Interpreting Nature and Society in the 20th Century

"Interpreting Nature and Society in the Twentieth Century"
Peter Taylor
Anthro 16:070:503 -- Social Organization & 01:070:410 -- Explanation in Anthropology.
Rutgers University, Spring 1997

Seminar Thursday 2.50-5.30, Seminar Room, 2nd floor, CCACC, 8 Bishop Place, CAC
NOTE PLACE CHANGE -- Please spread the word

Peter Taylor
Center for Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture
8 Bishop Place; 932-8678; email: pjt1@rci.rutgers.edu
Office Hours (by sign-up sheet) Wednesday 1.30-2.30

Course description

The meanings different people give to "nature," the tensions among co-existing meanings, and the changes over time can be read in terms of competing and changing views of the desired social order. In this seminar we extend this interpretive perspective to contextualize scientific analyses of social-ecological relations in the twentieth century. We link the science undertaken both to the wider social, political, and economic transformations and to the varying practical concerns of the scientists. We also highlight the trend, by no means uniform, towards frameworks that deal with the complexity generated by the intersection of processes involving differentiated agents and occurring at different scales, from the local to the transnational.
Topics include: ideas of nature; colonial and neo-colonial conservation; ecology in the atomic age; the tragedy of the commons; neo-Malthusianism; local knowledge and rationality; ecological resistance and agency; political ecology; gendered politics of development; planetary management and other global environmental discourses. The areas covered tend to be Third World and non-urban, the interpretive perspectives come mostly from the Western commentators, and the time period is mostly post-World War II. Readings include articles by Williams, Berger, Cronon, Haraway, Beinart, Heims, Little, Watts, Rocheleau, Hecht, Scott, Adas, Schroeder, Ross, and Peluso.
The seminar is designed to stimulate interaction among students from a range of fields, in particular, geography, anthropology, ecology, human ecology, and history of science. Students will develop their ideas through guided reading, submitting questions and thought pieces for discussion to a course email list, seminar discussion, taking turns leading that discussion, reports to the other students on additional readings, other class activities (e.g. simulations and interpretations of slides and videos), presenting progress reports on research papers and commenting on the reports and drafts of other students.

Topics
1. Exploring images of society and nature -- Introduction to course and participants
2. Nature as a social and historical construct
3 Conservation -- Imperialism, patriarchy, purification
4. Systems: Cybernetics and ecology in the atomic age
5. Individuals: Selfish and Aggregable -- Neo-Malthusianism & Tragedy of the Commons in the 60s & critiques in the 70s
6. Models of nomads and nomadic modelers
7. Adapted human ecologies based on local knowledge: adapted, flexible, or vulnerable?
8. Political ecology I: Case studies of agricultural margins & forest frontiers
9. Property, Access and Markets
10. Ecological resistance, agency and power
11. Gendered ecologies and the politics of production
12. International conservation imperatives
13. Student Presentations on research papers
14. Political Ecology II -- Theories of intersecting locally-centered, trans-local processes
Requirements

1. Reading (sometimes a lot), attendance, and participation in the discussion.
2. Lead (probably with 1 or 2 others) the discussion for 2 seminars. Leaders must meet with me in advance of the class.
3. Undergraduates will be assigned to a peer group(s), which will meet for an hour in advance of each class in order to prepare for the discussion and to formulate requests for "background briefings" from me.
4. Before class at least 8 times in the semester students must email to the class list, TBA@rutgers.edu, two questions that they would like discussed.
5. Each week the first part of the seminar will be reading the discussion questions and the 1 page reflection/discussion provocations that students bring to class (at least 5 times in the semester). Bring enough copies for everyone in the seminar. Emailing these also in advance to the class list will allow discussion leaders to prepare better for discussions.
6. Sometime during each seminar each student presents to a sub-group of the other students the additional reading s/he has prepared.
7. The last part of the seminar each week will consist of 1 or 2 students giving short presentations on the progress of their term paper research, conforming to the ideal schedule of progress toward the final term paper (see below.).
8. The term paper will be either a research proposal related to your work or a review of the growing literature in an area or period of "socio-ecological" science. Historical reviews or reviews of current topics not covered directly or sufficiently in the syllabus are particularly welcome, e.g., Ecology's relation to mutualism and co-operation; Ecological economics; Deep ecology, environmental ethics and left ecologies; Sustainable development; Subaltern studies and the environment. I can provide a list of possible readings for many of these topics. The review should use in a disciplined and explicit way some of the interpretive frameworks or themes introduced in the course. 10-15 pages for undergraduates; 15-20 for graduates, properly referenced.
Topic & bibliography , week 4
Outline, week 7
Draft, week 12 (Note the early date!)
Class presentation, week 13
Final version (revised following comments), week after last class (Note the early date!)
9. Extensions are given only if they are negotiated well in advance, and if you get more than 2 weeks behind the schedule above, you must propose an acceptable revised schedule. Being a visitor, I do not want any prolonged incompletes from this course.
10. Submission of one or two suggested additions or substitutions to the readings, with a brief note explaining the recommendation. Due: last class

Grading

Class participation 10%
Discussion leading 20
Submission of reflection/discussion provocations 10
Progress report on term paper 10
Term paper 50

Only graduate student auditors will be allowed, and they will be required to do the reading and participate in class, including to take their turn at leading discussions and to submit reflection/ discussion provocations.

Provisional syllabus and readings
Required readings will be available in a xerox packet from TBA for around $20 (including copyright permissions). Some required readings, marked #, are not included in the reader, mostly because of excessive permission charges. These and the additional readings will be will be placed on reserve at CCACC (open 9.30-4.30 only).

1. Exploring images of society and nature -- Introduction to course and participants
(two strands of course: study of ecological and social processes and social studies of science; "intrasecting processes"; ideas about nature as ideas about society -- a slide presentation)
Post- class readings (to report on during the first part of class 2):
Required:
Williams, R. (1980) "Ideas of Nature," in Problems in Materialism and Culture. London: Verso, 67-85.
Additional:
1. Berger, J. (1980) "Why Look at Animals?" In About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books, 1-26.
2. Taylor, P. J. and C. E. London (ms.). "Re/constructing agency (and other important things) in the diagramming of social-natural relations."
3. Taylor, P. J. and R. García-Barrios (1995). "The social analysis of ecological change: From systems to intersecting processes." Social Science Information 34(1): 5-30.
4. Worster, D. (1977) "Science in Arcadia & The empire of reason." In Nature's economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2-55.

2. Nature as a social and historical construct

Required reading:
Cronon, W. (1983) Changes in the Land N.Y.: Hill & Wang, 3-15; 159-170
#Cronon, W. (1991) Nature's metropolis: Chicago and the Great West New York: Norton, Chapters 3-5 (i.e., 97-259).
Additional readings:
1. Merchant, C. (1989). Ecological revolutions. Chapel Hill, U. N. Carolina, chaps. 1 & 8
2. Denevan, W. M., 1992, "The pristine myth - The landscape of the Americas in 1492", Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 82(3): 369-385.
3. Giles-Vernick, T. (1995). "Envisioning history in land: Mpimu historiography and ecology in the Central African Republic." Workshop on Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Management in a Comparative Global Context, Cornell University, April.
4. Williams, R. (1973). "Country and the City," in Country and the City. New York, Oxford University Press, 272-306.
5. Rowling, N. (1987). "Introduction," in Commodities: How the world was taken to market. London, Free Assoc Books, 7-21.

3 Conservation -- Imperialism, patriarchy, purification
Required:
Haraway, D. (1989). "Teddy bear patriarchy: Taxidermy in the garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936," in Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern sciences. New York, Routledge, 26-58.
Additional:
1a. Roosevelt, T. (1905). "National duties," in The strenuous life. New York, The Century Co., 279-297.
1b. Osburn, H. F. (1923). "Foreword," to C. Akeley, In Brightest Africa. New York, Garden City Publishing Co., ix-xii.
1c. Akeley, C. (1923). "Is the Gorilla Almost a Man?," in In Brightest Africa. New York, Garden City Publishing Co., 236-267.
2. Beinart, W. (1990). "Empire, Hunting, and Ecological Change in Southern and Central Africa," Past and Present 128: 162-186.
3. Neumann, R. (1995). "Ways of reseeing Africa: Colonial recasing of African society and landscape in the Serenegeti National Park." Ecumene 2(2): 149-169.
4. Ranger, T. (1989) "Whose Heritage? The Case of The Matobo National Park." Journal of Southern African Studies 15: 217-249.

4. Systems: Cybernetics and ecology in the atomic age
Required readings:
Odum, E.P. (1964), "New Ecology," Bioscience 14: 14-16.
Odum, H.T. "Chaps. 1, part 2, 11." In Environment, Power & Society, Pp. 1-41, 304-310. New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1971.
Additional readings:
1a. Heims, S. (1980) John von Neumann and Norbert Weiner Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, chapter 10.
1b. Excerpts from the Conference on Teleological Mechanisms:
Frank, L.K. (1948) "Foreword." Annals of the New York Academy of Science 50: 189-196
Hutchinson, G. E. (1948) "Circular Causal Systems in Ecology." Annals of the New York Academy of Science 50: 221-223,236-246.
2. Bateson, G. (1946). "Physical thinking and social problems," Science 103: 717-718.
3. Taylor, P. J. (1988). "Technocratic Optimism, H.T. Odum, and the Partial Transformation of Ecological Metaphor after World War II," Journal of the History of Biology 21(2): 213-244.
4. Taylor, P. J. and A. S. Blum (1991). "Ecosystems as circuits: Diagrams and the limits of physical analogies," Biology & Philosophy 6: 275-294.

5. Individuals: Selfish and Aggregable -- Neo-Malthusianism & Tragedy of the Commons in the 60s & critiques in the 70s
Ehrlich, P. R. (1968). The population bomb. New York, Ballantine -- excerpts to be determined.
Hardin, G. (1968). "The Tragedy of the Commons," Science 162: 1243-1248.
Roberts, A. (1979) "The 'tragedy' of the commons," from The Self-Managing Environment London: Allison & Busby, chap. 10
Harvey, D. (1974). "Population, resources and the ideology of science," Economic Geography 50: 256-277.

6. Models of nomads and nomadic modelers
Picardi, A. and W. Seifert (1976). "A tragedy of the commons in the Sahel," Technology Review May: 42-51.
Coughenour, M., J. Ellis, D. Swift, D. Coppock, K. Galvin, J. McCabe, T. Hart (1985) "Energy extraction and use in a nomadic pastoral ecosystem," Science 230: 619-625.
Ellis, J. and D. Swift. (1989) "Stability of African pastoral ecosystems: Alternate paradigms and implications for development," J. Range Management 41:450-459.
Additional readings
1. Taylor, P. (1992). "Re/constructing socio-ecologies: System dynamics modeling of nomadic pastoralists in sub-Saharan Africa," in A. Clarke and J. Fujimura (Ed.), The Right Tools for the Job: At work in twentieth-century life sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 115-148.
2. Little, M. A., N. Dyson-Hudson, R. Dyson-Hudson, J. E. Ellis, and D. M. Swift. "Human Biology and the Development of the Ecosystem Approach." In The Ecosystem Approach in Anthropology, ed. E.F. Moran. Boulder: Westview, 1984.
3. Little, P. (1988). "Land use conflicts in the agricultural/pastoral borderlands: The case of Kenya," in P. Little, M. Horowitz and A. Nyerges (Ed.), Lands at risk in the third world: Local level perspectives. Boulder: Westview, ed., 195-212.

7. Adapted human ecologies based on local knowledge: adapted, flexible, or vulnerable?
Required reading:
Rappaport, R. (1968). Pigs for the ancestors: Ritual in the ecology of a New Guinea people. New Haven: Yale University Press. Reprinted with epilogue, 1984 -- selections to be determined.
Richards, P. (1983). "Ecological change and the politics of land use," African Studies Review 26: 1-72.
Additional readings:
1a. Watts, M. J. (1984). "The demise of the moral economy: food & famine," in E. Scott (Ed.), Life Before the Drought. Boston, MA: Allen & Irwin, 124-148.
1b. Watts, M. (1983) "On the poverty of theory: Natural hazards research in context," in K. Hewitt (ed.) Interpretations of calamity from the viewpoint of human ecology Boston: Allen & Unwin, 231-262.
2. Rocheleau, D. (1991). "Gender, ecology and the science of survival: Stories and lessons from Kenya." Agriculture and Human Values 8(1): 156-165.
3. Toledo, V. (1990) "The ecological rationality of peasant production," in ed. Altieri, M. and S. Hecht, Agroecology and small farm development. Boca Raton; CRC Press, 53-60.
4. Geertz, C., Local Knowledge, excerpt to be decided.

8. Political ecology I: Case studies of agricultural margins & forest frontiers
Required reading:
Little, P. (1988). "Land use conflicts in the agricultural/pastoral borderlands: The case of Kenya," in P. Little, M. Horowitz and A. Nyerges (Ed.), Lands at risk in the third world: Local level perspectives. Boulder: Westview, ed., 195-212.
Additional readings:
1. Collins, J. (1987) "Labor Scarcity and Ecological Change," in Little, P., Horowitz, M., and Nyerges, A. (eds.) Lands at Risk in the Third World: Local Level Perspectives. Boulder: Westview, 19-37.
2. Hecht, S. (1985) "Environment, development and politics: capital accumulation and the livestock sector in eastern amazonia," World Development 13: 663-684.
3. Watts, M. (1987) "Drought, environment and food security," in M. Glantz (ed.), Drought and hunger in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 171-211.
4. Ribot, J. (1995). "From exclusion to participation: Turning Senegal's forest policy around." World development 23(9): 1587-1599.
5. García-Barrios, R. and García-Barrios, L. (1990) "Environmental and technological degradation in peasant agriculture: A consequence of development in Mexico," World Development 18: 1569-1585.
Extra:
Watts, M. and R. Peet (eds.) (1996) Liberation Ecologies.
Neumann, R. and R. Schroeder (1995). "Manifest Ecological Destinies: Local Rights and Global Environmental Agendas." Antipode 27(4): 321-448.

9. Property, Access and Markets
#Berkes, F., D. Feeny, B. McCay & J. Acheson (1989) "The benefits of the commons." Nature 340:91-93.
Peters, P. (1987). "Embedded systems and rooted models: The grazing lands of Botswana and the commons debate," in B. J. McKay and J. M. Acheson (Ed.), The question of the commons: The culture and ecology of communal resources. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 171-194.
Additional readings:
1. Taylor, P. (1995ms.) "Two inversions"
2a. Wade, M. (1987) "The management of common property resources: collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation," Camb. J. Econ. 11: 95-106.
2b. García-Barrios, R. and D. Mayer-Foulkes (1996ms.). "Fair is efficient: Labor regimes and distributive justice in the profit maximization firm." .
3. Wade, M. (1987) "The management of common property resources: collective action as an alternative to privatisation or state regulation," Camb. J. Econ. 11: 95-106.
4. Marginson, S. (1988) "The economically rational individual," Arena 84: 105-114.
5. Pearce, D., A. Markandya and E. Barbier (1989). "Prices and incentives," in Blueprint for a Green Economy. London: Earthscan, 154-172.
6. Rees, J. (1992). "Markets - The panacea for environmental regulation?" Geoforum 23: 383-394.

10. Ecological resistance, agency and power
Required:
Mackenzie, F. (1991). "Political economy of the environment, gender and resistance under colonialism: Murnag'a District, Kenya 1910-1950." Canadian Journal of African Studies 25(2): 226-256.
Additional:
1. Scott, J. (1987). "Resistance without protest and without organization," Comparative Studies in Society and History 29: 417-452.
2. Sarkar, T. (1985) "Jitu Santal's Movement in Malda, 1924-1932: A Study in Tribal Protest," Subaltern Studies IV: 136-164.
3. Smith, C. A. (1984) "Local history in global context: Social and economic transitions in Western Guatemala," Comparative studies in society and history 26(2): 193-228.
4. Adas, M. (1980). "'Moral economy' or 'contested state'? Elite demands and the origins of peasant protest in Southeast Asia," Journal of Social History 19(4): 521-546.
5. Mitchell, T. (1990). "Everyday metaphors of power." Theory and Society 19: 545-577.

11. Gendered ecologies and the politics of production

Required reading:
Schroeder, R. (1993). "Shady practice: Gender and the political ecology of resource stabilization in Gambian garden/ orchards." Economic Geography 69(4): 349-365.
Additional readings:
1. Carney, J. and M. Watts (1991). "Disciplining women? Rice, mechanization, and the evolution of Mandinka gender relations in Senegambia." Signs 16(4): 651-681.
2. Guyer, J. (1991). "Female farming in anthropology and African history," in M. di-Leonardo (Ed.), Gender at the Crossroads of Knowledge: Feminist Anthropology in the Post-Modern Era. Berkeley, University of California Press, 257-277.
3. Leach, M. (1992). "Gender and the environment: Traps and opportunities." Development in Practice 2(1): 12-22.
4. Mackenzie, F. (1991). "Political economy of the environment, gender and resistance under colonialism: Murnag'a District, Kenya 1910-1950." Canadian Journal of African Studies 25(2): 226-256.
5a. Jackson, C. (1995). "Radical environmental myths: A gender perspective." New Left Review.210:124-142
5b. Love, R. (1989). "The laws of life," in The Total Devotion Machine and Other Stories. London, The Women's Press, 39-45.

12. International conservation imperatives
Peluso, N. (1993). "Coercing conservation: The politics of state resource control," Global environmental change (June): 199-217.
Guyer, J. I. and P. Richards (1996). "The invention of biodiversity: Social perspectives on the management of biological variety in Africa." Africa 66(1): 1-13.
Additional:
1. Fairhead, J. and M. Leach (1996). "Enriching the landscape: Social history and the management of transition ecology in the forest-savanna mosaic of the Republic of Guinea." Africa 66(1): 14-36.
2. Schroeder, R. (1996). "'Re-claiming' land in The Gambia: Gendered property rights and environmental intervention." Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
3a. Taylor, P. J. (1997). "How do we know we have global environmental problems? Undifferentiated science-politics and its potential reconstruction," in P. J. Taylor, S. E. Halfon and P. E. Edwards (Eds.), Changing Life: Genomes-Ecologies-Bodies-Commodities. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
3b. Glantz, M. (1989) "Introduction and summary." In M. Glantz (ed.), Societal responses to regional climatic change:Forecasting by analogy Boulder, CO: Westview, 1-7, 407-428.
3c. Agarwal, A. and S. Narain (1991). "Global Warming in an Unequal World: A Case of Environmental Colonialism," Earth Island Journal (Spring): 39-40.
4a. Meffe, G. K., A. H. Ehrlich, et al. (1993). "Human population control: The missing agenda," Conservation Biology 7(1): 1-3.
4b. Taylor, P. J. and R. García-Barrios (1996). "The dynamics of socio-environmental change and the limits of neo-Malthusian environmentalism," ms. to appear in M. Dore, T. Mount and H. Shue (Eds.), Limits to markets: Equity and the global environment. Oxford, Blackwell.
5. Ross, A. (1991) "Is global culture warming up?" Social Text 28: 3-30.

13. Student Presentations on research papers

14. Political Ecology II -- Theories of intersecting locally-centered, trans-local processes
Required reading:
Taylor, P. and D. Hall (1997)ms. "Political ecology and the changing nature of social theory"
Additional readings:
1. Taylor, P. (1990) "Mapping ecologists' ecologies of knowledge," Philosophy of Science 1990, Vol. 2: 95-109.
2. Taylor, P. J. (1995). "Building on construction: An exploration of heterogeneous constructionism, using an analogy from psychology and a sketch from socio-economic modeling." Perspectives on Science 3(1): 66-98.
3a. Taylor, P. J. and R. García-Barrios (1995). "The social analysis of ecological change: From systems to intersecting processes." Social Science Information 34(1): 5-30.
3b. Wolf, E. (1982). "Afterword," in Europe and People without History. Berkeley, U. Calif. Press, 385-391.
4a. P. Blaikie, The political economy of soil erosion in developing countries (London: Longman, 1985), chaps. 5-7.
4b. Watts, M. (1990a) "Review of Brookfield and Blaikie: Land degradation and society," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 4:123-131.
5. Peet, R. and M. Watts (1993). "Introduction: Development theory and environment in an age of market triumphalism." Economic Geography 69(3): 227-253.