Published by University of California Press

California Studies in Critical Human Geography

Volumes

Book 2003

American Empire

Roosevelt’s Geographer and the Prelude to Globalization

Neil Smith

Volume 9 in this series

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An American Empire, constructed over the last century, long ago overtook European colonialism, and it has been widely assumed that the new globalism it espoused took us "beyond geography." Neil Smith debunks that assumption, offering an incisive argument that American globalism had a distinct geography and was pieced together as part of a powerful geographical vision. The power of geography did not die with the twilight of European colonialism, but it did change fundamentally. That the inauguration of the American Century brought a loss of public geographical sensibility in the United States was itself a political symptom of the emerging empire. This book provides a vital geographical-historical context for understanding the power and limits of contemporary globalization, which can now be seen as representing the third of three distinct historical moments of U.S. global ambition.

The story unfolds through a decisive account of the career of Isaiah Bowman (1878–1950), the most famous American geographer of the twentieth century. For nearly four decades Bowman operated around the vortex of state power, working to bring an American order to the global landscape. An explorer on the famous Machu Picchu expedition of 1911 who came to be known first as "Woodrow Wilson’s geographer," and later as Frankin D. Roosevelt’s, Bowman was present at the creation of U.S. liberal foreign policy.

A quarter-century later, Bowman was at the center of Roosevelt’s State Department, concerned with the disposition of Germany and heightened U.S. access to European colonies; he was described by Dean Acheson as a key "architect of the United Nations." In that period he was a leader in American science, served as president of Johns Hopkins University, and became an early and vociferous cold warrior. A complicated, contradictory, and at times controversial figure who was very much in the public eye, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

Bowman’s career as a geographer in an era when the value of geography was deeply questioned provides a unique window into the contradictory uses of geographical knowledge in the construction of the American Empire. Smith’s historical excavation reveals, in broad strokes yet with lively detail, that today's American-inspired globalization springs not from the 1980s but from two earlier moments in 1919 and 1945, both of which ended in failure. By recharting the geography of this history, Smith brings the politics—and the limits—of contemporary globalization sharply into focus.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520931527
ISBN:: 9780520931527
Subject:: History
Subject:: Regional and National History
Subject:: North America
Subject:: United States of America
Publisher:: University of California Press

Book 1999

On Holiday

A History of Vacationing

Orvar Löfgren

Volume 6 in this series

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Löfgren takes us on a tour of the Western holiday world and shows how two centuries of "learning to be a tourist" have shaped our own ways of vacationing. We see how fashions in destinations have changed through the years, with popular images (written, drawn, painted, and later photographed) teaching the tourist what to look for and how to experience it. Travelers present and future will never see their cruises, treks, ecotours, round-the-world journeys, or trips to the vacation cottage or condo in quite the same way again. All our land-, sea-, and mindscapes will be the richer for Löfgren's insights.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520928992
ISBN:: 9780520928992
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Anthropology
Subject:: Social Anthropology
Publisher:: University of California Press

Book 1999

Shady Practices

Agroforestry and Gender Politics in The Gambia

Richard A. Schroeder

Volume 5 in this series

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Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops.

This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "success story" of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520924475
ISBN:: 9780520924475
Subject:: Geosciences
Subject:: Geography
Publisher:: University of California Press

Book 2023

Making the Invisible Visible

A Multicultural Planning History

Leonie Sandercock

Volume 2 in this series

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The history of planning is much more, according to these authors, than the recorded progress of planning as a discipline and a profession. These essays counter the mainstream narrative of rational, scientific development with alternative histories that reveal hitherto invisible planning practices and agendas. While the official story of planning celebrates the state and its traditions of city building and regional development, these stories focus on previously unacknowledged actors and the noir side of planning.

Through a variety of critical lenses—feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial—the essays examine a broad range of histories relevant to the preservation and planning professions. Some contributors uncover indigenous planning traditions that have been erased from the record: African American and Native American traditions, for example. Other contributors explore new themes: themes of gendered spaces and racist practices, of planning as an ordering tool, a kind of spatial police, of "bodies, cities, and social order" (influenced by Foucault, Lefebvre, and others), and of resistance.

This scrutiny of the class, race, gender, ethnic, or ideological biases of ideas and practices inherent in the notion of planning as a modernist social technology clearly points to the inadequacy of modernist planning histories. Making the Invisible Visible redefines planning as the regulation of the physicality, sociality, and spatiality of the city. Its histories provide the foundation of a new, alternative planning paradigm for the multicultural cities of the future.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520918573
ISBN:: 9780520918573
Subject:: Architecture and Design
Subject:: Architecture
Subject:: History
Publisher:: University of California Press

Book 2020

Changing Fortunes

Biodiversity and Peasant Livelihood in the Peruvian Andes

Karl S. Zimmerer

Volume 1 in this series

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Two of the world's most pressing needs—biodiversity conservation and agricultural development in the Third World—are addressed in Karl S. Zimmerer's multidisciplinary investigation in geography. Zimmerer challenges current opinion by showing that the world-renowned diversity of crops grown in the Andes may not be as hopelessly endangered as is widely believed. He uses the lengthy history of small-scale farming by Indians in Peru, including contemporary practices and attitudes, to shed light on prospects for the future. During prolonged fieldwork among Peru's Quechua peasants and villagers in the mountains near Cuzco, Zimmerer found convincing evidence that much of the region's biodiversity is being skillfully conserved on a de facto basis, as has been true during centuries of tumultuous agrarian transitions.

Diversity occurs unevenly, however, because of the inability of poorer Quechua farmers to plant the same variety as their well-off neighbors and because land use pressures differ in different locations. Social, political, and economic upheavals have accentuated the unevenness, and Zimmerer's geographical findings are all the more important as a result. Diversity is indeed at serious risk, but not necessarily for the same reasons that have been cited by others. The originality of this study is in its correlation of ecological conservation, ethnic expression, and economic development.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520917033
ISBN:: 9780520917033
Subject:: Social Sciences
Subject:: Anthropology
Subject:: Social Anthropology
Publisher:: University of California Press

Book 2014

Agrarian Dreams

The Paradox of Organic Farming in California

Julie Guthman

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In this groundbreaking study of organic farming, Julie Guthman challenges accepted wisdom about organic food and agriculture in the Golden State. Many continue to believe that small-scale organic farming is the answer to our environmental and health problems, but Guthman refutes popular portrayals that pit "small organic" against "big organic" and offers an alternative analysis that underscores the limits of an organic label as a pathway to transforming agriculture.

This second edition includes a thorough investigation of the federal organic program, a discussion of how the certification arena has continued to grow and change since its implementation, and an up-to-date guide to the structure of the organic farming sector. Agrarian Dreams delivers an indispensable examination of organic farming in California and will appeal to readers in a variety of areas, including food studies, agriculture, environmental studies, anthropology, sociology, geography, and history.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520959132
ISBN:: 9780520959132
Subject:: Engineering
Subject:: Introductions and Overviews
Subject:: Engineering, other
Publisher:: University of California Press

Book Ahead of Publication 1999

Imposing Wilderness

Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa

Roderick P. Neumann

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Arusha National Park in northern Tanzania, known for its scenic beauty, is also a battleground. Roderick Neumann's illuminating analysis shows how this park embodies all the political-ecological dilemmas facing protected areas throughout Africa. The roots of the ongoing struggle between the park on Mount Meru and the neighboring Meru peasant communities go much deeper, in Neumann's view, than the issues of poverty, population growth, and ignorance usually cited. These conflicts reflect differences that go back to the beginning of colonial rule. By imposing a European ideal of pristine wilderness, Neumann says, the establishment of national parks and protected areas displaced African meanings as well as material access to the land. He focuses on the symbolic importance of natural landscapes among various social groups in this setting and how it relates to conflicts between peasant communities and the state.

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.0000/9780520929036
ISBN:: 9780520929036
ISBN:: 9780520234680
Subject:: Life Sciences
Subject:: Ecology
Publisher:: University of California Press