Patzke+Questioning+A+Text

Karin Patzke Experiments in Methods February 6, 2013

Memo: Questioning a Test


 * Pollan, Michael. 1991. //Second nature: a gardener's education//. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press.


 * What is the text “about” -- empirically and conceptually? What modes of inquiry were used to produce it? How is the text structured and performed? How can it circulate? **
 * __ About the author and subject __ : Pollan is a food journalist whose work has focused on “the places where nature and culture intersect.”[1] //Second Nature// is Pollan’s first book and presents both a historical and contemporary narrative of gardening, and small scale farming, in America. A less academic and more approachable counterpart to Leo Marx’s //The Machine in the Garden//, this book address how humans make sense of the world through physical manipulation, conflict and care of domesticated plants and landscape.
 * __ The structure and performance of the text: __ //Second Nature// (//SN// for future references) is written in a first-person memoir format to link Pollan’s personal experience with general understandings of the development of domesticated spaces in the US. Divided into four seasonal chapters, with subchapter components, he moves between a personal narrative and a generalized history of American gardens based on both academic analytic texts and historical non-fiction.
 * __ Circulation: __ While successive books by Pollan have been NYTimes bestsellers, //SN// represents an initiation into the longer narrative format that a book necessitates. It is intended for a ‘popular’ audience and unlike his more recent books, does not contain a sophisticated argument. However, the idea that nature is constructed by society to reflect specific cultural values is worthy of repeating, and as a first lengthy iteration of this by Pollan, it is satisfying in it’s simplicity.
 * __ A note about this memo __ : I use the terms “American” and “US” interchangeably. I know it’s wrong, but this choice is indicative of the text and reflects to US-centric theme of the book.


 * What is the text about – empirically? **
 * __ What phenomenon is drawn out in the text __ ? A social process; a cultural and political- economic shift; a cultural “infrastructure;” an emergent assemblage of science-culture- technology-economics?
 * Pollan explores how gardening in the US how been situated in larger rhetoric of progress and individualism. The author draws on his own experience of gardening as a child in the suburbs to illustrate the rise of hybrid seeds and the discourse of aesthetics in agriculture. In his narration of the purchase and restoration of a dilapidated farmhouse and acreage, Pollan focuses on how these suburban aesthetics informed several poor decisions regarding where, how and what he choose to manipulate (plant, restore, maintain, and change) the landscape.
 * In parallel, Pollan explores why these decisions aren’t represented of only an inexperienced novice, but indicative of temporal and economic contingencies revealed to the author to be specific to ‘modern America.’
 * __ Where __ is this phenomenon located – in a neighborhood, in a country, in “Western Culture,” in a globalizing economy?
 * Pollan focuses on the Northeast for his own personal experience, but uses historical works to flesh out his experience in both comparative means (US notions of estate v. British). However, the text is decidedly US centric and only uses national comparatives to focus on ways in which the American individualism and Puritanical beginnings shaped initial interactions with the landscape.
 * What historical trajectory is the phenomenon situated within? What, in the chronology provided or implied, is emphasized -- the role of political or economic forces, the role of certain individuals or social groups? What does the chronology leave out or discount?
 * Without saying it, Pollan focuses on the overtly political-economics of liberalism shaped agriculture and farming in America. Gardening is used as a means to concentrate behavior to a very individual scale. However, it’s clear from the historical and his own personal narratives that lone white males set to the tone for the means and methods of contemporary gardening in the US.
 * Left out are discussions of history and contemporary agriculture in the southern US, specifically the development and justification of slavery. Also omitted are women and immigrant narratives along with direct statements concerning mono-culture and GMOs. Though I think these later two might be reflective of the timing and knowledge of the author and publication, not necessarily a purposeful omission.
 * What scale(s) are focused on -- nano (i.e. the level of language), micro, meso, macro? What empirical material is developed at each scale?
 * Pollan glides from individuals (himself and historical gardeners) to corporations (in the form of seed catalogs), suburban planners and small-scale farming. The personal tone of the narrative doesn’t change; however it’s clear from Pollan’s narrative that the landscape has always been //too// constructed and as he scales away from individuals to groups of (generalizable) people – which coincidentally scales back from direct involvement with the land – more harm is done.
 * For instance, in narrating the role of seed catalogs, those companies that focus on aesthetics (White Flower’s //The Garden Book// or Wayside’s catalog) fail to accommodate the long term effects of hybrids and annuals in both economic (who can purchase what and when) and environmental terms.
 * Personal experience is used to illustrate these contemporary critical narratives. However, historical anecdotes, like the work of William Cronon and Wendal Barry to contextualize contemporary understanding of historic events.
 * Who are the players in the text and what are their relations? Does the text trace how these relations have changed across time – because of new technologies, for example?
 * The players are “Americans” and “the land.” However, these are within a very narrow scope. Americans, at least those discussed in the book, are white land-owning males. The land is described in (sometimes) romantic terms, illustrating a decidedly American focus on space, ownership, biblical metaphors, and cultivation.
 * Pollan does a great job of re-telling a narrative that I think is rather mainstream. Puritanical immigrants imposed contrary notions of Eden, corruption, and labor on American soil, which in turn has shaped the way both rural and urban cultivation and have taken shape. Urban sprawl is interpreted as a way to take control of ‘untamable’ land, while agriculture is posited as a means by which hard labor counteracts the temptations of nature. Disruptive to this narrative is Pollan’s description of rose hybrids as manifestations of acutely sexual aesthetics in the garden. I might be inclined to analyze these as “domestication technologies” in which the elaborate and time consuming labor of erotic cultivation is used to paradoxically reinforce and negate the role of the American gardener as Puritanical bully.
 * What is the temporal frame in which players play? In the wake of a particular policy, disaster or other significant “event?” In the general climate of the Reagan era, or of “after-the-Wall” globalization?
 * // SN // is focused on a condensed version of American history. Contemporary politics only play a role in so far as they have been guided by historical contingencies.
 * What cultures and social structures are in play in the text?
 * Pollan outlines a tension between multiple cultural values. A romantic pastoral ideal plays out in his narration of small farming and gardening in contemporary America. Focusing on development of agricultural practices by Puritans and immigrants from Britain, agricultural norms are established around themes of hard work and a desire to ‘cultivate’ the wild. Contempory consumer values, generalized superficially as “bigger and better” are presented to illustrate an un-sustainable focus on aesthetics and production in the garden.
 * What kinds of practices are described in the text? Are players shown to be embedded in structural contradictions or double-binds?
 * Pollan presents himself in a double bind. As he has cultivated his own property (through pathways and selective plantings) he values the “natural” beauty of the meadow (a reclaimed agricultural field unique to his ownership) but realizes this meadow is only a temporary aberration. While not a very insightful double bind, it is self-reflective and indicative of Pollan’s larger body of work – to investigate how one might live responsibly in contradictions.
 * How are science and technology implicated in the phenomenon described?
 * Building on the work of Leo Marx (unfortunately without citing or referencing it direction) Pollan presents ‘cultivation’ as a technology used to implement social values on nature. Order is created through specific planning and manipulation, in both small and large-scale tracts.
 * What structural conditions– technological, legal and legislative, political, cultural – are highlighted, and how are they shown to have shaped the phenomenon described in this text? How – at different scales, in different ways – is power shown to operate? Is there evidence of power operating through language, “discipline,” social hierarchies, bureaucratic function, economics, etc?
 * Pollan presents the mid-century debate between nature and culture through a relatively accessible and contemporary lens. At a very high level, ‘culture’ is a condition that governs social interactions with nature. Cultivation is a means by which order is imposed on the un-orderable.
 * Does the text provide comparative or systems level perspectives? In other words, is the particular phenomenon described in this text situated in relation to similar phenomenon in other settings? Is this particular phenomena situated within global structures and processes?
 * Pollan presents a brief comparative analysis of British and American gardens to highlight the distinct characteristics of the American landscape and how those guided the formation of a new aesthetic – particularly in the development of the lawn – as an endless meadow with no fences. However, as a whole, the text shows a surprising lack of comparative analysis, with accentuates the US-centric theme.


 * What is the text about – conceptually? **
 * Is the goal to verify, challenge or extend prior theoretical claims?
 * Pollan extends the nature/culture dichotomy to flesh out the “everyman” relation to gardening and cultivation in 1990s America. Compellingly he presents his own biography as a means to understand the artificiality of the divide and the difficulties of ‘unlearning’ values that have little practical relevance in the field. (pun intended)
 * What is the main conceptual argument or theoretical claim of the text? Is it performed, rendered explicit or both?
 * Pollan’s argument is focused on creating a philosophical (of the arm chair variety) guidance to guiding people – Americans superficially – to address issues of sustainability and governance through //practices// of self-sufficiency. Gardening is an opportunity to learn how to co-exist without damaging. This is explicit in the introduction and performed extensively throughout the text in a variety of ways. Romantic tropes and notions of wildlife are counteracted with Pollan’s own “re-education” through his experiences of gardening.
 * What ancillary concepts are developed to articulate the conceptual argument? How is empirical material used to support or build the conceptual argument?
 * One can see the threads of Pollan’s future work in several of the vignettes. Pollan’s discussion of hybrids and extensively cultivated vegetables can be interpreted as projections of his future work that is critical of GMOs. The chapter on trees and the conflict between social time (the immediate future) and sustainability help to iterate a critique of consumer culture.
 * How robust is the main conceptual argument of the text? On what grounds could it be challenged?
 * It is essential a mainstream book that uses biographical memoir as a means to communicate some-what complex ideas. As such, challenges can be issues in regards to race, gender, economic status and national centralism.
 * How could the empirical material provided support conceptual arguments //other than those// built in the text?
 * It’s only as I complete this questionnaire that I understand how completely on-sided Pollan’s argument is. The text supports a relative narrow version of American agriculture. I’m not sure what else it would be able to support.


 * Modes of inquiry? **
 * What theoretical edifice provides the (perhaps haunting – i.e. non-explicit) backdrop to the text?
 * Pollan relies on a strict re-telling of liberalism and focuses on individual action and beliefs a way to get a collective good. Disrupting the status quo, at least in this early book, is not his purpose. Instead, Pollan attempts to challenge the genre of nature writing in the US to focus on cultivation as opposed to romantic notions of the wild (à la Thoreau).
 * What assumptions appear to have shaped the inquiry? Does the author assume that individuals are rational actors, for example, or assume that the unconscious is a force to be dealt with? Does the author assume that the “goal” of society is (functional) stability? Does the author assume that what is most interesting occurs with regularity, or is she interested in the incidental and deviant?
 * Pollan doesn’t argue for rational actors, but deliberate decision making. Historical contingencies – the liberal, democratic, and consumer rhetorical that informs actions and values are hidden issues to be dealt with through education and experience.
 * Stability plays out in a complex way. Historical narratives have influenced contemporary actions. I might posit “determinism” as a way to understand what Pollan is pushing against.
 * In relation to the deviant or incidental, I might suggest that Pollan is interested in how to reverse the role of what is considered normative from an suburban perspective and transition to normative from an agricultural/environmentally sustainable stance.
 * What kinds of data (ethnographic, experimental, statistical, etc.) are used in the text, and how were they obtained?
 * Is biography ethnographic? I’m not sure. Pollan builds on academic analysis like Cronon and Barry to iterate complex notions of cultural building and urban development to a more general audience. Most often, historical texts, both fiction and non-fiction, are used to support Pollan’s speculations about the built and natural environment.
 * If interviews were conducted, what kinds of questions were asked? What does the author seem to have learned from the interviews?
 * No interviews.
 * How was the data analyzed? If this is not explicit, what can be inferred? How are people, objects or ideas aggregated into groups or categories? What additional data would strengthen the text?
 * Pollan compares his own personal experience with historical and contemporary non-fiction. He focuses on people that look like him – white men and there is little room with women or other ethnicity. Fleshing this out would be great.


 * Structure and performance? **
 * What is in the introduction? Does the introduction turn around unanswered questions -- in other words, are we told how this text embodies a //research// project?
 * Pollan posits this text as both a documentation of learning (through gardening) as well an initial (and tentative) guidance to answer the question “how does one act in nature?” He writes: Everybody wrote about how to //be// in nature, what sorts of perceptions to have, but nobody about how to //act// there. (p3)
 * This is not a finite research project, but an ongoing evaluation: "…the idea of a garden – as a place, both real and metaphorical, where nature and culture can be wedded in a way that can benefit both – may be as useful to us today as the idea of wilderness has been in the past….[despite] the general sense of alarm about our environment….in the garden [there are] some grounds for hope. (p5)"
 * Where is theory in the text? Is the theoretical backdrop to the text explained, or assumed to be understood?
 * Theory in the text is loose.
 * What is the structure of the discourse in the text? What binaries recur in the text, or are conspicuously avoided?
 * At a very general level, Pollan moves between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ throughout the text. And there are repeated riffs on this: suburban and rural, wild and cultivated, garden and forest (or prairie).
 * Socio-economic concerns are very generally discussed in Pollan’s narrative explaining gardening as a status symbol, both in regards to the traditional English garden and the suburban lawn. Each represent (among other things) a leisure time afforded to those with higher incomes.
 * Consumption and production are two that are not expressly written in the text, but are implied. Consumption (both of produce, but also of goods in general) is something urban people do without thinking. But production is something one is forced to consider when in rural communities.
 * Avoided are issues of gender and race.
 * How is the historical trajectory delineated? Is there explicit chronological development? How is the temporal context provided or evoked in the text? How does the text specify the cultures and social structures in play in the text? How are informant perspectives dealt with and integrated?
 * Pollan transitions from his experiences to historical events through out the text without regard to chapter delineations. The chapter headings indicate time (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) and by doing so, for those familiar with gardening, the topics are predetermined.
 * As a pseudo memoir of a middle age white man in American, it’s obvious from the onset that we are not going to be pushing any boundaries there.
 * How does the text draw out the implications of science and technology? At what level of detail are scientific and technological practices described?
 * Pollan’s views of technology are not as specific as a question such as this would imply:
 * “Biological controls won’t solve every pest problem – there are still too few of them, for one thing. But the approach holds promise, and suggests what can be accomplished when we learn to exploit nature's self-knowledge, and stop thinking of our art and technology as being necessarily opposed to nature. For how are we to categorize milky spore disease [a fungus used as a pesticide] as a form of human intervention in the landscape? Is it technological or natural? The categories are no longer much help, at least in the garden.” (p52)
 * T echnology has a very loose meaning in the text. ‘Cultivation’ and ‘gardening’ seem to synonyms to technology and science in the text. This overlap allows for the reader to be critical without really thinking about it.
 * How does the text provide in-depth detail – hopefully without losing readers?
 * The author persistent use of story-telling vignettes as a way to illustrate complex relations is used to do this.
 * What is the layout of the text? How does it move, from first page to last? Does it ask for other ways of reading? Does the layout perform an argument?
 * The chronological aspects of the narrative are reinforced in through the chapter headings: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. This is a disconnect to these two components though; the seasons repeat, while Pollan is advocating for a discontinuation of the norms that have developed around agriculture.
 * What kinds of visuals are used, and to what effect? What kind of material and analysis are in the footnotes?
 * There are no visuals, but footnotes are used to direct the reader to specific texts.
 * How is the criticism of the text performed? If through overt argumentation, who is the “opposition”?
 * The ‘opposition’ is both historical and a form of ‘non-criticallity’ of contemporary interactions with nature. Pollan posits a “wilderness ethic” as a means to counteract long-term destructive land use. However, it’s only a metaphorical use, and presents an alternative to the ‘ownership model’ that has dominated agricultural development.
 * “ The test of the wilderness ethic is not how truthful it is, but how useful it is in doing what we want to do — in protecting and improving the environment” (p185)
 * How does the text situate itself? In other words, how is reflexivity addressed, or not?
 * Pollan presents self-depreciating narratives in his text to invite a reflexivity of the reader.
 * Circulation? **
 * Who is the text written for? How are arguments and evidence in the text shaped to address particular audiences?
 * This is intended for a relatively main-stream audience. It is indicative of the genre of gardening/nature books in that it contains comments on ‘morals’ and ‘ethics’ in the vein //Waldon// or //One Straw Revolution//.
 * What alternative audiences can you imagine for the text, given its empirical and conceptual scope?
 * While it is posited as a gardening book, the themes are distinguishable from others in that suburban sprawl is a large component of the text. However, it’s pretty clear that the text isn’t only for ‘nature lovers’ but also
 * What new knowledge does this text put into circulation? What does this text have to say that otherwise is //not obvious//?
 * Pollan spends only a few pages at the end of the second to last chapter discussing the “wilderness ethic”. Yet it’s clear (especially in multiple readings) that this is the main take away from the text – that there are alternative metaphors and analogies that can be incorporated into one’s relationship with ‘nature’. Furthermore, American-based biblical narratives haven’t provided a sustainable agricultural economy and so re-thinking alternatives to nationally held values are necessary to shift focus.
 * How generalizable is the main argument? How does this text lay the groundwork for further research?
 * While Pollan presents specific historical accounts, he presents his own experiences as those of an “everyman” which encourages affiliation by the reader. However, as a white middle class man, Pollan’s stance is privileged. Nevertheless, it’s clear in his later work that individual experience and the desire for critically engaging normative ideas of consumption and development are the keystones to his inquiry.
 * What kind of “action” is suggested by the main argument of the text?
 * Pollan asserts that a ‘wildlife ethic’ promotes a different way of engaging with the world. He presents gardens as a ‘second nature’ something akin to nature, but manipulated by humans (p194). As such, for Pollan, garden’s are a site of education in which the boundaries of what is nature and what is human are conflated. In viewing the garden, not as “nature” but as a compromise between two sides (or some kind of no-region contingent of both), Pollan advocates for a thoughtful consideration of this boundary as a way to preserve resources, but also define and measure human action.
 * Pollan asserts that a ‘wildlife ethic’ promotes a different way of engaging with the world. He presents gardens as a ‘second nature’ something akin to nature, but manipulated by humans (p194). As such, for Pollan, garden’s are a site of education in which the boundaries of what is nature and what is human are conflated. In viewing the garden, not as “nature” but as a compromise between two sides (or some kind of no-region contingent of both), Pollan advocates for a thoughtful consideration of this boundary as a way to preserve resources, but also define and measure human action.

[1] From his website: http://michaelpollan.com/press-kit/