The Politics of Scale : A History of Rangeland Science / Nathan F. Sayre.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sayre, Nathan F., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rangelands--United States--History.

Rangelands.

Range ecology--United States.

Range ecology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (282 pages)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Rangelands are vast, making up one quarter of the United States and forty percent of the Earth's ice-free land. And while contemporary science has revealed a great deal about the environmental impacts associated with intensive livestock production-from greenhouse gas emissions to land and water degradation-far less is known about the historic role science has played in rangeland management and politics. Steeped in US soil, this first history of rangeland science looks to the origins of rangeland ecology in the late nineteenth-century American West, exploring the larger political and economic forces that-together with scientific study-produced legacies focused on immediate economic success rather than long-term ecological well being. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, a variety of forces-from the Homestead Act of 1862 to the extermination of bison, foreign investment, and lack of government regulation-promoted free-for-all access to and development of the western range, with disastrous environmental consequences. To address the crisis, government agencies turned to scientists, but as Nathan F. Sayre shows, range science grew in a politically fraught landscape. Neither the scientists nor the public agencies could escape the influences of bureaucrats and ranchers who demanded results, and the ideas that became scientific orthodoxy-from fire suppression and predator control to fencing and carrying capacities-contained flaws and blind spots that plague public debates about rangelands to this day. Looking at the global history of rangeland science through the Cold War and beyond, The Politics of Scale identifies the sources of past conflicts and mistakes and helps us to see a more promising path forward, one in which rangeland science is guided less by capital and the state and more by communities working in collaboration with scientists.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

A Note on Units of Measurement

Preface

Introduction. Rangelands, Science, and the Politics of Scale

One. Producing the Range: Extermination and Fences

Two. Fire and Climax: Bureaucratic Divisions of Scientific Labor

Three. Squinting at Blind Spots: Southwestern Rangelands and the Consolidation of Successional Theory

Four. Fixing Stocking Rates: Monitoring and the Politics of Measurement

Five. To Manage or Manipulate: Natural versus Artificial Improvement of Depleted Rangelands

Six. The Western Range Goes Global: Neo-Malthusianism and Pastoral Development

Seven. Till the Cows Come Home: Overseas Failures and Critiques of Range Science

Conclusion. Capital, Climate, and Community-Based Conservation

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2017.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226083254

022608325X

OCLC:

979417614