Victoria Machado | Rollins College (original) (raw)

Uploads

Papers by Victoria Machado

Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

Robert Boschman and Sonya L. Jakubec (eds), Signs of Water: Community Perspectives on Water, Resp... more Robert Boschman and Sonya L. Jakubec (eds), Signs of Water: Community Perspectives on Water, Responsibility, and Hope (Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2022), 464 pp., $44.99 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-77385-234-8.

Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

Recognizing the entangled nature of religion and public activism, this article proposes a new cat... more Recognizing the entangled nature of religion and public activism, this article proposes a new category for individuals operating at the intersections of activism and faith communities: activists of faith, an umbrella term for activists who work in secular activist spaces while also ascribing to particular religious traditions. I propose three categories for understanding these individuals: religious outliers, organizers of faith, and evangelical activists. Drawing from eight years of ethnographic fieldwork, I offer detailed examples of each type within Florida’s environmental movement in order to provide a robust understanding of faith-based ecological resistance in a religiously conservative region of the United States. Such activists go unnoticed as they belong to secular environmental groups, often without overt connections to their religious traditions. While their personal activism may set them at odds with conservative members of their religious communities, faith is a vital p...

Journal for The Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Feb 16, 2022

's Healing Waters offers readers the untold history of the spiritual sentiments that spawned the ... more 's Healing Waters offers readers the untold history of the spiritual sentiments that spawned the rise of water's healing properties in Florida, paving the way for the state's bustling tourism industry. Kilby's book includes photos, advertisements, and other images that paint the picture of Florida's healing waters and the beliefs that lured a range of people to 'take the waters' in hopes of experiencing their healing powers. Kilby largely organizes the book chronologically and by geographical regions in order to provide an alternative medical history that explains the rise of human-nature connections in the Sunshine State. By focusing on the healing powers of Florida's springs and coasts by way of sanatoriums, spas, sea bathing, and hydropathy, Kilby highlights the underlying worldview that created 'magical waters' and 'fountains of youth'. Kilby begins in the rst two chapters by describing the sacred origins of water and the rise of medical tourism in an effort to lay the foundation on which to understand early sentiments of water within Florida. Offering a range of perspectives from around the world and throughout history, Kilby situates water's ability to heal through the idea of 'water as life', rst associating sacred water with Florida's early indigenous people. Kilby later connects these worldviews with those of the ancient Romans and Greeks. The role of water within Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism is also brie y mentioned. However, much of the discussion centers on Europe, as the sacredness of water during the Middle Ages gave rise to scienti c healing with water during the Enlightenment. Collectively these ideas spark the emergence of spa culture that eventually made its way to the US, made popular through destinations like Saratoga Springs, New York, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and, in the 1800s, Florida's springs. In an effort to attract people to Florida, the British turned Florida into 'an earthly paradise' with 'health giving' natural properties encompassed by warm weather, sunshine, and healing water (pp. 15, 19). With such publicity, Florida soon became a place for an elite minority facing disease and sickness, and later expanded more generally to wealthy populations with the advent of the steamboat. Combing through historical archival information, these chapters lay a foundation for an early attraction to water for many well-to-do northerners including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe (pp. 31, 35). Chapters 3 through 6 focus on the mid-1800s to the early 1900s and spotlight the development of 'taking the waters' in Florida by highlighting different springs and the stories and attributes associated with them. These chapters depict the discovery of particular springs, which was often aided by local Native American guides who deemed such locations to be sacred. These discovery stories became folklore, adding to the esoteric ambiance surrounding the springs. Kilby explores the distinct qualities

Bloomsbury Religion in North America, 2021

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2017

Latin America's history is saturated with land reforms, which are viewed as social, economic, and... more Latin America's history is saturated with land reforms, which are viewed as social, economic, and political movements often with a focus on redistributing land rights, ensuring natural resource access, and ideally promoting sustainable livelihoods for the landless. While this is the case with much of the history of this region, rarely do scholars look at these movements in relation to other natural resources, particularly resources that craft the ecological environments that aid these social, economic, and political movements to change, thrive, perish or remain stagnant. Historian Mikael D. Wolfe tackles this quest as he sets out to uncover the role of water in relation to land, politics, and technology in Mexico's Laguna region through his book Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico (2017). Wolfe explores the Laguna region's Nazas River and the controversial Nazas Dam as he exposes the politics, policy, economics and general community understanding of this project and the water from 1910 to the 1970s and later through the 2000s (in the epilogue). He then seeks to uncover how and why Mexican federal engineers (técnicos) and Mexico's post revolutionary government engaged in invasive hydraulic technologies in the process of state development, while knowing it was an unsustainable option. Broadly, Wolfe first presents the controversial Water of the Revolution, through the importance of the river for land rights from the Porfiriato to the Mexican Revolution, the debate over damming the Nazas and an upswelling of pump technology, and the sociopolitical perspective of técnicos. Venturing into the 1940s through the 1970s, he addresses the Second Agrarian Reform by looking at the efforts workers undertook to construct the dam, the role of pumps and pesticides in the face of severe drought and the short-term success as well as short-term solutions for rehabilitation. The epilogue updates this issue as it explores more recent

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

Robert Boschman and Sonya L. Jakubec (eds), Signs of Water: Community Perspectives on Water, Resp... more Robert Boschman and Sonya L. Jakubec (eds), Signs of Water: Community Perspectives on Water, Responsibility, and Hope (Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary Press, 2022), 464 pp., $44.99 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-77385-234-8.

Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture

Recognizing the entangled nature of religion and public activism, this article proposes a new cat... more Recognizing the entangled nature of religion and public activism, this article proposes a new category for individuals operating at the intersections of activism and faith communities: activists of faith, an umbrella term for activists who work in secular activist spaces while also ascribing to particular religious traditions. I propose three categories for understanding these individuals: religious outliers, organizers of faith, and evangelical activists. Drawing from eight years of ethnographic fieldwork, I offer detailed examples of each type within Florida’s environmental movement in order to provide a robust understanding of faith-based ecological resistance in a religiously conservative region of the United States. Such activists go unnoticed as they belong to secular environmental groups, often without overt connections to their religious traditions. While their personal activism may set them at odds with conservative members of their religious communities, faith is a vital p...

Journal for The Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, Feb 16, 2022

's Healing Waters offers readers the untold history of the spiritual sentiments that spawned the ... more 's Healing Waters offers readers the untold history of the spiritual sentiments that spawned the rise of water's healing properties in Florida, paving the way for the state's bustling tourism industry. Kilby's book includes photos, advertisements, and other images that paint the picture of Florida's healing waters and the beliefs that lured a range of people to 'take the waters' in hopes of experiencing their healing powers. Kilby largely organizes the book chronologically and by geographical regions in order to provide an alternative medical history that explains the rise of human-nature connections in the Sunshine State. By focusing on the healing powers of Florida's springs and coasts by way of sanatoriums, spas, sea bathing, and hydropathy, Kilby highlights the underlying worldview that created 'magical waters' and 'fountains of youth'. Kilby begins in the rst two chapters by describing the sacred origins of water and the rise of medical tourism in an effort to lay the foundation on which to understand early sentiments of water within Florida. Offering a range of perspectives from around the world and throughout history, Kilby situates water's ability to heal through the idea of 'water as life', rst associating sacred water with Florida's early indigenous people. Kilby later connects these worldviews with those of the ancient Romans and Greeks. The role of water within Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism is also brie y mentioned. However, much of the discussion centers on Europe, as the sacredness of water during the Middle Ages gave rise to scienti c healing with water during the Enlightenment. Collectively these ideas spark the emergence of spa culture that eventually made its way to the US, made popular through destinations like Saratoga Springs, New York, Hot Springs, Arkansas, and, in the 1800s, Florida's springs. In an effort to attract people to Florida, the British turned Florida into 'an earthly paradise' with 'health giving' natural properties encompassed by warm weather, sunshine, and healing water (pp. 15, 19). With such publicity, Florida soon became a place for an elite minority facing disease and sickness, and later expanded more generally to wealthy populations with the advent of the steamboat. Combing through historical archival information, these chapters lay a foundation for an early attraction to water for many well-to-do northerners including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Harriet Beecher Stowe (pp. 31, 35). Chapters 3 through 6 focus on the mid-1800s to the early 1900s and spotlight the development of 'taking the waters' in Florida by highlighting different springs and the stories and attributes associated with them. These chapters depict the discovery of particular springs, which was often aided by local Native American guides who deemed such locations to be sacred. These discovery stories became folklore, adding to the esoteric ambiance surrounding the springs. Kilby explores the distinct qualities

Bloomsbury Religion in North America, 2021

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2017

Latin America's history is saturated with land reforms, which are viewed as social, economic, and... more Latin America's history is saturated with land reforms, which are viewed as social, economic, and political movements often with a focus on redistributing land rights, ensuring natural resource access, and ideally promoting sustainable livelihoods for the landless. While this is the case with much of the history of this region, rarely do scholars look at these movements in relation to other natural resources, particularly resources that craft the ecological environments that aid these social, economic, and political movements to change, thrive, perish or remain stagnant. Historian Mikael D. Wolfe tackles this quest as he sets out to uncover the role of water in relation to land, politics, and technology in Mexico's Laguna region through his book Watering the Revolution: An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico (2017). Wolfe explores the Laguna region's Nazas River and the controversial Nazas Dam as he exposes the politics, policy, economics and general community understanding of this project and the water from 1910 to the 1970s and later through the 2000s (in the epilogue). He then seeks to uncover how and why Mexican federal engineers (técnicos) and Mexico's post revolutionary government engaged in invasive hydraulic technologies in the process of state development, while knowing it was an unsustainable option. Broadly, Wolfe first presents the controversial Water of the Revolution, through the importance of the river for land rights from the Porfiriato to the Mexican Revolution, the debate over damming the Nazas and an upswelling of pump technology, and the sociopolitical perspective of técnicos. Venturing into the 1940s through the 1970s, he addresses the Second Agrarian Reform by looking at the efforts workers undertook to construct the dam, the role of pumps and pesticides in the face of severe drought and the short-term success as well as short-term solutions for rehabilitation. The epilogue updates this issue as it explores more recent

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics

Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics