial ecosystems continue to evolve, Schneider discusses John Todd's Living Machine, a natural purification method of sewage treatment, as the embodiment of the contradictions of the industrial ecosystem.

Schneider, Daniel: - Daniel Schneider is Professor in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and an ecologist for the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. His work on the history of ecology has been awarded the Price/Webster Prize by the History of Science Society.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262516389
ISBN 10	0262516381
Title	Hybrid Nature
Author	Daniel Schneider
Series	Urban And Industrial Environments
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2011-10-14
Number of pages	376
Prizes	Winner of Winner, 2013 George Perkins Marsh Prize, awarded be the American Society for Environmental History 2013
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.