monoculture
(ˈmɒnəʊkʌltjʊə(r))
[irreg. f. mono- + culture n. Cf. F. monoculture (1842 in Robert).]
a. The cultivation or exploitation of a single crop, to the exclusion of others that are possible. Also fig.
| 1915 C. R. Enock Tropics xxxiii. 373 The decline of sugar ‘monoculture’ may have proved a blessing in disguise. Cotton and many food-stuffs are now produced. 1925 E. F. Row tr. Demangeon's Brit. Empire 134 This plantation system, this exploiting to the uttermost of a single valuable product, involves the dangers of all monoculture. 1948 Times 17 June 5 The name [sc. groundnut scheme] is too suggestive of monoculture and dustbowls. 1961 J. Russell tr. Lévi-Strauss's World on Wane iv. 39 Humanity has taken to monoculture, once and for all, and is preparing to produce civilization in bulk, as if it were sugar-beet. 1962 Economist 7 July 60/1 A ‘monoculture’ economy dependent on only one resource for most of its income. 1970 J. Ardagh New France vi. 206 The monoculture of cheap wine was dangerous for the region's economy. 1974 Country Life 28 Mar. 710/1 The replacement of broad-leaved woodland with conifer and increasing monoculture. |
b. An area in which monoculture is practised or a single kind of (higher) animal maintained.
| 1951 New Biol. X. 56 Nature abhors a monoculture, and the most carefully tended orchards soon become ecological associations with distinctive flora and fauna. 1970 New Scientist 21 May 372/1 The transformation of habitats from virgin forests to cultivated woods, vast crop monocultures, industrial areas and big cities is the most radical change of nature that has struck Europe since the last glaciation. 1974 Environmental Conservation I. 17/2 Huge areas are turned into monocultures. 1974 Nature 24 May 307/3 One is towards the establishment of monocultures of eland, wildebeest, gazelle or kob. |
c. An area in which all the inhabitants share a common culture or way of life.
| 1968 Listener 5 Sept. 298/1 Los Angeles's least endearing characteristic: the tendency to fragment into self-contained, specialised areas—social monocultures. Functional monocultures, too: in Los Angeles you tend to go to a particular place to do a particular thing. |
Hence monoˈcultural a.; monoˈculturist, one who practises or advocates monoculture.
| 1915 C. R. Enock Tropics xl. 442 Events in some tropical lands have laid bare the unwisdom of monocultural methods. 1928 E. R. Johnson et al. Princ. Transportation xxi. 243 The South from earliest colonial days has been agricultural and primarily monocultural. 1964 Gould & Kolb Dict. Soc. Sci. 583/1 The ‘Deep South’ region of U.S.A. exhibits specialized cultural, political, and economic (monocultural) features. 1965 New Scientist 23 July 199/1 Monocultural crop planting on totally cleared areas. 1968 W. E. Lambert et al. in J. A. Fishman Readings Sociol. of Lang. (1968) 479 It is of special interest to note a basically similar pattern appearing in all three of the American settings, two bicultural and one monocultural. 1973 Country Life 30 Aug. 586/2 The monoculturists' ideas of good yields being likely to cause any self-respecting rotational farmer to blush with shame. |