OXFORD GEOGRAPHICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Editors: Gordon Clark, Andrew Goudie, and Ceri Peach
THE NATURE OF THE STATE
Editorial Advisory Board Professor Kay Anderson (Australia) Professor Felix Driver (United Kingdom) Professor Rita Gardner (United Kingdom) Professor Avijit Gupta (United Kingdom) Professor Christian Kesteloot (Belgium) Professor David Thomas (United Kingdom) Professor B. L. Turner II (USA) Professor Michael Watts (USA) Professor James Wescoat (USA)
ALS O PUBLISHED BY O XF OR D U N I V E RS I T Y P R E S S I N T HE O XF ORD G EOGRAP HI C A L A N D E N V I R O N M E N T A L S T U D IE S S E R I E S ConXict, Consensus, and Rationality in Environmental Planning An Institutional Discourse Approach
Yvonne Rydin Social Power and the Urbanization of Water Flows of Power
Erik Swyngedouw An Uncooperative Commodity Privatizing Water in England and Wales Karen J. Bakker Manufacturing Culture The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice Meric S. Gertler Thailand at the Margins Internationalization of the State and the Transformation of Labour Jim Glassman War Epidemics An Historical Geography of Infectious Diseases in Military ConXict and Civil Strife, 1850–2000 M. R. Smallman-Raynor and A. D. CliV Industrial Transformation in the Developing World Michael T. Rock and David P. Angel Worlds of Food Place, Power, and Provenance in the Food Chain Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch Decolonizing the Colonial City Urbanization and StratiWcation in Kingston, Jamaica Colin Clarke Poliomyelitis A World Geography: Emergence to Eradication M. R. Smallman-Raynor, A. D. CliV, B. Trevelyan, C. Nettleton, and S. Sneddon Putting Voters in their Place Geography and Elections in Great Britain Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie
The Nature of the State Excavating the Political Ecologies of the Modern State Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, and Martin Jones
1
3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, and Martin Jones 2007 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Whitehead, Mark, 1975– The nature of the state:excavating the political ecologies of the modern state Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, and Martin Jones. p. cm. ISBN–13 : 978–0–19–927189–4 (alk.paper) ISBN–10 : 0–19–927189–5 (alk.paper) 1. Human geography—Political aspects. 2. Human ecology—Political aspects. 3. Political geography. 4. Political ecology. 5. Enviromental policy—Political aspects. I. Jones, Rhys, 1971–II. Jones, Martin, 1970–III. Title. GF50.W454 2006 304.2’3—dc22 2006029642 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–927189–5 978–0–19–927189–4
For our friends and family
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EDITORS’ PREFACE
Geography and environmental studies are two closely related and burgeoning Welds of academic enquiry. Both have grown rapidly over the past few decades. At once catholic in its approach and yet strongly committed to a comprehensive understanding of the world, geography has focused upon the interaction between global and local phenomena. Environmental studies, on the other hand, have shared with the discipline of geography an engagement with diVerent disciplines, addressing wide-ranging and signiWcant environmental issues in the scientiWc community and the policy community. From the analysis of climate change and physical environmental processes to the cultural dislocations of postmodernism in human geography, these two Welds of enquiry have been at the forefront of attempts to comprehend transformations taking place in the world, manifesting themselves as a variety of separate but interrelated spatial scales. The Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies series aims to reXect this diversity and engagement. Our goal is to publish the best original research in the two related Welds, and, in doing so, to demonstrate the signiWcance of geographical and environmental perspectives for understanding the contemporary world. As a consequence, our scope is deliberately international and ranges widely in terms of topics, approaches, and methodologies. Authors are welcome from all corners of the globe. We hope the series will help to redeWne the frontiers of knowledge and build bridges within the Welds of geography and environmental studies. We hope also that it will cement links with issues and approaches that have originated outside the strict conWnes of these disciplines. In doing so, our publications contribute to the frontiers of research and knowledge while representing the fruits of particular and diverse scholarly traditions. Gordon L. Clark Andrew Goudie Ceri Peach
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book reXects the culmination of ten years of collective engagement with the testing notions of state and nature. As part of this collective endeavour we have travelled many miles, searched through numerous archives, and received various forms of advice and guidance. We would consequently like to recognize the personal and intellectual debts we have accrued in the completion of this volume. We want to acknowledge, Wrst and foremost, that this book is the product of the uniquely supportive and creative environment provided by the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Over the years we have all beneWted from the ‘Aber eVect’, which is produced by the geographers working in Aberystwyth and the special qualities of the place itself. At a more speciWc level we would like to thank Tim Cresswell, Luke Desforges, Deborah Dixon, Bob Dodgshon, Bill Edwards, Kate Edwards, Gareth Hoskins, Mark Goodwin, Robert Mayhew, Pete Merriman, Heidi Scott, Mike Woods, and all our graduate students for their advice, loaned books, and constant support as we completed this book. In addition to our colleagues at Aberystwyth, this volume has also beneWted from the input and guidance of a range of people from outside our department. We would like to thank in particular Elizabeth Baigent, Neil Brenner, Gavin Bridge, Allan Cochrane, David Demerrit, Marcus Doel, David C. Harvey, Bob Jessop, Craig Johnstone, David Keeling, Gordon MacLeod, John Pickles, Simon Naylor, Paul Robbins, and Erik Swyngedouw; while they may not realize it, they have all helped to shape the form and content of this volume. The book is based upon a range of interrelated research projects. We would like to acknowledge all of those organizations that have provided us with the necessary funds and time to complete these projects. These include the Board of Celtic Studies (of the University of Wales), the Economic and Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Geographical Society’s HSBC Small Grant Initiative, and the University of Wales, Aberystwyth Research Fund. We are also grateful for the advice and time of librarians and archivists working at the British Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives (Kew), the National Library of Wales, the Royal Society Library, and the Special Collections section of Sussex University Library. We would like to extend particular thanks to Huw Thomas (of the National Library of Wales) and the contributors to
[email protected] (a Forum for Issues Related to Map and Spatial Data Librarianship) for helping us with our work on Swedish cadastral maps. Thanks are also extended to Anthony Smith, for the time he spent producing the artwork in this volume; members of staV at the Waikato
x
Acknowledgements
Regional Council; Carwyn Fowler for his tireless eVorts on the Board of Celtic Studies project; and those interviewees who agreed to participate in this project. As with the production of any book, in many ways our academic debts are far outweighed by our personal ones. It is in this context that we would like to extend special gratitude to all of our friends and family, whose emotional support and empathies have made the writing of this volume possible. It is to these friends and family that this book is dedicated. Finally, we must acknowledge the following organizations for granting us permission to reproduce certain material presented in this volume: the Special Collections Section of Sussex University Library, for allowing us to reproduce material from the L. Dudley Stamp Papers (Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection Box, 19.1) on pp. 99, 102, 105–6, and 107 the Ordnance Survey, for permission to reproduce as Fig. 6.2 the map of air quality automated monitoring sites in operation, United Kingdom, March 2004, on p. 161; Blackwell Publishers for allowing us to reproduce Fig. 4.1 on p. 114; and Taylor & Francis for allowing us to reproduce Table 5.1 on p. 118. Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, and Martin Jones Aberystwyth March 2006
CONTENTS
List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations 1. States and Natures: An Introduction
xii xiii xiv 1
2. Seeing Double: Thinking about Natures and States
23
3. The Moments of Nature–State Relations
56
4. Mapping the Land: Spatializing State Nature
86
5. Nature and the State Apparatus
117
6. Between Laboratory and Leviathan: Technological Development and the Cyborg State
147
7. Exploring Post-National Natures: Nature in the Shadow of the State
177
Bibliography
209
Index
227
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 3.1 3.2 4.1 5.1 5.2 5.3 6.1 6.2 7.1
The framing of state nature Map of the Dutch Netherlands Map of Wales, showing the main reservoirs The spatial ordering of British nature Map of the EPA’s boundaries Map of Waikato Region within New Zealand Map of the Ceredigion constituency within the UK Integrated environmental monitoring in the UK Automated air quality monitoring sites in the UK, March 2004 Cities and territories in Australia
16 62 71 114 126 132 142 158 161 182
LIST OF TABLES
1.1 4.1 4.2
5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 7.1
Major resource conXicts since 1945 Land-use classiWcation scheme used by the British Land Utilisation Survey A scientiWc discourse of agricultural land: classiWcatory schemes deployed by the Land Utilisation Survey The manifold apparatuses of the modern state Danger levels for air pollution deWned by the EPA in 1971 The scales and territories of the RMA Soil issues and management in the Waikato Region, New Zealand Maori conceptions of nature and resource use General election result for the Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire North constituency, 1992 Summary of changing levels of greenhouse gas emissions for Italy, 1990–2002 (tonnes)
6 103
104 118 128 130 133 134 144 204
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ANT AURN BIO CEQ CPRW DEFRA DoE EPA GA IPCC LSE LUS NAEI RMA SCI UN
Actor Network Theory Automatic Urban and Rural Network Biotechnology Industry Organization Council on Environmental Quality Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales Department of the Environment, Food and Rural AVairs Department of the Environment Environmental Protection Agency Geographical Association Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change London School of Economics Land Utilisation Survey National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory Resource Management Act Sustainable Cities Inquiry United Nations
1 States and Natures: An Introduction Nature does not respect national boundaries; human beings seem incapable of managing their aVairs without them. (Elhance 1999: 3)
Before continuing to read this book, stop, place this volume back on the shelf and take a moment to look through the pages of an illustrated atlas of the world. At least half of this atlas will probably be given over to illustrating one of the dominant political ordering principles around which our world continues to be constructed and conceived—the nation-state. If your atlas is similar to ours, however, you will also notice that nation-states are not only represented and recognized according to their territorial shape and oYcial political nomenclature. Skimming through the glossy colour pages of our atlas,1 a continual cross-referencing appears between the political, ecological, and geological motifs of nation-states. The political map of the US, for example, is surrounded by images of the forests of New England in the fall and the spectacular geological strata of the Grand Canyon. Turning the page you Wnd an immediate association being made between Iceland and the volcanically heated Blue Lagoon Lake, the Bahamas and its golden sandy beaches, Belize and banana trees, Peru and the cloud-laden Andes. Further into the atlas the fjords are deployed as an icon for the Norwegian state, barren deserts are used to denote Western Sahara and Mauritania, and a dramatic picture of Victoria Falls is carefully positioned below a map of Zambia. These images are, of course, as with so much of what is routinely produced within the visualizations of state and nationhood, crude stereotypes of complex geographical entities. However, we want to argue that this collection of ecological and geological imagery does reveal an interesting relationship, a relationship that is central to the ways in which our worlds are constructed, ordered, and reproduced—the relationships between states and natures. This book is premised upon the exploration of a paradox. While contemporary discussions of global environmental change, trans-boundary biological communities, and systemic ecological threats routinely emphasize the irrelevance of state systems and boundaries as means for understanding and addressing questions of nature, everywhere you look nature is continually being ordered and framed by nation-states. From President Sarney’s stringent 1
Ours is The Complete World Atlas (Leicester, Silverdale Books, 2000).
2
States and Natures
defence of the Brazilian state’s sovereign right to utilize natural resources located in the Amazon to the complex electoral politics surrounding attempts to preserve the Everglades in the US (Hollander 2005), state politics continues to be bound up with the treatment and fate of the natural world. An exploration and analysis of diVerent forms of what we term state nature lie at the heart of this book. We deWne state nature as those strange but inherently familiar fragments of nature that have been politically removed and abstracted from their ecological contexts. Understood on these terms, fragments of state nature include: the various ecological emblems that are routinely used to represent national political communities (including plants, animals, and scenery); particular places/landscapes of ecological signiWcance (such as national parks and nature reserves); ecological phrases, narratives, and myths (incorporated into foundation legends and nation-forming stories); territorial maps and land-use surveys; and even micro-biological organisms and molecules whose transformation is regulated by various national laws and restrictions. In this context, to speak of state nature is to make reference to an historically speciWc form of nature and an associated set of understandings of the natural world. We claim that this form of (state) nature marks a radical disjunction with premodern understandings and treatments of the natural world. It is our contention in this volume that while much has been written on the role of religion, scientiWc method, cultural tradition, and capitalist industrialization in shaping social understandings and transformations of the natural world (see Latour 1994; Smith 1984; Thomas 1983; Wilson 1982), there have been far fewer systematic analyses of the role of states in the construction of modern nature.2 While analysing the relationships between states and natures, this book draws particular attention to the production of politically centralized and territorially bounded conceptions of nature. State nature is understood, then, as a form of territorially framed and administratively governed nature, which has been brought into existence as part of the processes that have resulted in the formation of modern nation-states. Before we outline in greater detail the particular way in which we intend to analyse state–nature relations, we want to brieXy consider some of the myriad ways in which states and natures connect in the world around us.
Preliminary explorations in state nature Hurricanes, ecological Leviathans and the administration of nature [A]fter Hurricane Katrina, the balance between protecting people from nature, and protecting nature from people, has become an urgent matter of public policy. (The Economist 2005c) 2
Notable exceptions include Johnston (1996), Scott (1998), Sheail (2002).
Introduction
3
As we were Wnalizing this volume for publication, Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the US. The social and environmental events and subsequent political responses associated with this disaster resonated strongly with the issues and concerns we had hoped to address when we began writing this book. At one level Hurricane Katrina was a so-called natural disaster—a product of what Ulrich Beck (1992b) has described as ‘unavoidable ecological risk’. As a natural disaster, initial responses to the hurricane and its associated devastation were of sympathy for the communities who had been randomly struck by an event that was beyond human control. But gradually, as the images of Xood-devastated New Orleans, ruined homes, disposed families, and squalid temporary shelters spread through global media networks, the discursive emphasis of the event shifted from one of natural disaster to that of governmental failure. This shift was captured in The Economist’s leader ‘The shaming of America’: Since hurricane Katrina, the world’s view of America has changed. The disaster has exposed some shocking truths about the place: bitterness of its sharp racial divide, the abandonment of the dispossessed, the weakness of critical infrastructure. But the most astonishing and most shaming revelation has been of its government’s failure to bring succour to its people at their time of greatest need. (The Economist 2005b)
Initial criticism of the US government largely related to its slow response to the crisis facing Gulf Coast communities. But as time went by the condemnation of the government moved from seeing the state as negligent in the disaster, to arguing that the (in)actions of the state were actually a contributory factor to the crisis. While local and state governments did take some of the blame for the Hurricane Katrina crisis, it was the federal state that came in for the harshest condemnation. To understand this criticism it is important to consider the institutional links that have been established between nation-states and nature. As large-scale, heavily funded bureaucracies, one of the key roles of nation-states is to insulate and protect their populations from large-scale natural disasters. This responsibility stems from the unrivalled resources, institutional supports, levels of coordination, and funding associated with states. It is this institutional capacity to act that means that nation-states are supposed to be able to respond quickly and unfalteringly in the face of natural disaster. It was the failure of the US state to act quickly and decisively following Hurricane Katrina that led to so much public disapproval. While criticism was levelled at a range of US government targets, including the President himself, it was the government’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that came under closest scrutiny. FEMA is the US government agency charged with coordinating the federal government’s response to disaster circumstances that outstrip the ability of state governments to respond to them eVectively. Despite the sophisticated and advanced environmental monitoring provided by the US government’s early warning hurricane
4
States and Natures
system, many felt that FEMA failed to coordinate a quick enough response to the ensuing disaster (The Economist 2005d). Such accusations were made worse by the fact that FEMA had been relegated from its former position as a cabinet-level agency. Ultimately, following FEMA’s perceived failing, its director, Michael Brown, resigned. Our concern, however, is not so much with whether FEMA and the US government were culpable in the Hurricane Katrina disaster, but with the links this example highlights between state bureaucracies and nature. The events surrounding Hurricane Katrina illustrate how there continues to be a belief that state institutions should be able to predict, administer, and respond to nature in certain ways. Yet despite their often elaborate bureaucratic infrastructures, it is also clear that states are often unable to deal with the vagaries and power of the natural world eVectively. The administrative apparatus of the modern state, according to certain scholars, provides the key to understanding the power and inXuence of the state (see Chapters 2 and 5). According to Weberian and neo-Weberian state theorists, the sheer scale of the administrative capacity associated with national governments (which includes its various departments, agencies, personnel, and civil servants) means that states continue to embody unique sites of political organization and power in the world today. In relation to nature modern states have developed a range of specialist administrative structures to frame and manage the natural world. The administrative architectures of states are often characterized by specialist institutional subdivisions with responsibilities for managing diVerent aspects of the natural world. Such institutions include agricultural ministries dedicated to ensuring a regular harvest from nature (see Chapter 4), environmental departments and agencies designed to monitor and protect the natural world (see Chapter 5), and rapid response units created to deal with ecological risk management and catastrophes (including FEMA) (see Chapters 5 and 7). In addition to illustrating how the production of state nature is informed and conditioned by institutional practices, analyses of the bureaucratic management of nature also reveal the social and political complexities that shape state–nature relations. In this context, when studying the state administration of nature one immediately discovers a bureaucratic infrastructure that is far removed from the modern myths of objective rationality and eYciency we often associate with the state. Instead, one is routinely confronted with a complex web of state oYcials, civil servants, political struggles, and environmental events that mix the human, the non-human, and the social and ecological in ever more complex ways. The activities of Brazil’s environmental protection agency, IBAMA, and its interventions in the Amazonian rainforest, are illustrative of this point. The Brazilian government established IBAMA in order to eVectively coordinate the government’s environmental protection programme. Given this remit, IBAMA has focused much of its resources, time, and energy on Amazonia. With its extensive tropical
Introduction
5
rainforest and associated timber and ecological resources, Amazonia is Brazil’s key natural resource. The problem facing the Brazilian government is that while the Amazonian rainforest represents a key economic asset (particularly in relation to timber production and the productive agricultural land that forest clearances can open up for cash-croppers to use), preservation of the rainforest ecosystem is also seen as a vital national and international objective (largely because of its untapped bio-ecological resources and the role of the forest in global atmospheric systems).3 IBAMA has consequently provided an important institutional context within which ecological information about Amazonia has been gathered and economic activity in the region has been regulated (largely through licensing systems). The centralization of knowledge about, and control over, Amazonian nature facilitated by IBAMA has provided the Brazilian government with a mechanism for institutionally framing the rainforest as a national resource and property. The complexities of IBAMA’s institutional structure and the sheer scale of the Amazon region have, however, made eVective regulation of the area diYcult. (For example, the Brazilian government recently admitted that the rainforest had been diminished by approximately 10,000 square miles between August 2003 and August 2004: Usborne 2005). To compound this situation, it has recently been revealed that civil servants working for IBAMA have been involved in covering up illegal logging operations, which has led to the arrest of forty oYcials and civil servants from IBAMA, including its lead oYcial in Amazonia, Mato Grosso (Usborne 2005). The case of IBAMA reminds us that far from being neutral agencies of the state, government bureaucracies are made up of humans who are capable of mistakes and corruption. In this context, it is diYcult to understand the institutional relationship between the Brazilian state and nature without considering the clandestine meetings of IBAMA oYcials and illegal logging Wrms, the global trade in mahogany, and international conventions on forest conservation. These are the processes that condition state–nature relations and continually complicate the simplifying logics of modern state intervention within nature.
Nature wars and the geopolitics of states and natures The Worldwatch Institute (2002) has estimated that wars fought over natural resources were responsible for over Wve million human deaths and the displacement of a further twenty million people from their homes in the 1990s alone. In addition, it was estimated that the ‘conXict commodities’ produced through these wars raised funds in access of US$12 billion a year for the rebels and authoritarian states involved in these conXicts (Worldwatch 3 For a wonderful insight into the complex politics and ecology of the Amazonian rainforest and the ebb and Xow of state–nature relations there, see RaZes (2002).
6 Table 1.1.
States and Natures Major resource conXicts since 1945
States involved
Natural resources involved
Afghanistan Angola Burma Cambodia Colombia Democratic Republic of Congo/Rwanda, Uganda Republic of Congo Indonesia Liberia Morocco Nigeria Papua New Guinea Rwanda Sierra Leone Sudan/Egypt Sudan
Heroin, opium, lapis lazuli, emeralds Oil, diamonds Timber, jadeite, natural gas, rubies, opium Timber, rubies, sapphires Oil, coca, cocaine Coltan, diamonds, gold, cobalt and copper Oil Natural gas, timber, minerals Diamonds, timber, rubber, gold, iron ore, cannabis Phosphates and oil Oil Copper Coltan Diamonds Water Oil
Source: Compiled from information in Elhance (1999); Klare (2001); Vidal (2002); Renner (2002: 7).
Institute 2002). It is of course diYcult to validate such shocking Wgures. Things could, however, actually be worse than these statistics suggest. But even if these numbers represent a gross exaggeration, it seems that nature, in the form of valuable resources, has a crucial role in shaping the geopolitical existence of many modern states. What we do know is that struggles over the control and utilization of natural resources are already leading to the proliferation of environmental conXicts (see Table 1.1), or what Klare (2001) terms ‘resource wars’. In relation to this book, resource wars highlight three crucial processes: 1 the link between the control of nature and the realization of state power; 2 that in order to secure access to, and power over, nature, states persistently attempt to nationalize environmental assets through the securing of territorial boundaries; 3 that despite continued historical attempts to territorially and administratively control nature, the geographical location and movement of nature continue to defy its framing by the state.4 It is clear that the control and management of nature has always been central to the realization and consolidation of state power. Early analyses of the geopolitical origins of nation-states, for example, revealed how nature played a crucial role in both inXuencing the external geopolitical terrain upon 4 For a more detailed analysis of the relationship between state, nature, and geopolitics, see Dalby (1992, 1996, 2002a, b), Dodds (2000).
Introduction
7
which states were forged and in stimulating the internal expansion of states in the quest for geographically ‘good lands’, with fertile soils and favourable natures.5 But if nature played an important role in the geopolitical constitution of modern states, it is also clear that the struggle for natural resources continues to underpin political and military struggles within a range of contemporary states. We claim that at the heart of resource conXicts is the political framing of nature as a national resource and its associated discursive association with national security. In the Wrst instance, the procurement of natural resources from particular regions to serve abstract national agendas is often a stimulus for conXict, as regional militia attempt to claim sovereignty over their own local assets. But it would be impossible to understand these conXicts without appreciating the historical processes of territorialization and centralization that made nature an object of political struggle in the Wrst place. In the context of the links between nature and issues of national security, many now claim that the concentration of key energy resources in what are deemed to be ‘politically unstable states’ has become one of the driving forces behind contemporary military and geopolitical strategy in the West. The intervention of the US in so-called ‘energy supply priority areas’ (particularly, it would seem, the oil-rich Middle Eastern region and the Andean states), for example, has been interpreted by some as an attempt to militarily frame natural resources that actually lie beyond the formal territorial borders of the US.6 One conXict of particular relevance to this volume is the contemporary struggle for water supply in the Nile Basin.7 Due to its exceptionally dry climate, Egypt depends on the River Nile for much of its water needs. The problem for Egypt is that the headwaters of the Nile pass through and supply eight African states before the river eventually reaches Egypt. This does of course make Egypt exceptionally vulnerable to attempts by other states to capture water from the Nile through irrigation schemes and dam-building projects. From the late 1970s onwards, the supply of water has been the top geopolitical priority of the Egyptian state—even more important, it is now argued, than its strained political relations with Israel.8 Egypt’s concerns 5 For more on the relationship between nature and the formation and expansion of early modern states see Mackinder (1904) and Ratzel (1896). Notice in particular how Mackinder’s famous analysis of the ‘pivot of history’ reveals the role that nature (in the form of geographical landscapes and geomorphological forms) conditioned the geopolitical context for state formation in continental Europe. It is also interesting to note the inXuence that Ratzel’s ideas of territorial expansion and the enclosure of ‘good natures’ had on the geopolitical ambitions of the early Prussian state and the territorial expansions devised by the German Nazi Party in the 1930s. 6 See Harvey (2003a) for more on the Carter Principle; see also Vidal (2002). 7 For a detailed review of water resource management conXicts in the Nile Basin, see Klare (2001: chs 6–7) and Elhance (1999). 8 More detail on the geopolitical signiWcance of water supply can be found in Klare (2001: chs 6–7). Indeed the key focus of Egypt’s diplomatic policies and international relations strategies now appears to be Sudan and Ethiopia—two states with inXuence over the Xow and utilization of Nile water—not Israel.
8
States and Natures
with water supply issues stem from the fact that without water the state would simply stop functioning. Clean water is vital at the most basic level for human health and survival, but water is also a prerequisite for key industrial processes and the production of economic wealth (see Chapter 3). What interests us about this case study is that water supply has obviously been an issue in the Nile Basin ever since its settlement by large numbers of people. Despite this, it is the post-colonial carving up of the basin into individual nation-states that is the key to understanding contemporary conXicts in the region. The point is that modern states continue to use territorial strategies to control facets of nature that are aterritorial in essence. Despite the dam-building projects undertaken by the Egyptian state (the most famous of course being the construction of the Aswan High Dam), the River Nile is not the exclusive property of Egypt and it continues to Xow through other states and across other territorial borders in the region. To many, the persistent leakage of nature across sovereign territorial boundaries in places like the Nile Basin makes discussions of the state meaningless within environmental debate (see Kuehls 1996; Young 1994). Our point is, however, quite the reverse, because we claim that it is the historical legacy and continued desire of modern states to territorially frame nature that is generating this era of resource wars. In this time of escalating nature wars, understanding the logics that undergird the relationship between the modern state and nature is now more, not less, important than it ever has been (see Chapter 7).
Nations, nature, and ecological patriotism9 In her celebrated exposition of the Welsh nation—The Matter of Wales—Jan Morris (1984) begins with a detailed discussion of its distinctive nature.10 While discussing a range of diVerent facets of Welsh nature, including rivers, trees, and animals, it is the landscape to which Morris (ch. 1) devotes particular attention. According to Morris, what makes the Welsh landscape so distinctive is its geology and the preponderance of rock at the surface of the landscape created by this geology. Morris asserts: The substance of Welsh nature is largely rock; some four-Wfths of the surface of Wales is hard upland, where the soil is so thin that the stones seem always to be forcing their way restlessly through . . . the real thing, the dominant, is hard, bare grey and stony. (Morris 1984: 17)
The landscapes of surface rock that are found throughout Wales have, so Morris claims, played a crucial role in the imagination and physical experience of Welsh nationhood.11 In terms of the national imagination, such harsh 9
We borrow this phrase from Matless (1998). The Matter of Wales was later republished (with additions) as Wales (London, Penguin 2000). 11 For more on the links between Welsh national identity and landscape, see GruVudd (1995, 1996). 10
Introduction
9
landscapes have been utilized as part of nation-building in Wales in a variety of ways. At one level, the natural landscape has provided a visual marker through which Wales has consistently asserted its distinctiveness from England (and Britishness) and the typically more ‘picturesque’ imagery of the English landscape. Secondly, the harshness of the Welsh landscape has also been used in rather dubious attempts to explain the character of the Welsh person as ‘hardy’, ‘determined’, and ‘hardworking’ (GruVudd 1995). Returning again to Morris: Watch how a Welsh farmer picks up one of those boulders! It is as though the two of them are Xesh and blood. A preliminary Xexing of the shoulders, a bending of tough stocky legs, a bit of a grunt, and the things, is up in his arms like a baby. (Morris 1984: 17–18)
It is through this close association of the Welsh landscape and the Welsh people that nature has been incorporated within the narratives of Welsh cultural history. What is perhaps important about the particular role of the Welsh natural landscape within the imagination of a Welsh community is that it has not only enabled the cerebral creation of a Welsh nation, but has provided a point of physical and sensual contact through which the nation has become an embodied experience. In this context Morris reXects: The whole sensation of rural Wales can be concentrated into one small patch of ground, a foot or two square, if that ground is Welsh enough: if it is tufted and ferned and mossed enough, that is, if its slab of stone is suYciently mottled, if the earth is properly peaty and the air slightly mushroomy . . . the truest Welsh places oVer experiences as much tactile as visual, for everywhere there are stones that seem to invite your stroking, your rolling, your sitting upon. (Morris 1984: 17)
While characterized by a rather naive environmental determinism, the meshing together of Welsh nature, landscape, and biology has become a central part of many of the foundation legends that are told of the gradual, organic emergence of the Welsh. The natural landscape consequently provides an important collective touchstone within the national imagination of Wales and, as we shall see later in this book, a cultural resource that has been actively defended within a series of nationalist campaigns against the modernizing logics of the British nation-state (see in particular Chapter 3).12 Throughout this book we continually emphasize the important role that nature plays in the socio-cultural fabric, as well as the political and economic well-being, of nation-states. In this context, it is important to be clear from the outset about the distinction we discern between nations and states. We understand states as demarcated political entities, with bureaucratic systems 12
For an interesting discussion of the role of natural landscapes in the politics of insurgent nationalism, see Nogue´ and Vincente’s (2004) work on Catalonia. Matless’s (1998) analysis on the landscape preservationist groups and their opposition to modern post-war planning in Britain is also very interesting in this context.
10
States and Natures
of administration, rules of law and sovereign powers. States, if you like, represent the realpolitik of a given country, its oYcial political system. The idea of the nation is, however, less easily deWned. Part of the reason for this diYculty is because nations often do not correspond to state boundaries (as in the Celtic nations of the UK, the Basque Country of Spain, or the Breton nation in France), or follow easily identiWable rule systems and political practices. Nations correspond to an alternative (but no less powerful or signiWcant) form of social organization to states. Nations are the cultural systems and modes of ethnic identiWcation that bind groups of people together. Nations embody the collective signs and symbols with which people of the same nation identify, invest cultural meaning in, and invoke at key sociopolitical moments. The signs and symbolism of nations can take diVerent forms, from national Xags, music, poems, literature, and newspapers, to television shows, dress, language, and historical narratives. The cultural artefacts of nations essentially act to ensure that while individuals will never meet all of those who share their national identity, it is possible to imagine a community of fellow citizens experiencing nationhood in a similar way.13 While nations do not always correspond to, or indeed support, state formations, the imaginary geography, foundation legends, and cultural myths of nationalism are often used to undergird state authority. States often make reference to key national motifs, historical events, and cultural values in order to support their own legitimacy and policy decisions. At other times, however, ethnic nationalisms can be mobilized against dominant forms of state power and politics and be used to resist the logics of modern state development. In relation to our discussions of nationhood, it is interesting to emphasize the important role that nature plays in the cultural production of nations (as we have already seen in the case of Wales). Indeed the etymology of the words ‘nation’ and ‘nature’ are remarkably similar—both of course being suggestive of something native, original, or genuine.14 Nature often provides the most obvious and readily available material resource around which to construct national legends and modes of identiWcation. Nature, for example, is often incorporated into the stories and myths of state formation that are used to forge a sense of common national heritage and belonging (see Chapter 3). John Rennnie Short (1991) has described the multifarious cultural appropriations of nature within state/nation formation as ‘national environmental ideologies’. Perhaps one of the most common and transferable national ideologies, which weave together nature and culture, is the ‘myth of blood and soil’.15 Prominent within many West European states such as Britain, Germany, and Italy during the interwar period, this myth 13 In his now celebrated book, Benedict Anderson (1991) describes nations as ‘imagined communities’. 14 For more on the common etymology of the words ‘nation’ and ‘nature’, see Williams (1998). 15 For a fascinating discussion of the role of soil debates within the construction of English national identity in the interwar years, see Matless (1998); see also Bramwell (1989: 163–6).
Introduction
11
describes the organic synthesis of nations in terms of the intimate mixing of nature (in the form of agricultural land) and humans (in the form of manual labour and political struggle) (Matless 1998: ch. 3). The ‘myth of blood and soil’ thus constructs the nation (and the associated political apparatus of the state) as the historical product of the mixing of culture and nature, human endeavour and ecological fecundity, blood and soil. Nations are thus seen to be distinct not because of their people, or their ecological assets, but because of their unique combinations of these social and natural forces. Such stories ultimately serve to naturalize nation-states, suggesting as they do that states are not artiWcial political constructions but the products of organic processes of evolution (Matless 1998: ch. 3). Nature can of course be woven into the narratives of nationhood in other, perhaps less inclusive, ways. In Fredrick Jackson Turner’s famous frontier thesis of American history, he describes the emergence and consolidation of the US in the context of the continual struggle between human civilization and the wild spaces of the North American continent.16 According to Turner, the frontier was where America encountered, subjugated, and transformed nature in the process of building a modern state. In this popularized myth of American history, then, nature becomes the oppositional force against any socio-political progress, but its place in the story of national history is still prominent. If certain foundation legends and national narratives involve the temporal appropriation of nature into the cultural project of nation-building, it is clear that landscape reXects the spatial equivalent of this process. Landscapes have been incorporated into nation-building projects in two main ways. First, iconographic landscapes have consistently been promoted within art and within acts of planning preservation as key signiWers of nations.17 According to Daniels (1993), landscapes oVer one of the most immediate senses of a nation’s ‘shape’ and form. In this sense landscapes quite literally provide a visual frame within which state natures can be isolated, observed, and understood (see Chapter 4). In his detailed analysis of the construction of landscape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Kenneth Olwig (2002) describes how certain visions of the quintessential English landscape came to denote a sense of organic unity across the whole (British) country. Olwig (2002: xxx–xxxii) argues that in seventeenth-century Britain, landscape became a political tool used simultaneously to ‘mask’ the socio-political divisions of the emerging British state and to forge a coherent vision of national unity. In this context, he argues that the process of landscaping also involved the ‘mindscaping’ of the nation, as nature became the basis for imagining national space and veiling the abstract power of the state. In addition 16 For an interesting and alternative reading of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, see Cronon (1991a: 46–54, 1999b). 17 For an overview of analyses of the relationship between landscape, nature, and nationstates it is useful to turn to the work of a number of prominent landscape geographers: see, for example, Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), Daniels (1993), Matless (1998).
12
States and Natures
to the use of natural landscapes, nation-states also rely upon the artiWcial construction of parks and gardens to convey the cultural ecologies of the nation. For example, in his analysis of the incorporation of nature into major European cities since the eighteenth century, Denis Cosgrove (1993) describes how nature was manipulated to serve certain political ends. According to Cosgrove, the use of picturesque garden design within royal parks and public spaces conveyed important messages about national history and unity. As a meeting place of culture and wilderness, or society and nature, the garden came to symbolize the harmony that had been established by a nation and its ecological inheritance. Cosgrove describes urban gardens as ‘middle natures’, where through the proper arrangement of water, grass, trees, and native species of Xowers, a nation could celebrate its nature, and perhaps more importantly, its transformation and improvement of the natural world. As this section has illustrated, the framing of nature by the modern state does not only operate at political and economic levels. State–nature relations clearly involve a series of cultural processes within which nature is framed by a mix of narrative, landscape design, art, photography, and monuments. As we have seen in our previous discussion of the administrative and geopolitical farming of nature by the state, the cultural appropriation and use of nature can often overXow and escape from its narrow codiWcation by nation-states. In this context, it is clear that as well as supporting nation-state building, natural landscapes have also been mobilized in a series of cultural and political movements that question the modernizing logic of modern nation-states.
Studying state–nature relations: sites, moments, and the framing of state nature Having established some of the ways in which it is possible to discern the entanglements of states and natures in the world around us, it is important to brieXy outline how we intend to approach and study the interaction between states and natures. Before we consider this, however, some words of warning. To talk of the interaction or relationship between states and natures is a problematic thing to do for two main reasons. First, it tends to suggest that there are things called ‘the state’ and ‘nature’, which can be easily identiWed and delineated. The terms ‘nature’ and ‘state’, however, actually represent two of the most internally diVerentiated categories within the English language.18 For example, when we talk of the state, are we 18
See Williams’s (1998) careful etymology of the word ‘nature’ for more on the particular diYculties of deWning the term. He actually claims that nature represents one of the most diYcult words to deWne in the English language. According to Williams, however, this diYculty is directly related to the importance of the processes to which the word actually refers.
Introduction
13
referring to parliaments, governments, executives, legislatures, bureaucracies, spatial territories, or parts of civil society like schools, hospitals, and community organizations, which could be considered to be part of the apparatus of the ‘ideological state’? In a similar sense, should discussions of nature be interpreted as a reference to ecological systems, biological processes, environments, or moral law? In this volume we focus our attention on nation-states. We understand the nation-state to be one relatively recent manifestation of the state form, characterized by a centrally orchestrated and extensive administrative apparatus, and a territorial area or space of operation over which it holds sovereign power.19 In this volume, however, we are not just concerned with what nation-states are, but with what they do and how they carry out their various operations. In this context, we emphasize that the nation-state is distinguishable from other historical state forms not only because of its administrative capacity and territorial scope but also because of its art of governing. Following Foucault (2002), then, we interpret the modern nation-state as a state that has been ‘governmentalized’. As a governmental entity the nation-state is characterized by a rational science of government, which is based upon the systematic collection of knowledge concerning that which is to be governed, and the use of that knowledge to ensure the ordered government of a particular people and territory through various techniques and tactics (Foucault, 2002: 212). In terms of our approach to nature we draw inspiration from the celebrated analysis of the historical evolution of human understandings of nature provided by Raymond Williams (1998: 219–24), who warns the analyst of nature to be ‘especially aware of its diYculty’. At the heart of his warning was a realization that nature has been and continues to be used in very diVerent ways to refer to very diVerent things. In this book we discuss what Williams (1998: 219) describes as the ‘abstract singular’ use of the word ‘nature’ in reference to either the forces guiding the world (as in ‘mother nature’), or the material world itself (often understood as excluding humans). While we discuss both uses of the term ‘nature’, we do focus in particular on its manifestation as the material world. When we speak of nature as the material world, however, we are not simply referring to static objects (landscapes, mountains, trees), but also to the inWnite array of processes that constitute nature: whether it be photosynthesis or the circulation of the atmosphere, human cell division or evapotranspiration. At one level then, nature, understood as the material world around us, can be thought of as the substratum of our existence, or all those processes, both within and beyond our body, that operate with or without human intervention. Having said this, however, throughout this volume we argue that it is erroneous to conceive of nature as a sort of pristine realm, untouched by human actions and power. 19 For a more detailed analysis of the various spatial scales and institutional modes of operation associated with contemporary states, see Brenner (2004).
14
States and Natures
Consequently, whether it is in terms of the construction of nature within art or literature, or the transformation of nature through science, technology, and industrial development, we argue that all forms of nature, or the material world, must now be understood, at least in part, as social products or artefacts. The second reason we are suspicious of discussions of states interacting with natures is because such phrases tend to suggest two already established entities doing things to each other—the state aVecting the natural environment, or changes in nature somehow inXuencing the policies and dictates of the state. In light of this reservation, throughout this volume we attempt to develop an account of states and natures which, rather than interpreting them as Wnished things or objects, instead analyses them as collections of interrelated processes. But what does this actually mean? At one level it suggests that in order to analyse state–nature relations it is important to unpack both categories so as to understand how their constituent parts are intermeshed and connected. At a second level, by understanding natures and states as processes we argue that state forms and natural systems are always already deeply implicated moments within a complex system of mutual coevolution. As is illustrated later in this book, such a perspective challenges and destabilizes many of the fundamental assumptions that tend to be made when deWning and conceiving of both states and natures. This approach to the relationship between states and natures is inspired partly by the writings and philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead (1985).20 In his analysis of the constitution of reality (and the methods of science in disclosing that reality), Whitehead asserts that we should understand ‘the world as a process and that process is a becoming of actual entities’ (1985: 30). We argue that states and natures are not pre-given, already completed entities, but continually emerging realities. Crucially, throughout this volume we also claim that facets of the emerging entities, which we now refer to as the state and nature, have provided important contexts for each other within their respective historical evolutions. In our exploration of the relationships between modern states and natures we focus upon the processes through which states attempt to frame the natural world. We take our understanding of the processes of framing from the work of Michel Callon (1998) on economic contracts and market exchange. Developing GoVman’s (1990) earlier analysis of the framing of social encounter, Callon argues that the frame is simply a context within which ‘action and eVects are known and measured’ (1998: 261). A frame could thus be a chemical factory, a theatrical performance, a laboratory, or a legal contract negotiation. Framing is a process that involves the ‘bracketing oV’ of the things and objects interacting in a certain context (Callon 1998: 20 See also Barry (2001: ch. 7) for more on notions of process and becoming in the constitution of objects of government.
Introduction
15
249). A frame of interaction involves a degree of focus, a focus on the things that can be measured and changed—and a subsequent ignorance of the things that are located beyond this calculation process. In this book we argue that nation-states have provided crucial framing devices within which social interaction with nature has been negotiated and realized in the modern era. As we see later in this volume, the framing of nature by the state only rarely involves the construction of a physical framework or territorial barrier, and can take the diverse forms of agricultural laws, scientiWc procedures, property rights, environmental statistics, and engineering infrastructures. What such framing processes invariably involve, however, is the ‘violent extrication’ (to use Callon’s term (1998: 253)) of nature from its broader ecological context. This violent extrication takes two basic forms: the extrication of nature from its local ecological context (as regularly occurs within the simpliWed practices of state-sponsored resource surveys); and the extraction of one state’s nature from the broader international environment with which it shares numerous biochemical relations. In the context of this second point, we should also mention that our invocation of framing should not be interpreted as a suggestion that nature is ever successfully or unproblematically framed by the state. Indeed, Callon (1998: 252–5) is quick to recognize that any discussions of framing must be coupled with an analysis of the concomitant processes of overXow. OverXows are perhaps best thought of as leaks, or the things that spill out and escape framing processes. In relation to state–nature interactions, overXows can be seen in the form of acid rain or genetically modiWed organisms, which have both at diVerent times eluded the framing of nation-states and Xowed across national borders. What is interesting within the contemporary era, however, is that these overspills are now being framed in such a way that they too can be measured and attributed to individual states (Callon 1998: 257) (see Chapter 7). In the speciWc context of modern state systems, we understand the process of the framing of nature in relation to two interrelated tendencies—the acts of centralization and territorialization. Both processes are synonymous with modern state systems. We understand centralization as having two vital eVects on the framing of state nature. First, centralization involves the gathering of standardized knowledge about nature through complex webs of institutional arrangements and technological devices. This centralized collection of knowledge about nature may include estimates of the concentration of chemicals in the atmosphere, national soil surveys, or water reserve analyses. As Scott (1998) recognizes, the gathering of this ecological knowledge within state laboratories, government departments, and various other ‘centres of calculation’, involves the production of a highly simpliWed nature, which has been abstracted from its geographical context and shorn of all those things that do not interest the state. The centralization of nature should not in this context simply be interpreted as a process of simpliWcation. Centralization is about making nature mobile (in both a literal and
16
States and Natures
metaphorical sense)—so it can be gathered in both a simpliWed form (as in the environmental statistic) or as an actual object (as in the laboratory or museum piece). Secondly, the centralization of knowledge about nature involves the creation of a Weld of power. This is essentially a Weld of state power over nature that is generated on the basis of the new understandings of nature that are created by the centralized concentration of knowledge about the natural world. This Weld of power not only frames the natures that are to be understood and governed by the state (i.e. state nature), but also suggests those natures—both within and beyond a state’s territory—for which it does not have governmental responsibility. We understand the process of territorialization as the use of space to control and regulate nature. In this context the territorialization of nature can be seen to operate in at least two ways. First, it involves the construction of spaces that facilitate and order the gathering of political knowledge. This knowledge can be the product of various mapping exercises or even geographical information systems (GISs), but essentially enables the state to know nature through its spatial form and location (see Chapter 4). Secondly, the modern state often uses territorial strategies to physically control nature and social interactions with the natural world. At one level, such territorial strategies may involve the regulation of nature through the use of national boundaries, but it can also involve the control of nature in sub-national spaces like national parks, sustainable cities, or planning zones. Throughout this volume, we consider how the processes of centralization and territorialization interact within the continual framing and reframing of nature by the state (see Figure 1.1). Crucially we claim that the interaction of these processes not only determines what nature a state is to govern, but also inXuences the ways in which it is possible to understand and experience the natural world. In order to operationalize this view of state–nature relations we explore the complexities of state nature through what we term diVerent sites and
Fig. 1.1.
The framing of state nature
Introduction
17
moments of connection. The terms ‘sites’ and ‘moments’ are important here because they draw attention to the important role of both space and time within the constitution of state nature. By focusing upon the sites and moments (or speciWc spaces and times) of state–nature relations we reveal the geographical complexities and temporal diversities that characterize these relationships. In this way we aim to avoid oversimplistic and abstract accounts of ‘the state’ and ‘nature’, and consider instead very speciWc imbrications of certain states with particular facets of nature, within particular spatio-temporal coordinates. We use the terms ‘sites’ and ‘moments’ because at one level they suggest the existence of discrete bounded spaces and times we can study—a national park or the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, for example, or an atmospheric monitoring laboratory, or a Xood event. In this context, a focus on sites and moments gives us something to grasp onto as we attempt to explore the pervasive yet strangely elusive relations between states and natures. Following Harrison et al. (2004: 130), we argue that sites and moments ‘are places and times of concentration and intensity of process and energy’. As intense concentrations of process and energy we claim that the various sites and moments we study in this book (including the American Museum of Natural History in New York, the early modern Swedish state, the Trewern Valley Reservoir, and even a particular day (22 July 2003) when Congressman Dave Weldon addressed the American House of Representatives) can all provide rich and complex insights into the ever-shifting relationships between states and natures. We consequently use diVerent sites and moments of state–nature relations not to limit and bound our investigations, but as points of departure as we become ever more immersed in the entanglements of states and natures. Sites and moments thus force us to consider the negotiated connection of the material and the discursive, the human and the non-human, society and nature, in the perpetual reconstruction of space and history. Throughout the seven chapters of this book we have deliberately chosen to look at a variety of what may seem at Wrst glance unrelated sites and moments of state–nature relations. Even in individual chapters we often move between Welds as diverse as the Dutch polders and Welsh nationalism, or governmental reform in New Zealand and parliamentary politics in the UK. We have deliberately chosen this strategy so that we can more eVectively convey the multitude of diVerent sites and moments where and when state– nature relations operate and in turn convey the pervasive and critical nature of this relationship to our contemporary modes of existence.
State, nature, and modernity’s laboratory While it is possible to chart the relationship between political authorities and the natural world through a range of ancient regimes and historical empires, in this volume we focus upon state–nature relations speciWcally within the
18
States and Natures
modern period. We explain what we understand by the modern period in greater detail shortly (p. 19), but our reason for studying this particular historical epoch requires some initial explanation. We are concentrating upon the modern era primarily because this is a time that is synonymous with the centralization and territorialization of political and ecological power described in the previous section. When exploring the modern era we are primarily interested in two of its most important myths—the myths of the modern state and modern nature. These myths are essentially based upon the twin scientiWc codiWcation of political power and ecological process witnessed in the modern era. In terms of the state, the formation of modern government is typically associated with the emergence of a new ‘science of the state’ in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Foucault 2002). It was at this time that the socalled ‘problem of government’ was transformed from being a question of securing sovereign power to one concerning the proper accumulation and use of knowledge as a basis for political regulation (Foucault 2002: 215). While Foucault does not expand in detail on precisely what the science of the state is, or was, we interpret it as a deWnitive model of good government, based upon standardized bureaucratic procedures and territorial controls and dedicated to uncovering an underlying and predictable truth within the things that are to be governed. The emerging myth of modern nature is, we claim, intimately tied to the operations of the modern state. We thus understand modern nature as a construction of the natural world within which nature is shorn of its social attachments, values, and meanings and is presented as a puriWed object of scientiWc reXection, exploration, and exploitation. In this context modern nature was invented, at least at a conceptual level, within the methodological convulsions and epistemological revolutions associated with the birth of the classical scientiWc revolution (Latour 1993; Thomas 1983). As a partial product of the scientiWc revolution, modern nature traces its historical origins to a similar time as the modern state. As subsequent chapters will show, however, this is no temporal coincidence—the modern state has continued to provide the political context within which the modern construction of nature as a knowable object of control and (scientiWc) government has been continually rehearsed, consolidated, and preserved. Having established this fairly rudimentary understanding of the modern state and nature it is important to reXect upon their mythical characterization. To speak of the myths of the modern state and nature may appear peculiar, given that they are the combined objects of analysis upon which this book is based. But by emphasizing their mythical status we are not trying to deny the profound eVects that notions of the modern state and nature have had on the world. Rather, we seek to explore how the myths of a cold, calculating, bureaucratic state, whose modes of operation transcend the messiness of everyday life, and an abstract, apolitical nature have actually
Introduction
19
enabled the deepening of ever more complex state–nature relations. In this way we partially concur with the parallels that Bruno Latour (1993: ch. 2) famously draws between the modern state and modern nature. The work of Latour has shown that while the visions of a ‘gigantic rational state’ and objectiWed nature have never been fulWlled, as popular myths they have both facilitated and fuelled the economic and political transformations that are synonymous with modernity (1993: 122). Our aim in this book is consequently twofold: Wrst, to explore the eVects that the modern myths of the state and nature have had on human understanding and experience of both politics and ecology; and secondly, to expose the complexities of both the state and nature, which are largely ignored within their mythical construction. In exposing these myths we seek to show a state which, far from being objective and removed, is dependent on a whole range of social actors and ecological processes for its existence. In a related sense, we reveal a nature which, far from being the objective product of science, is a socially constructed and politically infused product of modernity. Our analysis of the myths of both the modern state and modern nature thus become crucial moments within their respective demystiWcations. In attempting to uncover the complexities of the modern state, modern nature, and the connections between them, our project draws in part on the wider work of Bruno Latour. In his explorations of nature as a socio-ecological hybrid, and the state as a ‘skein of networks’, Latour (1993: 120–2) attempts to uncover the inherent messiness that lies behind our ordered understandings of both nature and the state. Where we diVer from Latour, however, is in our insistence on the continuing importance of both the state and nature as conceptual categories and ontological realities. While Latour’s hybrid interpretation of reality leads him to a point whereby both the state and nature become meaningless simpliWcations of our networked existence,21 we argue that both the state and nature continue to channel and mobilize important forms of socio-environmental power and agency, and as such are crucial loci of analysis. We are conscious that great care must be taken when speaking of the modern era. The idea of the modern actually refers to a diverse set of political, economic, and cultural processes to which a single term can hardly do justice. Literally meaning ‘of the moment’, or ‘just now’, the term modern tends to refer to processes of historical change associated with modernization—or what Soja (1987: 27) has described as ‘the continuous process of societal restructuring that is periodically accelerated to produce a signiWcant recomposition of space–time–being’. We will return to the links between the modern and space–time–being shortly, but it is important to recognize at this point that while the modern is often referred to as an era (modernity) its precise history is diYcult to delimit. In the celebrated analysis of modernity 21 In particular note Latour’s (1993: 122) criticisms of the conceptualizations of the ‘total State’.
20
States and Natures
provided by Marshall Berman (1983), we see the history of the modern era presented not as a continuously unfurling historical project, but as a series of intense periods of modernization, including the aforementioned political and scientiWc revolutions of the sixteenth century (where modernity became a force to oppose the ancient world) and the more recent technological transformations associated with the industrial revolution during the nineteenth century.22 It would thus be erroneous to interpret our mobilization of the notions of the modern state and modern nature as distinct historical categories or types. It is quite clear that during the era of modernity (whenever that may actually be) states have taken very diVerent forms and fulWlled varying functions, while nature has been understood and used in a variety of ways. It is our contention, however, that as a ‘programmatic vision for social change and progress’23 modernity has provided the ideological and technological context within which the intensive centralization and territorialization of the natural world (which we claim characterizes contemporary state– nature relations) has Xourished. Consequently, while Berman (1983: 15, 26) describes modernity as a ‘vital mode’ of largely social experience, we also see it in relation to a set of ecological ‘ways of being’ that have been shaped by the ‘technocratic pastorals’ of the modern state. In order to conceptualize the relationship between state, nature, and modernity we Wnd the metaphor of the laboratory particularly helpful. The modern scientiWc laboratory has a long historical association in the public imagination with the objective uncovering of nature’s secrets. This idealized vision of the laboratory has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years from sociologists who have explored the cultural and political fabric of laboratory life.24 Within these varied studies, the laboratory has been shown to be an intensely cultural and political site within which conventions (not truths) about the natural world are produced through everyday practices and struggles. By oVering the idea of the state as modernity’s laboratory we are suggesting that the state not only be understood as a site for the production of a deWnitive vision of (modern) nature, but as a political context within which struggles over the properties, meanings, and values of nature are being constantly expressed, managed, and partially regulated. As a laboratory space, of course, the modern state does not frame nature in the same way as real laboratories (through walls, experimentation columns, Petri dishes, and refrigerators) but through territorial borders, institutional structures, and laws. We claim, however, that just as laboratories produce legitimate knowledge concerning nature, and physically transform fragments of the natural world, so too states are actively engaged in the reiWcation of 22
See also Soja’s (1989: 24–31) analysis of Berman. We use here Maria Kaika’s term (2005: 4). 24 See in particular here Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s (1979) celebrated anthropology of the work of scientists sharing laboratory space. For a broader discussion of the politics of the laboratory, see Barnes and Shapin (1979), Latour (1983), Shapin and SchaVer (1985). 23
Introduction
21
modern state nature. By drawing the parallel between the role of the state and laboratory in the construction of nature, we are also mindful of Latour and Woolgar’s reXection on the relationship between the laboratory and the natural world: ‘ScientiWc activity is not ‘‘about nature’’, it is a Werce Wght to construct reality. The laboratory is the workplace and the set of productive forces, which makes construction possible’ (Latour and Woolgar 1979: 243; emphasis in original). The distinction that Latour and Woolgar make between nature and the reality produced in the laboratory is important for us because it serves to highlight the diVerence between the natural world and the reality of state nature that has been produced under modernity. Like the reality produced in the laboratory, state nature is not simply an objective reXection of the natural world, but rather a form of nature that is both possible and politically useful to construct. As a kind of virtual laboratory of nature, we claim throughout this book that the state has been central in orchestrating our modern conceptions of the natural world. In making this assertion we do not wish to deny the crucial role that both capitalism (see Smith 1984) and religion (see White 1967) had and continue to have in shaping the modern perception of nature. But we do argue that by focusing on the state we are able to perceive the particular impacts that the processes of territorialization and centralization have had on our understanding and treatments of nature. Implicit within this agenda is a belief that the emergence of modern states has fundamentally transformed how we experience and can experience the natural world (see e.g., Harvey 1989a, b; Soja 1989: ch. 1; Thrift 1996).
Structure of this book In this chapter we have sought to introduce the reader to our broad agenda and theoretical framework of analysis. The remainder of this volume is split into six main chapters. Chapter 2 supplements and extends this opening chapter, outlining and exploring the diVerent ways in which state theorists and ecological thinkers have conceived of the complex relationship between the state and nature. Together these two chapters outline the main theoretical traditions and ideas upon which this volume in based. In Chapter 3 we explore the historical relationships between states and nature and how states have utilized nature within their ideological and material development. Chapter 4 considers how nature–state relations have been spatialized as part of an emerging nation-state system, in particular through the cartographic practices associated with land-use mapping. Chapter 5 considers the role of political administrations and bureaucracies in mediating state—nature relations and Chapter 6 moves on to explore how technologies have facilitated new forms of state–nature interaction while at the same time undermining certain forms of state power over nature. Finally, Chapter 7 explores
22
States and Natures
the changing constitution of state nature in diVerent post-national contexts. In relation to the political, economic, and environmental processes associated with globalization, it considers how contemporary state–nature relations are increasingly being forged around a series of sub-national and supra-national sites and spaces.
2 Seeing Double: Thinking about Natures and States Without their countless objects that ensure their durability as well as their solidity, the traditional objects of social theory—empire, classes, profession, organizations, States—become so many mysteries . . . The very size of a Totalitarian State is obtained only by the construction of a network of statistics and calculations, of oYces and enquiries, which in no way corresponds to the fantastic topography of the total State. (Latour 1993: 120, 122)
The disintegration of the atlas: mythical abstractions and fantastic topographies This chapter is about how we think about states, natures, and the relationships between them. Despite this book’s assertion that an understanding of the relations between states and natures is vital for any interpretation of contemporary political life or ecological existence, it is important to recognize the growing sense of antipathy towards theories of the state within work on nature. This antipathy is based on two broad critiques of state theory—one epistemological and the other ontological. At an epistemological level, challenges to work on the state can perhaps best be understood in relation to the consistent tendency of certain strands of political theory to use the deWnite article when referring to ‘the’ state. Reference to ‘the’ state, however innocently deployed, implicitly suggests a clearly designated, singular entity of government. But it is precisely this view of states as sovereign, territorially autonomous containers of political life that has led to a concerted wave of theoretical criticism. The reiWcation of a deWnitive vision of the state has tended to create a very narrow view of the state within certain strands of contemporary political theory. It is in this context that Rose and Miller (1992) argue that the state is nothing more than a ‘mythical abstraction’ (see Chapter 1), or an attempt to simplify the complex networks and practices through which governmental power is realized into narrowly conceived, centralized visions of authority. Consequently, to many writing within what could
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broadly be deWned as a Foucauldian school (Hobbes 1996: 82) of political theory, notions of the state are anathema to the careful and systematic study of the governmental technologies, modes of calculation, and institutional procedures through which socio-political power is realized. At an ontological level, it is argued that even if vestiges of the mythical abstractions (or ‘fantastic topologies’) associated with state theory persist, the power of states to shape the political, economic, and social worlds has been seriously undermined. Much of the purported reduction in the state’s sovereign power has been associated with the rise of globalization1 and the associated socio-ecological relations and transactions that now routinely traverse national territories. Within both these critical perspectives on state theory issues of nature feature prominently. In the Wrst instance, for example, many now working on the complex networks of ecological governance, which characterize systems of environmental governmentality, claim that notions of the state obfuscate the subtle connections between political power and ecological process (Darier 1999). In the second context, certain scholars of globalization now argue that the key issues in contemporary socio-natural relations (whether it be climate change or ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere) are global in form and thus beyond the territorial remit of nation-states (Ophuls 1977). Despite these contemporary manifestations of the tensions between theories of the state and nature, in this chapter we explore how the separation of states and natures within critical study actually has much longer historical antecedents within western political thought and philosophy. Having considered the ideas informing the separation of states and natures within critical analysis, the remainder of the chapter examines how ideas of states and nature have been combined within diVerent theoretical traditions. Sometimes these connections are clear and explicit; in other instances they are merely implied. By excavating these diVerent theoretical traditions we consider a range of possible ways of understanding and discerning state–nature relations. Ultimately, we use these varied perspectives to better explain and position our own interpretation of the relationship between states and natures, which is based upon notions of territorialization, centralization, and framing.2
Rethinking states and natures I: first nature and the early modern state States of nature: Hobbes and Rousseau It is instructive to begin our discussions by referring back to some of the earliest philosophical accounts of the state and nature. What is interesting 1
For an overview of globalization see Held et al. (1999). For a much shorter but related theoretical review of state–nature relations see Whitehead et al. (2006). 2
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about some of these is that while often coming from opposing political perspectives they have one thing in common—a tendency to create a temporal and ideological dichotomy between states and natures. Let us begin with one of the most celebrated writers on the state and political sovereignty, Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was born prematurely on 5 April 1588 in the English county of Wiltshire. The seemingly apocryphal tale was told that Hobbes’s premature birth was a result of his mother’s concern with the imminent arrival of the Spanish Armada to English shores. We note this rather peculiar tale because it is suggestive of the times within which he lived and wrote. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was a place and an era of transition, when the political hierarchies of the medieval world were gradually being replaced by early modern state systems. Hobbes witnessed the kinds of social and military turmoil these transformations created—from the English naval struggles with Spain to the internal conXicts over the form and functions of the English state that raged during the civil war of 1642–48. On the basis of these experiences Hobbes wrote a series of manuscripts in which he reXected on nature, humanity, and social organization—including De Cive (1642) and De Corpore (1655). His most inXuential work, however, is undoubtedly Leviathan (1651), which, signiWcantly, was published only three years after the cessation of the English civil war and the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia. In Leviathan Hobbes explores the role that emerging systems of government (or embryonic states) should have in resolving social anarchy and war. According to Hobbes the leviathan was a hybrid political structure, combining the ‘sovereign power’ and ‘the people’ within a system of political control and obedience. While it would be erroneous to equate Hobbes’s vision of the leviathan with the modern state, what is interesting, in the context of our deliberations, are the discussions that he initiates regarding the relationship between nature and political government.3 Hobbes refers to nature not as a thing or as a set of ecological processes, but as a condition. In this context, it is wrong to associate Hobbes’s use of the term ‘nature’ with its contemporary manifestations. The condition of nature was, according to Hobbes, the type of social relations that did (or would) exist in the absence of a sovereign power. This idea of nature as a time or condition of ‘primitive’, savage society is often referred to as a state of nature. The idea of the state of nature clearly resonates with the contemporary idea of ‘Wrst nature’, or that time within human prehistory and ancient times when humans were still a product of nature and its laws, not a producer of nature themselves.4 As with all other species, Hobbes (1996: 82–6) argued, humans were a product of a state of nature 3
Caloyn Merchant (1989: 206–15) provides a more detailed analysis of Hobbes’s account of the natural world. 4 For more on the ideologies of Wrst nature and the idea of the production of nature, see Smith (1984) and Luke (1995: 3–4).
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within which their animalistic instincts and capabilities were set. The problem for Hobbes was that he believed that the natural impulse of humanity would, if left to its savage freedoms and unchecked desires, result in a system of social anarchy, destruction, and perpetual warfare. In his now (in)famous reXection on the state of nature, Hobbes emphasizes this fundamental belief: Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men [sic] live without a common power, to keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called war . . . where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall Xourish them withal. In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth . . . no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worse of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (Hobbes 1996: 84)
Perhaps what is most signiWcant about this often-cited quote is not so much the notoriously bleak picture it paints of early human existence, but the direct parallel it draws between the absence of the state (or a common power) and the presence of an uncivilized natural realm. Debate still rages as to whether Hobbes believed this state of nature (or ‘war’) actually existed, or whether he was using it as an ‘apocalyptic myth’ against which to counterpoint his theories.5 Hobbes did, however, predicate that the only way of resolving the natural inclination of humanity to follow selWsh desires and generate divisive conXict was to cede certain natural freedoms to a sovereign power. This sovereign power could then, through the advantages of the power vested within it, provide an authoritative framework within which conXicts and disputes could be resolved and social harmony achieved. While Hobbes’s vision of a sovereign or common power cannot be read simply as a call for a modern nation-state, it is clear that his idea of a civil government with national territorial scope is an authoritarian precursor of the modern state. What is also clear, however, is that when discussing issues of government and society, Hobbes establishes a clear temporal/metaphorical dichotomy between systems of nature and the laws and practices of government. To Hobbes, the state, or common power, replaces or supersedes nature—as the body of nature (‘primitive man’) is replaced by the body politic (the leviathan).6 The demarcation of a state of nature (or the original state of humanity), either in time or intellectually, from what we term the nature of the state (the establishment of a system of civil society centred on a sovereign government) is a common and persistent move within analyses of natures and states. The separation of nature and the state in this way operates at a number of levels, but is undergirded by a particular ideological vision of nature as an alien, uncivilized, external realm, over which human rationality 5 6
See the editor’s introduction to Hobbes (1996: xxxii). See ibid. (xviii).
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and good government must prevail if a morally virtuous society is to be achieved (Smith 1984).7 A second key writer who discussed the relationship between the functions of early states and the natural world was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The son of a Swiss watchmaker, Rousseau lived in Geneva as a child, eventually moving to Paris, where he began to write some of his most famous philosophical work. He is of particular interest to this book for two main reasons: Wrst, because he was a philosopher of the Enlightenment who was concerned with the establishment of a modern rational and representative state that could replace the systems of feudal servitude that existed in Europe during the eighteenth century; and secondly, because his work provides an alternative view on the relationship between states and natures to that oVered by Hobbes. In his famous Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1755) (or the Second Discourse),8 Rousseau presents a detailed exegesis on Hobbes’s notion of the state of nature. Critically, within his discussion of the state of nature, Rousseau rejects Hobbes’s vision of the state of nature as nasty and brutish and argues that it is the emergence of modern political society (and in particular authoritarian states) that has created social inequality, repressions, and political unrest. In this context, Rousseau argues that rather than supplanting nature, the function of states should be to re-establish and preserve the personal freedoms associated with the state of nature, or the natural state of humanity. It is the need to re-establish natural freedoms that Rousseau is referring to in that famous Wrst line of his The Social Contract, when he states, ‘Man [sic] is born free; and everywhere he is in chains’ (Rousseau 1993: 181). Many have argued that Rousseau’s invocation of the state of nature as a time of timid harmony and freedom is nothing more than romantic naturalism.9 At one level there can be little doubt that he utilized a very diVerent ideology of nature from that deployed by Hobbes. This divergence in Rousseau’s understanding of nature from that of Hobbes is expressed perhaps most clearly on the opening page of his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, when he quotes Aristotle’s reXection on the relationship between nature and moral order: ‘We should consider what is natural not in things which are depraved but in those which are rightly ordered according to nature.’10 It is in this context that Rousseau’s vision of nature is perhaps best thought of in terms of the contemporary notion of an internal ideology of nature—an ideology that attributes moral virtue, wholesomeness, and divine order to 7
The taming, or civilizing, of nature by modern state institutions has been likened by Tim Luke (1997) to the imposition of an artiWcially generated ‘techno-sphere’ (or second nature) onto a pre-historical ‘eco-sphere’ (or Wrst nature). 8 Its full title was A Discourse on a Subject Proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What is the Origin of Inequality Among Men, and is it Authorised by Natural Law? 9 See the editor’s introduction to Rousseau (1993). 10 This quote was taken by Rousseau from Aristotle’s Politics (Book I, ch. 2).
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the natural world (Smith 1984: ch. 1). Nevertheless, Rousseau did not advocate a romantic quest in search of a lost Eden or natural order, but rather the creation of an artiWcial system of political government to preserve the natural rights of humanity to freedom. According to Rousseau, this system of political government was best achieved through a social contract, or bond, forged (and constantly re-aYrmed) between people and the state. On Rousseau’s terms the role of the state should be to deliver the collective will of the people and to preserve their right to individual freedom. To Rousseau, then, the state was a necessary institution in preserving nature or at least the natural order of the world. The signiWcance of the work of Hobbes and Rousseau for this book lies not in their respective portrayals of the pre-statal realms of Wrst nature, but in the fact that in order to theorize the political and moral functioning of states they had to invent a natural world. In order to comprehend what living in a state system was, it is clear that both Hobbes and Rousseau created a vision of an antecedent regime of nature, and used this vision to justify absolutism and republicanism, respectively, within the governments of their time. For both writers it is clear that nature became a mirror for the state. For Hobbes this mirror showed the problems that an absence of state power could create, while for Rousseau nature was invoked to illustrate the intrinsic failure of early modern governmental systems. This mirror for the state, oVered by both Rousseau and Hobbes, is consequently best conceived of as a ‘strippeddown’ vision of humankind—in Rousseau’s terms, humanity as it came from ‘the hand of nature’ (Smith 1984: ch. 1).
Anarchists, states, and natures The third and Wnal set of philosophies on the relationship between the early state and nature we wish to reXect upon come not from individual writers but a collection of political thinkers and activists collectively known as the ‘Anarchists’. While Anarchism has contemporary connotations with various nihilistic actions, political protests, and radical resistances, we are concerned here with the philosophies of a group of thinkers who emerged in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These writers, who became know by the collective term ‘Anarchists’, include prominent Wgures like Mikhail Bakunin, William Godwin, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, PierreJoseph Proudhon, Elise´e Reclus, and Henry David Thoreau. Despite its varied political and philosophical roots, the basic premise of Anarchism can be summarized as an opposition to the imposition of any form of authority that serves to erode the personal freedoms and creative powers of the individual. (It is salient to note that the word ‘anarchism’ can be taken to literally mean the absence of a leader or commanding authority.) Anarchist suspicion of authority has taken various forms, with numerous treatises written on the corrupting powers of both religion and science in the erosion
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of personal liberties (see Bakunin 1970; Kropotkin 1974). The state, however, has remained the central target of Anarchist writings and actions. The Wrst clear articulation of Anarchist philosophies on political hierarchy and the liberty of the individual was provided by William Godwin in his Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). In his famous reXections on the nature of political justice, Godwin claims that the presence of the state has two pernicious eVects upon the society over which it presides (Godwin 1976). First, states tend to produce a condition of dependence, whereby individuals turn to the state to provide the basic things they need to live rather than securing these things themselves. Secondly, and in a related sense, Godwin argues that states engender regimes of ignorance among their national populations, as individuals become increasingly alienated from the processes by which their lives are made possible. While the problems of dependency and ignorance identiWed by Godwin were invoked in a wide range of political contexts to justify Anarchist-inspired visions of society, many Anarchists equated these problems directly with the social experience of, and interaction with, nature. Anarchist writers claimed that the emergence of the modern state had eVectively severed people’s routine interactions with the natural world and undermined the valuable ecological knowledges produced by these immersions within nature. State-sponsored programmes of scientiWc forestry and industrialized agriculture, and the shift of population from rural to urban areas inspired by this transition were, according to the Anarchists, to blame for the growing estrangement of people from nature. It was this belief that inspired one of the most famous of all Anarchist writers, Peter Kropotkin, to write his celebrated blueprint for an Anarchist society—Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow (1899). In this book Kropotkin argued for the decentralization of society from a nationally integrated system of industry and agriculture into a federated system of self-contained communes. While inspired by the desire to create a better quality of life for people, through the careful integration of industry, agriculture, and the home, at the centre of Kropotkin’s vision was a clear desire to remove the barriers that he believed the state had placed between people and the natural world. Perhaps the clearest indication of the Anarchists’ concern with socionatural relations is captured in the publication of one of their earliest journals, Mother Earth. Edited by Alexander Berkman and published by Emma Goldman, Mother Earth provided a framework within which Anarchist concerns with political society were combined with deliberations on environmental change and ecological destruction. The dual purpose envisaged for Mother Earth is perhaps captured best in Emma Goldman and Max Baginski’s introduction to the Wrst issues of the magazine in March 1906: MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is a deadweight on the Wrm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only
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in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains of riches. The Earth free for the free individual! (Goldman and Baginski 1906: 1)
The mantra of ‘the Earth free for the free individual’ espoused by Mother Earth encapsulates the relationship that Anarchists regularly constructed between political freedom and ecological harmony. During the early part of the twentieth century Mother Earth became a very fashionable place to publish, numbering among its varied contributors Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Leo Tolstoy. Combining poetry with political philosophy and ecology with historical commentary, the pages of Mother Earth reveal the links that Anarchists discerned between the erosion of political liberty and freedom within emerging state systems and the social estrangement and destruction of nature. ReXecting on the consolidation of state power in the US, Emma Goldman and Max Baginski make the political ecology of anarchism clear: To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas JeVerson, America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands— Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions, on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had suYced to turn a great republic, once gloriously established, into an arbitrary state that subdued a vast number of its people into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize every material and mental resource. (Goldman and Baginski 1906: 1)
In this zealous passage on the socio-ecological consequences of state formation it is possible to discern a clear distinction between the purported slavery of arbitrarily imposed state systems and the inherent freedoms of nature, and in particular wilderness. The connection between wilderness, liberty, and nature is a consistent theme within the various issues of Mother Earth and other Anarchist writings. It is of course not diYcult to draw parallels between this vision of nature and freedom and Rousseau’s invocation of the state of nature. What appears to be diVerent, however, between the state of nature envisaged by Rousseau and the Mother Earth invoked by Anarchists are the political motives that informed these constructions. While Rousseau used the idea of a state of nature to imagine a state system that preserved the natural freedoms of humankind, the Anarchists’ recourse to Mother Earth had much more to do with the creation of individual freedoms, which were based on the independence of people from the state. On Anarchist terms, personal independence from state systems was to be
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realized through a re-engagement of people with the substratum upon which their existence depended—nature. If Mother Earth represented the intellectual exegesis of Anarchist thinking on the proper ordering of society and nature, Henry David Thoreau provided its practical counterpart. In many ways Thoreau embodies the type of Anarchist ecologism envisaged within the pages of Mother Earth. Thoreau’s Anarchist sympathies are perhaps expressed most clearly in his suspicion of the state. (During his life, it is claimed that he never voted or paid taxes!) Thoreau’s ecologism is evident in his varied writings on, and his persistent desire to reconnect with, the natural world. Perhaps the most famous expression of his particular brand of eco-anarchism (or anarcho-ecologism) was his retreat to live in the Massachusetts woods and the subsequent publication of his famous book Walden (or, Life in the Woods) in 1854. During July 1845, while still mourning the death of his brother, Thoreau took up residence at a woodlot on Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts. His good friend Ralph Waldo Emerson owned the Walden Pond woodlot and it was Emerson’s writings on nature that inspired Thoreau to embark upon his retreat. Altogether, Thoreau only lived on Walden Pond for two years and two months his record of his time there remains essential reading for Anarchists and environmentalists alike. In many ways the illustrated front cover of the 1942 Signet Books reprint of Thoreau’s classic tale conveys the meaning of his sojourn at Walden. It shows Thoreau learning against a wooden cabin, surrounded by nature, in a deep state of contemplation and free from any discernable authority or government. This is the Anarchist ideal, an individual free of the pandering dependencies of the state, in a condition of reXective harmony and understanding with the natural world. In his account of his two-year separation from mainstream society at Walden Pond, Thoreau describes an intimate relationship emerging between himself and his surrounding natural environment. Shorn of the complexities and demands of modern life, he describes a growing interdependency emerging between himself and the cycles and seasons of Walden’s ecologies. Crucially, and echoing the transcendental philosophies of Emerson, Thoreau claims that his reconnection with nature not only facilitated the gathering of important forms of environmental knowledge, but a spiritual awakening of the self. It is this belief in the discovery of the true self (within the realms of nature from where that self Wrst originated) that lies at the heart of Anarchist philosophies of freedom, the state, and nature. This process relies fundamentally on the gradual discernment of a human ‘species being’, which is only recognized when a broader consciousness of ecological being is comprehended. According to Anarchists, it is this conscious species being that is denied within the alienated ecological realms of the modern state. It is important at this point to recognize the limitations of our brief review of Anarchist philosophies. As we have intimated, Anarchism is a broad and
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ongoing philosophical tradition, and as such our brief, historically limited review of its luminaries fails to grasp the complex variations within Anarchist writing and thought. While admitting this, however, it is clear that the early writings of the Anarchists continue to be invoked within various facets and strands of contemporary environmentalism, and persistently inform the environmental movement’s suspicion of the modern state. Our primary concern with the enduring inXuence of Anarchist philosophies relates to their tendency to create a potentially pernicious zero–sum game in discussions of the state and nature. The point is that through the Anarchist characterization of the state as repressive and nature as freedom, there is a tendency to suggest that more state power means less space for nature, while the re-emergence of nature concurrently reXects an erosion in the inXuence of the state. This is clearly absurd! It is absurd because of the implicit assumptions that such a perspective makes about both the state and nature. First, it assumes that all forms of state are hierarchical and suppressive. While there is a clear tendency within modern state systems to favour hierarchical systems of command and control, this tends to overlook the potentially empowering and heterarchic networks through which state power can be realized (Robbins 2004, forthcoming). Secondly, this perspective rests upon a rather idealized view of nature as a non-hierarchical entity of mutual cooperation and support. Increasingly, scientiWc study has revealed the discordant hierarchies through which nature operates, which, while liberating certain species and biological forms, inhibit and subjugate others. The point is that just as with Hobbes’s and Rousseau’s ‘states of nature’, certain Anarchists have been guilty of creating an arbitrary division between states and natures. While in part informed by the temporal assumptions of accounts of a primordial state of nature (or Mother Earth), it is interesting that the division that Anarchists make between states and natures is a very spatial aVair. Consequently, within the Anarchist tradition the state is equated with industry, the city, and the nation, while nature becomes synonymous with agriculture, wilderness, and the local. Here nature and the state are not so much times (the state of nature/ the nature of the state) as spaces and places (Walden/Washington, DC). It is our contention in this book that the spatial spread, or consolidation, of states (that is, their territorialization) should not be equated with an associated loss of space for nature. Instead, we argue that rather than replacing nature, states have provided new spatial and institutional contexts through which nature is being understood and experienced. Before leaving Anarchist writings, it is important to recognize a shifting emphasis in neo-Anarchist thinking on the relationships between the state and nature. This is perhaps captured best in the diverse and inXuential writings of Murray Bookchin (1980, 1986, 1991). What is interesting about Bookchin’s work is that while his writings on social ecology and ecological democracy emphasize the importance of abandoning forms of social organization that are predicated upon the state, his critique of the state is not based
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upon the state as a political principle but on the modes of rationality and socio-ecological ordering that states tend to produce. This, of course, is much more a critique of the modern logics of states than simply their institutional existence. If we look, for example, at Bookchin’s reXections on states and natures in his Post-scarcity Anarchism, this distinction becomes clear: The cast of mind that today organizes diVerences among humans and other life-forms along hierarchical lines, deWning the external in terms of its ‘superiority’ or ‘inferiority’, will give way to an outlook that deals with diversity in an ecological manner. DiVerences among people will be respected, indeed fostered, as elements that enrich the unity of experience and phenomena. The traditional relationship that pits subject against object will be altered qualitatively; the ‘external’, the ‘diVerent’, the ‘other’ will be conceived as individual parts of a whole all the richer because of its complexity. This sense of unity will reXect the harmonization of interests between individuals and between society and nature. Freed from an oppressive routine, from paralyzing repressions and insecurities, from the burdens of toil and false needs, from the trammels of authority and irrational compulsion, individuals will Wnally, for the Wrst time in history, be in a position to realize their potentialities as members of the human community and the natural world. (Bookchin 2004: 57)
The issue for Bookchin here is clearly not so much with the existence of political authority in the form of a state or government, as with the ordering logics that this centralized authority imposes upon the natural world and the impacts that these ordering techniques have on subsequent social experiences of nature.11 As opposed to a conscious unity of experience between the social and ecological worlds, Bookchin sees a dual tendency within state systems. At one level states impose a hierarchical order which reduces nature to its component parts and establishes clear boundaries between the social and natural worlds. Secondly, Bookchin discerns that as the social and natural worlds are ordered hierarchically by state institutions, a process of othering emerges through which nature loses much of its social and spiritual meaning. Of course what both the processes of hierarchical ordering and othering have in common is that that they tend to simplify nature into a series of socially discernable and manageable categories and simultaneously obfuscate other systems that could be used to understand nature and ecology.
Rethinking states and natures II: second nature, administrative power, and the ‘ecological leviathan’ Weber and the ecological leviathan The second set of theories we wish to explore reXects a more sanguine interpretation of nature–state relations than those recounted so far. We are 11 This is perhaps why Bookchin advocated a vision of state decentralization that was not based upon ecological principles but on the structures of libertarian municipalism.
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primarily concerned in this section with how a political and cultural consciousness of an emerging form of second (or socially changed) nature is intimately connected to the conceptual embracing of the state as a necessary manager of natural resources and ecological risk. When we speak of second nature, we do so in direct and deliberate contradistinction to the idea of Wrst nature we discussed in the previous section. Consequently, if Wrst nature is the primordial substratum of existence, or that which pre-exists social production, second nature is a nature that has been constructed and produced, an artiWce of a prevailing socio-technical order (Smith 1984: ch. 2). While we are suspicious of the widespread use of the term ‘second nature’ within contemporary philosophical debate,12 what is interesting about the term is that it describes a form of nature that humanity is responsible for producing. This notion of social responsibility for nature has been manifest in two main ways. First, there has been a growing awareness—often driven through the environmental movement, but also through environmental sciences—of the unprecedented ecological damage that the industrial generation has done to the natural world. Secondly, and strangely allied to the production of environmental damage, has been an emerging socio-cultural and techno-scientiWc belief that human society can control and manage the environment in new ways. This process of environmental management is based upon maximizing environmental resource use while alleviating the eVects of environmental damage. It is in this dual context of environmental change and increasing political power over the environment that the idea of the state as manager or caretaker of nature Wrst emerged. In many ways the idea of the state as caretaker, or guardian, of the environment is a philosophy not too distant from the Hobbesian state (see Johnston 1996: 131–2). Consequently, and in the context of capitalist social relations in particular, it is not diYcult to imagine how the selWsh pursuit of individual economic agents, if unchecked, could have devastating eVects on the welfare of environmental commons like the atmosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere. The somewhat simplistic and economically Xawed argument goes that in such circumstance, each economic agent would be impelled to exploit the environment to his or her fullest capacity, while avoiding any form of environmental reparation for fear of subsidizing the resource use of competing economic agents.13 This is in eVect the eco-industrial equivalent of Hobbes’s chaotic vision of the state of nature.14 From this perspective the 12 This is primarily because of the way in which the term has been used to deny the continuing reality of Wrst nature—which, if not in terms of ecological space, at least in relation to ecobiological processes, endures. 13 See in this context Garret Hardin’s (1968) famous, if controversial, tragedy-of-thecommons thesis. 14 While conceived of in relation to the need for collective international action to protect the global commons, the classic exegesis on the economic exploitation of global commons was provided by Garret Hardin in his Tragedy of the Commons (1968). See also Hardin (1974) for a discussion of the need for global or world government.
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state’s institutional capacities and territorial coverage enable it to assume an important position within the Weld of environmental management—intervening in pollution control and abatement, coordinating large-scale environmental clean-up operations, devising new acts of legislation to control socioindustrial interventions in nature, granting licences and permits for new scientiWc techniques and engagements with nature, and constantly providing matrices and calculated formulae of estimated environmental change and likely resource availability. This interpretation of the relationship between the state and nature essentially sees the state as a collective ecological agent, acting either in the best interests of the population as a whole (a neo-pluralist perspective), or on the best available judgement of scientiWc experts and state personnel (a neo-elitist position).15 But the question remains as to why the state, and not other politicoeconomic agents, should assume the position of guardian of the natural world. The idea of the state as an ecological manager derives from a collection of writings that have focused upon the political apparatus and administrative resources associated with state bureaucracies. These theories are often referred to as Weberian, or neo-Weberian, after the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920). While Weber wrote on a broad range of topics, he developed a particular interest in the nature of political bureaucracy (Weber 1947), which he interpreted as a form of labour division applied to systems of political administration. In this context, he saw the state as a set of emerging bureaucratic structures with an increasingly specialized set of institutions (or departments) and state personnel (civil servants) dedicated to political management tasks. Weber’s analysis of the state as a complex system of administrative structures led to his famous four-part deWnition of the state as: 1 a diVerentiated set of institutions and personnel embodying 2 centrality in the sense that political relations radiate outwards from a centre to cover 3 a territorially demarcated area, over which it exercises 4 a monopoly of authoritative rule-making, backed up by a monopoly of means of physical violence. (Quoted in Mann 1984: 185)
According to Weber it was the institutional capacity and associated rulemaking ability that set the state apart from other institutions. Drawing inspiration from Weber, modern neo-Weberian theorists like Giddens and Mann have developed sophisticated accounts of the state as a set of administrative structures that have a degree of autonomous power. The idea of autonomous power is important here because it opposes Marxist theories of the state, which often portray it as merely the expression of class forces and the interests that control it (see the next section, p. 38). Neo-Weberians like 15 For more on the links between the state and collective environmental action, see Johnston (1996).
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Giddens and Mann assert that the gradual accumulation of centralized institutional support, political bureaucracy, and trained policy elites has created a situation whereby the state has its own particular brand of power and inXuence, which is partially autonomous from class power or military might. Mann (1984) describes the authoritative resources of the state as its ‘infrastructural power’, while Giddens (1985: 19) prefers the term ‘administrative power’. In both instances, the processes they describe are recognizable by their contrast to traditional forms of absolutist or despotic state power. According to Mann (1984), the infrastructural power of the state is the product of the varied accumulation of institutional mechanisms and organizational procedures. In a related sense, Giddens’s notion of administrative power emphasizes the role of states in mobilizing administrative techniques in the increasingly detailed surveillance of society (1985: 181). Giddens (1985: 178) argues that states are essentially ‘reXexively monitored systems of reproduction’, which not only provide the necessary judico-political conditions for social reproduction, but also routinely scrutinize the changing circumstances of a nation to ensure prolonged security. Giddens recognizes that while states have always acted as systems of reXexive monitoring, within the modern period their technological capacity to perceive and respond to change within their territories has been greatly enhanced. Indeed, he goes so far as to argue that the emergence of systematic data-gathering and datamanagement techniques marks the end of authoritarian state forms and the birth of the modern state. The key state technology of reXexive monitoring identiWed by Giddens is that of information gathering, documentation, and storage. With the assistance of advanced communication systems and new data-gathering and accumulation techniques, Giddens observes a great advancement in the institutional capacities of the state during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This was based upon the regularized production and storage of information gathered through national censuses, tax registers, factory returns, and health statistics. Tied into the institutionalized datagathering practices of the state was of course an ability to control information and intervene more eVectively within the social and economic activities of the nation. In his related analysis of infrastructural power, Mann (1984) is quick to point out that many of the administrative techniques of the state are neither unique to it as a socio-political organization, nor were they deliberately devised by calculating state elites. Instead, he sees the state’s infrastructural power as being part of a general pattern of heightened social resource mobilization. What sets the state apart, on Mann’s terms at least, is the way it wields accumulated infrastructural resources over a Wxed territorial area and through a system of continual centralization. The link between infrastructural power and territorial control is echoed in the work of Giddens (1985), who argues that the administrative power of the state is both
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a product and a facilitator of the ordering of time/space at a national level. In this context, the infrastructural/administrative unity of the state not only enables it to control social activity within its territory, but also facilitates the deliberate choreography of the time/space of social life within a national framework. While the work of Weberians and neo-Weberians tends to focus on the exercise of state infrastructural/administrative power on society (in the form of the gathering of social statistics or through social institutions like the school, hospital, prison, and factory), it often ignores the related administration of nature, which has been an implicit part of the emergence and consolidation of the modern state. The administration, or management, of nature can be observed in two mains ways. First, the state administration of nature has evolved in relation to the gathering of information on environmental resources and ecological change. Secondly, the state’s administrative reach into nature is the product of their accumulated technologies, which enable them to assume a relatively unchallenged management position when society is confronted with ecological risk or environmental problems (see Chapters 5 and 7). The role of the state as a privileged institutional player within the Weld of environmental management is a theme developed by Ron Johnston (1996) in his explorations of the links between nature, state, and economy. According to Johnston, the accumulated administrative/infrastructural capacity of the modern state is important in the management of nature for two main reasons:16 Wrst, because the state was able to act as a collective agent, regulating the competitive and often unsustainable economic exploitation of nature pursued by individuals; and secondly, because of the constitution of nature as a complex of interlocking and diverse systems, the state is often presented as the only body able to eVectively reach into the diverse Welds that make up the ecologies of nature and provide eVective management. It is consequently argued that only the modern state with its specialist environmental ministries, agricultural departments, state laboratories, and legislative powers is able to marshal and control the complexities of nature. Such views on the relationship between the state and nature have led some writers to emphasize the need for authoritarian state systems to manage environmental problems.17 Perhaps the clearest example of the state’s institutional management of nature can be seen in the Weld of resource management. In his inXuential book Seeing Like a State, James Scott (1998) provides a fascinating insight into the historical role of the state in the administrative management of 16
See also Bridge and Jonas (2002) for a more recent discussion of the links between state government and nature. 17 It was issues of scarcity and the problems of global resource management during the 1970s that led Ophuls (1977) to call for an ecological leviathan.
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nature. While not written from a strictly Weberian perspective, the work of Scott (1998: 29) reveals that one of the key resource management issues facing early modern states was securing a regular and suYcient supply of food (see Chapter 4). With variable harvests and diVerent local methods for measuring agricultural yields it was diYcult for early modern states to be certain that in any given year nature would provide a suYcient quantity of food to feed the population. Social unrest, which regularly followed food shortages and famines, meant that the monitoring and management of agricultural production became one of the prime functions of early state systems in Europe. In order to manage agricultural nature eVectively, the early modern state rolled forward its administrative capacity into local agricultural communities, forcing farmers to adopt standard measures for agricultural returns. Gone were parochial, imprecise measures like ‘basketfuls’, ‘cartloads’, and ‘handfuls’, to be replaced by the centrally approved measures of the state (Scott 1998: 25). The critical eVect of such uniform measures was that nature became something that could be seen by the state, its likely returns calculated and predictions made on future harvests, potential food storage, and territorial redistribution requirements (Scott 1998). The early state administration and measurement of nature in this way not only made the vagaries of nature politically manageable but also transformed the natures that were subject to such techniques. At one level this transformation was ideological, as facets of the agricultural landscape were converted by the logic of state administration from nature to existing only as ‘natural resources’ (Scott 1998: 13). At another level, the transformation of nature was more material as the early modern state promoted standardized agricultural systems to complement their measurement regimes. While these systems involved regimented Weld patterns and new harvesting techniques, they often undermined the varied ecologies of local nature that had existed before. Of course, what began with the management of agricultural resources during the early modern period has now been extended to the management of water, forestry, minerals, and energy supply within the complex systems of state administration, techno-science, and engineering in the late modern era.
Risk bureaucracies and the reXexive state If resource management has been an ongoing historical objective of states, the control and amelioration of ecological risk is a much more recent political goal. In his famous exposition of the proliferation of risk within the modern world, Ulrich Beck (1992a, b) describes how accelerated industrialization has created a new mode of social order—a risk society. According to Beck (1992b: ch. 1), this new world order can be distinguished from the preindustrial society on the basis of two processes—the rejection of tradition and the transformation of nature. In the context of nature, Beck identiWes an increasing tendency within modern society to transcend the limits that have
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historically been imposed by the natural world at both a global scale (in terms of extended resource exploitation, nuclear power, and biosphere engineering) and at a microbiological level (in relation to genetic modiWcation, nanotechnology, and cloning). The combined transcendence of tradition and nature has, according to Beck, not only resulted in the proliferation of risk but also given rise to a whole new brand of risk: he calls these new forms of risk industrial or ‘avoidable’ (1992a: 97). Industrial risk diVers from preindustrial risk to the extent that it can be calculated and partially controlled—it cannot simply be interpreted as a product of fate or a ‘freak of nature’. While Beck (1992a: 113) is highly critical of the ability of territorially constrained nation-states to address the increasingly global patterns of ecological risk, it still appears that the state has an important role in the so-called risk society. Within the risk society it is clear that the role of the state changes from being an institution primarily concerned with wealth/resource (re)distribution to one focusing on the management and distribution of socioecological risk (see Chapter 7). But in this context, the administrative power and infrastructural reach of the state means that it has a crucial role in both managing the material eVects of risk-taking and in making risk politically acceptable. In relation to managing the eVects of ecological risk, Beck (1995: ch. 4) comments on the emergence of ‘hazard bureaucracies’ within the contemporary state, which are based upon complex systems of risk assessment calculation, contingency plans, and rapid-response units, which respond to the worst eVects of ecological disaster.18 Beyond the actual manifestation of ecological risk, however, the state also has a critical function in the political and cultural management of risk. Consequently, in liaison with the scientiWc and technological communities, the state has a central role in alleviating social anxiety about risk through various assessment exercises and public outreach campaigns. The continual liaison between state and scientiWc oYcials within the discursive management of risk reXects what Rudolf Bahro (1987) described as ‘elite stewards’ who act as dedicated guardians of society against environmental harm. Bahro’s vision of elite stewards of nature was based upon a belief that the state had a crucial role in marshalling the wise deployment of ecological knowledge. In both the management of actually occurring and potential risk, certain Weberian state theorists argue that the state now has an important reXexive role in monitoring the worst socio-ecological side-eVects of industrial modernity. This is a process of which Beck was well aware, referring to it as ‘reXective modernity’—a process whereby ‘modernization becomes its own theme’ (1992b: 19). 18 Beck’s notion of a hazard bureaucracy is echoed in the earlier writings of Rudolf Bahro (1987) when he described the need for a ‘salvation’ or ‘rescue’ government that is able to intervene in the face of the most extreme forms of ecological crisis. See also here Gandy (1999).
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While sensitizing us to the important role of the state as an institutional agent of unusual reach and power, Weberian-inspired approaches to the state continue to reinforce a distinctly dualistic interpretation of the relationship between states and natures. Through their study of the state apparatus, Weberians tend to see the state as a manager who intervenes in an inert sphere referred to as nature. In a tone that is reminiscent of Hobbes, the administrative intervention of the state within nature is seen as a civilizing process, wherein the dangers and threats of nature are suppressed and society is insulated from the natural world. The problem here is that the Weberians’ institutional state is often conjured up as a pre-given entity with little understanding of the ways in which state formation has been informed by an ongoing historical interaction between political and ecological processes. Consequently, in attempting to establish the autonomous power of the state, Weberian-inspired theory tends to construct a state that is autonomous of nature. As such, the emergence of the state is once again constructed as an oppositional force to the natural world.
Rethinking states and natures III: Marxism and the nature of the relatively autonomous state Committees of the bourgeoisie If Max Weber stands on one side of a spectrum of state theorists, in many ways it would be necessary to place Karl Marx at the opposite end. At a simple level the contradistinction between Weberian and Marxist state theory is expressed in Marx’s famous assertion that the state was merely a ‘committee of the bourgeoisie’—serving the needs of the ruling capitalist class. The idea that the state is merely the instrument of capital, of course, runs in opposition to the Weberian endeavour, which aims to reveal the autonomy of the state’s power as a complex system of bureaucratic inXuence and administrative control. To talk of a Marxist theory of the state, however, is misleading. It is misleading because it suggests that there is a single vision of the state running through the work of Marx, when in fact it is possible to observe competing ideas of the state throughout the collected works of Marx. Despite this, Marxist state theories and their associated elaborations do provide some important insights into state–nature relations within modern capitalist society. Marx’s main Wrst-hand experience of state systems came from his time working as an underpaid journalist in modern-day Germany and in exile in England. He did, however, also spend a lot of time in Paris (including his honeymoon19) and became a keen observer and commentator on changing 19 Indeed, it was during his honeymoon in Paris in the summer of 1844 that Marx (perhaps rather unromantically) penned his famous Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.
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political circumstances in France during the nineteenth century. Marx’s combined observations of the British, French, and German states resulted in a series of inXuential writings on the form and function of the modern state system. One problem with critical accounts of Marxist state theory is that they tend to rely on stereotyped critiques of Marxian approaches to the state. In this section we start with the stereotypes before uncovering a Marxist approach to the state that is not as far removed from that of Max Weber as one might think. Given Marx’s staunch focus on economic structures and in particular the mode of production as the key driving forces behind the history of capitalist society, it should come as little surprise that many Marxian accounts of the state are derived from economic, not political, reasoning. Accordingly, Driver (1991) summarizes the classical Marxian vision of the state through the use of three interrelated assumptions: 1 that the state is a ‘superstructural’ institution; 2 that this institutional form is created by the ‘basal’ forces associated with the capitalist mode of production; 3 that the state’s key role, or function, is to enable the continued accumulation of capital and to ameliorate the socio-economic crisis tendencies associated with this accumulation process. This vision of the state is clearly evident in the early writings of Marx, where he espoused an instrumentalist notion of capitalist state forms. In the German Ideology of 1846, for example, Marx and Engels (1999: 54) emphasized the important role of the state in mobilizing the collective energies of national labour under the banner of an ‘illusory general (or universal) interest’. The illusory nature of this general interest was, according to Marx and Engels, based upon the fact that it was not general at all, but really an expression of the interests of the bourgeoisie. Of course this vision of the capitalist state as a mechanism for orchestrating labour to suit the needs of the ruling economic class culminated in Marx and Engels’s most famous aphorism concerning the state in their Communist Manifesto of 1848: The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and the world market conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common aVairs of the whole bourgeoisie. (Marx and Engels 1985: 82)
Their assertion that the state was nothing more than the instrument of the ruling capitalist class led them to be highly critical of prevailing bourgeois ideologies of the state (like those of Rousseau, described above, and Hegel) in which the state was presented as a progressive framework of enlightened social empowerment. The instrumentalist vision of the state developed in the early writings of Marx and Engels is perhaps stereotypically the one most associated with
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Marxian writings on politics. However, Marx’s later writings on state politics in France (particularly the Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) provide a much more detailed historical materialist account of the capitalist state.20 Two things are most striking about Marx’s analysis of state politics in France during this period: Wrst, he noticed how, due to the relative balance of class forces, under Louis Bonaparte the French state was able to exercise a degree of independence from the dominant bourgeois interests of the time; and secondly, he noticed that when class support for Louis Bonaparte was evident it came from the smallholding peasant class, not the bourgeoisie (Marx 1963: ch. VII). Here we see a very diVerent view of the state from that routinely presented within post-Marxist attacks on Marxist state theory. Marx recognized that while the state may always be subject to class interests, political contingencies and various political tactics and manoeuvres can often aVord the state a degree of ‘relative autonomy’ in the exercise of political power. While the recognition of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state brings Marx closer to Weber than we may think, there was something distinctive in Marx’s reXections on the institutional form and functioning of the state. In his analysis of the Paris Commune uprisings of 1870 (in his Civil War in France), Marx asserted that a socialist revolution cannot simply proceed through the communist procurement of the existing capitalist state system (Joseph, 2003; Marx 1974). In this context, he recognized that the state was capitalist not simply because it was controlled by the capitalist bourgeoisie, but because its institutional form, administrative functioning, and infrastructural power had all evolved in such a way that they served the particular needs of capitalist society.21 With its role as guarantor of private property rights and the regulator of the labour relations, the capitalist state was not a political system that could easily be converted to serve the needs of a communist movement (Joseph, 2003). As we argue later in this volume, the idea of the state as an administratively autonomous form, which is nevertheless deeply inscribed by the capitalist system within which it has evolved, provides a powerful analytical framework for contemporary work on the state. While much has been written on both Marxist theories of the state and nature, Marx himself speaks very little of the direct relationship between states and the natural world.22 One instance, however, where we do see Marx discussing the relationship between the state and nature explicitly is instruct20 Focusing on the period from 1848 (the year of a revolutionary socialist uprising in Paris) to 1851 (the year of the coup d’e´tat of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), Marx provides a wonderfully detailed and sophisticated reading of the relationship between class, revolution, and state power in France. 21 For more on Marx’s analysis of the institutional functioning of the capitalist state, see Joseph (2003: 17–18). 22 For a review of Marxist theories of the nature, see Schmidt (1971) and Smith (1984). For more on Marxist theories of the state, see Jessop (1982, 1986, 1996).
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ive. In one article for the Rheinische Zeitung (where he began work as a newspaper columnist), Marx discusses the introduction of the Wood Theft Law in Germany.23 As with many other similar acts of legislation in Europe at the time, it was designed to stop peasants from exercising their rights to collect kindling wood from local forests. In eVect such legislation served to transform nature (in the form of woodland) from a communal resource into a privatized economic good. Marx was, as you might expect, scathing in his criticism of the Wood Theft Law. But within this criticism we see traces of the themes that recur within Marxist discussions of the relationship between the state and nature: 1 the role of the state in favouring certain class interests above others in the use of contested natural resources (in this particular case favouring the forest owners above the peasants); 2 the state reinforcing social alienation from the natural world (in this case the local socio-ecological metabolisms of forest and local community). The links between class interests, disputes over nature, and social estrangement (or alienation) from the natural world have become recurrent themes within contemporary Marxist analyses of nature–state relations. At one level, the relationship between the state and nature can be understood on Marxist terms as a largely economic aVair. As Marx pointed out in the famous opening lines of his Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx 1971), nature is a crucial source of economic wealth (labour in this sense was understood by Marx (p. 11) as a ‘manifestation of a force of nature’). According to Marx, as the vital substratum for wealth creation, the bourgeois exploitation of nature was a central component of capitalist society.24 In this context, the state has had an important historical role in providing the necessary conditions through which the wealth of nature can be abstracted. The role of the state within the economic exploitation of nature can be seen in a variety of ways. The state has, for example, consistently provided the material conditions under which the industrial utilization of nature has been able to proceed. It has often been the state, through national programmes of road- and railbuilding, that has provided the basic infrastructures through which nature has been excavated and transformed within the industrial production process. States have also provided the conditions under which facets of communal nature have been converted into private assets which can be freely appropriated for individual gain. In this context, the state has also been able to exercise its legitimized monopoly on the use of violence to police unpopular industrial interventions within the natural world (Watts 2001). 23
For a more detailed discussion of this article, see the editor’s 1999 introduction to Marx and Engels (C. J. Arthur: 12). 24 See Burkett (1999: Part II) for a recent review of Marxist work on the link between capitalist society and nature.
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Neo-Marxists and the strategic relational state A number of contemporary state theorists have challenged prevailing Marxist orthodoxies concerning the exercise and class functions of state power, while still trying to preserve an essentially Marxist interpretation of the state. Drawing on key twentieth-century Marxist theorists of the state, like Antonio Gramsci (1973) and Nicos Poulantzas (1978), neo-Marxists have developed new ways of conceptualizing the operation of the state. Bob Jessop, one of the most prominent of the contemporary school of neo-Marxists state theorists, has utilized the writings of both Gramsci and Poulantzas in his recent writings on the state. Through his reading of Gramsci, Jessop argues for a new understanding of the exercise of state power in Marxism. Recognizing that modern states only intermittently exercise their ‘legitimate monopoly on violence’ (or coercive power) in order to force populations to obey their dictates, Jessop explores the more subtle and perhaps indiscernible operation of the state in gaining the willing and active consent of its citizens in the enactment of national policies.25 It is here that we see perhaps the greatest divergence between Marx and Gramsci in relation to their ideas of the state, with Marx emphasizing the authoritative power of the state over its citizenry (through the police and military forces), while Gramsci draws greater attention to the exercise of state power in and through civil society by way of various ideological strategies (Jessop 1997: ch. 5). In other work, Jessop (1985) has used the inXuential, if often overlooked, writings of the Greek political theorist Nicos Polantzas to constructively challenge traditional Marxist accounts of the state. Through the work of Poulantzas, Jessop stresses the impossibility of the state simply following the will of the capitalist class. The impossibility of this task stems from the fact that the will of any capitalist class is always divided. In this context, Jessop (1996) develops a strategic relational account of the state, in order to account for the ways in which states formulate policy and action in the context of competing ‘class fractions’. The importance of Jessop’s strategic relational state theory is that it recognizes the inXuence of class forces on the state (the state as relational) while simultaneously allowing for the relative autonomy of state apparatus in developing courses of actions that best suit the diVerent and competing needs of diVerent class interests (the state as a site of strategy development). As we explore later, the strategic relational understanding of the state developed by Jessop provides an interesting perspective on the ways in which the state manages and regulates the competing economic, political, and cultural appropriations of nature within a given territory. Drawing on Marxian dialectical thought, geographers such as Noel Castree (2002), David Harvey (1996, 2000: ch. 11), Neil Smith (1996, 1999) 25 See in particular Jessop (1982, 1985, 1996, 2002) to chart Jessop’s continuing Marxist engagement with the capitalist state.
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and Erik Swyngedouw (1993, 1997) have recently questioned the ontological division that is regularly constructed between society and nature. While not writing explicitly about the state, the collective work of these authors does provide us with some fascinating insights into what neo-Marxism can oVer work on nature. In line with classic dialectical thinking, these writers have shown that the categories of nature and society cannot exist (in any meaningful sense at least) without their relative positioning to each other. Beyond the linguistic dialectics of society and nature, however, these Marxist geographers have also stressed the material relations that make nature and society categories that are always already deeply implicated moments of each other. By combining analyses of the ideological and material dialectics of society and nature, they have questioned the ontological foundations of the natural world. They argue that instead of seeing nature as something that is an eternal and pre-given fragment of reality (Wrst nature), or merely a mental or linguistic construct, nature should be seen as a produced outcome of the dialectical interplay of ideologies and the material practices though which it is created. This interpretation of nature has been articulated most clearly in Neil Smith’s (1984: ch. 2) production of nature thesis. According to Smith (1999), the idea of the ‘production’ of nature is important for two reasons: Wrst, because of the distinction that can be made between the ‘production’ and the ‘construction’ of nature; and, secondly, because of the emphasis that the term ‘production’ places on the prevailing capitalist relations within which nature is continually being (re)produced. Smith asserts that the idea of a socially produced nature is diVerent from the notion of the construction of nature by virtue of the fact that it considers the socioeconomic and political practices in and through which nature is transformed (at a simultaneously ideological and material level), rather than simply drawing attention to the social representation of an underlying natural world. While rarely developed in relation to the politics of the state, it is not diYcult to extrapolate, from Smith’s work, an understanding of the role of the modern state within the various moments of production through which nature has its contemporary existence. Marxist work on the state and nature, then, suggests some potentially dynamic ways in which the emerging dialectics of states and natures can be studied. We do, however, perceive a danger within Marxist analyses of states and natures: they tend to resolve the dichotomy between the political and ecological worlds by making them both ultimately subservient to capitalism (see Castree 2002). In Marxist theory it is consequently capitalism that in the last instance moulds the state and it is capitalism that ultimately drives the social production and transformation of nature. In this context, there is a danger within Marxist theory of providing an integrated account of the state and nature, whose integration depends on the theoretical diminution of both the political capacity of the state and the ecological power of nature in order to make way for a broader theory of capitalism.
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Rethinking states and natures IV: political ecologies, governmental technologies, and the cyborg state The political ecologies of the state and nature Over the past thirty years a new set of ways of analysing and interpreting the relationships between states and natures has emerged. Some of these theoretical perspectives have been inspired by Marxist ideas of the state, whereas others are a direct critique of Marxism. One tradition that embodies both of these positions is political ecology.26 The notion of political ecology is perhaps best thought of as a blend of work within social theory, political economy, and analyses of the ‘ecologies’ of nature. Prominent political ecologists like Piers Blaikie (1985), Jay O’Brien (1985), Richard Peet (1991), and Michael Watts (2001) have emphasized the need to understand natural issues like food shortages, droughts, desertiWcation, and various forms of natural disaster, not simply as products of nature, but as the hybrid outcomes of politics and ecology. In this context, early forms of political ecology were very much a reaction against prevailing neo-Malthusian accounts of resource shortages and population pressures during the 1970s and 1980s. In these accounts the problems of nature were constructed as precisely that: problems of the natural world, or a product of encountering natural limits. To political ecologists, however, there are no such things as ‘natural’ limits; to talk of scarcity is consequently interpreted as a device for obscuring the social, class, gender, and race relations that prevent a more equal distribution of nature’s wealth among the population. Early Marxistinspired work within political ecology studied the ways in which landownership and resource exchange issues shaped political and ecological life. More recent post-Marxist work in political ecology, inspired by radical feminism and post-colonial study, has explored the roles played by imperial and masculinist discourses and practices in shaping and transforming the natural world (see Escobar 1998; Seager 1993; Shiva 1998). With its clear desire to fuse the political with the ecological, the political ecology tradition obviously has signiWcant implications for how we understand and interpret state–nature relations. The work of Paul Robbins (forthcoming) serves to illustrate the various ways in which the state appears within the work of political ecologists. Certain political ecologists study the ways in which capitalist political economies mesh with ecological processes within particular nation-states. Jay O’Brien (1985), for example, has focused upon the production of famine conditions in the Sudan, while Michael Watts has explored the political ecologies of oil extraction in Nigeria and Ecuador. While the state often only Wgures implicitly within these accounts of political 26 For good overviews of the work of political ecologists see Peet and Watts (1996) and Robbins (2004).
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ecology, it is clear that it is a key component within the maelstrom of political institutions, economic practices, and ecological processes that produce nature in diVerent parts of the world. At other times the particular eVects of state power and inXuence have been integrated into the work of political ecologies in a more explicit way. The work of Roderick Neumann (1995, 1998, 2004) on wilderness enclosures in Africa, for example, reveals the importance of territorial strategies designed to order and control nature within the speciWc processes associated with state-building. Through a careful analysis of state-sponsored wildlife reserves and national parks on the African continent, Neumann (2004: 203–4) describes how the territorial designation of wilderness areas has tended to create zones within which nature can be simultaneously preserved and contained in a way that allows other forms of agricultural and economic development to occur. He claims that the territorialization of nature within nature reserves is not simply about giving order to nature, but about the broader coordination of national state space. Neumann goes as far as to claim that ‘the process of mapping, bounding, containing and controlling nature and citizenry are what make a state a state. States come into being through these claims and the assertion of control over territory, resources, and people’ (2004: 202). The work of Neumann serves to illustrate that the creation of human territoriality is indivisibly related to the territorial management of nature or, as Neumann (2004: 203–4) says, the ‘containment and control of nature in conservation territories was inseparable from the colonizing state’s eVorts to control its African subjects and ultimately create a new kind of person: civilized, productive, and observable’. While the work of Neumann does make an explicit link between the state and nature within emerging forms of political ecology, there is signiWcant scope to incorporate the state more fully into contemporary political ecologies (Robbins, forthcoming).
Foucault, the state, and environmental governmentality Within and beyond post-Marxist political ecology there is a broad and diVuse body of work that has been inspired by Foucault’s writings on power, feminist analyses of social structures, and post-structuralist ideas. This corpus of work is oVering a signiWcant challenge not only to how we analyse the state, but to the very essence of state power itself (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: ch. 13; Foucault 1990, 1991, 2002b, 2003).27 At the centre of this broad post-Marxian movement has been a critical rejection of analyses of power that focus on its most obvious manifestations; namely spectacles of violence and force, and the centralized sources of state power from which such acts of overt control Xow. Through his archaeology of the ‘art of government’ (see Chapter 1), 27 See also the work of Jane Jenson (1993, 1995) for examples of feminist/discursive analyses of national politics.
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Foucault identiWed a transition within both the operation of state power and ultimately the relationship between the state and the exercise of wider forms of social control. In relation to the operation of state power itself, Foucault (2002a) charts the emergence of a new type of government from the sixteenth ´ tuathail 1996: century onwards (see also Hardt and Negri 2000: chs 1–2; O ch. 1). No longer concerned expressly with the interests of the king or prince, this was a state devoted to the careful administration of its population. This form of state is perhaps most easily identiWable with Giddens’s ‘administrative state’, regulating its population through statistical surveys and tax registers. According to Foucault (2002a), this administrative state governed through the household—by monitoring the household as its basic governmental unit and by ensuring social reproduction through the provision of household welfare. From the eighteenth century onwards, however, Foucault discerns an altogether diVerent state in operation. This was a form of political rule that Foucault referred to as the governmental state, and is largely synonymous with the character of the modern state we outlined in Chapter 1. The key diVerence for Foucault between the administrative state and the governmental state was the expanded vision of power associated with the latter. No longer simply concerned with discrete households, the governmental state was a system of government concerned with the management of a national population and the ordering of the entirety of its territorial resources (Foucault 2002). This period of state (trans)formation is particularly pertinent to our discussions of state–nature relations because it corresponds to the emergence of a series of new ordering devices for quantifying and delimiting national natures (including systematic national mapping programmes, biological catalogues, and various ecological inventories ´ tuathail 1996: 7–12). designed to describe the nature of the nation) (O According to Foucault, both the administrative and governmental forms of the state were expressions of a disciplinary society—based upon the overt application of political power and discipline on to the national population ´ tuathail 1996: 7–12). In the late modern era, Foucault charts a diVerent (O constellation of social power, however, based less on overt discipline and more on social control, or the ‘regulation of social life from its interior’ (Hardt and Negri 2000: 23). This was a ‘society of control’ not discipline, a society characterized by a far less centralized apparatus of governance and a more diVuse Weld of social power.28 A critical aspect of Foucault’s reXection on the changing form of governmental power was his emphasis on the increasingly biopolitical form that power takes in the late modern world (Foucault 2002). Hardt and Negri capture well the signiWcance of biopolitical power when they observe that: 28 While Foucault never actually used the terms ‘disciplinary society’ and ‘society of control’, we borrow the terms here from Hardt and Negri (2000: 23–4) as useful ways of expressing Foucault’s argument.
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Biopower is a form of power which regulates life from its interior, following it, interpreting it, absorbing it and re-articulating it. Power can achieve an eVective command over the entire life of the population only when it becomes an integral, vital function that every individual embraces and reactivates of his or her own accord . . . The highest function of power is to invest life through and through, and its primary task is to administer life. (Hardt and Negri 2000: 23–4)
In the emergence of biopower, of course, we see the paradox of the modern state. In order to achieve total socio-territorial command, the state, at least as a centralized bureaucratic locus of power, must disperse so that it can become a behavioural principle of the individual. The goal of state power can only be achieved with the Xow of power from the state to the individual, to life itself. This is why many Foucauldians argue that the study of political and social power should focus on the micro-politics of everyday life and language, not the formal structures of government and the state. Despite providing a radical disjuncture with existing approaches to the state, Foucault provided little indication of what his approach to power meant in relation to the state’s control and utilization of nature (see Darier 1996: 6).29 Throughout this book we argue that Foucault’s focus on human life, within his excavations of biopower, can be usefully extended to cover a much broader range of life sources—including the non-human and ecological. In this way we argue that the state has become increasingly implicated in the routine disciplining and control of nature, both in regulating social actions towards the natural world and in terms of altering bioecological processes themselves. The extension of Foucault’s theories of power to work on the government of nature has been partly developed within an emerging group of writings on environmental governmentality (Darier 1996, 1999; Goldman 2004; Luke 1996, 1999). Within this emerging body ´ ric Darier (1996: 601) have considered how Fouof work, writers such as E cault’s analysis of the technologies of government and associated knowledgegathering institutions could be deployed in order to expose the inner workings of the intensiWed Weld of power that governments are bringing to bear on the natural world (see Chapter 6).
Networks of power and the new topographies of state nature Related to, though far from synonymous with Foucault’s analysis of power are the inXuential writings of Gilles Deleuze and Fe´lix Guattari (1984, 2002). Within their extended study of the modes of socialization associated with 29 One instance when Foucault does talk about nature is in the preface of The Order of Things (2003: xvi), when he discusses Borges’s reXections on a Chinese encyclopaedia’s division of animal types. Foucault notices how the modern rationalization of nature into logical categories leaves little room for alternative visions or knowledges of nature—which could include (in Borges at least) the Chinese classiWcation of animals as ‘belonging to the Emperor’ or those that ‘from a long way oV look like Xies’!
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global capitalism (Capitalism and Schizophrenia), Deleuze and Guattari propose a universal history of state forms. Within this history they chart the changing power relations running through early archaic states, monarchies, city-states, and the modern nation-state. In accordance with Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari argue that modern expressions of power cannot easily be reduced to either systems of repression or ideology that are historically synonymous with the state, but instead ‘impl[y] processes of normalisation, modulation, modelling, and information that bear the language, perception, desire, movement, etc., and which proceed by way of microassemblages’ (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 48). The idea of microassemblages of power is important here because it reXects Deleuze and Guattari’s assertion that global capitalism has ushered in a new era of socialization, within which global economic power subsumes all aspects of social life and cultural practice within the choreographies of capitalist development. The implications of these emerging microassemblages of power for the macroassemblage of the modern nation-state are explained in the following passages: But this is precisely the sense in which the State is termed ‘territorial’. Capitalism, on the other hand, is not at all territorial, even in its beginnings: its power of deteritorialization consists in taking as its object, not the earth, but ‘materialized labor’, the commodity. And private property is no longer ownership of the land or the soil, nor even the means of production as such, but of convertible abstract rights. That is why capitalism marks a mutation in worldwide or ecumenical organizations . . . From all these standpoints, it could be said that capitalism develops an economic order that could do without the State. (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 454; emphasis added)
According to Deleuze and Guattari, late capitalism embodies a new world order, or ‘Empire’, whose power rests not on macroassemblages of hierarchical power and whose form is increasingly non-territorial. What is particularly interesting about their work in the context of this book, however, is that despite questioning the Westphalian model of the nation-state as a ‘transcendent paradigm’ of and for social organization, they do recognize the continuing role of the state as a model of realization for capitalism. Thus, perhaps surprisingly, they assert: Thus the States in capitalism, are not cancelled out but change form and take on a new meaning: models of realization for a worldwide axiomatic that exceeds them. But to exceed is not at all the same thing as doing without. We have already seen that capitalism proceeds by way of the State-form rather than the town-form . . . It is thus proper to state deterritorialization to moderate the superior deterritorialization of capital and to provide the latter with compensatory reterritorializations. (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 454–5)
While we prefer the notion of reconWgured territorializations (as opposed to the de- and re-territorilizations used by Deleuze and Guattari), the work of Deleuze and Guattari reXects a growing realization of the new subnational and supra-national territorial forms that the state takes under global
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capitalism.30 As we will see later in this volume, the reconWguration of state territory in and through emerging urban agglomerations and supra-national spaces has important implications for nature, and in turn for the state (see Chapter 7). As part of the same globalization processes that exceed the national bounds of the nation-state, nature is thus transformed from being national to simultaneously being global and sub-national at the same time. Thus sustainable regions, green cities, and ecological zones supplement preexisting fragments of national nature, but remain natures that are still produced as part of a re-articulated state system. Related to the more decentralized and diVuse conceptualization of political power developed within the Foucauldian and Deleuzian traditions described above, has been a changing conceptualization of the power relations existing between nature and society. Increasingly, new theories of nature have suggested a need to focus less on the social transformation and control of nature and more on the mutual imbrications of society and nature (or ‘socio-nature’) within various political and scientiWc projects. One of the leading exponents of this view of nature is Bruno Latour, whose work has consistently returned to the question of the relationship between society and nature in the modern world (see Latour 1986, 1993, 1998, 1999, 2004; Latour and Woolgar 1979; see also Chapter 1). Through his studies of modern politics, science, and social discourse, Latour has observed the ways in which modernity has been characterized by an insidious separation of the social and natural spheres of existence. He claims that modern society has been marked by two distinct but deeply related practices: the processes of puriWcation and translation (Latour 1993: 11). According to Latour (1993: 10–11), the process of puriWcation has involved a series of attempts to mark out two separate and tightly sealed ‘ontological zones’: the zones of human life and culture, and the arena of the non-human and the natural. Ironically, however, Latour illustrates how puriWcation accelerates the practices of translation, through which new combinations of nature and society mix to create novel and increasingly complex socio-ecological ‘hybrids’ or ‘quasiobjects’. The work of Latour on the imbroglios of modern society and nature has led to a broader theoretical project that is customarily referred to as Actor Network Theory (ANT). ANT is devoted to studying how nature and society are, and always have been, ‘stitched together’, and the heterogeneous associations of society and nature.31 Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the network that provides the key epistemological and methodological framework for ANT. 30 For more on the post-Westphalian territorial forms of the state, see Brenner (1998, 1999, 2001, 2004), Jones (1998), and MacLeod and Goodwin (1999). 31 For an example of the broad cross-section of work that has been carried out under the banner of ANT, see a selection of the following: Callon (1986), Castree (2002), Law (1992), Murdoch (1997, 1998), Swyngedouw (1999), Whatmore and Thorne (1998).
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According to ANT theorists, networks are complex webs of ‘heterogeneous associations’ forged between human and non-human entities. By focusing upon the constitution and maintenance of these intricate systems of organic and inorganic forms, ANT asserts that the dichotomies that have been constructed between society and nature, and between the global and the local, simultaneously dissolve. Murdoch captures the essence of ANT well in the following quote: Latour wishes to by pass the dualisms of micro/macro, local/global and even subject/ object by focusing upon the ‘blind spot’ where society and matter meet and, importantly, exchange properties . . . [material] resources frame, deWne and conWgure interaction. And without such resources humans could never hope to act upon others distant in time and space. (Murdoch 1997: 329; emphasis added)
According to Latour (1986), it is the constant exchange of properties between social and material forms that makes non-localized human interaction possible—and, moreover diVerentiates human from simian societies. By recognizing the role of non-human forms in the creation and maintenance of systems of power and strategic organization, ANT argues that a symmetry of exchange exists between society and nature, within which both human and non-human actors (or actants in the lexicon of ANT) play crucial roles in the constitution of socio-ecological change and stability (Murdoch 1997). In relation to our deliberations on the relationships between states and natures, this body of thought appears to have two important implications. First, by suggesting that social interactions with nature are constituted through complex networks that stretch across diVerent levels of social organization, ANT implies that it is erroneous to draw too sharp a distinction between the state and nature. In this context, it is important not to simply understand state–nature relations as the state unilaterally acting on nature—whether it be in terms of the social construction, or production, of the natural world. Instead, it is crucial to recognize how state power is only realized through the ‘enrolment’ of nature within complex networks of power. By focusing upon networks of power, as opposed to more hierarchical models, ANT also questions the focus on centralizing, institutional forms of state power developed within Marxist and Weberian theory. We argue that the recourse to networks, however, does not necessarily have to mean that we abandon a concern with the hierarchical institutions of the state, but that we recognize the ways in which these forms of administrative power connect with more diVuse systems of localized social control and political power. Secondly, ANT also reveals that despite the role of the state—within both scientiWc practice and cultural discourse—in attempting to gradually disentangle society from nature (the act of puriWcation), modern states have actually driven an intense era of translations within which new and increasingly indissoluble
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hybrids of society and nature have emerged.32 While the approach to state nature we adopt in this volume is sympathetic to the methodological insights oVered by actor network approaches, we stop short of adopting a full ANT-based perspective on state natures. We argue that within ANT there is a danger that the state can be reduced to one component within a socio-ecological network. The problem with such a scenario is that the signiWcance of the centralizing and territorializing processes associated with state power can be lost within an account of networks of exchange. Instead, we prefer to think of the state as a socio-ecological network or ‘framing device’ itself, which engages a range of human and non-human objects within its centralizing and territorializing desires.
Cyborgs, technological amalgams, and the state Related to the work of Bruno Latour has been the pioneering analysis of nature developed by Donna Haraway (1989, 1991, 1997, 2004a; see also Hables-Gray, 2003). Focusing on the links between gender, technology, and nature, Haraway has developed an innovative reading of social–natural interactions centred on the Wgure of the cyborg. The cyb(ernetic)org(anism) is important to Haraway precisely because it fuses the technological (in the form of cybernetic systems of command and control programming) with organic matter (humans, animals, and nature). In this sense Haraway’s use of cybernetic technology is similar to the way in which Latour uses networks to analyse the mixing of society and nature in everyday life. While originating within science Wction, Haraway observes that cyborgs are now an increasingly prominent part of science fact and social reality. From gene programming to antibiotics, from prosthetics to pacemakers, from pollution monitoring to environmental modelling—new fusions of technology and nature are seeing diVuse bodies and ecologies being programmed and regulated in increasingly sophisticated ways. Perhaps the central insight of Haraway’s cyborg politics is the way in which it challenges our most basic ontological assumptions. Haraway argues that if we understand society and nature as essentially fusions and products of technology, we begin to understand the fundamental artiWciality of existence. To ground existence in 32 Here it is important to note the similarity between Latour’s work on puriWcation and translation and Deleuze and Guattari’s (2002) reXections on the processes of coding, overcoding, and decoding within the modern state. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the state gives form to its territory and subjects through a continual process of classiWcatory coding. As the state’s institutional apparatus expands, however, Deleuze and Guattari notice how the state tends to overcode its objects of power by more and more sophisticated systems of coding. The result of this is that increasingly the state sets in motion expanding systems of decoding within which the various forms (labour, Wnance, tax) created by the state generate new types of power that elude state-coded surveillance. The objects of translation identiWed by Latour appear to reXect what Deleuze and Guattari would recognize as decoded facets of nature.
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technology as opposed to nature is important because it suggests that there is nothing natural about gender disadvantage or racial exploitation, that there is nothing inevitable about ecological disaster. Cyborg politics is consequently a politics of responsibility, within which society recognizes its role in the inWnite simulations of social nature within which we all carve out our existence. In considering the relationship between states and nature, Haraway’s reXections on cyborgs are vital. As Deleuze and Guattari (2002: 458–9) point out, states can be thought of as ‘human–machine systems’—technological centres within which national populations become increasingly enslaved to machines. They notice two distinct ages of machine–human intersections under capitalism: the enslavement of labour to the motorized machine within industrialism, and the cybernetic capture of people within the expanded information technologies and electronic surveillance systems available to the state. Throughout this book (and in particular in Chapter 6) we explore the value of understanding the state as a cyborg system. At the centre of this endeavour is a desire to show that the modern state has not only been responsible for the proliferation of individual cyborg forms under industrial capitalism, but that the state itself is a cyborg, an amalgam of technology and nature, a political system that is quite literally plugged into nature. What we propose to do in this book is to understand both the state and nature as products of the technical age—as artiWces of industrial capitalism.
Approaching state–nature relations and the process of heterogeneous framing The approach to state–nature relations, which we set out in Chapter 1, draws inspiration from many of the theoretical traditions discussed in this chapter. By focusing on the ways in which states ‘frame’ nature, however, we attempt to realize an approach to states and nature which, while recognizing their myriad interconnections, does not dilute their respective values as categories of analysis. In the remainder of this book we consequently explore the diVerent technological, institutional, territorial, and administrative ways by which modern states frame nature. In doing so, however, we do not see this framing process as a simple exercise in absolute state power; in Callon’s own account of the frame he does not understand it as a Wxed object, but as the contingent outcome of an agent’s ability to mobilize a series of objects and forces that make framing possible (Callon 1998). We argue that in order to frame nature the state itself must become involved with, and entangled in, a range of objects, devices, and things. It is when trying to negotiate this complex terrain by which nature is framed that we claim the state itself is transformed—both in terms of its institutional forms and its modes of practice. In this sense, we want to explore how nature has both facilitated
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the formation of modern state power, and has in turn been framed by the nation-state. The notion of the frame, then, becomes a useful way of understanding the ways in which the centralizing and territorializing desires of the state are both realized in and compromised by the objects, techniques, and devices that mediate state–nature relations and make framing possible. In the shadow of the modern state we argue that the purpose of framing continues to be preWgured by the acts of centralization and territorialization. This is not to say that acts of framing become any less dependent upon a complex set of political and ecological struggles for their realization, or any less prone to incidences of overXow, leakage, and failure. The framing of nature by the state can be seen all around in the world today: the passionate defence of the right to exploit national resources oVered by many developing nations in the face of international pressure for them to pursue environmental protection (see Seager 1993: 141–7); the use of nature within various eco-nationalist movements as an iconographic resource through which to assert national identity and diVerence; and the technological monitoring of nature in order to produce national archives and inventories cataloguing environmental change within national borders. We assert that the continual framing of nature by the state in this way has produced (and continues to produce) a particular historical form of nature–state relation. Within all these examples, however, it is important to see the act of framing not only as a practice of limiting nature (either territorially or administratively) but also as a call to recognize the heterogeneous ways in which states and nature interconnect. State–nature relations are heterogeneous because they operate not just in state departments but also in museums, laboratories, health clinics, parks and gardens, and even corporate boardrooms. Throughout this book we attempt to combine a conscious awareness of the centralizing institutional/territorial capacity of the state with an appreciation of the changing nodes and diVuse networks through which many forms of state power are now being realized. This requires us to steer a careful route through the macro and micro-worlds of state–nature relations, between Weber/Marx and Foucault/Haraway, between state institutions and cybernetic technologies, between the nation and the body, the past and present. Holding these apparently contradictory perspectives together may seem almost impossible, but we feel that this task is important if the heterogeneous associations that exist between states and natures are to be revealed.
3 The Moments of Nature–State Relations States and natures in historic context A key consideration when explicating the character of nature–state relations is their historical geographies, or what we may term their key ‘moments of mutual association’. But despite the obvious importance of nature and the environment for shaping the character of the state and the equally crucial role played by physical and environmental processes in reproducing political forms, it seems clear to us that the majority of work in history and historical geography has tended to separate the two themes from one another: at one extreme lie studies of the changing political form of the state; at the other, an environmental history that is usually concerned with the history of the environment for its own sake. The not immodest aim of this chapter is to forge a more productive link between these two academic traditions. We attempt to do this through illustrating the key moments that have helped to structure nature–state relations. In talking about moments, we do not refer simply to particular times or periods that have been crucial for the forging of nature–state relations. Our emphasis on the notion of moments does not seek to give primacy to temporal issues as such. Rather, in referring to nature–state moments, we emphasize the characteristic or indicative associations that have existed between states and natures. We seek to stress, therefore, a range of diVerent types of association that have been important in structuring nature–state relations. Obviously, the issue of time is important since the character of nature–state relations would have been extremely diVerent in the Greek polis when compared with the state of high modernity. The degree to which nature could be modiWed obviously varied between the two time periods, as did its potential impact on political processes. Even within the modern period, the character of nature–state relations has varied considerably. Changing technologies and political and ecological ideologies have ensured a diVerent repertoire of associations between states and natures throughout the whole of the modern period. But it is not the issue of time per se that explains these
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diVerent associations; rather, it is the diVering ideological, technological, and material relations that exist between speciWc states and natures at particular points in time.1 Although the main focus of this chapter, and of this book, is on the key modern moments of nature–state relations, we do not seek to underplay the signiWcance of earlier and equally (if not more) important moments of interactions between states and natures. The most important moment, arguably, in nature–state relations lies outside the purview of this book, since it took place in antiquity. This was the formation of the so-called ‘pristine’ or ‘primary states’. These were pristine states since they represented the Wrst known examples of state formation in human history. Crucially, nature and the environment have been deemed to have played a crucial role in the formation of these states. Karl Wittfogel (1957) noted, for instance, that these early societies were located in fertile river basins. Their agricultural productivity was based to a large extent on patterns of irrigation and it was the increased agricultural productivity aVorded by such technology that enabled these civilizations to reach far higher levels of sophistication than had previously been the case. Although the speciWc aspects of Wittfogel’s theory have now been rejected on the whole, others have still maintained that ecological matters were of great import in shaping primary states. Robert Carneiro (1970), for instance, developed a notion of spatial ‘caging’, drawing attention to the fact that these riverine civilizations were, without fail, surrounded by deserts. For Carneiro, therefore, it was the relationship between fertile alluvial basins and the surrounding deserts that enabled a concentration of population, which, in turn, facilitated the development of state organizations. Michael Mann (1986), in his study of the changing forms of social power over time, has furthered this thesis by elaborating on the impact of the twin processes of spatial and social caging that were key to the development of the great riverine state civilizations. He argues that the individuals living within these early states were socially and spatially constrained by the agricultural technology that supported their swollen populations. Mann, therefore, portrays a state-making process where the inhabitants of a given region become dependent upon the environment, the advanced agricultural capabilities, and the concomitant societal developments facilitated by the existence of state institutions. New state organizations came into being as a way of regulating new ways of transforming the environment. Similarly, the existence of these new state organizations was supported by the transformed natures they controlled. Despite the signiWcance of this earlier moment of nature–state relations, our main focus in this chapter is on the key moments of nature–state relations within modernity. We want to suggest in this chapter that three
1
Alternatively, see Schatzki (2003).
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diVerent nature–state moments have been crucial over the modern period.2 The Wrst key nexus of nature–state relations is what we term the moment of consolidation. The moment of consolidation refers to the beginnings of the relations between modern states and natures. The term ‘consolidation’, of course, draws on Charles Tilly’s account of the process of state consolidation that characterized the modern period, where the multiple political forms and identities of the Middle Ages were gradually and, in most cases, painfully rationalized into a more horizontal association between sovereign states (Tilly 1975, 1990; see also Mann 1988). We want to focus in this chapter on the way in which nature was intimately intertwined with the process of state consolidation. As well as the attempts made during this period to deWne national languages, laws, and customs, considerable eVorts were directed towards the deWnition and consolidation of ‘national natures’. The discursive construction and the subsequent material transformation of a national nature facilitated and constrained the process of state consolidation that was taking place during the period. We examine this theme by focusing on the early modern period, paying especial attention to the complex interactions between the state and nature in the Dutch Netherlands. The second key nexus of nature–state relations, we argue, is a moment of contestation or, in other words, a particular set of nature–state associations in which nature is used to challenge and contest state forms and ideologies. If one key facet of the political geographies of the modern period has been the gradual and tentative consolidation of the state, another equally important process has been the contestation of the selfsame institutions and ideologies of the state by various organizations, groups, and individuals. In this regard, it can be dangerous and misleading to attempt to talk of a moment of contestation that is somehow separate from a moment of consolidation. Many authors have attempted to show the interdependency of relations of domination/resistance or, alternatively, of the ‘entanglements of power’ (see Pile and Keith 1998; Sharp et al. 2000). We agree fully with the sentiments of these authors. One cannot speak of a moment of ‘nature–state’ consolidation, for instance, without focusing on the various uses of nature as a means of contesting the consolidation of the state. Similarly, the moment of contestation—where nature is used as a way of challenging state forms and ideologies—structures and is structured by the forms of political and ecological domination that are prevalent in that place at that time. We believe, nonetheless, that there is a need to emphasize certain contexts within which 2
We do not doubt, in this regard, that it would be possible to expand this list to take account of other nexus of nature–state relations. We limit ourselves to the three that are discussed in this chapter since they illustrate, in our minds, the range of key relations that have existed between political and ecological processes and institutions throughout the modern period. In doing so, we do not want to classify these diVerent types of association as ‘ideal types’, of the sort so popular in some branches of the social sciences. Instead, we view them as indicative and particularly crucial instances of nature–state relations.
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nature has been used speciWcally as a way of challenging state forms and discourses. It is in this sense, we maintain, that a speciWc focus on a moment of contestation is warranted. Indeed, there are numerous examples of the use of nature as a way of contesting and challenging dominant state institutions and ideologies. The various writings of the Anarchists, discussed in Chapter 2, illustrate the way in which nature could be mobilized as part of a broader political strategy to challenge the dominance of the state. We focus in this chapter on the use of nature and ecological arguments as a way of sustaining challenges to the state by sub-state territorial movements or nations. SpeciWcally, we discuss the contestation of the use of water resources in Wales and its use as a discourse around which Welsh nationalism has been mobilized. We maintain that a third form of nature–state moment lies in the reconstitution or re-fabrication of political and ecological relationships in the form of simulacra. Authors such as Umberto Eco (1987), Jean Baudrillard (1994), and Timothy Mitchell (1988), argue that we are witnessing a present in which representations of the past are deemed to be far more real that the past itself. It is in this context that we can speak of a moment of simulacrum, in which actual human relations are reworked through ‘protection, embalming, restoration’ and are, thus, reborn into the ‘eternal birth of the simulacrum’ (Baudrillard 1994: 41). In the context of the current project, we need to think about the way in which the representation of nature–state relations— potentially in a variety of diVerent forms—assumes a reality in itself, more potent than that which it seeks to represent. We argue that a key moment of simulacrum for nature–state relations lies in the context of the natural history museum, where the national natures of the state are displayed. The representation of nature–state relations reaches its apogee within natural history museums with regard to the diorama (see especially Mitchell 1988). In devising a ‘true’ representation of habitats and ecosystems within particular dioramas, we argue that natural history museums seek to incorporate nature into state history. We examine such ideas empirically in this chapter through a discussion of the American Museum of Natural History. Speaking of museums alludes to another important theme that will emerge within this chapter, namely the signiWcance of remembering nature–state interactions. Much has been made of the importance of narrating pasts and histories as a way of shaping present individual and group identities or, in other words, of the need to ‘historicize our understanding of identity’ (Somers 1994: 6). In the context of nationalism—the group identity most relevant to the themes discussed in this chapter—there is a clear emphasis on remembering national pasts as a way of inspiring national presents and futures. The contested, plural, and political aspect of this process has been described by Benedict Anderson (1983: especially ch. 11) as one of ‘remembering/ forgetting’: certain aspects of national pasts are remembered whereas other aspects, conveniently, are forgotten. The key point we want to stress in this chapter is that nature is often incorporated into this narrative of the nation,
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and implicitly therefore, of the state. Natures are utilized as means of reinforcing the identity narratives of the nation-state but can also be used by those seeking to challenge the dominance of the state through the development of alternative narratives of nature. Such themes of remembering nature—for a variety of diVerent reasons—emerge through our three case studies.
The ‘moment of consolidation’: states and natures during the early modern period The process of state consolidation has been the subject of much academic debate in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Various authors have noted how societies in Europe from approximately the beginning of the sixteenth century experienced a number of interrelated institutional changes as they gradually discarded feudal methods of organizing people and land and, instead, adopted more rational, bureaucratic, and territorial forms of societal organization. With the formation of the modern state, the feudal commendatio, which was characterized by ‘an intensely personal relation, envisaging two partners [lord and vassal] who choose, aid, and respect each other as individuals’ (Poggi 1978: 21), slowly gave way to a more impersonal, uniform, and territorial method of governance. Numerous authors have focused on diVerent aspects of this process but they have, on the whole, paid little explicit attention to the role of nature, natural resources, or the environment in facilitating the process (see Chapter 2).3 A particular set of literatures that rectiWes this deWciency to some extent is that concerned with environmental history. The branch of ‘political environmental history’, in particular, has focused on the interrelationships between the histories of the environment and state policies and laws. As J. R. MacNeill (2003: 8) has shown, however, this work has tended to focus explicitly on the imbrications of politics and the environment during the relatively recent past—especially the period after 1880.4 The two major exceptions to this unwarranted narrow temporal focus are John Richard’s (2003) magniWcent account of the global interrelationships between states, 3 See Giddens (1981), Mann (1986), Tilly (1975, 1990), see also Giddens (1985) and Foucault (2002). For a discussion of the growth of rationality in a more general context during this period, see Weber (1985). 4 McNeill’s account of the scope of political environmental history would seem to be relatively narrow, being conWned to state policies and laws. Material environmental histories—concerned with the material transformation of the environment in an historic context—and cultural environmental histories—which focus on the past representation of the environment—are bracketed oV as diVerent and separate branches of environmental histories. We would contend—and hope to demonstrate in the current volume—that it is impossible to compartmentalize environmental histories neatly in such a way. The politics of the environment, of necessity, involve both material transformations and cultural representations of the environment.
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markets, and the environment in the period between 1500 and 1800 and Alfred Crosby’s (1986) discussion of the importance of environmental concerns for the development of political forms throughout the whole of the modern period. Richards discusses the role of states and empires in transforming the environment at ever-greater rates during the early modern period in four interrelated contexts: the intensiWed human land use along settlement frontiers; biological invasions; commercial hunting of wildlife; and the search for scarce energy resources. Crosby, similarly, focuses on the way in which the European empires of the modern period were able to transform global environments in more drastic ways. Importantly, these global environments also helped to shape the form and functions of the new empires of the modern period as various European states sought out ‘new Europes’ located in the furthest reaches of the world and relocated their ‘portmanteau biota’ there (Crosby 1986: 7, 89). While these contributions are to be welcomed, their explicit focus on the intermeshing of global environments and equally global empires would seem to downplay a far more fundamental, common, and productive association between states and national natures, and its impact on the process of state consolidation that so characterized the early modern period. We would argue that there needs to be a more sustained enquiry into the political and ecological transformations of the early modern period, particularly with regard to the framing of national natures by emerging states. The Dutch Netherlands (see Figure 3.1) is the locus classicus of the mutual transformation of state forms and national natures during this period. Simon Schama, who has written so eloquently on the topic, argues for instance that: it can never be overemphasized that the period between 1550 and 1650, when the political identity of an independent Netherlands nation was being established, was also a time of dramatic physical alteration of its landscape. In both the political and geographical senses, then, this was the formative era of a northern, Dutch, nationhood. (Schama 1987: 34)5
Schama’s account focuses, in particular, on the relationships between the contemporaneous transformation of Dutch nature and of Dutch political identity during the crucial ‘golden age’ of the seventeenth century, but his work also has much to say concerning the inXuence of Dutch national natures on the development of new state organizations during the same period. We want to argue that nature, in the form of water, was framed into the development of the Dutch state since it brought many advantages with regard to trade and agriculture. At the same time, considerable eVorts were made to frame nature, in the form of water, out of Dutch national space 5 The following paragraphs are based on Schama’s account of the penal system adopted in the Dutch Netherlands during the seventeenth century.
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because of its threat to people, livestock, and land. In this section, we focus on this tangled association between nature and Dutch political identity before moving on to examine the relationship between Dutch nature and state organizations. The link between nature and political identity is illustrated most poetically in Schama’s description of the ‘drowning cell’, a feature of the Dutch penal system during the seventeenth century. The drowning cell was a means of correcting the behaviour of prisoners who were too lazy or uninterested to work. The slothful convict would be placed in a small enclosed space, into
Fig. 3.1.
Map of the Dutch Netherlands.
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which water would be subsequently poured. A hand pump was, thankfully, located within the cell and could be used by the prisoner to discharge the water. After a suitable period of hard work and, thus, of penal correction, the prisoner was released from the cell and would, presumably, have seen Wt to adopt a more industrious attitude towards his work within the prison. Whether the drowning cell was actually used within Dutch prisons or was merely a myth propagated as a means of coercing the inmates into more useful activity is in some doubt. Travellers to the Dutch Netherlands during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allegedly bore witness to the existence of drowning cells. Few physical remains exist, however, to help to corroborate such claims. What is more important, we would argue, is the widespread use of the drowning cell as a metaphor for the perilous link between an emerging Dutch nation—and by implication Dutch state—and the North Sea. The metaphor alluded to the need for the Dutch people, as a whole, to demonstrate an industrious character if they were to survive the perils of the sea. For Schama (1987: 40), this was literally a ‘Xood society’, in which the Dutch people were in a constant state of war with nature. The way in which such a sentiment coloured Dutch political identity can be illustrated by the St Elizabeth’s Day Xood of 1421. Although pre-dating the modern period, this Xood was remembered well into the early modern period within Dutch society as a symbol of the constant struggle between the Dutch nation and its surrounding seas. The impact of the Xood on the Dutch national psyche can be appreciated when one considers its physical magnitude. During the month of November 1421, a storm breached the sea defences at Broek and Xooded an area of 500 square kilometres. At the time, it was estimated that 100,000 people had perished. More recent estimates have reduced the extent of the disaster, arguing for a death toll of approximately 10,000 (Schama 1987: 35). During the early modern period, however, the St Elizabeth’s Day Xood became seared on the Dutch historical consciousness and inscribed as a feature of Dutch art. The Xood was viewed in biblical terms, most particularly with regard to the tale of Noah and his ark. Importantly, the Xood was remembered as something that contributed key aspects of the Dutch national character. Sin had been cleansed away as a result of the Xood, it was argued, enabling a pure and childlike Dutch nation to appear in its aftermath. Seawater and the associated dykes, estuaries, and meres—the key aspect of an emerging Dutch national nature—shaped people and their identities as much as it shaped the physical lie of the land. The relationship between Dutch identity and the sea was, however, more than a simple one based on fear and loathing. It was recognized that the sea also brought many advantages to the Dutch people, in terms of their capacity for trade and agriculture. The extensive system of internal waterways, for instance, proved to be immensely beneWcial in enabling a trade in Dutch agricultural goods. At the same time, these waterways were a great threat to inland settlements. It has been argued that such a tension between the
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beneWcial and pernicious inXuences of the sea can be viewed as a symbol of a broader conXict within the emerging Dutch national identity of the early modern period. The signiWcance of Protestantism, and especially its more extreme Calvinistic form, within the Dutch Netherlands speaks of a national culture that was based on a conXict between the necessity of thrift and hard work—witness the drowning cell discussed above—and a related wariness of the material beneWts deriving from it. In this way, the Dutch placed great store on hard work, which would lead to individual and common wealth, but were equally wary of an ‘overXow of riches’. As Schama (1987: 47) succinctly puts it, a ‘fear of drowning in destitution and terror was exactly counterbalanced by a fear of drowning in luxury and sin’. The recurring Wgure that helped to symbolize this tension within the Dutch national psyche during later times—and, we would argue, at a broader level illustrates the conXictual relationship between the Dutch people and Dutch national natures—was Goethe’s creation of Faust. Faust’s dying speech was seen by the Dutch people as one that encapsulated the tortuous relationship between the Dutch people and Dutch nature. It was through continuous hard labour, Faust maintained, that the (Dutch) land and people were to be made free and were to attain moral wealth. Indeed, it was through the facing of the ‘perennial danger and ordeal’ of the conXict with nature that the moral qualities of the Dutch were to be improved. For later readers of Goethe’s tale, the fact that Mephistopheles joins forces with Neptune to liquefy Faust’s mortal body merely illustrated the way in which nature, left unchallenged, could undermine the moral and national progress of the Dutch people. Faust’s dying words illustrate this threat and related challenge in an admirable fashion: I work that millions may possess this space If not secure, a free and active race Here men and herds, in green and fertile Welds Will know the joys, that new-won region yields, A paradise our closed-in lands provides Though to its margins rage the blustering tides When they eat through in Werce devouring Xood All swiftly join to make the damage good. Ay, in this Thought I pledge my faith unswerving Here wisdom speaks its Wnal word and true None is of freedom or life deserving Unless he conquers it anew With dangers thus begirt, defying fears Childhood, youth, age shall strive through strenuous years Such busy teeming throngs I long to see Standing on freedom’s soil, a people free. (Quoted in Schama 1987: 50)
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But if the struggle for survival against the sea was viewed as a key contributor to the emerging Dutch national identity, it also, equally, helped to shape the development of the political organization of the Dutch state. At a general level, a strong connection was envisaged between the act of forging the new and independent political organization of the Dutch state and the physical struggle against the tides of the sea. This was especially the case given the fact that the Dutch state was created in opposition to a dominant Habsburg empire, based in Spain.6 The Dutch Netherlands had been inherited by Charles V, King of Spain, through his paternal grandmother, Mary of Burgundy, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. From then on, conXict raged between the Dutch and their Spanish overlords. At certain times, the focus of the conXict would centre on what we would term proto-national issues: the need for the Dutch people to govern themselves independently and to be freed from a distant oppressor. At other times, religious issues would come to the forefront. For instance, Philip II, son of Charles V, could declare to the Pope that he would ‘rather lose a hundred lives, if I had them, than consent to rule over heretics’ (quoted in Koenigsberger 1987: 117). The breaking point was reached in 1581, when William of Orange of the House of Nassau proclaimed on behalf of the Dutch people that ‘God did not create people slaves to their prince to obey his commands whether right or wrong, but rather the prince for the sake of his subjects’ (quoted in Koenigsberger 1987: 117). This declaration led to a long and bloody war of secession between the Dutch and the Spanish, one that also intermittently attracted the interests of the other great European powers (Koenigsberger 1987: 146). The struggle for independence from Spain was to last eighty years and was successful only with the recognition of the independence of the United Provinces of the Northern Netherlands in 1648. In many ways, the struggle for independence brought together notions of political identity with more abstract notions of state government. The declaration contained in the so-called PaciWcation of Ghent in 1577 illustrates the way in which notions of Dutch identity became associated with the need to create new Dutch political formations. The various signatories of the PaciWcation agreed to create a political federation in the Dutch Netherlands, stating that they oblige[d] all inhabitants of the provinces to maintain, from now on a lasting and unbreakable friendship and peace and to assist each other at all times and in all events by words and deeds, with their lives and property, and to drive and keep out of the provinces the Spanish soldiers. (Quoted in Mackenney 1993: 303)7
Crucially for our argument, a clear analogy was drawn during this period between the tyranny of the Spanish Habsburg empire and the tyranny of the sea, to the extent that ‘in the minds of those who fought this battle on two 6 For a brief account of the Dutch revolt against Spanish Habsburg rule, see Mackenney (1993: 300–5). 7 See also Koenigsberger (1987: 140).
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fronts, they were causally connected’ (Schama 1987: 42).8 The Spanish and the sea were two external forces that needed to be resisted and tamed if an independent and economically thriving Dutch state was to be created. The description of the Dutch struggle against the sea given by the sixteenthcentury hydraulic engineer Andries Vierlingh could equally well be applied, as Schama argues, to the struggle against the Spanish: Your foe Oceanus, does not rest or sleep, either by day or by night, but comes, suddenly, like a roaring lion, seeking to devour the whole land. To have kept your country, then is a great victory. (Andries Vierlingh, quoted in Schama 1987: 42)
At a more fundamental level, we can also think about the emerging organization of the Dutch state and the way in which it was linked to its need to inXuence and withstand the vagaries of nature. The social and political organization of a system of dykes was crucial in this respect. From the Middle Ages onwards, when the Dutch had begun the process of draining the polders and reducing the potential impact of the sea on their society and agriculture, the organization of the dyke system had been based on a high degree of local autonomy. This had been especially important in the more precarious provinces of Holland and Zeeland, where the pernicious impact of the North Sea was experienced more readily. As Helmut Koenigsberger (2001: 21–2) has so aptly put it: ‘here life was dominated by water—the sea and the great tidal estuaries, lakes and meres’. The highly devolved character of the Dutch political system during the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the sixteenth century derived in part from the autonomy granted to communities in Holland and Zeeland with regard to the maintenance of dykes. Local communities were left to develop a shared responsibility for maintaining their own section of dyke with little interference from the emerging Dutch state. The key political Wgures within this system of government were the local reeves, the dyke-wardens (dijk-graven), and the heemraadschappen (the so-called water guardians), rather than any overlords located in distant major settlements. The Count of Holland, for instance, was merely one individual on a larger council of people involved in the erection and maintenance of sea defences within his territory (Koenigsberger 2001: 40). This led to an ‘ascending’ conception of political power, one that diVused outwards from Holland and Zeeland to the whole of the Netherlands: political authority was derived from local consent rather than being imposed from above.9 The contours of political power within this system were essentially far ‘Xatter’ than in other countries in medieval Europe, where it was organized along
8
See also Schama (1987: 35). As Mackenney (1993: 303–5) notes, the lack of central authority in the Dutch Netherlands proved to be somewhat of a drawback when contesting the sovereignty of the King of Spain over Dutch lands. If the King of Spain was not sovereign, then who was? 9
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feudal and hierarchical lines (Koenigsberger 2001: 22).10 This illustrates clearly the ways in which the means developed to control water in certain parts of the Netherlands aVected the character of political organizations throughout the whole country. A regional nature was essentially recast as a national nature, which, in turn, shaped the character of political authority. The particularities of the Dutch system of government were thrown into sharp relief with the advent of Habsburg rule in the Netherlands. Perhaps as a result of their inherent distrust of the Dutch—borne out of religious diVerence as well as outright instances of revolt—the Habsburgs sought to promote a far more centralized approach to government. At one level, the new form of rule was concerned with political and military issues. The infamous Duke of Alba’s period as the governor-general of the Netherlands was characterized by considerable bloodshed and an eVort to develop more systematic means of taxation. The proposed tenth-penny tax of 1569 was viewed by the Duke of Alba as a way of supporting the Spanish troops based in the Netherlands, as well as enabling the repayment of moneys that had been sent from Spain to support its previous regimes in the Dutch lands (Koenigsberger 2001: 224V).11 And yet it is signiWcant that part of the eVort to centralize methods of rule during the sixteenth century focused on the governance of water within the Netherlands. In 1544, Charles V instigated a new centralized body of ‘hydraulic administration’, both to coordinate the system of dykes within the Netherlands and to act as a clearing house for a more systematic taxation regime, which would enable the erection of further sea defences. The new ‘national’ body was not well received. Riots took place in Edam and Assendelft in North Holland. Matters were exacerbated as alleged Habsburg placemen were elected as dyke reeves. These were subsequently accused of a lack of knowledge of the local circumstances surrounding the maintenance of dykes and of a related lack of accountability and moral authority within the various local communities charged with maintaining the dykes. The conXict came to a head over the new centralized system of taxation put in place as a means of Wnancing the new ‘nationalized’ sea defences. These were uniformly perceived as a foreign and unwarranted Wnancial imposition on communities, which had successfully managed the maintenance of their own dykes for generations. Many assumed that the taxes were used to Wnance activities other than dyke extension and maintenance. Whether such accusations were true or not is largely irrelevant. What was more important was the belief among the Dutch that the Habsburgs had 10
Koenigsberger also argues that part of the reason for the lack of developed social hierarchies within the Netherlands derived from the importance of the merchant class within the various provincial estates, something that led to a far more dispersed patterning of political power. On a broader note, see Dodgshon (1987: 166–92). 11 The Duke of Alba’s scheme was ultimately unsuccessful due to combination of a concerted eVort on the part of the various provinces to resist it and political intrigue in the royal court in Madrid, which served to undermine the Duke’s credibility.
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transformed ‘morally authorized contributions into morally repugnant forced levies’ (Schama 1987: 42). In a broader context, we would argue also that the Habsburg rationale for a systematic and centralized form of government Xew in the face of the more community-based forms of government that had existed in the Dutch Netherlands prior to Habsburg intervention. Key to this whole debate was the control of water through sea defences. Who should be responsible for the sea defences? How should they be funded? What was the appropriate scale for the social control of an unruly sea? All of these were key questions in the Dutch Netherlands during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as it began on a slow and contested road to state consolidation. The Dutch Netherlands’ declaration of independence during the mid-seventeenth century put paid to the centralizing project promoted by the Habsburgs (Davies 1997: 538). Nonetheless, attempts to resolve these conXicts over the appropriate management of water in the polders in no small part conditioned the trajectories taken by the developing Dutch state of the period. In this way, the contested and tortuous process of state consolidation within Dutch lands shaped, and was shaped by, the continuing contestation over the control over nature.
The moment of contestation: territorial and environmental politics Although processes of contestation were apparent in the period discussed in the previous section, we think it important to emphasize a separate moment of contestation that connects nature–state relations. A recurring feature of modern politics and political geography has been the eVort made by various territorial groups to undermine established nation-states. Theoretical explanations for the break-up of established nation-states are numerous and need not detain us at the present (Gellner 1983; Hechter 1975; Nairn 1981; Smith 1982). What is common to many of the diVerent instances of territorial politics is their appropriation of nature as a way of furthering their contestation of state forms. Much work has been conducted on the galvanizing role of nature in general, and of environmentalism in particular, in relation to East European nationalist movements, which have sought to undermine the established states that existed in that region (Dawson 1995; Eckersberg 1994; Podoba 1998). Admittedly, the role played by environmental concerns within these nationalist movements has been, in many cases, temporary. Group loyalties in Eastern Europe are now more deeply aligned with issues of economy, identity, and language than they are with nationalist accounts of ecological problems. But this need not detract from the importance of environmental concerns as a way of promoting eVorts to contest established state forms and ideologies. Indeed, there is a strong argument that these
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environmental concerns were crucial to the successful challenge made by a variety of sub-state groups to established nation-states throughout the whole of Eastern Europe in the period subsequent to 1989. As a way of explicating the moment of contestation within nature–state relations, we focus in particular on Welsh territorial politics during the twentieth century. We believe it oVers an unparalleled illustration of a continuing process of contestation within British and Welsh nature–state relations. More speciWcally, it shows how alternative framings of nature can be enrolled by diVerent groups in their political debates and contestations. The main impetus for the development of Welsh nationalism came with the formation of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, in 1925, although it would be diYcult in some ways to equate its political strategy with more contemporary sub-state nationalisms. Pyrs GruVudd (1994, 1995) has made it clear that Plaid Cymru’s main aim at the time of its inception was to secure the future of the Welsh nation as a Welsh-speaking and moral people. Issues of political representation and of the need for political independence—the questions with which we associate sub-state or territorial politics—were, therefore, secondary during this early period in the party’s development. The Reverend Dyfnallt Morgan, one of the early members of Plaid Cymru, clearly illustrated the overarching moral concern of the party when he argued that ‘the new order that is being thrust upon us is a Godless civilisation. Do our Churches realise that when Welsh civilisation disappears they too will disappear?’ (quoted in Williams 1982: 152). It is signiWcant, nonetheless, that even during this early period we also witness the inXuence of normative environmental accounts of the Welsh nation within the rhetoric of Plaid Cymru. GruVudd (1994) has shown how during this period Plaid Cymru advocated that the members of the Welsh nation should ‘return to the land’, since it was only by living in rural areas and through being close to the soil of Wales that the linguistic and moral future of the Welsh nation could be secured (see Chapter 1). In many ways, therefore, a moral distinction was made by the early members of Plaid Cymru between the closeness of the Welsh people to the natural environment of Wales and, in a related sense, to the cosmopolitan inXuences of the English culture and nation, which was to be found in the towns and cities of Wales. Nature, or rather the alleged closeness of the Welsh nation to nature, was used as a way of contesting the growing pernicious inXuences of Englishness on a Welsh way of life. Of course, the association between a nation and its rural areas and ‘natural environment’ has been a longstanding emphasis within the ideologies of nationalism. Colin Williams and Anthony Smith (1983), in their seminal paper on the geographies of the nation, illustrated the common emphasis on notions of habitat, folk cultures, and autarchy within nationalist ideologies. In all these themes we witness the way in which the ‘true’ members of nations are said to exist in a close relationship with the rural landscape and nature of the nation.
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But it is in debates surrounding water resources that we see the clearest manifestation of a moment of contestation with regard to nature–state relations in Wales and the broader United Kingdom. It is fair to say that the geographical location of Wales makes it an ideal source of water. Its location on the western seaboard of the UK and its relatively mountainous terrain ensure that it is a country that is blessed—if that is the correct term— with a bountiful supply of water in the form of rainfall. One author has even stated that ‘rainfall is perhaps the most noticeable feature of the Welsh climate’ (Sumner 1977: 45), something that the authors of the present volume can well attest to! Annual levels of rainfall can be as low as 800 mm along the north coast and the Welsh borderland but can reach 4,000 mm in the more mountainous areas. To think about it in another way, total precipitation in Wales is equivalent to 3802 daily gallons per capita, compared with 662 daily gallons per capita in England (Davies 1998–2001: 167). Welsh water resources are also valued since they are located relatively near to some of the larger urban areas of England and Wales: Merseyside; Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and South Wales in particular (see Figure 3.2). All this has meant that Welsh water resources have become a key asset in the society and economy of the UK. The exploitation of Welsh water resources, however, possesses a long and chequered history. Not surprisingly, the most contentious instances—and most signiWcant as far as the arguments made in the current volume are concerned—relate to the use of Welsh water resources by English towns and cities, and we concentrate speciWcally on this territorial aspect in this chapter. Since the late nineteenth century, municipalities located along the western border of England had sought to discover new sources of clean and soft water in Wales as a means of countering the alarming decline of the largely subterranean water supplies that existed in their localities. These additional supplies—part of a process of the territorial capturing of nature—were needed not only in order to fuel increased industrial growth in towns and cities such as Birmingham and the Liverpool conurbation, but also as a way of securing purer and healthier water supplies for the populations of these urban areas. It has been argued that the quality of water had come to be viewed as a key determinant of a population’s health by the late nineteenth century, and the various municipalities at the leading edge of Britain’s industrial revolution actively sought to secure the best possible supplies for their inhabitants (Roberts 2000). The demand for new water supplies was clear for all to see. In a survey into the water demands of Liverpool, conducted in the late nineteenth century, one respondent argued that ‘Liverpool is one of the most unhealthy towns in England’, further maintaining that ‘to the want of a suYcient supply of water for general domestic purposes much of that unhealthiness and shortness of the lives of the inhabitants must be attributed’ (quoted in Coopey et al. 1999: 95). The public health movement, led by inXuential individuals such as Edwin Chadwick, promoted an
The Moments of Nature–State Relations
Fig. 3.2.
71
Map of Wales, showing the main reservoirs.
argument regarding the utilization of new technologies in order to bring additional supplies of clean water to service Britain’s urban population. The speciWc consequence of these arguments was an increased attempt by English municipalities from the nineteenth century onwards to appropriate Welsh water resources: the Elan and Vyrnwy Lakes were created in the late nineteenth century as a means of servicing the water requirements of the cities of Birmingham and Liverpool, respectively; the Alwen water scheme was promoted at the beginning of the twentieth century in order to supply
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Birkenhead’s needs; Warrington Corporation’s attempts to drown the Ceiriog valley were thwarted in the 1920s; and the last major scheme targeted the Tryweryn river as a means of supplying water to Liverpool during the 1950s and ’60s (see Coopey and Roberts 1999; Roberts 2001). We focus, in particular, on this Wnal water scheme, since it illustrates most clearly a moment of nationalist contestation of nature–state relations. Since 1955, it had been rumoured that Liverpool Corporation had been searching for additional sources to supplement its dwindling water supply. Its earlier foray into the Welsh mountains, the product of which was the Efyrnwy reservoir, was struggling to cope with Merseyside’s domestic and industrial demand for water. Much of Liverpool Corporation’s justiWcation for creating a new dam was based on its suVering during the Second World War. The promoters of the Tryweryn scheme argued that the great sacriWce that they had made during the conXict far outweighed any minor inconvenience caused to a small number of households, which would have to be relocated from a remote village in north-west Wales. Furthermore, it was argued that there was a dire need to improve levels of sanitation amongst the city’s poorer inhabitants. The proposed reservoir of Tryweryn, it was maintained, would help to address this issue (Davies 1998–2001: 167–8). The Tryweryn episode become a crucial touchstone for much of Welsh nationalist politics during the 1950s and ’60s and, indeed, still touches something of a raw nerve even today. As Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams (1985: 291) argues, ‘control over its own water became . . . an inXammatory issue in Wales’ during the period. Crucially, as well as mobilizing a discourse that sought to engage with the importance of preserving local cultures, many protesters during the period sought to promote a more nationalist set of discourses, ones that deWned the water of Wales as a natural resource that belonged to the land and people of Wales, rather than one that was the property of the UK state. Water, it would seem, was being utilized as a means of furthering a sub-state territorial politics. For instance, key Wgures in Plaid Cymru were involved in the protests against the drowning of the valley, among them individuals such as Gwynfor Evans, the party’s Wrst Member of Parliament, and long-term activist D. J. Williams. Pamphlets published by the party at the time argued that These plans should not be allowed to damage the incomparable beauty of our country. This beauty is part of the national heritage of the Welsh nation, one of the noble inXuences that moulded the special character of our nation, one of the inXuences that continues to mould and sustain our nation. (Quoted in Roberts 2001: 180)
For people within the Welsh nationalist movement, the area in which the condemned community—Capel Celyn—was located was a key location where the folk culture of the Welsh people still survived and thrived. Echoing themes discussed earlier, it was also portrayed as a community that lived in
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harmony with its natural environment. In eVect, the people of Capel Celyn were close to the land and close to the culture of Wales, whereas the new and foreign technologies and inXuences represented the antithesis of this close relationship to nature. Building on these themes, it is useful to follow John Davies’s distinction between the political context and the linguistic and/or cultural context for the nationalist protests of the time. At one level, many activists stressed the broader political context for the Tryweryn farrago. SpeciWcally, many argued for the distinctiveness of Wales as a separate nation, which should possess various territorial rights regarding the use and transformation of, inter alia, nature. This viewpoint was summed up impressively by Elystan Morgan, the barrister who represented two protestors against the scheme, who were brought to trial for acts of vandalism in 1962. He argued that ‘if the Welsh nation exists and if it possesses rights over its assets, then we should believe that these two young men acted in order to protect those assets’ (quoted in Davies 1998–2001: 169). In this statement, it is the territorial coherence of the Welsh nation that takes precedence, along with a related argument concerning the validity of the nation’s claim to control its own natural resources. This was Welsh water, not British water. Similar arguments arose in the context of the need to develop a Welsh Water Board, which would be able to manage the exploitation of a key natural resource located within the boundaries of Wales (Davies 1998–2001: 179). Other protesters were more concerned with the cultural or linguistic contexts framing the proposed Tryweryn project. The main signiWcance of the proposed scheme was the fact that it destroyed a culturally vibrant Welsh-speaking community. As John Davies notes, it was widely known by the 1950s and ’60s that the number of Welsh-speaking communities was deteriorating rapidly. To destroy a classic example of a Welsh-speaking community in such a way, according to many activists, was tantamount to a direct attack on the heart of the Welsh nation. In this sense, the proposed scheme would have been criticized and withstood even if it were meant as a source of water for towns and cities within Wales (Davies 1998–2001: 179). While it is useful to separate out the diVerent contexts within which the national rhetoric of the time was embedded, we maintain that in practice there is a strong and productive relationship between the two. Although individual activists may well have stressed one aspect at the expense of the other, much of the later signiWcance of the Tryweryn episode lies in its symbolic expression of a territorial and cultural injustice. Of course, one should not overemphasize the support of the Welsh people towards the Tryweryn campaign. Much has been written about the variegated character of Welsh politics during the period, especially with regard to the policies and strategies of the Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales (CPRW). At a national Welsh scale, the CPRW was conspicuous by its absence from any eVort to resist the construction of the dam. Indeed, the
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plans for the dam found favour in the ranks of the national-level CPRW. Patrick Abercrombie and the Reverend H. H. Symonds, for instance, were far more in favour of the Tryweryn project than they were of an alternative project to develop a hydro-electric scheme on the Conwy river. Symonds noted as follows: Liverpool’s Tryweryn scheme is far preferable to the . . . Conwy scheme; it involves far less civil engineering (and what there will be would be far less injurious to the landscape) and, above all, no power stations and linking pylons. (Quoted in Roberts 2001: 176)
As Owen Roberts (2001) has rightly pointed out, such sentiments Wtted in with the CPRW’s aim to preserve and enhance the aesthetic and visual qualities of the Welsh environment. Indeed, some within the CPRW at a national level went as far as to argue that the Xooding of the Tryweryn valley could actually enhance its visual appeal! What is signiWcant, in this respect, is the wholly diVerent attitude taken by the local Merionnydd branch of the CPRW. Vincent Evans, for instance, a local branch member of the CPRW, was keen to distance himself from the strategy being adopted by the CPRW at a national level. He referred admiringly to the particular way of life that existed in the village about to be submerged as part of the proposed scheme and contended that: My Committee rightly or wrongly believe that . . . the destruction of the village of Capel Celyn and the Welsh way of life that has grown up with the village cannot be replaced by the rebuilding of the village elsewhere . . . The new village will be Wlled up by outsiders brought in to look after the Reservoir and another where the Welsh way of life is practised will disappear. (Quoted in Roberts 2001: 183–4)
We witness here the drawing up of a close discursive link between the impact of the proposed water scheme both on one particular locality in North Wales and the wider Welsh nation. For many activists during the period, whether members of national or environmental movements, abandoning this Welsh village could be equated with abandoning a distinctive Welsh way of life and nature–culture connections therein. The other signiWcance of the Tryweryn episode is the way in which it has entered the Welsh popular imagination as an instance of an insensitive interference by English governmental authority in Wales. As such, it has assumed an iconic status within Welsh nationalist circles and become a symbol of the various woes suVered by the Welsh people at the hands of an English state, industry, and culture (Davies 1998–2001: 167).12 Liverpool 12 On a broader level, Welsh nationalist sentiment has drawn much ideological support from the notion of internal colonialism, popularized by Michael Hechter (1975). During the 1960s and 1970s, for instance, Plaid Cymru based much of its political ideology on ideas related to internal colonialism. The abstraction of Welsh water from the valleys of Wales was seen to be but another example of an historic process of economic, political, and cultural oppression of a Welsh people by English institutions.
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Council’s recent formal apology for their past insensitivity will do little to appease Welsh nationalists. The phrase ‘Remember Tryweryn’, indeed, seems set to retain its potency within the Welsh nationalist lexicon as a form of shorthand to describe the perceived oppression of the Welsh people by English and British institutions. Indeed, the Tryweryn reservoir is remembered on a subliminal, day-to-day, and banal level in Wales today through various artistic practices and graYti (Jones 1988; Thomas 1997). Nature, thus appropriated, is used as a means of contesting dominant state ideologies.13
The moment of simulacrum: nation-states and natural history museums Look up at the leviathan. Extending for a total of ninety-four feet, it hangs, suspended in mid-air as if by magic. The shimmering blue steel and plastic model in the Hall of Ocean Life of the American Museum of Natural History represents the awe, the immensity, and the grace of the largest living mammal, the blue whale. Visitors to the museum today accept the model as an eVective depiction of the physical characteristics of the blue whale, transported en masse to uptown New York. But it is instructive to consider the historic trajectory of the exhibit that one can witness today. Debates concerning the appropriate means of depicting the blue whale within the museum continued for much of the twentieth century (Wallace 2000: 24–30). Some favoured a model based on an assemblage of the bone structure of the blue whale, a format used in dinosaur exhibits, but this was deemed to lack ‘the spark of life’ for it gave no ‘sense of the power, grace and harnessed energy that a living whale possesse[d] in such abundance’ (Wallace 2000: 26). The alternative option was to create a diorama of the blue whale. Museums had experimented from the outset with the creation of dioramas: ‘lifelike’ depictions of living things, often placed within their broader ecological contexts. But the sheer scale of the blue whale, for many, all but precluded the creation of a lifelike depiction of a whale and of its living circumstances. In any case, a whale’s skin was far too brittle to attempt to recreate what would, in eVect, be the largest stuVed model in the world. The Wrst attempt to represent the whale came in the form of a model created by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1907. It consisted of a steel frame, plaster of Paris, and other modelling materials; according to many visitors, it resembled a torpedo far more than it did a living whale! The model lasted until 1959, when the museum decided that a new and more realistic model needed to be constructed. Various options were considered, including 13 For a discussion of the concept of banal nationalism or, in other words, the way in which nationalism is reproduced in a mundane and everyday context, see Billig (1995).
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a model hung from the ceiling by wires, a helium-Wlled inXatable model, and a model that would be supported from below by a metal rod. None were deemed to be appropriate. One seemingly madcap idea, which gained much support for a while, was to exhibit a dead whale in the museum, half-covered in seawater and surrounded by the sounds of lapping water and crying gulls. The proposal was not scrapped until the smell of a decaying whale carcass was demonstrated to the museum’s Women’s Committee. It seemed as if the reality of museum exhibitions could only be taken so far before museum patrons protested. Finally, it was agreed that the most practical and elegant solution would be to bolt the model to the museum’s ceiling. Opened in 1968, the gallery now, according to Joseph Wallace (2000: 30), represents one of the ‘most spectacular and popular displays ever mounted at any museum in the world’. This debate surrounding the creation of an appropriate exhibit for the blue whale, we would argue, begins to illustrate the moment of simulacrum within nature–state relations. The whole tenor of the various discussions regarding the blue whale exhibit were based on deciding the most eVective and real ways of depicting nature. Which technologies and materials should be used? How should the visitor’s experience of the exhibit be regulated? How real should the exhibit be? Which senses should be appealed to within the exhibit? It is signiWcant that Joseph Wallace, almost as an afterthought to his account of the creation of the blue whale exhibit in the museum, comments that scientists now know that not every physical detail of the model is completely accurate. The color, for example, isn’t blue enough. But without doubt, this superb exhibit comes breathtakingly close to capturing the spirit that animates the real blue whale. (Wallace 2000: 30)
Yet whereas Wallace argues that the model of the blue whale does not approximate in every detail to the blue whale of reality, what we would argue—following authors such as Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco—is that it is the reality of the blue whale as it is exhibited in the museum that is most signiWcant. In this simulacrum of the blue whale, the reality as represented is far more important than the blue whale’s reality in the world’s oceans. Speaking of the simulacrum, Baudrillard (1994: 2) has maintained that the postmodern present is characterized by an ‘era of simulation’ in which an original reality is being erased. Simulations and simulacra become the new reality, which entails ‘substituting the signs of the real for the real’ through the creation of an ‘operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly descriptive machine’. For Eco (1987: 7), too, this ‘furious hyperreality’ involves the replacement of a thing by a sign—a representation, a memorialization, or an image—which, in turn, assumes the signiWcance of the thing that it replaces. Similar to Baudrillard, Eco (1987: 21–2) maintains that the thing itself can lose all sense of integrity, as in William Randolph Hearst’s
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castle in Santa Barbara, where sections of European castles, convents, and monasteries were reassembled into one giant collage of a building. Here, once again, the simulacrum clearly attains a greater sense of reality than that which it seeks to re-enact. It is the process of representation that is the key to the creation of the simulacrum, as Timothy Mitchell (1988) has noted. This is a representation that seeks to depict the ‘real world’ in incredible detail, to the extent that the boundaries between the representation and that which is represented become blurred. Mitchell’s account of the Paris World Exhibition of 1889 speaks of the blurred boundaries between the exhibition and what lay outside its walls: ‘a labyrinth which includes in itself its own exits’. The representations within the Exhibition ‘became so accurate and so extensive, no one ever realised that the ‘‘real world’’ they promised was not there’ (Mitchell 1988: 10). The key site that enables this act of representation is the museum; the key technology, that of the exhibit or the diorama. The growing preponderance of museums and heritage sites on a global scale illustrates their signiWcance for new and everlasting representations of old places and practices (Belcher 1991: xiii; Urry 1990: 104–12). Timothy Luke (1997:1) argues, for instance, that ‘in a hyperreal time . . . museums function as critically important modelling agencies and mapping centers to meld ontological meanings with cultural terrains’. The key aspect of this quote, we believe, is its reference to the role of museums as ‘mapping centers’. Museums centralize a whole range of diVerent variables under one roof and, in doing so, make the social and natural worlds knowable and mappable. If museums play a key role in signifying and representing nature–culture relations, then the technologies used to achieve this end are that of the exhibit and the diorama. The diorama aims to ‘establish itself as a substitute for reality, as something even more real’ (Eco 1987: 8) or, as Donna Haraway (2004b: 186) has put it, ‘meaning machines’. These dioramas were of great signiWcance in natural history museums, where, as noted in the introductory paragraphs of this section, great store was placed on the realistic depiction of Xora and fauna.14 Developments in taxidermy, in modelling, and in art all served to enable the exhibitor to create a ‘peep-hole’ into the jungle or, in other words, more lifelike representations of specimens and their related ‘habitat groups’ (Haraway 2004b: 155). Once again, the aim was to create something that equated to reality or, indeed, something that exceeded reality in terms of the quality of the visitor’s experience. SigniWcantly—given the focus in this section on the American Museum of Natural History—both Baudrillard and Eco contend that the emphasis on remembering and immortalization that is associated with the simulacrum is 14 Other venues exist for the protection and embalming of nature: they range from national parks to the idealized human–nature relationships portrayed in theme parks, such as Disney’s EPCOT (see Fjellman 1992: 319–47).
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a particular facet of Americans and American culture. For Baudrillard, Americans, having missed out on the original running of history, are forced to make do with its re-running: They will be the Wrst to immortalize everything by reconstitution (by putting things in museums, they can match in an instant the fossilization process nature took millions of years to complete). But the conception Americans have of the museum is much wider than our own. To them, everything is worthy of protection, embalming, restoration. Everything can have a second birth, the eternal birth of the simulacrum. (Baudrillard 1988: 41)
Eco (1987: 6), too, maintains that ‘there is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication’. There is no better example of a museum that has striven to recreate reality in such a manner than the American Museum of Natural History. It is important to note here the contribution of key individuals in shaping the destiny of the museum. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the opening of the museum in 1877 would not have come about had it not been for the remarkable energy and commitment of one individual, Albert Bickmore (Preston 1986: 13–23).15 After graduating in geology and chemistry from Dartmouth College, Bickmore studied under Louis Agassiz, who had founded the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. It was Bickmore’s time studying under Agassiz, and especially their subsequent estrangement, that convinced him of the need to locate a new and more impressive Museum of Natural History in the largest and most vibrant city of the US, namely New York. His commitment to this project over subsequent years was unfailing. Blessed with an ability to persuade politicians and potential benefactors alike of the worth of the proposed museum, he won approval from the State legislature to erect a new building to house the museum on New York’s Upper West Side, fronting Central Park. The Wrst stone was laid by US President Ulysses S. Grant in 1874 under the gaze of a number of key government oYcials, while the building was opened oYcially by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. But, of course, a museum is more than a mere building; the true signiWcance of the American Museum of Natural History from the outset was its vast collection of important exhibits. Many collections were bought wholesale by the museum and it was Bickmore’s enthusiastic pursuit of these opportunities to augment the museum’s collections—allied with low visitor Wgures—that led to the institution’s Wnancial troubles during the late nineteenth century. By 1880, it was on the brink of closure. The saviour Wgure 15 Much of what is discussed in this paragraph derives from Preston’s (1986) account of Bickmore’s contribution.
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came in the form of Morris K. Jesup, employed as a troubleshooter by the trustees. Bickmore’s enthusiasm for the project, obviously, was infectious. Jesup became convinced of the need for the museum in New York and set about, as the new president of the museum, to invigorate its collections. He instigated two key transformations to the way in which the museum was organized. First, he placed an increased emphasis on what we may term entertainment, as opposed to hard science. Exhibits of large mammals, he argued, would attract far more visitors through the museum’s doors than would those of molluscs or beetles. The second great change was the emphasis on ‘active collecting’. The period of Jesup’s presidency, according to Douglas Preston (1986: 23), represented the beginning of the ‘golden age of exploration’ between 1880 and 1930, when over a thousand expeditions were sent by the museum into all parts of the globe (Wallace 2000: 23–45). Jesup’s astuteness as president led a sustained period of growth in the fortunes of the Museum of Natural History. In 1881, when his term as president began, there were only 55,000 square feet of exhibits but by 1906 this Wgure had increased to 600,000. Employee Wgures had also increased dramatically during the same period, from twelve to 185 (Preston 1986: 22). It is not an overstatement to suggest that Jesup’s period as president witnessed the laying of crucial foundations for the museum’s success during the twentieth century. By the end of the century, the scope of the museum’s activities had grown to staggering proportions: it is now a workplace for 200 scientists and twenty-Wve million specimens and is visited by a total of Wve million visitors each year (American Museum of Natural History 2001: 5). It acts today as an organization that focuses on the entertainment and education of visitors, as well as being a research establishment of the highest order. At Wrst glance, the story of the formation of the American Museum of Natural History would seem to contradict a simple account of the increased inXuence of the state on the memorialization and representation of nature. This is especially the case when considering the fact that it lies outside the direct control of the state institutions at either the federal or state level. The museum has always been a charitable, private, and, ostensibly, independent organization governed by a Board of Trustees. Indeed, Haraway (2004b: 188) argues that it can be contrasted with the natural history museums of Europe, which are organizations that lie directly within the control of their respective states (see also Luke 1997:1). But this is to adopt too narrow an understanding of the state. Antonio Gramsci, in particular, has argued for the need to view the state as something that is dependent upon a range of institutions that seemingly exist in civil society. In order to achieve its political, social, and economic hegemony, the state must educate the mass of the people to a certain moral and cultural standard. In addition to its key educational and juridical functions, the state achieves this aim through ‘a multitude of other so-called private initiatives and activities’, which ‘form the apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes’
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(Gramsci 1978: 258). It is clear, in this respect, that the American Museum of Natural History played a key role in facilitating this broader educational process that has been crucial to the reproduction of the political and cultural hegemony of the US state. The extent to which the museum can be viewed as a state project can Wrst be elucidated through reference to those key individuals involved in its formation and development. At a quite straightforward level, the presence of two US presidents at key stages in the erection of the museum’s Wrst purpose-built building would seem to indicate the extent to which the institution was viewed as a symbol of American national esteem. Other individuals involved in the setting up of the museum were also key Wgures within both the Wnancial and political establishment of New York and the wider US, including J. Pierpont Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Similarly, it is possible to argue that many of the museum’s early activities reXect a concern with the need to promote the national natures of the US. We bear witness to this national concern in the development of the museum’s gem collection, whose formation derived from the activities of George Kunz, gem expert for TiVany and Co. and honorary curator in the museum, and J. Pierpont Morgan, the wealthy New York Wnancier and museum trustee. A combination of Kunz’s expertise and Morgan’s money led to the formation of one of the best gem collections in the world at the tail end of the nineteenth century, containing as it did the much-vaunted sapphire, the Star of India. Much of the impetus for the formation of the collection, however, came from the Paris World Exhibition of 1889, which we have already discussed. It is signiWcant that Kunz was able to convince Charles TiVany, founder of TiVany and Co., of the need to show European jewellers the quality of North American gems. Driven by a combination of professional and national pride, Kunz set out on a nationwide journey across the US to acquire the best examples of precious stones that he could Wnd. The collection, subsequently, won the Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition and, upon its return to New York, was bought for the museum by Pierpont’s money (Preston 1986: 219–20; Wallace 2000: 101–2). The signiWcance of this brief example, we would maintain, is the way in which the museum was involved in taking natural artefacts formed under the geological conditions of a prehistoric past—a past in which humans and nation-states were evidently non-existent—and framing them as part of the national nature of the US. In this crucial shift, gems were transformed from being products of the natural processes taking place beneath the earth’s surface to being national products that could elicit a national sense of pride amongst Americans. The role of natural history museums in enabling humans to impart a sense of order on the natural world has been made clear by Michel Foucault. In the process, rational thought ‘operate[s] upon the entities of our world, to put them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to names that designate their similarities and their diVerences’ (Foucault 2003: xix).
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This process of classiWcation is especially pertinent in the context of natural history, with botanical gardens and natural history collections being its concrete manifestation. These latter sites hide as much as they reveal, and are ‘books furnished with structures, the space in which characteristics combine, and in which classiWcations are physically displayed’ (Foucault 2003: 150). Importantly, this gaze or vision, as Luke has maintained, is both ‘totalizing’ and ‘particularizing’: natural history museums seek to embrace and represent the whole of life on earth but do so as a means of subdividing it into interrelated categories. ‘Museums of natural history are essentially attempts to collect all of the world’s facts, as artifacts, specimens or examples, and then classify, organize, and interpret their meanings’ (Luke 1997: 18–19). One crucial element within this process of classiWcation and organization is the nation-state and it is here that we witness the mutual imbrication of nation-states and natures within the natural history museum. As Luke (1997: 59) has so aptly put it, museums are both ‘products and producers of national modernization for the state’.16 At one level, they reXect and reify the nation-state’s eVorts to segment space, so that museums speak of our natural history as opposed to the natural histories of other nations and peoples.17 Here, museums attain the status of a ‘complete microcosmic representation of the nation-state . . . the building contains representatively everything in the state territory—and in this way becomes itself a symbol of the power relationship’ that lies at the heart of the nation-state (Pro¨sler 1996: 35). At another important level, natural history museums also emphasize particular national ways of thinking about nature. All natures presented within the space of the natural history museum are viewed through a mental framework derived from the national space within which the museum resides. In these two senses, nature does not merely enter history within natural history museums, as Foucault has maintained. In framing nature using the lens of the state, we contend that nature actually enters state history within all natural history museums. One way in which we can examine how natures have entered US state history within the American Museum of Natural History is to focus on the importance of ideas relating to race, which were being propounded in the US during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Donna Haraway (2004b) has outlined in great detail the way in which the fabric of the museum, as well as its various displays, were shot through with telling statements regarding the racial ideas that were prevalent in the US during this period. As one approaches the building along Central Park West, one is struck by the immensely large statue of Theodore Roosevelt, mounted on a horse as a 16
As Luke notes, this tendency is partly linked to the shift identiWed by Francis Bacon as universal nature was made private. One key way in which nature was made private was in the context of the nationalization or statization of nature (see Impey and MacGregor 1985: 1). 17 In a related context, see Billig (1995).
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father Wgure to two ‘primitives’, a Native American and an African. The statue also contains a dedication to Roosevelt as ‘a great leader of the youth of America, in energy and fortitude in the faith of our fathers, in defense of the rights of the people, in the love and conservation of nature and of the best in life and in man’. The racial undertones of the statue are plain for all to see but the dedication, as Haraway (2004b: 153) argues, also draws our attention to other themes: ‘youth, paternal solitude, virile defense of democracy, and intense emotional connection to nature’. The connections between a racialized US federal state and the museum are clear: the one serves to reinforce the other in the statuary located at the museum entrance. Other threads attach a racialized US state to the American Museum of Natural History. The link between the museum and the science of eugenics clearly illustrates the organization’s role as a useful tool of the US federal state. The Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in the museum in 1921, was believed by H. F. Osborn (President of the American Museum of Natural History at the time) to be ‘perhaps the most important scientiWc meeting held in the Museum’ (quoted in Haraway 2004b: 190). Various state and educational representatives attended the Congress—both from the US and further aWeld—and the conference proceedings were published under the title Eugenics in Family, Race, and State. After an initial lukewarm response to the Congress’s proclamations, they were increasingly taken up by politicians and the press. Two years later, the US Congress passed laws containing new restrictions on immigration, which would protect the ‘American Race’ from undesirable external inXuences. A private institution it may have been, but the museum was also clearly a handmaiden of the US federal state in which it was located.18 Even in the simulacrum of the diorama, the notion with which we started this section, we can witness the important connections between states and natures. Perhaps the most famous group of dioramas is that located in the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. These are a testament to the high level of skill and ‘realistic’ representation achieved in the museum’s exhibitions, especially under the leadership of Carl Akeley.19 Haraway expands on the narrative or the story contained within the dioramas that appear in this Hall: Gradually, the viewer begins to articulate the content of the story. Most groups are made up of only a few animals, usually a large and vigilant male, a female or two, and one baby. Perhaps there are some other animals—a male adolescent maybe, never an aged or deformed beast. The animals in the group form a developmental series, such 18 It is also possible to position the concept of race, and its association with both the museum and the US state, within a broader context of social anarchy and disorder (see Rexer and Klein 1995: 25). 19 For a discussion of the new techniques of taxidermy developed by Carl Akeley in the African Hall of Mammals, techniques that enabled him to create hyperreal exhibits, see Haraway (2004b: 166–71), Luke (1997: 27), Preston (1986: 92–3), and Wallace (2000: 13).
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that the group can represent the essence of the species as a dynamic, living whole . . . Each group forms a community structured by a natural division of function; the whole animal in the whole group is nature’s truth. (Haraway 2004b: 156)
The pivotal diorama is the group of African mountain gorillas, with the male silverback gorilla, the Giant of Karisimbi, as its centrepiece. Perhaps as a result of the genetic closeness of the gorilla to humans, the quality of the panoramic artwork, or the Werceness and integrity of the ‘Giant’ himself, this diorama has been viewed as the apogee of the taxidermist’s art: a spiritual vision of nature and of humanity’s place within it (Haraway 2004b: 157). But these dioramas, not least that of the mountain gorillas, also comprise a narrative of state–nature relations. Luke (1997) argues that Akeley’s experiences in Africa—where he was nearly killed by a charging elephant, and where he witnessed Wrst hand the damage inXicted by ‘European’ hunters on African wildlife—led him to re-evaluate the narratives contained within the African dioramas. At one level, their implicit message is of an anthropogenic and state-centred transformation of nature within Africa—through the hunting of wild animals and the exploitation of natural resources (Luke 1997: 28–9). But, at the same time, the dioramas’ act of freezing nature and time in an everlasting set pose, or, as Luke (1997: 31) has put it, ‘slowing or stopping civilization’s spoilage with simulations of Nature’, could be viewed as a symbol of the ability of states to attempt to freeze nature in reality, or, in eVect, to develop means of conserving threatened species and habitats. Akeley, for instance, was a keen advocate of the need to form a national park within the Belgian Congo, which would serve to protect the habitat of his beloved mountain gorillas (Wallace 2000: 19). Similarly, the freezing of nature–state relations within the diorama can be viewed as a metaphor for the increasing eVorts made to conserve and ‘freeze’ national natures within the US at the same time. The 1920s, when Akeley carried out his expeditions to the Belgian Congo and when he planned and produced the gorilla diorama, were, after all, in the middle of a period when national natures were being preserved at an unprecedented rate in the US (Wilson 1992: 224). The reasons behind this process were the same in the US as they were in the Belgian Congo: namely, the need to protect species and environments that were in danger of despoilation (Green 1996: 95). In this light, the gorilla diorama can be viewed as a symbol of a further state transformation, or, alternatively, the reiWcation of nature through the creation of new state conservation bodies within the US and further aWeld. Natural history museums, such as the one in New York, are involved in a process of deWning and classifying national natures, which are represented through the hyperreality of the exhibition and/or the diorama. Natural history museums are, therefore, ‘biopolitical acts’ in which curators and other technocrats contribute to a process of Wxing and Wnalizing ‘the empiricities of humanism and naturalism as complex clusters of practicable representations, carrying stabilized accounts of normalizing knowledge’
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(Luke 1997: 47). They are infused with political meaning: in their mechanisms of classiWcation, in their use of technologies, and in their representations of nature. It is the world of hyperreality that enables this moment of simulacrum within nature–state relations to be produced by curators and consumed by museum patrons.
Concluding comments The connections between nature and the modern state have unfolded in certain key momentary associations. While we have stressed that these moments of nature–state relations do not strictly adhere to historic time periods as such, but rather reXect particular conWgurations of practices, ideologies, and materialities of states and natures, it is likely that particular types of momentary relations will assume greater signiWcance at certain times more than others. In this regard, the moment of consolidation was of greater signiWcance during the period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries in the majority of European states. The moment of contestation became more prevalent from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, as various forms of sub-state or insurgent nationalism sought to counter the processes of consolidation that had taken place throughout the modern period. The moment of simulacrum, too, is one that is part of a postmodern contemporary world, where new technologies and cultural forms have enabled the replacement of realities by more eYcient and eVective substitutes. But while such a temporal framework might prove alluring at Wrst glance, it can ultimately oversimplify a reality—in terms of nature–state relations— that is far more complex. At one level, we need only think of a process of state consolidation and a related moment of consolidation of nature–state relations that is proceeding at a tortuously slow pace in some developing countries in the contemporary period. In countries that still suVer under the neocolonial rule of multinational corporations and other global agencies, there is little sense of a successful historic process of deWning national natures. Indeed, and as we shall see in Chapter 7, the moment of consolidation of national natures is an ongoing process for the vast majority of states in the contemporary world, in the face of continuing global appropriations of nature and natural resources. Similarly, and as noted in the introduction to this chapter, it is likely that moments of contestation have coexisted, and continue to coexist, with moments of consolidation. The manifold processes of state consolidation that have taken place during the whole of the modern period have always been contested by various groups and individuals. Nature has formed one key battleground within this process of territorial domination of, and resistance to, the state. Even the moment of simulacrum, ascribed by Baudrillard (1994) to a contemporary, postmodern period, has been in evidence over a far longer term. The desire to represent natural
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realities—and to make them more real than reality itself—proved problematic for the curators of the American Museum of Natural History throughout the twentieth century. It is not merely a feature of a postmodern museum space. Taken together, such comments further emphasize the need to think of moments, not in a strictly temporal sense, but rather as a means of considering the diVering ideological, technological, and material relations that exist between speciWc states and natures at particular points in time. The exact form of those moments—and the way in which they manifest processes of consolidation, contestation, and simulacrum—is essentially something that must be determined through empirical study.
4 Mapping the Land: Spatializing State Nature
Introduction: land, nature, and the map In 1965 it was estimated that Belgium had 607,142 hectares (ha) of forested land, while Finland had 21,800,000 ha (6,500,000 of which were swamp forest).1 France, meanwhile, had 111,800 ha of swamps and marshes (e´tang en rapport), compared with the Federal Republic of Germany’s 188,000 ha. Of its total land area of 24,402,000 ha, the UK had 7,541,400 ha of unimproved grazing land being grazed by a staggering 28,967,000 sheep. Further estimates revealed that the Netherlands had 7,990 ha of dunes and 50,700 ha of land designated as muddy Xats. Perhaps what is most unusual about these Wgures is that they don’t appear at all unusual. What, after all, could seem more normal than knowing such detailed statistical facts about a series of modern European states? These Wgures are actually taken from a World Land Use Survey, which was conducted in collaboration by a series of states during the middle of the twentieth century.2 Despite their seemingly routine character, however, what interests us about these Wgures are the links they reveal between nature, the state, and space (or more speciWcally land). The Wgures presented above have two things in common: Wrst, they are all statistics about the natural world, which have been organized through speciWc reference to nation-states (France, Belgium, the UK); and secondly, they all (with the exception of the statistics on British sheep) describe nature by making reference to its spatial form—or more accurately its extent (hectares of marsh, forest, dune, etc.). This association between nature and land is, we argue, a signiWcant one. We claim that historically the idea of land has 1
The statistics quoted here are all from Stamp (1965: 8, 12–14, 29, and 21, respectively). The World Land Use Survey was established by the International Geographical Union and sought to use a standard set of land-use classiWcations (which were agreed in 1949) to provide a global survey of land uses. L. Dudley Stamp (the famous geographer and land-use specialist) was given the responsibility of collating standardized land-use Wgures for European states, which were ultimately presented in Occasional Working Paper 3 of the World Land Use Survey (see Stamp 1965). 2
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provided diVerent nation-states with a mechanism for making sense of nature and for ordering it spatially. In light of the historical perspective on nature–state relationships provided by Chapter 3, this chapter analyses how state–nature interactions are mediated and played out within space. While recognizing the diverse range of ways in which state–nature relations have been spatialized over time, here we focus our attention on one crucial site of state nature—the land-use map. To speak of the land-use map is slightly misleading, given the miscellaneous and assorted forms that land-use maps have taken in diVerent states and nations. What counts as a land-use map, for example, could range from the rudimentary sketches of early state surveyors right up to the modern-day, multilayered, and computerized displays of land generated within geographical information systems. We actually adopt a very inclusive deWnition of what a land-use map is—any cartographic representation of space that contains details of the social and ecological properties of, and processes that occur within, the area delimited by the map. This chapter begins by charting the various ways in which state–nature relations can be thought of spatially. After reXecting in greater detail on the political utility of land-use maps, the analysis then moves on to consider two cases of land-use mapping in action. The Wrst case study considers the emergence of cadastral mapping in early modern Sweden. By focusing on the emergence and training of a new breed of Lantma¨tare (land cartographers), this section considers how land-use maps helped to consolidate the territorial integrity and military-economic strength of the early Swedish state through the production of a spatial dataset of nature. The second case study considers the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain, which was conducted during the 1930s. We describe how this initially voluntary exercise, commissioned by the untiring geographer L. Dudley Stamp, become vital within the re-nationalization of land during the Second World War in Britain and the subsequent spatial reordering of nature in the post-war years. Through these two case studies, we consider how the act of land-use mapping, and its associated practices of visualizing and charting space, serve to produce particularly centralized and territorialized ways of knowing and understanding nature.
Thinking through the spaces of state nature—or avoiding the ‘territorial trap’ From narrow to integral space: the spatialities of state–nature relations In many ways the spatial form of nation-states represents their most obvious manifestation within the social imagination. Returning to the atlas with which we began this volume, the association between nation-state and nature
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evident, there is of course a spatial one, predicated as it is upon the juxtaposition of fragments of nature and depictions of states expressed through territorial maps. Often when we refer to nation-states, our Wrst thoughts turn to a particular state’s spatial form and location. The spatiality of nation-states is in this sense obvious—the spatial shape of any given nation-state is part of its unique identity, the spatial equivalent of its Wngerprint. But there is a danger in this intuitive association between states and the colour-coded grid of international state space. The danger lies in interpreting nation-states on narrow spatial terms.3 John Agnew (1994) has described the dangers of narrow conceptualizations of state space through the rather sinister notion of a ‘territorial trap’ into which unsuspecting state theorists and political scientists can easily fall. Agnew’s trap is really a set of assumptions, which equate the spatiality of the state to the maintenance of its national territorial borders, and consequently assume that state power is somehow circumscribed by its external territorial markers. The reduction of state space to territorial boundaries is problematic for two main reasons: Wrst, because it ignores the important spatial relations and conWgurations through which states extend their power and inXuence beyond their own territories; and secondly, because it fails to appreciate the role of the state in moulding and forging spaces that lie within its own political borders. It is in this context that the recent work of Neil Brenner has called for a rejection of the spatial fetishisms associated with narrow, territorially conceived notions of state space, and for greater attention to be given to the integral spaces of states (Brenner 2004: 78). According to Brenner, integral spaces are ‘the territory-, place-, and scale-speciWc ways in which state institutions are mobilised to regulate social relations and to inXuence their locational geographies’ (2004: 78). The integral spaces of the state consequently correspond to the spaces that are produced as the intended or unintended consequences of state strategies and policies. Such spaces can include planning regions and urban agglomerations within states, and supraeconomic complexes that cut across diVerent national territories. A concern for integral space, then, draws attention away from the Wxed spatiality of the boundary line to the complex and Xuid spaces that are constantly being made and remade within and beyond states. There is a series of diVerent ways in which the spatial relationship between states and natures has been explored. These varied approaches range from the simpliWed ‘linear spatialities’ (RaZes 2002: 153) of state nature described within theories of the frontier, to more sophisticated accounts of the bricolage of the spaces of state nature provided by writers such as Bill Cronon (1991).4 In this chapter we focus upon the integral spaces through which 3 For an excellent discussion of narrow territorial understandings of state space oVered by many political scientists and state theorists, see Brenner (2004: chs 1–3). 4 See also Kaika (2005). In this compelling account of water supply in Athens, Kaika describes how the modern technological appropriation of a lasting supply of water for the city was enrolled within a narrative of national development and the political control of the natural world by the Greek state.
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states mould, and are in turn shaped by, the natural world. In adopting this perspective, however, we are not abandoning our sensitivity to the territorial strategies through which states seek to control nature through controlling space (i.e. through wildlife reserves, conservation areas, or national parks: see Neumann 1995, 1998, 2004), but rather attempt to understand how territorial techniques are used alongside a range of spatial strategies to frame and manage social relationships with the natural world. In exploring these varied spatialities of state nature, however, we are particularly interested in the tension that the great theorist of space, Henri Lefebvre (2003), discerns within the state’s spatial relations. This contradiction is based on two interrelated but antagonistic processes. The Wrst involves the constant desire by states to homogenize the natural spaces they inherit (according to Lefebvre the homogenization of space is about trying to make the territorial area of nation-states function as socio-ecological wholes). The second, apparently contradictory, process that Lefebvre discerns within the state management of space is its support for systems of private land and property. He argues that within advanced capitalist economic systems, the proliferation of private property relations tends to produce a chaotic and fragmented spatial system. This chaos of space is a product of individual landowners following their own narrow interests and failing to recognize the importance of a spatially integrated society to the maintenance of the overall economy. A paradox thus emerges: while one of the most important roles of the modern state is to preserve and maintain property relations—and by deWnition the basis for capitalist economic expansion—this very act tends to undermine the capacity of the state to create an eVectively coordinated national space for the use and conservation of nature. It is this paradox that provides the broad context for the remainder this chapter.
The land-use map and the spatialization of nature In this chapter we focus on the spatial paradoxes of states and nature through the case of the land-use map. Our focus on the land-use map draws particular attention to the role of both land and maps within state– nature relations. Of course the idea of land has played an important role within the historical depiction of national state natures. References to ‘our land’, for example, have long been the mantra associated with national ideologies and state-building. The idea of land within a national context is, however, at one and the same time ambiguous and intriguing. It is ambiguous to the extent that reference to land can sometimes be made in relation to the abstract territorial bounds of a nation’s space, or to the particular socionatural qualities of a country. In the latter use of the term, of course, the idea of land is often co-opted within the creation of particular modes of national
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identity around iconic ‘land’ scapes.5 The idea of land is, however, intriguing to us precisely because of its association with landscape and ‘the country’. Despite ‘land’ being a very general term (which incorporates both social and natural spaces and landscapes), it has become synonymous with accounts of natural landscapes, soils, and pastoral ideals (Short 1991). To us, then, the notion of land has been used to understand space both politically (and in particular nationalistically as ‘our land’) and ecologically (in relation to certain understandings of natural landscapes as places of nature). In this context, we claim that the notion of land attributes certain political and ecological qualities to more abstract spaces—in other words, the notion of land is often used to give space simultaneous political and ecological meaning (see Olwig 2002). To this extent, we suggest that land can be thought of as the ecological equivalent of place. Consequently, just as places are spaces that have been imbued with socio-cultural meaning and value,6 we claim that land is equivalent to space that has been given both political and ecological signiWcance. In the context of this broad understanding of land as a meeting point of state, space, and nature, the land-use map takes on a new level of signiWcance. We interpret the land-use map as an attempt to articulate, represent, and produce land through the rigorous and standardized practices of cartographic science. In this sense, land-use mapping is an exercise in making the often vague cultural invocations of a nation’s land into an actually knowable spatial entity. As we shall see, this process involves a signiWcant amount of time, political coordination, and expertise, but it can result in the production of land that is not only of cultural utility to states, but can also facilitate an expanded governmental reach of the state over its territorial natures. Accordingly, we do not see the mapping of land as simply a neutral recording process, but as a strategy with particular political goals and aims.7 From the surveying practices through which cartographers compile the data that is to be represented in maps to the drafting of map sheets themselves, we argue that it is important to consider what types of map are being produced, and perhaps more importantly, which cartographic modes of representation are being deployed. As with many other types of map, land-use surveys record information about nature that expands the individual state’s knowledge of its natural resources (Gascoigne 2004). It is consequently wrong to think of land-use maps as purely maps of how land is being used. Land-use maps have always provided chronicles of how land is being under-used, or even misused, and 5 For a more detailed exploration of the links between land, country, and landscape, see Olwig (2002). 6 See here the collected works of Tim Cresswell (1996, 2004), on the relationship between space and place. 7 For a critical review of the politics of maps and mapping, see Dorling and Fairbairn (1997), Monmonier (1993, 1996), and Woods (1992).
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indications of how it could be used more eVectively and eYciently in the future. As devices that are essentially dedicated to particular, synoptic, and often simpliWed visions of the world, maps provide an interesting example of how knowledge of nature can be centralized by states and governments. As with all acts surrounding the centralization of nature, it is important to consider what eVects the surveying procedures, modes of projection, and acts of symbolization associated with map-making have on the natures that are represented and how they determine what type of nature is even able to be represented (Pickles 2004: 93). Denis Woods (1992: 78–9) describes the production of nature within the acts of mapping as the ‘culturalization of the natural’ (we would prefer to describe it as the ‘politicization of the natural’). But as centralized registers of nature, maps are obviously about the simultaneous centralization and territorialization of nature. Consequently, through their spatial coordinates, land-use maps not only record information about the natural world, but they do so on the basis of a spatial index—that is to say, on the basis of the spatial location of nature. In this sense, land-use maps are clearly implicated within a process whereby spatial order is sought within political landscapes. This order can be provided by the maps themselves or by the actions taken by political authorities on the basis of the maps they receive. It is in this context that Pickles (2004: 95) reminds us that ‘maps precede territories’—in their capacity to shape both the mental conception and physical transformation of space—‘not territory the map’. Beyond their centralizing and territorializing qualities, however, an often overlooked aspect of the political utility of maps is their mobility. As scaled representations of territory, maps contain information about nature that can be easily stored, copied, and transported between diVerent state departments and diVerent regions of a nation. The mobility and related reproducibility of maps (processes that are both now increasingly taking a digital form) mean that they can be used in a variety of political contexts and serve an increasingly diverse range of social needs.
Books of the land and privatizing national nature: the case of cadastral mapping in Sweden8 [T]he history of property . . . has meant the inexorable incorporation of what were once thought of as free gifts of nature: forests, game, wasteland prairie, subsurface minerals, water and water courses, air rights . . . , breathable air, and even genetic sequences, into property regimes. (Scott, 1998: 39)
8 We would like to acknowledge the support and guidance of Elizabeth Baigent in helping us to write this section. We are particularly indebted to her because of the valuable insights she oVered us on the relationship between early modern cadastral mapping in Sweden and the natural world.
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Cadastral maps in the service of the state9 In his celebrated book (already discussed brieXy in Chapter 2) Seeing Like a State, Scott (1998) begins his analysis of modern state projects with a promisingly entitled chapter called ‘Nature and Space’. While, as you would expect, this chapter does provide a fascinating account of the centralized ordering of both nature and space that has accompanied the emergence of the high modern state, it fails to reXect upon the ways in which the ordering of state space (or territory) has been intimately tied to the ordering of states’ ecological resources (or national natures). What transpires in Scott’s analysis is a consideration of the ways in which nature has been ordered within space, and the ways in which space has been used to order social practices. What is missing, however, is a direct account of the role of territorial strategies in actually facilitating the state’s government of nature. While Scott does not make an explicit connection between the formation of early land-tax systems and the control and regulation of nature, in this section we claim that the early construction and administration of proprietorial land was a crucial moment within the state’s expanding knowledge over, and control of, national natures. In order for land to be taxed and administered it Wrst had to be mapped and delimited. It was in this context that early modern Europe witnessed the spread of a very particular type of land-use map—the property or cadastral map. While many existing analyses of cadastral maps have illustrated their role in the creation of standardized social property relations, far less has been written on their role in facilitating both the national and local framing of nature and social relationships with the land. Our aim in this section is consequently to combine Scott’s analysis of the early modern state’s administration of nature and space (through largely simpliWed systems of calculation and vision), with a consideration of how new spatial systems were actually used to order nature. Cadastral maps are essentially property maps. Having established this, it is important to realize that the mapping of property through cadastral techniques did not begin as a state-sponsored process. Early cadastral cartographers were initially employed by private landowners to survey their newly enclosed estates and manors so that they could know precisely what it was that they owned (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 1). Our interest in cadastral maps, however, focuses on the seventeenth century, when cadastral techniques were used to consolidate the spatial power and inXuence of emerging state systems in Europe. According to Kain and Baigent (1992: 130), it was during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that cadastral maps became an important part of the extension and consolidation of state power. Pickles
9 Our analysis of the role of the cadastral map in the government of early modern nature in Sweden is inspired by Kain and Baigent’s (1992) wonderful book on the history of property mapping.
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(2004: 97) describes a newly emerging ‘map consciousness’ at this time, as the map became implicated in the expansion and territorial logics of the early state and capitalist systems. At this particular time the map was essentially transformed from a device dedicated to the presentation of spatial data to a marker of political boundaries and control (see Buisseret 1992). In many emerging European states during this period, the process of cadastral mapping was transformed from a privatized ad hoc process to a standardized, centrally administered exercise. State funds became available to support national cadastral surveys, training institutions were created to instruct cadastral cartographers, and state oYcials were designated to oversee the mapping process. While the precise reasons for the emergence of cadastral mapping in early modern Europe are far from clear, we claim that cadastral maps were not only used to gather taxes. Drawing on Kain and Baigent’s analysis of cadastral mapping in Sweden, we argue that cadastral maps provided an important territorial strategy for regulating social relations with nature, and for making nature more readily exploitable within programmes of national economic development.10 Our focus on the process of cadastral mapping in Sweden perhaps requires a little explanation. First, it is important to realize that Sweden was one of the Wrst countries in the world to instigate a systematic cadastral survey of its territory (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 3). Indeed, it is believed that most of Sweden’s unforested lands had been subjected to cadastral analysis by 1700 (Baigent 1990). Secondly, the Wrst systematic national cadaster in Sweden was constructed at a crucial moment within the political and economic modernization of the country. State-sponsored cadastral mapping began in Sweden in 1628 under the reign of Gustav II Adolf (1594–1632) (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 3). In many ways Gustav II Adolf’s twenty-one-year reign as king of Sweden marked the emergence of Sweden as a powerful and inherently modern European state (Ahnlund 1940; Roberts 1968, 1992). While Gustav II Adolf is perhaps most remembered for his military campaigns against Denmark, Norway, and Poland, and the expansion of the Swedish state that accompanied these endeavours (Lindegren 1985; Roberts 1968), he was also instrumental in laying many of the socio-political foundations of the modern state system in Sweden. During his reign, constitutional reform saw a clear role emerging for the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament), a revised tax system, the consolidation of the Swedish language through the development of a new Swedish dictionary, and a reinvigorated national education system (Ahnlund 1940). Gustav II Adolf’s educational history meant that he valued science, logic, and political order highly, and with the help of his state oYcials and aids he sought to create a highly modern state system (Baigent 2003: 33). The era of state modernization and expansion achieved under his reign became known as the ‘Age of 10
See also in this context Baigent (2003).
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Greatness’ (Stormaktstid) in Sweden (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 3; Roberts 1992). As we shall see, this ethos of political and social modernization was instrumental in framing the transformation of nature in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Sweden.
The standardization of cadastral mapping and the rise of the Lantma¨tare Understanding the emergence of state-sponsored cadastral mapping in Sweden in relation to the so-called of ‘Age of Greatness’ associated with Gustav II Adolf is important because it helps to partially explain why Sweden took such a leading role in early forms of large-scale cadastral surveying. At one level the relationship between the Age of Greatness and cadastral mapping was a contingent one, based as it was on the maturing of a new cartographic science (with new surveying, drawing, and printing techniques) coinciding with new and ambitious views of what the Swedish state could be. It appears, however, that the rise of cadastral mapping in Sweden was a more speciWc product of both the desire to modernize the Swedish state and the prevailing geopolitical situation in the Baltic and more widely in Europe during the seventeenth century. At one and the same time, it is clear that Gustav II Adolf wanted to modernize Sweden’s ‘scanty and primitive’ (Roberts 1992: 16) state apparatus and establish an expanded Swedish empire in northern Europe. In relation to the establishment of an expanded Swedish state, Elizabeth Baigent (2003: 50–1) argues that cadastral mapping was both the product and facilitator of an emerging militaristic state mentality associated with Gustav II Adolf. State-sponsored cadastral mapping began in Sweden in 1628, when Gustav II Adolf initiated the Lantma¨teriet (National Land Survey Board) and appointed Andreas Bureus as mapmaker general (generalmatematiker) (Baigent 1990). The 1628 instruction to create a Lantma¨teriet provides us with an insight in to its purposes. According to Baigent (2003: 51), the instruction emphasized ‘the Wrst aim of mapping to be the defence of the realm [and] the rigorous recoding of the nation’s resources; the hint of future glories, [and the] search for improvements’. The link between mapping and the defence of the Swedish realm is signiWcant here, given that this was a time when Sweden was particularly keen to secure its borders with Russia and Denmark (Baigent 2003: 33). As generalmatematiker Andreas Bureus was responsible for replacing the map surveyors who worked for private landowners (revkarlar) with a new breed of state-trained (usually in the Weld) cartographers known as Lantma¨tare (Kain and Baigent 1992: 51–2). Bureus trained new surveyors with appropriate scientiWc backgrounds (normally including mathematics, astronomy, and geometry), and rigorous testing was put in place to ensure that the new apprentices were competent in the newly standardized art of cadastral
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mapping (Kain and Baigent 1992: 50–1). Bureus’s prominent role in the early mapping of the Swedish state led to him being known as ‘den svenska kartograWens fader’ (the father of Swedish cartography) (Baigent 2003: 33).11 Once an eVective team of state land surveyors had been trained, an assessment of Swedish property could begin. Utilizing their standardized measures and cartographic techniques, the Lantma¨tare began to produce two types of map: the Wrst type was called a Skifte, and involved producing a very simple geometrical map of property boundaries; the second map type, known as a Kanceptkorta, provided a much more detailed base map cataloguing the diVerent qualities of the land in question (Baigent 2003: 52). As more and more cadastral maps of Swedish territory were produced during the seventeenth century, groups of a hundred maps were normally bound together to create map books called geometriska jordebo¨ckerna (literally meaning ‘geometric land books’) (Baigent 2003: 54). The utility of this new breed of state map was based upon their standard form and scale. The rigorous, scientiWc standardization of map surveying and drawing in Sweden ensured that diVerent maps could be compared and then compiled into registers of the land. Every eVort was made to ensure the scientiWc comparability of cadastral maps by the Lantma¨teriet—even to the extent of banning the decoration of the maps with Swedish folk art (Baigent 2003: 54). How and why cadastral surveys were used in Sweden during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a matter of some dispute. Beyond national security, their obvious function (as previously discussed in the context of Scott’s work) was to provide a basis for systems of land taxation. However, in the context of Sweden, it appears that the cadastral survey served other governmental functions. The main indication of the broader role of Swedish cadastral maps relates to the fact that cadastral surveys were carried out for all lands in Sweden, not only those that were to be taxed (Baigent 1990, 2003: 56). Beyond taxation, then, it appears that, at least initially, cadastral surveys were used to chart the availability of good and potentially productive land in the kingdom. Many accounts of Sweden during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries recognized its shortage of good quality agricultural land and the extensive forms of social poverty this had created (Roberts 1992). In his celebrated account of seventeenth-century Sweden, Michael Roberts recognizes that ‘[A] great part of the land was lake and forest; a wilderness of wood and water, very diYcult to traverse except in winter; a country where land was still dwarfed by nature’ (1992: 13). In the context of the scarcity of good land, it became imperative that the Swedish state knew where its productive land was and that that land was utilized eVectively. It is clear that many Swedish cadastral maps were designed to be records of nature just as much as of property boundaries. In good agricultural areas, for example, Kain and Baigent (1992) describe how Lantma¨tare were required to 11
After Lo¨nborg (1903: 235).
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record whether the land was black earth, clay, sand, or heath. Later, in 1636, a colour-coding system was introduced by the Lantma¨teriet to detail if land was cultivated (grey), forested (dark green), meadows (green), covered by mosses (yellow), or stony slopes (white). This form of topographical detail can be clearly seen on Swedish cadastral maps from the time. When this type of land survey information was combined with the newly instigated standard measurements employed by the Lantma¨tare,12 it became much easier for the Swedish state to estimate national productive yields and to target new regions for development. In addition to the cadastral surveying of agricultural land, Baigent (2005) describes the particular emphasis that was placed by land surveys at the time on woodland area. This was of course because of the strategic importance of timber to the early modern states for both fuel and shipbuilding. The Lantma¨teriet did also, however, give signiWcant attention to the mapping of Sweden’s mineral assets. The Swedish economy during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries relied heavily on mines for the production of its economic wealth (Baigent 2003: 48–50). Baigent reXects on the importance that was given to the mapping of mineral resources within the Lantma¨teriet. Indeed, in 1629 a new map was developed in Sweden within which surface information regarding the location of mineral assets was supplemented by cross-sections of the depth of the resource. In this context, it is clear that the Lantma¨teriet were devoted to the construction of both a horizontal and vertical territorial representation of the natural world (Braun 2000). The desire for land-based environmental knowledge of the seventeenthcentury Swedish state was, however, not simply an administrative exercise. Kain and Baigent (1992: 130) assert that in addition to information gathering, cadastral surveys were designed to guide improvements to Swedish land assets. Initially these state-sponsored land improvements focused on rivers, lakes, forests, and mining areas, as well as agricultural land. During the eighteenth century, however, cadastral surveys became increasingly tied to issues of agricultural reform (Baigent 2003: 39–40). In this context, it became increasingly common for Lantma¨tare to devise property divisions that would not only resolve land disputes but would enhance the capacity of farmers to maximize their agricultural yields and the productive potential of nature. With the appointment of Jacob Faggot as director of the Lantma¨teriet in 1747, cadastral surveys become increasingly tied to agricultural reform and the creation of a new rural landscape of larger-scale farms and more isolated settlement patterns (Baigent 2003: 60). It appears that the use of the map as a basis for improvement was also applied to mining as well as agricultural
12 While measurements did change with diVerent directors of the Lantma¨tare, early cadastral maps were draw using the tunnland as the standard cartographic measurement (the tunnland is equivalent to 0.5934 m); see Kain and Baigent (1992: 52).
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areas, with Bureus adopting some degree of inXuence on the operations and techniques employed by individual miners (Baigent 2003: 49). This brief account of cadastral mapping in early modern Sweden illustrates the way in which early modern states utilized private property relations to frame social relations with the natural world. At one level, the consolidation of private property relations through various surveys, topographical maps, and land-use books enabled the Swedish state to perceive for the Wrst time a national nature. But beyond knowledge of national state nature, it is also clear that the consolidation of private land in Sweden was also a territorial strategy designed to change social (and in particular agricultural and mining) relations with nature through the control and administration of space. Cadastral mapping in Sweden is thus a clear example of the state utilizing private property as a means of extending its own power and inXuence ever more deeply into the natural world. It is clear in this sense, that as a very speciWc form of land-use survey, cadastral maps were not only designed to record proprietorial nature but also to shape and transform it. As Baigent (2003: 34) persuasively argues: ‘the maps were as much geopolitical as cartographic statements . . . they were intended to enhance the nation’s greatness, not simply to record it’. The shaping and transforming of nature associated with the Swedish cadastres operated at two levels. First, the cadastral maps were designed to ascertain which natural resources could be claimed by the Swedish state, thus depriving their geopolitical rivals and neighbours of the strategic advantage of using certain borderland resources. But secondly, cadastral mapping was also about depicting an increasingly detailed and diverse sense of what Swedish nature was and where it was located. The Swedish cadastral map thus transformed understandings of land and nature in Sweden. This transformation saw both land and nature become national objects with key geopolitical signiWcance within the process of early modern state-building. Consequently it is clear that land-use mapping in Sweden was just as much about the forging of Swedish identity as it was about recording property boundaries and mapping the location of natural resources (Pickles 2004: 100–6). The role of cadastral mapping in the ‘self-fashioning’ of the Swedish state of course serves to illustrate how the spatial framing of nature—and the associated territorial and military security it can aVord—is a crucial moment within the formative dynamics of statehood itself (Pickles 2004: 100–6).
Land-use surveys and re-nationalization of the land In the Wnal section of this chapter we consider the relationships between states, nature, and land-use maps that have become typical of modern states in the twentieth and twenty-Wrst centuries. We are particularly going to consider the land-use survey of Britain that was carried out in the 1930s. In
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doing this we focus speciWcally on the eVorts of one man, Sir L. Dudley Stamp, in shaping the land and nature of Britain in the periods immediately before and after the Second World War. L. Dudley Stamp is a fascinating character; a geographer by profession, he rose to prominence within the British state as a member of the Scott Committee on land utilization in rural areas, as the chief adviser on rural land use to the Ministry of Agriculture, and as the oYcial land-use delegate of the British government to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Buchanan 1968). His rise to become the British state’s expert on land-use issues and mapping must be understood in relation to his role in coordinating the Wrst national land-use survey of the UK during the 1930s. Through this survey, he not only helped to instigate a new science of land-use surveying but also alerted the British state to the value of accurate land-use mapping. During our exploration of the procedures and political eVects of L. Dudley Stamp’s land utilization survey of Britain, we will see that landuse surveys have a very diVerent set of relations with private property than those we observed with cadastral maps. In this context we will see how surveys like that carried out in Britain were a response to the fragmentation of space by private property relations noticed by Lefebvre (2003), and the problems that this fragmentation process created for the eVective management of national nature. But what is perhaps more signiWcant about our analysis of the British Land Utilisation Survey is that it contributed, in the longer term, not to the reform of social relations with nature on private land, but to the restructuring of the spatialities of nature at a national level.
L. Dudley Stamp and the British land scare Our story of L. Dudley Stamp and the British Land Utilisation Survey begins in 1930. In that year Stamp founded a research institution he named the ‘Land Utilisation of Britain’. While coordinated through the London School of Economics (LSE) (University of London), the Land Utilisation Survey was actually staVed by unpaid volunteers from university departments and educational institutions throughout Britain and by paid organizing secretaries based at the LSE (Stamp 1946: 1). In his summary of the Wndings of the survey, Stamp describes its objectives in the following terms: ‘to record on detailed maps on the scale of six inches to one mile the use of every acre of land in England, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man’ (a survey was also completed in certain areas of Northern Ireland) (Stamp 1946: 37; emphasis added). Ultimately, the land-use survey resulted in the production of an estimated 22,000 Weld-sheets, which collectively embodied around 44,000 days of human work (Stamp 1946: 37). According to Stamp, a national land-use survey was important because it would begin to address the problems created by the largely unregulated use of land promulgated under
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private landownership systems in Britain since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this context he asserts: Britain is a small country with a big population and the supreme need is to make the utmost use of the land in order to satisfy the varied legitimate desires of all sections of the community. In the past, land use was determined with little or no control by the state. The fate of any given piece of land was almost entirely in the hands of its owner: its future was determined in many cases by the largest purse. The activities of the farmer were determined in the main by his estimates of personal gain under a system of free trade. (Stamp 1946: 72)
It is also clear that Stamp believed that as a relatively small country with a large population, the ineYcient use of land and the natures it contained could adversely aVect Britain’s economic and political prospects. Following the eVects of the parliamentary enclosure in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the proportion of British land given over to agriculture reached its peak of approximately 87 per cent at the end of the nineteenth century (Best 1968: 90). The commercialization of British agricultural land following enclosure did, however, lead to a decline in the availability of agriculturally productive land in the twentieth century. The main cause of this decline was the shift from a rural/agricultural economy to an urban/industrial system. This economic shift had important territorial impacts, as the expanding industrial cities of Britain gradually started to cover ‘good-quality’ agricultural land with concrete, houses, and roads—sealing the land’s productive potential oV from further use. Between 1900 and 1950 it has been estimated that there was a 7 per cent reduction in the amount of land available for agricultural production (Best 1968: 92). Interestingly, before detailed studies of the changes in agricultural land-use patterns could be carried out, estimates of the loss of British agricultural land were vastly exaggerated. Some, for example, estimated that Britain had lost up to 50 per cent of its agricultural surface area (Best 1968: 89). Such wild estimates undoubtedly contributed to a growing sense of social and political hysteria in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s concerning the erosion of the countryside, which contributed to the related ‘land scare’. In this context, David Matless (1998: ch. 1) has described emerging forms of protests and popular campaigns instigated at this time, particularly in England, to protect the nation’s countryside. These campaigns were coordinated through groups like the Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the National Trust, and were based upon a series of written articles, exhibitions, and even popular postcards (Matless 1998: 25–6). While these campaigns were partly concerned about the loss of agricultural resources, they were primarily interested in the socio-cultural impacts of rural landscape erosion. In the context of this book two things are particularly interesting about these rural protest movements. First, as Matless (1998: 26–7) recognizes, a signiWcant portion of the
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British rural conservation lobby in the 1920s and 1930s did not advocate an anti-modernist nostalgia for some form of bucolic idyll in the British countryside. Instead, many in the rural conservation lobby (including Stamp) believed that the preservation of the British (and in particular English) countryside depended upon modern planning techniques and associated forms of control and ordering. Secondly, there was a strong belief among these rural preservationists that it was the British state that should provide the legal and institutional support needed to protect the countryside (Matless 1998: 27–32). It is clear that the emerging concern over the protection of the English countryside informed Stamp’s desire to produce a detailed national survey of land uses. In a sense, the growth of rural preservationism made the need for a land-use survey even more pronounced. Suddenly the competition for rural land was not simply between agriculture and urban industrialism, but also involved those who wanted to see more of the countryside protected from both the practices of commercial agriculture and urban expansion. In this context, it is clear that Stamp was confronted with a situation within which there was increasing competition for the use of a dwindling stock of rural land. It appeared to Stamp that a crucial step in handling such landuse disputes was to gain an accurate sense of precisely what national land assets were being used for. Beyond these broad incentives for a national survey, the role of Stamp’s Land Utilisation Survey (LUS) was given further impetus by events that occurred during and directly after the survey had been completed. The Great Depression that swept through Britain during the early 1930s had a crippling eVect on British agriculture: with a declining market for agricultural goods and a lack of investment in the agricultural sector, increasingly large swathes of the British countryside were left uncultivated and turned to rough brush (Best 1968: 91–8). Locating and monitoring these underutilized fragments of British countryside would become an important part of land-use planning in the UK. Secondly, with the onset of the Second World War and the loss of valuable agricultural imports, the eVective and eYcient use of agricultural land became a national priority (Short et al. 2000). In this context, Stamp’s recently completed land-use survey was to prove an invaluable source of knowledge to the British state during the war years. It is clear that Stamp himself understood his LUS as a tool not only for protecting and maximizing the use of agricultural land but also for managing the multiple pressures that were brought to bear on Britain’s land resources in the 1930s. In this context, when commenting upon the potential utility of his survey for British planning authorities, he states: ‘essentially the problem of national planning in the physical sphere becomes that of allocating the right land for the right purposes to satisfy all the varied needs of the people’ (Stamp 1946: 74). As we shall see in the following section, the tensions in the use of national land in pre- and post-war Britain increasingly related to how
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best to use the natural assets of the nation and how best to manage these facets of nature spatially.
Visualizing nature and the new science of land-use surveying In the context of the broad set of social, economic, and spatial pressures described above, Stamp set about trying to establish a new sense of order in the British landscape. As we argue later (see pp.104–5), his LUS would ultimately facilitate a new level of British state surveillance over its land assets and a series of related planning and institutional structures designed to order these assets. But at this point we are primarily concerned with how Stamp actually carried out his survey and the eVects this survey had on political understandings of the land and its associated natural qualities. In his fascinating review of the LUS, Christopher Board (1968) describes the situation facing L. Dudley Stamp in 1930. Board Wrst recognizes that despite the unique nature of Stamp’s endeavours, various forms of geographical survey were already under way in Britain before the LUS began. For example, Board (1968: 30–1) recounts Hugh Robert Mill’s call for a complete regional survey of Britain in 1896 and the establishment of the Geographical Association’s Committee for Regional Survey (signiWcantly, Stamp was to become an honorary secretary of this committee). Stamp’s involvement with the Geographical Association (GA) was no doubt an inspiration for his vision for a land utilization survey.13 But his surveys were to be diVerent from the detailed regional reports that were produced under the aegis of the GA. Following in the venerable tradition of regional geography and idiographic description, the regional reports produced by the GA were varied and sought to reveal a range of social, geological, and landform features that characterized diVerent British regions (Board 1968: 30–1). It is clear that Stamp (1928) believed that in order to carry out an eVective geographical survey of Britain surveying should be restricted to the observation of surface uses. The emphasis that Stamp placed on the observation of surface utilization was important for two main administrative reasons: Wrst, it ensured that diVerent surveys would contain the same basic survey data and could thus be more easily combined into a national inventory; and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the focus on land-use observations meant that such surveys could be carried out much more quickly than more detailed regional surveys. As we shall see, Stamp’s focus on the use of visual observation as a key methodology within the practice of land-use surveying would have a profound eVect on the descriptions of British nature contained within his survey, and indeed on the types of nature that it was possible for his surveyors to experience and describe. 13 Indeed, Board (1968: 31) observes that Stamp was commissioned to carry out a national set of regional surveys for the GA before he began his own Land Use Survey.
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At the outset of the LUS, Stamp appears to have been confronted with a fundamental tension. While he wanted to carry out the Wrst systematic and standardized survey of land use in Britain, it is clear that there was a shortage of geographers, Weld surveyors, and cartographers available to carry out such an enormous task to the required standards. Board (1968: 32) does, however, observe that while the LUS did lack (in terms of quantity) the skilled personnel that it perhaps needed, it was still able to exploit the abilities of the expanding number of geographers who were emerging from British university departments in the 1920s and 1930s. In this context, trained geographers and cartographers were given the task of overseeing Weld surveyors and compiling oYcial survey reports. The main work of the survey was, however, to be carried out by often untrained volunteers recruited from schools and other educational establishments (Stamp 1946: 37). Interestingly, additional support was secured through Scout, Guide, and Rover groups through a national Hike for a Purpose Campaign (Scouter 1932). In all, it is estimated that some 10,000 schools and 250,000 schoolchildren actually participated in the LUS (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994, 1995). In order to create an army of young land-use surveyors the LUS had to gain the active consent of numerous county education committees throughout Britain. Indeed, much of the early work of the LUS organizing secretary appears to have been spent corresponding and liaising with the chairs of education committees.14 In order to achieve a truly national land-use survey it was crucial for Stamp to obtain the acquiescence of all county education committees. The problem was that many committee chairs (for example, in Cambridge) were suspicious of the motives and utilities of the LUS. While they had a number of reservations about the use of schoolchildren in the LUS—particularly in relation to safety and its distracting inXuence on their classroom studies—their main concern related to the suspicion that many had that the LUS was part of a covert, state-sponsored land tax or valuation procedure.15 Given these suspicions, it is interesting to note how Stamp and his LUS were keen—despite their own real beliefs—to underestimate the national value of the LUS to the British state when corresponding with education oYcials. In one letter to an education committee chair, the secretary of the LUS consequently states: Its [the LUS] primary objective being educational and its secondary objective being of national utility . . . its educational value is enormous, it teaches the school children the geography of their own village, their own parish, their own borough, and their own county. It teaches them how to read a map, and trains their powers of observation.16 14 See for example: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers, SxMs5 University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1. 15 Letter from LUS Secretary (Leo J. Riordan) to the Chair of the Cambridgeshire County Education Committee, 21 August 1931: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers, SxMs5 University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1. 16 Ibid.
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Table 4.1. Land-use classiWcation scheme used by the British Land Utilisation Survey Land-use category
Colour-coding system
Arable land Meadow or permanent grass Heathland and moorland Forest and woodland House with garden Market garden Land agriculturally unproductive (built-up areas or derelict land)
Brown Light green Yellow Dark green Purple Light purple/Cross-hatch purple. Red
It is interesting, then, that despite the great eventual value of the LUS to the British state, it was initially promoted as a device for developing the geographical skills of a new national citizenry. Through a series of reassuring letters, and even visits from Stamp himself, the LUS was gradually able to secure the support of enough education authorities to ensure that there were no spatial gaps within their national land inventory. The need to use schoolchildren to carry out large parts of the LUS was one of the key factors in determining the relatively simple system of land classiWcation that Stamp developed (Board 1968: 32). In his summary of the Wndings of the LUS—The Land of Britain and How it is Used—Stamp (1946: 39) outlines the classiWcatory system used in the survey. It was based upon seven basic descriptions of land use, which were to be marked on survey sheets using a colour-coding scheme and a series of classiWcatory letters (see Table 4.1). Many have commented on the symbolic signiWcance of the colour-coding scheme deployed Stamp. The pale greens, browns, and yellows used to represent rural land reXected the same colours that were being used by British landscape artists at the time to reXect the beauty of the countryside (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 36). The use of red to depict built-up urban areas was, however, clearly deployed by Stamp to convey the threat to the British countryside posed by metropolitan expansion (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 36). This colour-coded designation of land was supplemented by a more detailed survey of the ecological properties of agricultural land by the LUS. This sought to designate the agricultural quality of land and attempted to represent soil types, elevations, and drainage properties (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 39–42). This survey led to a further system of land classiWcation involving three main categories of land—good quality, medium quality and poor quality—and ten further categorical subdivisions (see Table 4.2). Collectively, the classiWcatory schema used and developed by Stamp and the LUS embodied a new scientiWc system for land-use surveys in Britain. It was scientiWc to the extent that it replaced the vernacular descriptions of landscapes often found in regional surveys with a standardized discourse of the land. The accuracy of this new scientiWc discourse is of course open to
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Table 4.2. A scientiWc discourse of agricultural land: classiWcatory schemes deployed by the Land Utilisation Survey Major land quality category
Sub-categories of land quality
I Good-quality land
First-class land with deep soils Good general-purpose farmland First-class land (prone to Xooding) Good but heavy land
II Medium-quality land
Medium-quality light land Medium-quality general-purpose farmland
III Poor-quality land
Poor-quality heavy land Poor-quality mountain land Poor-quality light land Poorest land
question, but what is not in doubt is that suddenly British land had a new language. So what had previously been ‘ploughable’, ‘rich’, or ‘fertile’ was now suddenly preWxed with standardized adjectives such as ‘good’, ‘medium’, or ‘poor’ quality. Underpinning this new scientiWc discourse of land-use classiWcation was the role of vision. What each of the classiWcatory categories of the LUS had in common was the strong emphasis they placed on the visual qualities of the land and natures encountered by the surveyors. The emphasis on visual features was of course important because the LUS did not have an adequate number of skilled surveyors to carry out more detailed and intrusive studies of the chemical and physical properties of land. In this context, under the guidance of their teachers and experts from the LUS, the children and volunteers who participated in the British Land Utilisation Survey had to be trained how to see land. The idea of vision has been discussed extensively within analyses of governmental power and the activities of states. In his Seeing Like a State, Scott (1998) uses the notion of sight as a metaphor for the diVerent ways in which the state makes social and natural worlds legible. In his fascinating study of the US census, Hannah (2000: 177–8) also utilizes the metaphors of the state’s Weld of vision and the viewer to try and understand the diVerent ways in which governments collect knowledge about their territories. According to both Scott and Hannah, then, the visual power of states— achieved through censuses, surveys, registers, and statistical tables—is a type of vision that depends upon the abstraction and simpliWcation of knowledge. In terms of nature, Scott (1998: 11–33) emphasizes the violence that this visualization can have on the natural world, as it is stripped of its ecological complexities in order that it may become politically governable. Of course, we see this process of abstract visualization in the procedures and practices of the British LUS. Indeed, in their review of the LUS, Rycroft and Cosgrove (1994: 38) notice how the Survey transformed the ways the state saw nature and land, from an oblique, on-the-ground perspective, to a vertical, abstract
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view. Vision does, however, take a more literal form in the operations of the LUS. As we have already established, the LUS was based upon the recording of visual information about the natural landscape and associated resources. The point we wish to make is that by emphasizing the visual codiWcation of land and nature, the LUS was not simply providing an unambiguous and unbiased picture of British land resources, it was actively shaping what it was possible to know about British land and the natural qualities it possessed. In their absorbing analysis of the links between vision, space and nature, Macnaghten and Urry (1998: 109–25) emphasize a contradictory relationship emerging between modernity, nature, and sight. They recognize that while the sense of sight has long been synonymous with the Enlightenment project of bringing all that is hidden and mysterious in to the light, the emerging ‘hegemony of vision’ (to use Levin’s term) in the West has also been central to emerging forms of modern surveillance and suppression (see Levin 1993: 121–2). In order to understand the power relations between vision and political suppression, however, it is necessary to distinguish between vision in general and the particular brand of vision that has become a deWning characteristic of modern science and government. Within modern science and government vision has been constructed as the classical sense of distanced objectivity. As the ‘cognitive canon’ of modern science, Haraway (1991: ch. 9 and p. 183) describes how visualization has enabled the construction of a detached but totalizing way of looking at the natural world. The association between vision and scientiWc objectivity can be traced through the Cartesian discourses, which emphasized the purity of the eye, to the Linnaean practices of optical classiWcation.17 In order to secure the link between vision and objectivity of course, ‘homogenization of the visual experience’ must be guaranteed (Macnaghten and Urry 1998: 17). The standardization of vision in the LUS was secured by the instructions the LUS members and teachers gave to volunteers and students. These surveying instructions were contained in the special pamphlet sent to all participating education committees which was used by teachers to instruct their students. In addition to the explanatory pamphlet, however, the LUS also regulated the standards of the survey through regular correspondence with education oYcials, within which they talked through the diYculties and common errors that arose within land surveying. In one letter to a GA member involved in the Cheshire survey, the LUS secretary reXects on the confusion that can often arise from the classiWcation of natural land: Swampy areas by streams, especially when marked by rough pasture, marsh and reed symbols, are ‘H’ and if the Ordnance Survey have put these signs on, we do not usually pay much attention to any letters of doubtful value added by schoolchildren 17 For a more detailed analysis of the links between vision and modernity, see Jenks (1995), and Levin (1993).
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who may not appreciate the symbols . . . Areas shown on the six inch maps as rough pasture, etc. and marked with ‘W’: in these cases all we do is to decide whether they (the surveyors) have really seen anything in the way of a factory sprouting on the spot, or as is usually the case, taken a dislike to such areas and called them waste.18
In essence, this pamphlet and associated guidance trained the surveyors in how to look at land. A central element within this training exercise was not only to instruct surveyors on what they should see, but also what they should not see and therefore ignore. In this context, the surveyor’s gaze was a way of seeing land and nature that automatically simpliWed the Weld of vision being observed. This simpliWcation operated on two levels. First, it suggested the visual elements of land and nature that were not relevant to the surveyor (perhaps a Weld’s diverse uses, wildlife inhabitation, or broader ecological context). Secondly, the surveyor’s gaze automatically marginalized other ways in which land could be experienced and perceived (whether it was through smell, touch, or other ambient features).19 What both these simpliWcation processes seem to have ensured is that the production of a land-use survey was achievable (despite a lack of resources and expertise) and that the knowledge it produced could be used by the British state to make sense of, and then govern, its land. There were, however, problems associated with the visual practices of the LUS. The limitations of its visual codiWcation methods were illustrated in the problems associated with the codiWcation of housing land. The secretary of the LUS reXected: Housing estates marked in an unsatisfactory manner are annoying. All we really worry about is whether they are as large as indicated. If, as often happens, that a surveyor has been confronted from the road by a piece of ribbon development, and has erroneously presumed that the whole of the Weld behind the houses is built up. . . . we frequently have to leave these points to be checked.20
As this quote illustrates, visual surveillance is dependent upon gaining a suitable vantage point. When this vantage point is not available, the power of vision to code and record accurately is of course compromised. We claim that those surveyors, teachers, lecturers, college students, and schoolchildren who were enrolled in the LUS of Britain in the 1930s become the ‘mobile eyes’ of the state.21 As mobile eyes, the volunteers involved in the LUS were able to use their visual faculties as a kind of technology of surveillance. As a mode of surveillance, of course, the sur18
Letter from LUS Secretary to Mr Warrington of the GA, 18 April 1935: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1. 19 For more on varied sensual engagements with nature and landscapes, see Tuan (1974). 20 Letter of LUS Secretary to Mr Warrington of the GA, 18 April 1935: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1. 21 For more on the idea of ‘mobile eyes’, or eyes that are simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, see Haraway (1991: ch. 9).
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veyors’ gaze was useful precisely because it enabled the LUS to penetrate beyond the boundaries of private landowners in ways in which more direct surveying techniques could not. Sight in this context enabled surveillance to be carried out at a distance and in ways that could cross the boundaries between public and private space (only two instances of landowners actually preventing schoolchildren from surveying their properties were recorded in the early years of the LUS22). As we shall see in the following section, it was this training that enabled the surveys to produce a picture of British land and nature that was in keeping with the synoptic vision of the British state over its natural assets. While the LUS contribution to national economic development and planning has been discussed at length, far less has been made of its contribution to education and learning among the children who participated in the survey. Much was made during the 1930s of the unique opportunities the LUS oVered to schoolchildren. In one particularly nostalgic report of the time, for example, in the Eastern Daily Express, J. E. Mosby claimed that: The summer of 1931 is one that will be remembered by over a thousand young surveyors who set out for the open country with six-inch maps explaining their own neighbourhood and with renewed interest in even going into distant parishes and correcting Weld boundaries, marking the position of new houses and adding mystic letters according to the nature of the ground they were surveying . . . During the late summer evenings, they sailed forth on bicycles after long hours exploring the countryside, and returning home at dusk with their precious reports, displaying that spirit of adventure which is the heritage of every Norfolk boy. (Mosby 1932)
It appears that many involved in the LUS scheme saw the adventurous exposition of young schoolchildren to the open countryside of Britain as a virtue in itself. It is clear from many accounts of schoolteachers at the time that they believed that the LUS could help to create a new ecologically informed citizenry, whose understanding of their nation’s heritage could be enhanced through more regular exposure to its natural landscapes.
Land in the service of the nation The LUS completed its Herculean task in 1939, just before the start of the Second World War (Stamp 1946: 37). The end of the survey was marked by the conversion of the 22,000 Weld survey sheets (at a scale of six inches to one mile) into a series of standard LUS maps (rescaled to one inch to one mile). These were stored initially at the LUS headquarters at LSE, before being reproduced and distributed to diVerent libraries and organizations through-
22 Letter from LUS Secretary (Leo J. Riordan) to the Chair of the Cambridgeshire County Education Committee 21 August 1931: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1.
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out Britain. The raw maps of the LUS were amalgamated and analysed by the LUS in a collection of reports. The Wrst LUS report was composed by L. Dudley Stamp and E. C. Willatts (the organizing secretary of the LUS) in 1934. It provided a brief, interim summary of the Wrst twelve oneinch maps produced by the Survey (Stamp and Willatts 1934). From 1937, however, the LUS gradually began to present its Wndings through a series of Regional Reports. In keeping with the regional geographical tradition—of which Stamp was of course a prominent Wgure—these reports sought to position their respective descriptions of land use within an explanatory frame that incorporated an account of the social, economic, and geological histories of the regions from which they were taken. It was prominent geographers and geography teachers, who had led many of the survey expeditions, who generally prepared these reports (Board 1968: 34). It was partly on the basis of these surveys that in 1946 Stamp was able to produce The Land of Britain and How it is Used, within which he highlighted the strategic land-use implications of the LUS Wndings. The importance of the LUS did, however, become apparent long before Stamp’s 1946 publication. As one would expect, the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 had a profound aVect on how the LUS was perceived and used. The advent of war fundamentally shifted how land assets were conceived of in the UK. With the loss of food imports and trade from Europe and the threat to Commonwealth trade posed by the German Navy, British land assets suddenly become re-nationalized. British land was re-nationalized in two ways. First, agricultural land suddenly became a Wnite resource that had to be used to feed the nation’s population. Secondly, it became evident that increasingly large swathes of privately owned land would have to be used for the purpose of national food production. Even in 1938, before the war, the UK was dependent on overseas suppliers for 70 per cent (by value) of its food assets (Short et al. 2000). Suddenly this 70 per cent food lifeline was under threat! Essentially the Second World War meant that the British state had to mobilize its land assets and maximize its use of its natural assets in new and more extreme ways. Matless (1998) describes how British land was mobilized through a series of emergency measures that mixed militaristic metaphors with new ways of using land and nature. To the British government, land became a ‘weapon of war’, and its eVective use during the war was guaranteed by its own army (the Land Army) and associated ‘Dig for Victory’ campaigns (Matless 1998: 174–9). Undergirding these eVorts was a desire to ensure that as much land as was possible could be put to productive use (Ministry of Information 1945). To achieve this goal of course required knowledge of existing land-use patterns so that future developments could be planned and mapped. It was in this context that Stamp’s LUS records were to play such an important role in Britain’s early war eVort.
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Stamp’s own account of the months following the outbreak of the Second World War provides an insight into the emerging role of LUS records in the British war eVort: An unexpected result of the declaration of war was the receipt of several telegrams asking to borrow sets of original [Land Utilisation Survey] Weld maps as a basis for planning the ploughing up campaign . . . the next two or three months were occupied in sending out thousands of our original six inch Weld sheets on loan to County War Agricultural Committees . . . . our maps, of course, showed the areas actually ploughed in the years before the war. (Quoted in Short et al. 2000: 29)
The scramble for LUS maps and inventories described by Stamp reXects the growing desire of the British state to collate an accurate and up-to-date picture of Britain’s organic resources. This political desire would eventually lead to the instigation of the National Farm Survey, which ran from 1941 to 1943. This was coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture but carried out by County War Agricultural Committees (Short et al. 2000: ch. 1). Using the LUS as a guide, the teams working on the National Farm Survey collated information on farmland use, which was then used to identify pastoral areas that could be ploughed and used as arable land, or arable land that could be utilized in more eYcient ways to support the war eVort and feed the nation. One of the central ways in which the wartime state sought to maximize the eYciency with which Britain exploited its natural organic resources was though the promotion of a new era of mechanization within the agricultural sector. While the National Farm Survey was not the Wrst survey of farms in the UK (a farm management survey, for example, was completed during the 1930s), it was the Wrst to legally require the cooperation of private landowners and to achieve anywhere near a national picture of farmland use. In their detailed analysis of the National Farm Survey, Short et al. (2000: ch. 1) argue that with its bureaucratic support mechanism and statistical outputs, it was a key moment in the incorporation of British agriculture into the modern era. What is signiWcant, in the context of this book, is that along with the LUS, the National Farm Survey cemented the increasing centralization of state surveillance over a nationally framed nature. One of the key consequences of data obtained from the LUS and the National Farm Survey was the growing ability of the state to challenge the use of private landowner in the UK. If land was deemed to be underused or used in an inappropriate way, legislation enabled the state to demand changes to how farms were being used and, in extreme situations, to seize control of land assets (Matless 1998: 175). Through the use of Plough-Up Orders and eviction actions, the British state slowly began to take control of an increasingly wide range of land and associated natural resources. According to Short et al. (2000: 35), during the Second World War the British state conWscated the relatively small, but nevertheless signiWcant, quantity of 440,000 acres of land. The interventions of the state in British agriculture
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during the Second World War reveal the ambiguities that surround the relationship between states and land. Although states have had an important historical role in protecting the rights of private landowners, it is clear that when this duty collides with prevailing national interests that land is quickly re-nationalized. In their discussions of the British National Farm Survey, Murdoch and Ward (1995) recognize the link between governmental power and the Xuctuating territoriality of private land. Consequently, while the territoriality of private land may appear to lie outside the Welds of power associated with the state, it is clear that private ownership is only tolerated under circumstances wherein the resulting land uses serve strategic state ends. The territorial control of nature through land use and monitoring programmes may therefore Xuctuate between private (local) and common (national) modes of ownership, but it is never outside the framing inXuences of the nation-state.
Reordering the spatial geometries of state nature—the state as ‘land’ lord Following the end of the Second World War, the LUS and the centralized store of land-use knowledge and expertise created by Stamp were utilized in a new national programme of planning. Although this new system was implemented after the war, it was conceived and developed through a series of committees and commissions, which met and reported while conXict still engulfed mainland Europe.23 These wartime eVorts have now entered the pantheon of British planning history through their eponymous titles—the Barlow Commission and the Scott and Uthwatt Committees.24 While these commissions and committees, and the famous reports they produced, have been widely analysed and discussed, we claim that they represent an important moment in the emerging historical relation between the British state, its land, and its natural assets. In diVerent ways the Wnal reports produced by each of these committees and commissions were designed to provide a practical and highly rational system through which the contested social, economic, and environmental demands that were being placed on Britain’s scarce land resources could be eVectively managed. The detailed reports produced by Barlow, Scott, and Uthwatt led to the creation of Britain’s Wrst national system of land-use planning. This national system was focused on the newly formed Ministry of Town and Country Planning (created in 1943) and related acts of legislation. Peter Hall (1992: 23 The Barlow Commission was actually formed in 1934 but did not publish its Wnal report until 1940 (see Hall 1992: ch. 4). 24 These commissions/committees were named after their respective presiding chairs: Sir Andrew Montague-Barlow, Sir Leslie Scott, and Sir Augustus Andrewes Uthwatt (Lord Justice Uthwatt).
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ch. 4) has described this elaborate array of institutions and acts of legislation as a post-war ‘planning machine’. The modernist undertones of Hall’s phrase eVectively capture the nature of post-war planning in Britain. It was machine-like to the extent that it sought to instigate an extensive and highly rational framework within which land-use disputes could be resolved and land-use resources could be quickly mobilized in the national interest. Matless (1998: 190) claims that the emergent planning system of post-war Britain was designed to enable the state to rise above the divisive politics that surrounded land-use issues and through the science of planning create a spatial order within British socio-environmental relations. While each of the British state’s reports on land-use planning had an important bearing on the emerging spatial relations between the British state and nature in the post-war period, we want to focus our attention on the work and recommendations of the Scott Commission in particular. In part our concern here relates to the fact that Stamp was himself a key Wgure on the Scott Commission and saw the initiative as a key opportunity to further his calls for the protection of British agriculture and the countryside (Matless 1998: 220).25 The signiWcance of all this to our deliberations also derives from the fact that it laid the foundations of a national system through which the utilization of nature and land would be set. The Scott Report (1942) essentially proposed a nationalized land planning system through which the high-quality agricultural land identiWed within Stamp’s LUS could be eVectively protected and utilized (Hall 1992: 71–2). The result of the Scott Commission’s Report was the formation of a national planning system, which would embrace both town and country and which placed an onus on land developers to illustrate the ways in which new constructions were in the public interest (particularly where they threatened good-quality agricultural land). Through subsequent planning legislation and various procedures associated with planning reports, permissions, appeals, and consultations, the Scott Commission led to a new era of national control over nature, which was facilitated through the territorial control of land use. Despite popular calls at the time, however, the Scott Report did not result in the nationalization of British agricultural land. As Stamp emphasized in an article for Foreign AVairs, private landowning farmers had historically played a crucial role as custodians of the nation’s land assets and as the ‘nation’s unpaid gardeners’ (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 38). The Scott Report’s recommendations to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning would eventually lead to a planning system that would deter farmers from seeking short-term gains by selling their land for development—thus
25 Matless notes that Stamp’s prominence on the Scott Commission led The Economist to dub its Wnal publication not the Scott Report but the Stamp Report.
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protecting some of the nation’s most precious ecological assets (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 39). The mixed reactions that the Scott Report received at the time are, however, indicative of its status as an inherently modern strategy for the protection of state nature. Members of the British business community were critical of Scott and Stamp’s report because they argued it was too preservationist, not allowing for necessary change and economic development in the countryside (Matless 1998: 220–1). At the same time, however, many rural conservationists argue that the scientiWc rationalities undergirding the report were anathema to the organic ideals of the conservation movement (Matless 1998: 221–4). It was feared by certain rural conservationists that the close bond forged between local communities, farmers, and nature was gradually being replaced by the state, as a removed modernist landlord, with little sense of the local ecological speciWcities that make up rural community life (Matless 1998: 221–4). Stamp’s LUS was instrumental in shifting the British state’s spatial cognition of national nature. While at one level this shifting cognition was based upon a heightened spatial awareness of the location of natural resources, it was also predicated on a growing realization of a broader spatial order within British nature. The LUS and its subsequent regional reports and national summaries (see Stamp 1946: 41) recognized a broad spatial division within British land and nature. In Stamp’s own work this division was expressed in terms of the harsh but spectacular upland areas of the UK and its more agriculturally productive lowland regions. While the Scott report, with its recommendations on town and country planning and rural land use, applied to both upland and lowland Britain, it is clear, at least in terms of Stamp’s intentions for the report, that it was primarily designed to protect and conserve lowland Britain’s natural assets and ecologies. Heavily inXuenced by both the Scott Commission and Stamp’s LUS survey, the treatment and use of key upland areas in the UK would eventually be dealt with by the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. Following the recommendations of the Scott Report pertaining to issues of public access to the countryside, the idea of establishing a system of national parks, as part of a planned and ordered nation, became accepted government doctrine (Cullingworth 1982: 197–8). Ultimately these reports, committees, and acts of parliament led to the creation of the ten original national parks in England and Wales, each with their own planning authority and system of land-use regulation. What most interests us about Britain’s much-discussed national park system is not so much the technical legislative processes that informed their inception and the planning procedures that regulate their activities to this day, but rather their spatial location and their wider role in the spatial ordering of nature in the UK. What was most striking about the Wrst ten national parks in England and Wales was the types of natural landscapes
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they incorporated. In her fascinating discussion of national parks policy in the UK, Marion Shoard discerns a distinct set of landscape preferences within the early national parks systems. According to Shoard (1980: 66), the early national parks in the UK all tended to be located in landscapes dominated by ‘mountain, moor and sea cliV’. These more rugged, wild landscapes were preferred to the gentle environments associated with chalk or fen landscapes (1980: 67). The reasons for this preference for certain types of nature within the early national parks system are far from clear (Shoard 1980: 66).26 What seems most likely (as Shoard herself recognizes) is that the desire to use national park authorities to protect largely upland nature was the product of the residual concern the British state had over ensuring that lowland agricultural areas were able to maintain their productive capacity and feed the nation. In this context, when put together, it is possible to understand the Scott Report and the National Parks Commission as a national framing strategy through which the British state sought to give order and purpose to nature. If we consider the broader role of the Scott Report and the National Parks Commission together, it is possible to discern a distinct territorial strategy emerging in the UK in the immediate post-war years. Cosgrove et al. (1996) argue that the emerging system of post-war rural planning in the UK represented an attempt to provide a modern framework within which to preserve a pre-existing natural order in British land and landscapes. According to Cosgrove et al., post-war British planning facilitated an important, spatially diVerentiated way of regulating nature and land. Drawing inspiration from the broad-scale land-use observation developed by the LUS and Stamp’s identiWcation of distinct upland and lowland landuse areas in the UK, the British planning system sought to protect two forms of nature: the picturesque, agriculturally active landscapes of lowland Britain; and the wild, untouched natures associated with upland areas. In the Wrst instance, town and country planning procedures sought to ensure the protection of lowland Britain as the productive garden of the nation (see Figure 4.1). At the same time, the National Parks Commission sought to preserve upland areas as the ecological kernels of Britain’s Wrst nature. In this context, while lowland areas were celebrated as a kind of ‘middle nature’ (Cosgorve 1993), where (agri)culture and nature met and were mutually transformed, the wild spaces of upland Britain were seen as the underlying ecological bedrock of the nation, which should be
26 As Shoard notes, the preference shown for upland, wild nature in the Dower Report (1945) was a concern for the National Parks Commission. The Commission did look at the case for including the Norfolk Broads and the South Downs in the original list of national park sites devised by Dower (see Shoard 1980: 67).
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Fig. 4.1.
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The spatial ordering of British nature.
Source: Drawn by Anthony Simth, adapted with the permission of Blackwell Publishers from Cosgrove, D., Rosecoe, B., and Rycroft, S. ‘Landscape and identity at Ladybower Resservoir and Rutland Water’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 21 (1996), 534–51.
remembered and continually incorporated within emerging modes of national identity.27 As Neumann (2004) argues, the creation of national parks and reserves for nature is always about more than simply the spatial control of nature. The formation of national parks is a key moment within the overall management of the national territory. What the story of the LUS illustrates is how states have used land as territorial frames in and through which to shape and control nature. In this 27 For an interesting discussion of (admittedly much earlier) historical debates surrounding the relationship between landscape, identity, and the state in Britain, see Olwig (2002).
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case, while representing an altogether more advanced bureaucratic process, the LUS of Britain is not so dissimilar from the early cadastral maps of Sweden discussed earlier in the chapter. What both case studies have in common is the clear desire on behalf of the respective states to create a centralized set of knowledges about nature that are calibrated and ordered on a territorial basis. What interests us most about the LUS are the eVects it had on how British nature was understood and utilized. At one level it is clear that the careful local studies of the LUS provided a much more detailed register of land resources and how they were being used at a local level. This local knowledge was of course immediately transformed by the colour-coding systems and nationalized mapping exercises of the LUS into a more abstract and legible nature. As the LUS started to inform and guide postwar planning in the UK, we see how large-scale descriptions of land uses in upland and lowland Britain were transformed by the state into a broader ‘land’-scape debate. The transformation of (local) land into (national) landscape seems to have been vital in resolving the British state’s own relationship with private land assets. While neither the Town and Country Planning Act nor the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act actually nationalized land, they did set the broad basis upon which the state could legitimately intervene within land-use issues. The conversion of land (property) into landscape (wild or picturesque aggregates of lands) marked the point at which private land interests gave way to broader, nationally scaled concerns. The British state’s concern with landscape was of course both ideological and practical, as it attempted to preserve both the natural fabric of the country and its economic needs. In this sense, the category of ‘natural landscape’ is an interesting example of the types of state nature with which this book is concerned. It is clearly a category that reXects both the territorial and institutional framing of nature to achieve a broad set cultural, political, and economic goals on behalf of the state.
Conclusions In this chapter we have explored the spatial implication of states and nature. Focusing speciWcally on the historical emergence of land-use maps, we have considered how space is used as a strategy for simultaneously centralizing and territorializing nature. The land-use map has provided us with some particularly pertinent insights into the spatial form of state–nature relations. Within the deployment of land-use maps on behalf of states, we have seen their valuable role in the collection of an increasingly centralized roster of ecological knowledge. In relation to the emergence of modern state systems, it is important to notice how such rosters were produced on the basis of increasingly standardized and institutionalized (in the case of the Lantma¨teriet) systems of cartography and mapping. The case of the land-use map has
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also illustrated the diVerent ways in which states attempt to develop forms of territorial control over nature. Land-use surveys and cadastral mapping are never simply about the recording of pre-existing boundaries but are always about imagining new ways of spatializing nature. Land-use maps have consequently produced new boundaries both at the external reaches of states and in the internal proprietorial regimes of national systems. These new cartographic boundaries are always part of emerging state strategies to control, transform, or co-opt nature in diVerent ways. Sometimes, as in the case of Swedish cadastral maps, such surveys can be used to shape the uses of nature that are adopted within diVerent estates. The example of the LUS, however, serves to illustrate that even when surveys begin outside the state apparatus, they can be co-opted within broader national schemes for the spatial re-ordering of socio-natural relations. Finally, our analysis of land-use maps has also illustrated their role not only in mapping a pre-existing nation but in actually forging a sense of national political identity. Consequently, in the case of early modern Sweden, we saw how cadastral maps were used by the state administration to forge a sense of an expanded Swedish political community. In the context of the British LUS, it is possible to discern the use of land surveying as a device for educating a new ecologically aware national citizenry. If, as we argued at the outset of this chapter, states are inherently spatial political actors/institutions, then it appears that the spatial framing of nature is a crucial moment within the consolidation of the political and cultural power of states.
5 Nature and the State Apparatus
Thinking about the state apparatus The previous two chapters have examined key moments and sites of nature– state interaction and have argued for the need to explore the manifold contexts within which these linkages develop. This discussion proved useful as a way of highlighting the diVerent ways in which modern states have sought to frame national natures through ideological and material processes, and began to illustrate the ideological and concrete impacts of national natures on state organizations. This chapter focuses on the ways in which nature has been incorporated into the state apparatus, as well as showing how the state apparatus has helped to frame national natures. When referring to the state apparatus, we mean the ‘set of institutions and organizations through which state power is exercised’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 45). The state apparatus is distinct from the state form, which refers to the relationship between a given state structure and a particular social formation, and the state function, which alludes to the ‘activities which are undertaken in the name of the state’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 37, 41).1 Despite the reference to a state apparatus in the preceding sentences, it is clear that it does not represent a singular entity. If, as Neil Brenner (2004: 4) maintains, a reference to the state in the singular misleadingly ascribes to it a unity and uniformity that it does not possess, then by the same token, we need to think about the state apparatus as something that is not singular in character. Gordon Clark and Michael Dear (1984) have emphasized the multi-faceted and plural nature of the state apparatus (see Table 5.1). The state apparatus, in this sense, comprises an agglomeration of diVerent sub-apparatuses, which are the ‘collection of agencies, organizations and institutions which together constitute the means by which state functions are attained’, and para-apparatuses, namely those ‘auxiliary agencies’ that 1
Many neo-Marxist state theorists would tend, however, to use the term ‘state form’ when referring to what Clark and Dear refer to as the ‘state apparatus’; see, for example, Brenner (2003) and Jessop (1990). Our use of the term ‘state apparatus’ equates to Weberian understandings of the state bureaucracy (see Giddens 1985; Weber 1991).
118 Table 5.1.
Nature and the State Apparatus The manifold apparatuses of the modern state Aspects of the state apparatus
Functions Consenus
Political: parties, elections, government, and constitutions
Legal: mechanisms for mediating between various groups and actants
Repressive: the mechanisms for enforcing state power
Production Public production: statemanufactured public goods
Treasury: Fiscal and Public provision: the monetary policies that contracting of other agencies to provide public regulate economic relations goods
Integration Health, education and welfare: mechanisms for reproducing labour power
Information: mechanisms for disseminating or suppressing information
Executive
Communications and media: various players within the telecommunications industry
Administration: Regulation: regulatory administrators involved agencies involved in the in the reproduction of the regulation of non-state whole state apparatus activities
Source: Adapted with the permission of Taylor & Francis from Table 3.1 in Clark, G. L. and Dear, M. J., The State Apparatus: Structures of Language and Legitimacy (London, Allen and Unwin, 1984), p. 50.
possess ‘some degree of operational autonomy’ (Brenner 2004: 49). The state apparatus ranges, therefore, from those bureaucracies charged with conducting the state’s executive functions to a plethora of agencies involved in its more mundane aspects of governance. For Antonio Gramsci, the state apparatus is even broader in scope, drawing in important aspects of civil society. If ‘state ¼ political society þ civil society’, then we need to think of the state apparatus as something that is inclusive and broad-ranging in character (Gramsci 1973: 263). This is especially the case in the contemporary period, when lines of separation between the roles of state and private agencies are increasingly diYcult to demarcate. For many authors, the modern state betrays—in its form and function as well as its apparatus—a singular undergirding inXuence, namely its association with the capitalist mode of production. Perry Anderson, for instance, has noted how the shift from feudalism to capitalism led to the creation of a capitalist state apparatus, which included ‘standing armies, a permanent bureaucracy, national taxation, a codiWed law, and the beginning of a uniWed market’ (1974: 17). The impact of the capitalist mode of production on the modern state is clearly important, but we would hope that the Wrst four chapters of this book have also begun to hint at the inXuence of diVerent forms of nature, too, on the apparatus of the modern state. The discussion in Chapter 3, for instance, showed how eVorts to both frame (and frame out) water in the sixteenth-century Dutch Netherlands possessed far-reaching implications for the tentative process of state consolidation that was taking
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place then. The various guises of the state apparatus, we maintain, should be viewed as both a producer and a product of national natures. Claus OVe begins to draw our attention to such sentiments when he argues that the state organizes certain activities and measures directed towards the environment and it adopts for itself a certain organizational procedure from which the production and implementation of policies emerge. Every time a state deals with a problem in its environment, it deals with a problem of itself, its internal mode of operation. (OVe 1975: 135; emphasis in original)
OVe’s reference to the environment is diVerent from the one employed in this book, alluding as it does to the embeddedness of the state in a particular socio-economic environment. His terminology is useful in the present context, nonetheless, since it inadvertently illustrates the mutual embeddedness of states and national natures. National natures are framed by the state apparatus—through the formation of particular organizations, through the implementation of certain policies and strategies, and through various processes of representation—but, at the same time, the existence of national natures leads to the state apparatus itself being inXuenced and framed in important ways. Some work has begun to examine the relationships between the state apparatus or, alternatively, its various sub- and para-apparatuses, and national natures. We showed in Chapter 2 how Weberian state theorists in particular have stressed the role of the administrative or bureaucratic state as a collective and institutional manager of nature. Many have argued, in this respect, that the state is the only organization that possesses the collective capability to regulate the unsustainable exploitation of nature by individuals, as well as oVering a suYciently integrated and comprehensive understanding of the workings of the environment (Johnston 1996). In other words, the high levels of ‘infrastructural power’ aVorded to the modern state through its apparatus means that it alone is able to frame national natures in eVective ways. Others have examined how nature has become increasingly embedded in the state apparatus. Matthew Gandy (1999), for instance, has explored the relationship between state natures and the state apparatus and has drawn particular attention to the changing focus of the state with regard to the management of nature over time, as well as to the varying impacts of nature on state forms. For much of the nineteenth century, the main ecological concern of the European state was to protect public health, especially with regard to the rapid processes of urbanization taking place throughout much of Europe (e.g. see Fraser 2003: 65–84). Importantly, the prevalence of various ecological and health risks within the towns and cities of nineteenth-century Europe led to far-reaching reforms of the state apparatus at the local and national scales. Eric Evans (2001: 295), for instance, has argued that the public health threat facing much of urban Britain during this period led to far-reaching re-evaluations of the appropriate role and form of the
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central and local state apparatus with regard to the formation of new laws and policies, new organizations, and new ideologies of government (see also Driver 1988). New developments with respect to the management of nature have taken place over the twentieth century, according to Gandy, and the ‘earlier emphasis on public health has been extended to a range of newer concerns with biodiversity, climate change and the pollution of the global commons’ (1999: 60; see also O’Connor 1994). As we show in the empirical sections of this chapter, it is these newer environmental concerns of the twentieth century that have signalled a more sustained embeddedness of nature into the state apparatus, through the development of new departments and agencies concerned with national ecological issues and the implementation of new strategies and policies that seek to ameliorate national environmental risk. Finally, the development of more neoliberal state forms, as well as the related emergence of less predictable forms of environmental risk, have led to fundamental challenges to the state apparatus’s ability to manage national and international natures eVectively. The emergence of new forms of ecological risk, in particular, has led to a ‘diminution in the power and legitimacy of liberal conceptions of the state as arbiter of the public interest’ and as manager of national natures (Gandy 1999: 63; see also Beck 1992). Indeed, some even argue that the persistence of the centralized and centralizing state apparatus actually serves to exacerbate environmental problems, both within and beyond its boundaries (Torgerson 1990). The political, ecological, and geographical implications of such developments are discussed at length in Chapter 6. We focus in particular in this chapter on the relationship between national natures and the state apparatus in three separate contexts. First, we consider the relationship between the state apparatus and national natures by examining the development of regulatory agencies that have sought to respond to natural risk and hazard. As Johnston (1996: 131–2) has argued, the administrative or bureaucratic state is the only organization that possesses the wherewithal to manage competitive and unsustainable uses of nature within national contexts. The compartmentalization of such responsibilities within particular state sub-apparatuses—with the sole aim of managing the various risks associated with national natures—has been a feature of state rule in the majority of states since the 1970s. But as well as being a guarantor of certain environmental rights within particular national contexts, the other signiWcance of these agencies has been their eVort to understand the complex and manifold interdependencies of diVerent kinds of nature within one ecological and national whole (Johnston 1996: 131–2). The modern state’s ‘infrastructural power’ and its status as a centralized hub for the collection of information, therefore, means that it is the only organization with the ability to monitor and manage national natures in eVective ways. As a way of illustrating the state’s role as both a manager of environmental risk and a centralized hub for the collection of ecological information—speciWcally
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in the context of its environmental ministries, departments, or agencies—we examine the US Environmental Protection Agency, established in 1970. The relationship between national natures and the state apparatus, however, is never a simple or uncontested one. Particular kinds of nature or ways of understanding nature are granted far greater access into the state apparatus than others. By the same token, certain kinds of nature are deemed to be more important for states to manage and protect. The state, in this sense, always arbitrates between diVerent and possibly competing social and ecological interests within its territory (Clark and Dear 1984: 21–3). We want to argue that the role of the state in arbitrating between diVerent ecological interests demonstrates a peculiar tension between political and technocratic aspects of the state apparatus. At one level, the arbitrating role of the state draws our attention to the political processes of decision-making that take place with regard to national natures. Who makes decisions concerning the appropriate ways of managing national natures? Which ideological and material priorities are used in order to justify such decisions? In another context, many have argued that the modern state has increasingly used a technocentric language and ideology in order to justify and frame its decision-making concerning national natures. It has been contended, for instance, that ‘environmental management has been dominated by conceptions of state activity as a realm of technical and managerial expertise separate from the political arena’ (Gandy 1999: 63). Nature is thus redeWned as a technical issue, coming within the purview of professional bureaucrats and specialists, most notably scientists and planners. As a way of examining this tension between political and technical framings of national natures by the state apparatus, we focus on the planning profession in New Zealand, speciWcally through reference to its 1991 Resource Management Act. In addition to showing the role of planners, as technocratic state arbiters, in making important decisions concerning the management of national natures in New Zealand, we also demonstrate how the Act was infused with a highly politicized understanding of the appropriate role to be played by the state apparatus in managing the environment. Our third case study focuses more explicitly on the political sub-apparatus of the state. Many authors have sought to challenge the technical neutrality of the state, in broad terms, but also with speciWc regard to ecological issues. Recent work, for instance, has demonstrated how political issues inXect the incorporation of nature into the state apparatus. As an example, Gail Hollander (2005) has shown how presidential, state, and local politics have been closely intertwined with the state regulation of the Florida Everglades from the 1920s onwards. Indeed, she argues that it is impossible to understand fully the recent eVorts to grant environmental support and protection to the Florida Everglades without addressing Florida’s role as a key swing state within US presidential politics. Conversely, the changing governmental protection aVorded to the Florida Everglades has been dependent, in large part,
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on the Xuctuating fortunes of Democrats and Republicans, both in Florida and at the federal scale. Hollander’s work illustrates the need to examine the way in which nature is represented in the political sub-apparatus of the state. In talking about representation, we refer both to the individuals and political parties that have sought to represent nature within their policies, strategies, and other documents, and also to the way in which nature is represented within that literature. As Bruno Latour (1998, 2004) has shown, nature has, on the whole, struggled to be heard and seen within the representational apparatus of the state. As a way of elaborating on these themes, we examine the tentative greening of formal parliamentary politics in the UK that took place during the 1980s and 1990s.
The apparatus of the risk aversion state: the US Environmental Protection Agency On 9 July 1970, President Richard Nixon communicated a special message from the White House to the US Congress, entitled the ‘Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970’. Despite the uninspiring title of the document, its message signalled a wholesale and highly signiWcant re-evaluation by the US government of the way in which it should manage environmental risk within the national boundaries of the US federal state. The proposed product of the reorganization plan would be a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), whose aim would be to ‘identify pollutants, trace them through the entire ecological chain, observing and recording changes in form as they occur’, as well as ‘determin[ing] the total exposure of man and his [sic] environment, examin[ing] interactions among forms of pollution’ and ‘identify[ing] where in the ecological chain interdiction would be most appropriate’.2 During the 1970s, the EPA evolved into a highly signiWcant organization in developing new laws, in implementing old ones, and in determining the tenor of environmental values and concerns within the US. Today, it still represents the key sub-apparatus of the US federal state for managing and ameliorating environment risk within the boundaries of the US (EPA 2003). The formation of the EPA as a regulatory agency demonstrates clearly how the environmental risks posed by national natures within the US led to the creation of a new sub-apparatus of the federal state. At the same time, it also illustrates the attempts being made by the US state during this time to frame the national natures of the US in more eVective ways. Our aim in this section is to focus on how a regulatory agency of the US federal state and US national nature were both deWned in relation to one another.
2 R. Nixon, ‘Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970’ (Washington 1970), at
accessed 16 May 2005.
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To begin with, we examine the inXuence of national natures on the formation of the EPA. It is evident that its establishment was brought about in large measure by a growth in the awareness of ecological risk in the US and further aWeld. Many have stressed that the driving force behind its formation was the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1963). Although the central focus of the book was on the indiscriminate use of pesticides within agriculture, it achieved an iconic status as a broader commentary on the environmental destruction that was increasingly being wreaked by humankind and, as such, can be viewed as something that led to a key moment in nature–state relations in the US and, indeed, further aWeld. Lewis (1985: 1) has argued, in this respect, that the ‘EPA today may be said without exaggeration to be the extended shadow of Rachel Carson’. More broadly, it can be argued that Carson’s book contributed to the late 1960s and the early 1970s achieving the status of a ‘unique period in terms of the strength of the environmental coalition spanning both organized labour and the newly formed environmental pressure groups’ (Gandy 1999: 72; see also O’Connor 1994). Changing public opinion in the US, in particular, contributed to broad demands for a more coherent and far-reaching intervention by the state in order to reduce the environmental degradation caused by population and industrial growth, and the concomitant rampant use of resources and emission of pollutants. It is signiWcant that one of the EPA’s Wrst success stories was its implementation of a ban on the use of the pesticide DDT. Developed during the Second World War, DDT had been used extensively in US agriculture since the late 1940s. After three years of governmental enquiry into the use of the pesticide and its deleterious side-eVects, it was concluded that the ‘use of DDT posed unacceptable risks to the environment and potential harm to human health’.3 The pesticide that had inspired Carson’s publication of Silent Spring, and which had indirectly led to the formation of the EPA in the Wrst place, was one of the Wrst ecological risks to be managed and subsequently nulliWed by the new sub-apparatus of the federal state. In addition to this increased focus on environmental risk, it is clear that the 1960s and 1970s also witnessed a re-evaluation of the character of the environment. Nixon, in his address to Congress in 1970, made repeated reference to the need to study and understand the workings of the ‘total environment’ or, in other words, the interactions that took place between land, air, and water. It was the promotion of this holistic interpretation of the environment that necessitated a wholesale reorganization of the US state apparatus. As the title of President Nixon’s 1970 communication suggests, the EPA would come about as the product of the reorganization of the responsibilities and staV of a number of other pre-existing organizations 3 EPA, ‘DDT ban takes eVect’, EPA Press Release, 31 December 1972, at accessed 14 July 2005.
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within the federal state apparatus. In monitoring water and air quality within the US, as well as researching the environmental problems caused by radiation, pesticides, and other solid wastes, the EPA assumed certain governmental responsibilities that had previously resided within the purview of the Department of the Interior, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Atomic Energy Commission, the Federal Radiation Council, and the Agricultural Research Service.4 Rather than pursuing the fragmented and disjointed approach that had characterized the federal state’s management of ecological risk prior to 1970, it was deemed necessary to create one united regulatory agency that could frame the national nature of the US—and, more importantly, transgressions against it—in an eVective and holistic manner (Lewis 1985). The increasingly predominant view of the need to study the ‘total environment’ thus entailed the formation of a sub-apparatus of the federal state that was equally all-encompassing in its framing of US national natures. But as well as evincing a sectoral reorganization of the US federal state apparatus, it is also clear that the EPA emphasized a mechanism for regulating nature at the national scale. The overarching emphasis on the federal level within the EPA represented a reiWcation of the national scale and a related downplaying of the regional and global scales. William D. Ruckelshaus, in an oral history account of his period in charge of the EPA, outlined the signiWcance of this realignment: Up to that point—up to the formation of the EPA—it was largely a question of the states enforcing the environmental laws . . . it was left to the states, and they competed with one another so Wercely for the location of industry that they weren’t very good regulators of those industries. Particularly in the whole social regulatory area— health, safety, and the environment—they just weren’t very good.5
Clearly there was a need to ensure that environmental laws could be applied and sanctioned by a federal state agency in order to circumvent the possibility of an environmental ‘race to the bottom’, in which diVerent states within the US competed with each other to attract industries by relaxing environmental regulations. The EPA, in this respect, was to be viewed as a guarantor of environmental standards throughout the whole of the US, acting as a so-called ‘gorilla in the closet’. There is no clearer example of this shift in scalar mindset than in the formulation and implementation of the Clean Air Act of 1970. Although only an amendment to the earlier Air Quality Act of 1967, the Act represented a signiWcant shift in the implementation of environmental law within the US. The 1967 Act had been based on individual states within the US developing and enforcing pollution control standards within their regions. Not surprisingly, given the comments made 4
EPA, ‘DDT ban takes eVect’, EPA Press Release, 31 December 1972, at accessed 14 July 2005. 5 W. D. Ruckelshaus, ‘Environment before the EPA’, at accessed 16 May 2005.
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above, it suVered from a lack of purposeful implementation as individual states sought to downplay its impact on the industries located within their own boundaries. The 1970 amendment enabled the US federal state to become involved in air regulation for the Wrst time, thus leading to a situation in which air pollution control was made a national responsibility.6 Viewing air pollution as a national environmental risk, therefore, led to a concomitant reorganization of the US state apparatus at a national and federal scale. As well as the process of upscaling from individual states to the national scale, the formation of the EPA as a federal agency also signalled an attempt to downplay the signiWcance of environmental processes and challenges that existed at the international or global scale. The EPA’s responsibilities during this early period were concerned with responding to the environmental risks that were associated with US national territory. Far less attention was directed, in this respect, towards global environmental issues. The ban on DDT, discussed above, for instance, was notable for the exemption that it granted to the export of DDT to other countries.7 The threat posed by DDT to human health was, obviously, only an ecological risk when it aVected US citizens. There is no better illustration of this overarching emphasis on national natures in conditioning the US federal state apparatus than the relationship between the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), formed in 1969. After the formation of the EPA, an eVort was made to diVerentiate the international and global reach of the CEQ from the domestic concerns of the EPA. The most signiWcant discrepancy, as Ruckelshaus discusses, was the relative levels of staYng of the two organizations. During the early 1970s, the CEQ was staVed by between thirty-Wve and forty people, while the EPA contained some 15,000 staV!8 This disjuncture in terms of size illustrates the overwhelming signiWcance of national nature, as opposed to global nature, in shaping the apparatus of the US federal state during this period. But, of course, the relationship between national natures and the US state apparatus is highly recursive in character. Some of the issues discussed above have begun to illustrate how the regulatory agency of the EPA sought to promote a framing of nature at the national scale within the US. The ban on the use of DDT within the US, as well as its promotion of the Clean Air Act of 1970, represented an organizational reaction to the perceived importance of national natures within the US. And yet, at the same time, the EPA’s coordination of these eVorts to ameliorate environmental risk within the US helped to further reify the notion that these were national environmental 6 D. P. Rogers, ‘The Clean Air Act of 1970’, at accessed 16 May 2005. 7 EPA, ‘DDT ban takes eVect’, op cit. 8 W.P. Ruckelshaus, ‘Russell Train and Robert Fri’, at accessed 16 May 2005.
Fig. 5.1.
Map of the EPA’s boundaries.
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risks. The EPA, in other words, through its organizations, policies, and strategies, has helped to increasingly frame the national natures of the US. The key signiWcance of the EPA is its role as a centralized hub for collecting, interrogating, and disseminating information.9 It has, admittedly, utilized a regional structure as a means of facilitating the process of collecting and disseminating information about various environmental risks (see Figure 5.1). At present, its national headquarters in Washington coordinates the activities of its regional oYces in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle.10 But despite this devolved structure, the central hub in Washington retains a prime signiWcance. The OYce of the Administrator, the coordinating centre of the EPA, for instance, contains an OYce of Policy, Economics, and Innovation, whose duties include managing the whole of the EPA’s regulatory agenda. These oYces, located in Washington, represent the centre point out of which the framing of the national natures of the US emanates. One way of further exploring this centralized framing of national natures in the US is to focus on the people that staV the EPA as an organization. The key Wgure throughout the history of the EPA has been the head of the Agency, the so-called Administrator. The Administrator has acted as the central lynchpin for the EPA, around which monitoring and enforcement duties have coalesced. Especially during its formative years, there was an onus on the Administrator to instil a sense of purpose within the organization, something that could contribute to its emerging role as the collector of information concerning environmental risk in the US. Ruckelshaus, the Wrst Administrator, for instance, emphasized that one of the key early challenges for the EPA was to make it work as an organization, especially given its organizational legacy as a union of responsibilities drawn from many separate predecessor organizations.11 The oYcial title of Ruckelshaus’s post—the Administrator—was highly signiWcant, in this respect, since it signalled a belief in the ability of the state to frame all aspects of US national nature: to collect information concerning its diVerent forms and locations and to centralize it within the state sub-apparatus; to manage nature in eVective ways; to monitor instances in which nature is being transgressed in some way; and to develop ways of ameliorating the impact of environmental risks. In short, the use of the term ‘Administrator’ to designate the head of the EPA is redolent of a state mentality in which nature is viewed as an object of government, which can be subsumed within a centralized and internally diVerentiated state bureaucracy. Equally signiWcant, we would argue, were the informal appellations given to Ruckelshaus, as the Wrst Administrator, 9
More broadly, see Dandekar (1999) and Giddens (1985). See the EPA organizational chart at accessed 16 May 2005. 11 W. P. Ruckelshaus, ‘Important issues’, at accessed 16 May 2005. In a diVerent context, see Jones et al. (2005). 10
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during his early years in oYce. These included ‘Mr Clean’ and, in reference to the newly released Clint Eastwood motion picture of the time, ‘The Enforcer’ (Lewis 1985). Both of these more popular descriptions of Ruckelshaus’s role also illustrate, we maintain, the attitudes towards the responsibilities of the EPA: namely, to clean up the US environment by forcing recalcitrant private or city corporations to adhere to the various environmental laws that were already present on the statute books (Williams 1993). The role of the EPA in framing national natures—through a process of collecting and centralizing information—is illustrated further when one considers its remit in more detail. Throughout its period of existence it has sought to outline the levels of environmental degradation that would be tolerated within the national natures of the US. Technical and scientiWc eVorts have been made to deWne the parameters of environmental risk that would enable the EPA to achieve subsequent environmental gains. Table 5.2 shows the danger levels of air pollution that were deWned by the EPA in 1971. The precision of the EPA in both monitoring and deWning the environmental dangers displayed in this table speaks of a state sub-apparatus whose role is highly dependent upon the precise collection, collation, and dissemination of information concerning US national natures. As a result of its existence as a systematized and centralized branch of the US federal state apparatus, the EPA was becoming highly cognizant of the ecological risks that were present in the US during the 1970s. Moreover, the EPA used this unparalleled depth of knowledge to deWne the acceptable and unacceptable characteristics of various aspects of the US national nature at this time. But as we have been at pains to emphasize, this was not a one-way process. At the same time, the precise deWnition of various types of environmental risk that were present in the US at the time contributed in a fundamental way to the bureaucratic diVerentiation of the EPA as an organization. At present, for instance, the OYce of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, headed by Acting
Table 5.2.
Danger levels for air pollution deWned by the EPA in 1971
Environmental risk
Pollution levels that could harm public health
Sulphur dioxide Particulate matter Carbon monoxide
2620 micrograms per cubic metre, 24-hour average 1000 micrograms per cubic metre, 24-hour average 57.5 milligrams per cubic metre, 8-hour average 86.3 milligrams per cubic metre, 4-hour average 144 milligrams per cubic metre, 1-hour average 800 micrograms per cubic metre, 4-hour average 1200 micrograms per cubic metre, 2-hour average 1400 micrograms per cubic metre, 1-hour average 3750 micrograms per cubic metter, 1-hour average 938 micrograms per cubic metre, 24-hour average
Photochemical oxidants Nitrogen dioxide
Source: Data from ‘EPA deWnes air pollution danger levels’, press release (19 October 1971) at accessed 15 July 2005.
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Assistant Administrator Susan B. Hazen, is subdivided into three other oYces: the OYce of Pesticide Programs, the OYce of Pollution Prevention and Toxics, and the OYce of Science Coordination and Policy. Interestingly, the OYce of Pesticide Programs is further subdivided into nine diVerent divisions, some of which are deWned by particular environmental risks, such as the Antimicrobial Division and the Biopesticides and Pollution Prevention Division.12 There exists, seemingly, a circuitous network in which the EPA deWnes national ecological risks before being, in turn, internally deWned in and through them. National natures in the US, and especially the ecological risks that are associated with them, have, therefore, both framed and been framed by the US federal state apparatus since the 1970s.
Nature and the arbiter state: New Zealand’s planning system Our second case study examines the role of the state apparatus in arbitrating between diVerent social and ecological interests, speciWcally in the context of the planning system of New Zealand. With the inception of the Resource Management Act (RMA) in 1991, New Zealand experienced a sea change in its planning laws. A focus on the RMA, we maintain, enables us to examine the means through which the state apparatus seeks to frame nature as a technical issue that should be administered by professional bureaucrats and specialists, most notably ‘rational’ planners. Scratching beneath the surface, however, allows us to demonstrate how politics actually infuses the relationship between the apparatus of the arbiter state and New Zealand national nature in all aspects of the RMA. The Act was promulgated in 1991 as a means of promoting the sustainable management of natural and physical resources within the boundaries of the New Zealand state and, as such, provides the legal framework within which the management and development of New Zealand’s natural resources takes place. The promulgation of the Act represented a radical overhaul of the planning system, as New Zealand sought to replace its British-derived town and country planning legislation with a far greener and more sustainable understanding of the need to manage the biophysical environment. In this regard, the RMA has been viewed as something that has signalled a fundamental change in the way that the state understands the environment within New Zealand, in both normative and practical terms (Memon and Gleeson 1995; Perkins and Thorns 2001: 639; Robertson 1993). The inception of the RMA brought about a detailed re-evaluation of the means through which the state apparatus should adjudicate over competing ecological interests. There is a concerted eVort within the RMA, for instance, 12 See EPA, ‘Pesticides section’, at accessed 14 September 2005.
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Nature and the State Apparatus Table 5.3.
The scales and territories of the RMA
National scale (central government) . Overview role . Developing policies for managing resources . Performance and quality standards . Aspects of coastal management . Management of toxic wastes, explosives, and other hazardous substances Regional scale (regional councils) . Overview and coordination role: regional resource policy statements; regional plans (optional) . Water and soil management . Management of geothermal resources . Natural hazards mitigation and planning . Regional aspects of hazardous substances . Pollution management and air pollution control . Aspects of coastal management Local scale (territorial councils) . District plans . Control of land use and subdivision . Noise control . Control for natural hazards avoidance and mitigation . Local control of hazardous substances use
to distinguish between the competencies and responsibilities of diVerent levels of the state apparatus involved in administering the Act (see Table 5.3). In the context of the RMA, scale and territory assume the status of essential elements of the practice of government. While there is a strong sense within the RMA of the need for subsidiarity (devolving responsibilities downwards to the smallest possible or appropriate scale), there is still a countervailing nationalizing tendency within the territorial and scalar structure outlined in the Act (Memon and Gleeson 1995: 117). A sub-apparatus of the central state, for instance, plays a key role in overseeing and monitoring the RMA, through the auspices of the Ministry for the Environment and a new Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who reports directly to Parliament (Robertson 1991: 308). It also sets the broad parameters within which regional and local governments make decisions concerning potential environmental eVects. In addition, national policy statements guide the preparation of regional and local plans. But at a more mundane level, it is clear that the day-to-day implementation of the RMA takes place within regional and local councils, and it is in this context that the technocratic aspects of the relationship between New Zealand national natures and the apparatus of the state become more apparent. As SchoWeld (1993) has shown, planners have had to make practical decisions concerning the technical, practical, and legal problems associated with a new governmental technology such as the RMA. As a way of illustrating this point, we examine the role of the planning system in arbitrating
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between competing uses of soil in New Zealand. As well as showing the technical incorporation of nature into the state apparatus, it also begins to illustrate how politics has infused the relationship between nature and the state within the RMA. The New Zealand state has sought to protect its high-quality soils for many years (Grundy and Gleeson 1996: 204–8). Given the country’s historic dependence upon exporting agricultural goods, high-quality soils have traditionally beneWted from a high level of protection. In addition to this agricultural pressure, New Zealand’s best soils have also been prone to another threat, namely processes of urbanization and suburbanization. Many urban areas are located near to the most productive agricultural land. The continued processes of urbanization and suburbanization that have occurred over the past few tens of years have led to the conversion of prime agricultural land into residential and industrial use. As a result of these environmental and economic concerns, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1977 emphasized the need to protect the soils of the highest quality. For instance, section 3 of the 1977 Act stated that ‘the avoidance of encroachment of urban development on, and the protection of, land having a high actual or potential value for the production of food’ should be viewed as a matter of national importance (quoted in Grundy and Gleeson 1996: 204; see also Leamy 1993). Protection was achieved through a process of zoning, which separated out conXicting types of land use. Zoning enabled planners to designate agricultural lands that were of high quality as areas that were deserving of special protection, through the designation of speciWc rules and regulations. At face value, the RMA reaYrms the commitment to protecting and enhancing soils as key facets of the New Zealand environment. Soil management is viewed as an important feature of the role played by regional councils within the RMA; section 30 of the Act states that all regional councils should control the use of land, for the purpose of soil conservation (New Zealand Government 1991: s.30). An examination of soils, for instance, forms an important part of Waikato Regional Council’s discussion of signiWcant resource management issues within its region (see Figure 5.2). It draws attention to: the accelerated erosion of soil resources that can be brought about by activities such as farming, burning, forestry, road construction, and urban development; the contamination of soils caused by many land-based activities, in discrete and diVuse forms; the need to protect soil health in terms of its physical and chemical composition; and the need to manage the moisture content of soil suVering as a result of inadequate drainage (Environment Waikato 1996: 44–7). As well as monitoring the various soil issues that are pertinent to the region, the Regional Statement also outlines a variety of mechanisms for improving the management of soils within the region (see Table 5.4). In reviewing the threats posed to soil, and planning ways of mitigating them, the RMA acts as a mechanism through which the state apparatus can arbitrate between diVerent land uses in New Zealand.
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Fig. 5.2.
Nature and the State Apparatus
Map of Waikato Region within New Zealand.
Table 5.4 also demonstrates the overwhelmingly technical means of framing nature within the RMA. This is a technocratic language of ‘mitigating accelerated erosion’, of ‘maintaining the integrity of existing soil conservation programmes’, and of ‘liaising with organizations that seek to lessen adverse environmental eVects’. The role of the New Zealand state apparatus in arbitrating between diVerent soil uses, at face value, becomes de-politicized. It represents an issue that should be determined by the technical and scientiWc language and practices of the planning professional. But if the RMA illustrates how the modern state within New Zealand has been able to frame nature in technical and scientiWc terms, it is also signiWcant since it shows how the state has sought to take heed of a series of nonscientiWc, non-technical, seemingly ‘irrational’ and ‘pre-modern’ discourses. The RMA emphasizes Maori interpretations of the environment and appropriate forms of land use, seeking to incorporate these alternative priorities
Nature and the State Apparatus Table 5.4.
133
Soil issues and management in the Waikato Region, New Zealand
Environmental issue
Policy
Accelerated soil erosion (loss of soil productivity, Avoid, remedy, or mitigate accelerated degradation of water supply through erosion through: sedimentation and adverse eVects on the . environmental education programme values associated with land) . preparing regional plans that may contain rules for the management of land and soils . developing a regional monitoring programme . advocating the control of pest populations . maintaining the integrity of existing soil conservation programmes . liaising with organizations that seek to lessen adverse environmental eVects . liaising with territorial authorities and other agencies to promote soil conservation. Soil contamination (the discharge of contaminants onto or into land aVecting the condition of the soil)
Reduce the impact of contaminants on the soil resource through: . encouraging the development of sustainable land management practices . advocating sustainable land management practices through the environmental education programme . establishing rules in the Regional Plan to avoid, remedy or mitigate the discharge of contaminants . developing, through the Regional Plan and environmental education programmes, means of discouraging illegal dumping
Maintenance of soil health (to maintain the versatility and productive capacity of the Region’s soil resources—with a focus on the use of fertilizers, the biological activity and organic carbon levels within soils, and the physical condition of the soil)
Land uses should avoid the degradation of soil versatility and productive capacity through: . the development of a regional land monitoring programme . the development of an environmental education programme . encouraging research into development of sustainable land management practices . preparing rules to avoid, remedy, or mitigate the degradation of soils . liaising with other bodies that seek to reduce soil degradation Moisture to be managed to maximize the sustainable productive capacity of soils through: . preparing regional rules for moisture management in Regional Plans . monitoring the eVects of land drainage within the Region . developing asset management plans to deliver drainage services in former drainage board areas
Moisture management (ensuring no net loss of productive soils as a result of poor moisture management)
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into its decisions concerning the use and conservation of nature. Section 6 of the Act requires that Maori are consulted, for instance, in order to ensure that any resource development does not impinge on their sacred sites and other ‘treasures’. This alternative discourse, speaking of Maori perceptions of the intrinsic value of nature and the environment, acts as a powerful counter-melody to the dominant technocratic theme contained within the RMA. The tensions between these two discourses are evident in the Waikato Region. At a general level, the Waikato Regional Council considers the close link between Maori and the land and soil of Waikato as an important contextualizing factor within its discussion of the various environmental issues facing the region: Tangata whenua by deWnition means people of the land. Maori believe that they have a unqiue spiritual aYnity with the land. Maori view themselves as an integral part of the natural world. Their relationship to land provides a link with both ancestors and future generations. It conWrms tribal and kinship ties, and in doing so, establishes a sense of tribal identity and continuity. In managing the land resources of the Waikato, it is acknowledged that Maori are able to use land in their ownership in accordance with their culture and traditions, and on ancestral land, to protect sites and resources which are of particular cultural value to iwi [tribe] consistent with statutory requirements. (Environment Waikato 1996: 41)
More speciWcally, the Regional Policy Statement elaborates on the key Maori concepts that are central to the RMA’s operation within the region, including its methods for arbitrating the use of soil. Table 5.5 illustrates some of the key terms and concepts that help to articulate this alternative conception of appropriate forms of land and resource use. The promotion of Maori values within the RMA bears welcome testimony to the increased consideration given to the material and spiritual needs of Maori in New Zealand after years of neglect (Laitouri 1996: 332; Walker Table 5.5.
Maori conceptions of nature and resource use
Maori term
Meaning
Aki kaa
The rights to occupy land and use resources are sustained through occupation and resource use Band or sub-tribe The Supreme Being for Maori A tribe or people A guardian or steward To exercise stewardship over land, resources, and nature Governorship or government The customary authority exercised by an iwi or hapu A territory within which a tangata whenua group claims an association The iwi or hapu that holds mana whenua over an area Treasures or properties that are prized as the sacred possessions of a tribe ChieXy authority Sacred site
Hapu Io Iwi Kaitiaki Kaitiakitanga Kawanatanga Mana Whenua Rohe Tangata whenua Taonga Tino rangatiratanga Waahi tapu
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1990). But at the same time, it is dubious how seriously these Maori concerns are taken. It is signiWcant that the references to Maori concepts and ideas tend to appear in isolated sections of Waikato’s Regional Policy Statement, rather than being mainstreamed within the whole of the document. We would argue, ironically, that the persistence of such a non-technical and non-scientiWc language in certain sections of the policy statement actually serves to highlight its otherwise highly technocratic and scientiWc character. Even though the modern state apparatus in this case has seen Wt to admit another set of discourses in order to enable it to arbitrate between diVerent forms of land and resource use, it is clear that it is the technical, scientiWc, and neutral language of the established planning system that dominates the RMA’s framing of national natures in New Zealand. At one level, therefore, the RMA can be considered as something that represents a technical and scientiWc means in and through which the New Zealand state may arbitrate between diVerent forms of land and resource use. Many have argued, nonetheless, that it also betrays a highly politicized understanding both of the broader role of the state apparatus and of New Zealand’s national natures. Memon and Gleeson, in this regard, give a Xavour of the broader context for the development of the RMA, as well as indicating some of the ideological tensions that have aVected its operation. They have argued that New Zealand’s new planning legislation is the product of two quite distinct, and contradictory, sociopolitical forces, notably the New Right and the environmental movement. The new legislative context in New Zealand signals a paradigmatic shift in planning ideology and perhaps practice. The movement is from a town and country mode, which was embedded in the wider political economy of the welfare state, to a new biophysical and technocentric planning paradigm. (Memon and Gleeson 1995: 109)
Up until the 1970s, the New Zealand state had followed a political and governmental programme that had emphasized broadly welfarist principles, in line with the similar emphases being made in other Anglophone countries in the post-war period. Under the leadership of a Labour government during the 1980s, however, it embarked on a sustained programme of governmental and socio-economic reform, which emphasized the need to increase the competitiveness of New Zealand industries within an increasingly globalized world economy. The recurring theme within this period of reform was to deregulate and minimize the impact of government on all socio-economic processes (Grundy and Gleeson 1996: 198–201; Franklin 1991; Memon and Gleeson 1995: 114; see also Bray and Haworth 1993). At the same time, New Zealand—like other states—began to engage with an environmentalist discourse from approximately the 1970s onwards: the Labour, National, and Social Credit parties (the three main political parties in New Zealand) adopted certain policies that were supportive of environmental issues. A productive relationship between these two diVering ideologies has been diYcult to maintain. Nowhere is the forced marriage between the two
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contrasting ideologies of neoliberalism and environmentalism more evident than in the context of planning in New Zealand. It has been argued, for instance, that the protection aVorded to the natural and biophysical environment within the RMA is relatively weak. According to Memon and Gleeson (1995: 121), the RMA’s protection of the environment is lacking since it fails to give ‘precedence to environmental protection objectives over other objectives’. Embracing such an ideology would have undermined New Zealand’s economic competitiveness during the 1980s and was, accordingly, resisted by the New Right. The omission of mining activities from the orbit of the sustainable management of resources is a good example of how the RMA represents a relatively half-hearted take on sustainability. The New Right’s inXuence on the Act is witnessed, too, in relation to the RMA’s emphasis on the need to address the eVects of actions and practices, rather than on the actions and practices themselves. Whereas the previous Town and Country Planning Act had sought to regulate human practices, the RMA merely seeks to regulate the impact of those practices on the environment. At one level, this can be described as a shift from a prescriptive form of planning to a more empowering and Xexible system (Robertson 1993: 308). Others have argued, however, that it represents a potentially dangerous deregulation of planning controls in which, ‘within very wide boundaries, people can do what they like, so long as they do not harm the environment’ (Memon and Gleeson (1995: 119). There is, therefore, a danger that the RMA may lead in the future to unrestrained and, ironically, unsustainable transformations of the natural environment within the country. Whatever the impact of the RMA on New Zealand’s soil resources and the broader environment, its various clauses begin to illustrate how the state apparatus’s attempts to arbitrate concerning national natures may become mired in political and ideological concerns. We turn to consider the representation of nature within the political sub-apparatus of the state in more detail in the Wnal empirical section of this chapter.
Nature and the political sub-apparatus of the state: the case of the UK In the previous two sections, we have concentrated on the incorporation of nature into the state apparatus in largely bureaucratic terms. By contrast, this section explores how nature is represented within the political subapparatus of the state. We conceive of this process of representation as something that can take place in two separate contexts. At one level, we need to think about the extent to which environmental or broader green ideas become incorporated into the plans, policies, and strategies of political parties and government. In the introduction to this chapter, for instance, we discussed Hollander’s (2005) work on the Florida Everglades. Her research
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demonstrated the extent to which concerns regarding the nature of the Everglades became implicated within the policies of Republicans and Democrats at both a state and federal scale. But in addition to thinking about the extent to which nature is represented within the political sub-apparatus of the state, we also need to examine in greater depth how nature becomes represented within the political arena. Latour, for instance, has elaborated on the potential mechanisms in and through which an ecological form of politics enters the political sub-apparatus of the state. At one extreme lies an ecological politics that can impinge in a limited fashion on the broader repertoire of policies and strategies adopted by political parties and governments, being added as a new ‘layer of behaviour and regulations to the[ir] . . . everyday concerns’ (Latour 1998: 222). Alternatively, a more all-compassing and holistic version of ecological politics can enter the political sub-apparatus of the state. In this rarer ‘ ‘‘globalisation’’ of environmentalism’, we witness an eVort by political parties and governments to demonstrate how nature and society must be managed as a whole ‘in order to avoid a moral, economic and ecological disaster’ (Latour 1998: 222). Focusing on these two alternatives makes us think of how political ecology can be incorporated into the political sub-apparatus of the state through either the development of a ‘new form of politics or a particular branch of politics’ (Latour 1998: 221; see also Whitehead 2004). In other words, Latour suggests that we need to examine how political ecology can be engaged with ‘surreptitiously, by distinguishing between questions of nature and questions of politics, or explicitly, by treating those two sets of questions as a single issue that arises for all collectives’ (Latour 2004: 1). The empirical discussion in this section illustrates these twin mechanisms as they were played out in the environmental politics of the UK during the 1980s and 1990s. We focus on the growing environmental awareness of established political parties as a way of discussing the piecemeal and limited greening of formal politics, while an exploration of the UK Green Party enables us to elaborate on the explicit ‘globalization’ of ecological concerns. Porritt and Winner (1998), writing towards the end of the period, describe the signiWcance of the 1980s as a time during which ecological issues began to assume greater signiWcance within British politics. The 1980s have witnessed a spectacular greening of mainstream British politics, at least in the narrow environmental sense of the word. Until the beginning of this decade, few major politicians were prepared to speak up on green issues. From the 1983 General Election onwards, national politicians have been catching up with the popular perception that the environment in an increasingly important issue. Now, according to their manifestos at least, Conservative, Labour and Alliance13 parties all care deeply about the environment. (Porritt and Winner 1998: 85) 13 The ‘Alliance’ refers to the pact made between the Social Democratic Party and Liberal Party during the 1980s. This formed the basis for the creation of the Liberal Democrats, who currently assume the status of the third party within British parliamentary politics.
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The established political parties were, therefore, contributors to the growing importance of environmental politics in the UK during the 1980s. Although the main opposition parties in the UK had begun to incorporate some environmental concerns into their policy discourses from the mid-1980s onwards, it is clear that our main focus of attention must lie with the Conservative Party.14 Under the forceful leadership of Margaret Thatcher, since 1979 the Conservatives had embarked on a prolonged period of social and economic reform in order to eradicate the so-called ‘British disease’. But despite its radical qualities, it is clear that the Conservative Party did not view environmental issues as being important concerns for much of the 1980s. Indeed, during the Falklands War of 1982, Thatcher had famously referred to the environment as a ‘humdrum issue’ (Young 1989: 273). More problematically, McCormick (1991: 59) has noted that ‘the basic principles of environmental regulation and protection are built on values that are inherently antipathetic to the values of Thatcherism’; environmental regulation required a strong state to monitor and manage the environment, something that was anathema to Thatcher’s lauding of the free market and the related enterprise culture. Given the political proclivities of the Conservative Party throughout much of the 1980s, Thatcher’s two pro-environmental speeches of 1988 were, indeed, remarkable. The Wrst speech, delivered to the Royal Society in September, detailed the Conservative Party’s support for the ideals of sustainable development as a speciWc means of answering the challenges posed by such issues as population growth, global warming, the decay of the ozone layer, and acid rain. Thatcher built on this statement in her keynote speech to the party’s annual conference in October, in which she argued that we Conservatives . . . are not merely friends of the Earth—we are its guardians and trustees for generations to come. The core of Tory philosophy and the case for protecting the environment are the same. No generation has a freehold on this Earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease. And this Government intends to meet the terms of that lease in full. (Thatcher 1989: 274)
These two speeches were crucial to the emerging environmental debate of the 1980s for they signalled that it should now take place at the centre-stage of British parliamentary politics rather than at its margins. One commentator argued, for instance, that the Royal Society speech, in particular, had ensured that the environment had now moved from political marginality to political mainstream . . . The environmental movement has been an outsider, an intruder. If little else happens, her speech will have the immediate eVect of legitimizing the latter, and of making concern about the environment oYcial. (Jacques 1988) 14 For an account of the greening of the opposition parties during the 1980s, see Garner (1996: 139–47) and Porritt and Winner (1988: 63–76).
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To prove that these speeches contained some substance, the Conservative Party followed them up with a number of concrete developments. The Wrst was its convening of a global conference on ozone depletion, held in London in February 1989, and paid for in full by the British government. New legislation was also passed, which led to increased monitoring and regulation of rivers and acid rain. The Conservative Party had succeeded in placing environmental issues Wrmly on the political agenda within the UK. Moreover, its position as the party of government ensured that these new environmental priorities could be taken forward in concrete ways. But despite these developments, it is clear that the ecological politics advocated during this period by the Conservative Party were highly emasculated in character. McCormick, for instance, has argued that much of the new environmental legislation of the late 1980s came about largely as a result of changing public attitudes towards the environment and/or European Community law, which demanded that the UK legislated on certain key issues, most notably acid rain (McCormick 1991: 62). In addition, the way in which nature was represented within the policies and strategies of the Conservative Party speaks of an ecological politics that was highly circumscribed and compartmentalized in character. Certain policies may have been developed in order to counter particular ecological risks—for instance, those associated with acid rain—but these were not reXective of a broader shift in the policy mindset of the Conservative Party. In this respect, the Conservative manifestos of 1987 and 1992 were still positioned with regard to the need to reduce taxes and governmental interference of all kinds, and had a related emphasis on the need to promote economic growth. The limited representation aVorded to ecological issues within the political rhetoric and action of the Conservative Party, and other established political parties during the 1980s, therefore, is redolent of a tentative greening of merely a ‘particular branch’ of the political sub-apparatus of the UK state. If established political parties were advocating the need for a tentative and ‘surreptitious’ link to be drawn between ecology and politics during the 1980s, it is clear that other organizations were seeking to promote a more radical and holistic form of ecological politics. We refer here, in particular, to the increasing inXuence of Green parties on the political sub-apparatus of the state. McCormick eVectively captures the broad sweep of Green politics: Green politics is not simply about the environment. It is ultimately about a fundamental reordering of conventional political and economic systems, advocating grass-roots democracy, local community government, human-scale technology and institutions, social equality, sustainable development self-reliance and a holistic worldview that encourages individuals to understand their place in the world. (McCormick 1991: 123)
This is certainly the case with regard to the UK Green Party. Its current policies range from a need to re-evaluate the meaning of work through
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a greening of the economy to a broad set of demands concerning the need to democratize and ecologize government and politics at a variety of diVerent spatial scales.15 If this holistic approach to ecological politics is clear for all to see within the policies and strategies of the UK Green Party, it is equally evident that its eVorts to incorporate such ideals into the political sub-apparatus of the UK state have fallen on barren ground. The remainder of this section highlights the diYculties associated with promoting this holistic and all-encompassing ecological vision within the political sub-apparatus of the UK state. Jonathon Porritt has argued that ecological concerns have been aVorded little space within the political sub-apparatus of the UK: If you are a Green Party activist . . . it’s a pretty bloody depressing thing, election day. You don’t expect to be getting a lot of joy out of the results as they come in . . . you know, two per cent; three per cent, four per cent, whatever it might be. I’ve been a candidate myself many times, so I know how bloody miserable it is to be honest. And you can put a brave face on, you can say ‘well we’re building support for the future’ and all the rest of it but there’s no turning away from the sense of disappointment, if not despair, on occasions, looking at how limited a purchase these ideas still have on modern electorates.16
In this respect, despite years of political campaigning since the mid-1970s, the UK Green Party had struggled to promote an ecological agenda within the UK. Its ultimate success in gaining political representation in 1992, in the form of the election of Cynog DaWs as a joint Plaid Cymru and Green Party MP, did not indicate a fundamental re-evaluation of the place of nature within the representational politics of the UK. Indeed, Cynog DaWs’s election is highly signiWcant, we would argue, since it illustrates that a peculiarly propitious set of contingent circumstances were necessary in order to elect just one Green Party MP—and for a limited period of time only—to the UK Parliament. We can begin by focusing on the temporal contingencies that led to the Green Party’s election success in 1992. In parliamentary terms, the Green Party had undergone somewhat of an upturn in its fortunes during the late 1980s. Riding a wave of public opinion that was focused for the Wrst time on environmental issues, it managed to poll 89,354 votes during the 1987 general election, a Wgure that was 65 per cent higher than the 1983 total of 54,077. Because of the UK’s Wrst-past-the-post voting system, however, the party did not gain any political representation. Such relative success, nonetheless, led to statements by the Green Party that it was on the verge of an electoral breakthrough, based on its acquisition of disaVected votes from both the Labour and Alliance parties (Porritt and Winner 1988: 76). The most notable 15
See accessed 9 November 2005. Interview with Jonathan Porritt conducted and transcribed by a research assistant under the direction of Rhys Jones. 16
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‘success’, nonetheless, came in the European elections of 1989, where it polled 2.29 million votes, or 15 per cent of the total (see Carter 1992; Curtice 1989).17 Jonathon Porritt explained the signiWcance of this vote for green issues within the UK in the following way: it came as a huge surprise to people that that percentage of the vote was actually secured . . . The truth of it is, and I know the Green Party hates me for saying this . . . is it wasn’t really a vote for the Green Party per se. In many instances it was a vote for a voice that said ‘we’ve got to think about our relationship more carefully with the living world; we are out of balance in that relationship at the moment; these issues are going to get much more serious and painful; the mainstream parties . . . are playing fast and loose with people’s concern about this, and we’ve got to get more focus on this’.18
The ‘whole area of sustainability and climate change’, according to Porritt, had gained widespread acceptance within popular and political debate, and, in many ways, the Green Party became the beneWciary of this shift in public opinion. The party’s ‘success’ within the European elections was, however, relative. Once again, it did not gain any seats within the European Parliament as a result of the Wrst-past-the-post system used for European elections in the UK at that time. But the electoral advantages aVorded by this upsurge of interest in environmental issues could not alone explain the Green Party’s political success in 1992. Two other contingent factors also contributed to it. The Wrst revolved around the geographical peculiarities of the parliamentary constituency of Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire North in West Wales (see Figure 5.3). Mid and West Wales had, since the 1960s, proved popular for those interested in green and alternative lifestyles and, therefore, had garnered some political support for the Green Party since the 1970s. The constituency, moreover, had always been somewhat of a political outlier within British politics, having returned Liberal (and latterly Alliance/Social and Liberal Democrat) MPs for much of the twentieth century. Through a combination of factors, however, it had become a four-way marginal by the 1980s, represented by the Alliance Party (latterly Social and Liberal Democrat Party) and contested by the Conservatives, Labour, and Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationlists). The European elections of 1989, and their speciWc manifestation in the European constituency of Mid and West Wales (including Ceredigion), provided a decisive impetus for the re-evaluation of political relationships within the constituency. They acted as a warning bell for Plaid Cymru, since the Greens (with 13.2 per cent of the vote) had edged into third place ahead of Plaid Cymru (11.6 per cent). The immediate consequence of this result was the instigation 17
For a cautionary note on the credibility of the Green Party’s success within the European elections, see McCormick (1991: 122). 18 Interview with Jonathan Porritt conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones.
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Fig. 5.3.
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Map of the Ceredigion constituency within the UK.
of talks about forming an electoral pact between the Green Party and Plaid Cymru within Ceredigion. A leading green activist at the time saw the 1989 result as a key catalyst for political accommodation between Plaid Cymru and the Green Party: ‘It had a big inXuence I think from Plaid’s perspective . . . in that we did ever so well . . . I was at the count and Cynog [DaWs] said to me ‘‘Look, you’ve really hammered us. We have to get together’’.’19 19 Interview conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones.
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A series of both formal and informal meetings occurred between Plaid Cymru and the Greens at the Welsh national scale during 1989–90. By the time of their annual conference in 1990, Plaid Cymru had passed a green economic policy, and a motion was also passed enabling the party to engage in dialogue with the Green Party at constituency level about the possibility of local electoral pacts. In Ceredigion, the local Plaid Cymru and Green parties signed what they termed the ‘Llandysul Accord’ on 10 April 1991—a formal agreement of coalition between the two parties in the Ceredigion and Pembroke North constituency. A joint press release exclaimed: ‘Plaid Cymru—Green agreement ‘‘creates winning combination’’ ’.20 The political and cultural particularities of the Ceredigion and Pembroke North constituency—being as it was a melting pot of both nationalist and environmental politics—were key factors, therefore, in explaining the local desire for an electoral pact. But it also took a certain level of individual contingency in order to facilitate the development of formal and productive links between Plaid Cymru and the Green Party.21 Cynog DaWs, the joint Plaid Cymru–Green Party candidate, was the key Wgure in this regard. He was an established candidate, having previously contested the constituency for Plaid Cymru in the general elections of 1983 and 1987. However, Cynog DaWs was unusual within Welsh nationalist circles in that ecological ideas had played a central role in his political philosophy for many years. This was crucial to the emergence of a Plaid/Green dialogue prior to 1992. During an interview, he explained: I had held, for twenty years, a great interest in the development of the green movement, the Ecology Party in the Wrst instance, and then the Green Party, I had been watching all of that, I had been reading magazines such as The Ecologist so I knew that scene very well.22
Cynog DaWs, therefore, provided a much-needed personal credibility to the pact between Plaid Cymru and the Green Party. The fortuitous association of these three sets of contingent factors, we would argue, explain the remarkable result of the Ceredigion and Pembroke North constituency, which was declared in the early hours of 10 April 1992 (see Table 5.6). The result was signiWcant for it signalled the election of the Wrst Green Party MP to the UK Parliament for Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire North or, what we may term, ‘nature’s constituency’. Jonathon Porritt, for one, 20 ‘Plaid Cymru–Green agreement ‘‘creates winning combination’’ ’, Plaid Cymru/Ceredigion and Pembroke North Green Party press release, 10 April 1991: Cynog DaWs papers (National Library of Wales PCD, 10). 21 It is signiWcant that Simon Hughes, MP, following the heavy defeat suVered by the Alliance in the 1987 general election, contemplated becoming a joint Liberal and Green Party candidate (see Porritt and Winner 1988: 75). 22 Interview with Cynog DaWs conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones.
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Nature and the State Apparatus Table 5.6. General election result for the Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire North constituency, 1992 Candidate
Votes
Cynog DaWs (Plaid Cymru/Green) Geraint Howells (Liberal Democrat) O. J. Williams (Conservative) John Davies (Labour)
16,020 (31.3%) 12,827 (25.1%) 12,718 (24.8%) 9,637 (18.8%)
recalled how he felt ‘just uncomplicated joy at the result’. More locally, Alun Williams, a Green Party activist stated during an interview that There was a tremendous sort of jubilation, right across Ceredigion in lots of ways. I remember . . . we had a huge great party after Cynog won and someone saying to me ‘do you know I’ve lived here 20 years and this is the kind of thing I’ve always dreamt of’, that sort of coming together of these ostensibly very diVerent cultures but diVerent cultures which actually had quite a lot in common that wasn’t previously recognised, really.23
Cynog DaWs subsequently took up his position as the Wrst Plaid Cymru/ Green Party MP. On arriving at the House of Commons, he took every opportunity to announce the fact that the Wrst Green Party candidate had been elected to the UK Parliament.24 He also contributed in more concrete terms to the development of green legislation. On 20 January 1995, he co-sponsored the Home Energy Conservation Bill, which became law on 8 June 1995 (Friends of the Earth 1995a,b). On 20 March 1996, after the dissolution of the Plaid/Green pact, Cynog DaWs introduced a Road TraYc Reduction Bill to the House of Commons (Friends of the Earth 1996b). Although the Bill stood no chance of becoming law, it provided a Wrm parliamentary precedent for the subsequent Liberal Democrat Bill of 13 November 1996, which became law on 21 March 1997 (Friends of the Earth 1996a, 1997). Not surprisingly, perhaps, in June 1993 Cynog DaWs won the Green Magazine award for best newcomer to Parliament. At one level, Cynog DaWs’s election to Parliament signalled a radical re-evaluation of the place of nature within the political sub-apparatus of the state. His policies ranged widely in terms of their scope and demonstrated an engagement with a holistic vision of ecological politics. A substantial document entitled Together: Building a Future, underlined the policy emphasis of the Plaid/Green partnership. The document’s themes included the Rio summit, equal opportunities for women, global consumption, the NHS, housing, devolution, agriculture, regional economic development, education, the Welsh language, and transport. Many of these policies were combined 23
Interview with Alun Williams conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones. 24 Draft of Cynog DaWs’s maiden speech to the House of Commons, 11 May 1992: Cynog DaWs papers (National Library of Wales PCD, 11–12).
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after the 1992 general election into a more coherent single publication entitled Towards a Green Welsh Future (Plaid Cymru and Green Party Ceredigion and Pembroke North 1993). Within these various themes, we witness an eVort to stay true to the ideals of a broad and all-encompassing ecological politics. But at the same time, it is possible to maintain that Cynog DaWs’ election as a joint Green Party and Plaid Cymru candidate actually illustrates the precariousness of nature’s representation within the politics of the UK state at this time. This point is made clearly by the fact that the election of the Wrst Green Party MP was dependent upon the concatenation of a range of contingent factors. The representation of ecological issues within the political sub-apparatus of the British state also suVered as a result of the Green Party’s status as a partner within a broader pact, whose other member was a party that emphasized the territorial politics associated with nationalism. Furthermore, there was a belief in some quarters that the Green Party was being asked to compromise its ecological vision in order to sustain its membership within the pact. Richard Bramhall, an opponent of the Ceredigion coalition, for instance, argued that Plaid Cymru policy ran contrary to Green Party policy, in that Plaid was committed to a traditional growth economy, road-building, the Maastricht Treaty, nuclear energy, blood sports, transport of live farm animals, and the Criminal Justice Act, and that it was opposed to a land value tax. In addition, Bramhall (1994) drew attention to the way in which Plaid Cymru’s linguistic and nationalist parochialness ran contrary to the Green Party’s more international and global ecological vision. Tellingly, the distrust of nationalist politics amongst certain sections of the Green Party, along with a belief that their ecological politics were being compromised as a result of their association with Plaid Cymru, led to the break-up of the pact between the two parties.25 By the time of the 1997 general election, Cynog DaWs stood—and was subsequently elected with an enlarged majority—as a Plaid Cymru candidate. No Green Party MPs have been elected to the UK Parliament since that short yet signiWcant period at the beginning of the 1990s. In this sense, the particular contingencies that were required in order to elect one MP to the UK Parliament, the turbulent relationship between the two parties within the pact, and their subsequent acrimonious split, we would argue, illustrate the inherent diYculties associated with representing nature within the political sub-apparatus of the UK state. Nature’s access to, and representation within, the political sub-apparatus of the UK state, it seems, is highly regulated and restricted. Established political parties, although keen to promote their environmental credentials, have been, at best, only half-hearted supporters of ecological concerns. Similarly, the UK Green Party has struggled to make much of an imprint on political debate within the UK’s various formal spaces of democracy. This does not mean that nature experiences the 25
For a discussion of the reasons behind this collapse, see Fowler and Jones (2005: 541–5).
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same diYculties in accessing the representational sub-apparatus of all states. The experience of Germany as the ‘green hare of Europe’, for instance, has demonstrated that certain states, particularly those with a form of proportional representation within their political sub-apparatus, are able to represent nature in a more meaningful and comprehensive manner.26 But for the foreseeable future, at least, it is likely that nature will be hard pressed to make its voice heard within the UK’s formal political arena and will have to make do with its place in the marginal spaces of ecological activism (Carter 2001).
Concluding comments This chapter has focused on the relationship between national natures and the modern state apparatus. From the 1970s onwards, there has been an attempt to incorporate nature into various sub-apparatuses of the state: with regard to the formation of regulatory agencies concerned with minimizing ecological risk; in the context of those aspects of the state apparatus involved in arbitrating between diVerent uses of nature; and with respect to the representation of national natures within the political sub-apparatus of the state. But while this process speaks of the growing extent of the association between nature and the state apparatus, it does not necessarily reXect a meaningful or far-reaching incorporation of ecological ideals into state bureaucracies. We have already seen, both in the case of the New Zealand RMA and in the Green Party’s limited electoral success in the UK, how ecological politics was muted—almost had to be muted—in order gain access to the state apparatus. Nature, conceived of in terms of a holistic ecological politics, has struggled to be represented within the apparatus of the state. In more philosophical terms, too, Latour has maintained that it is extremely diYcult for nature to be fully represented within state bureaucracies and politics. He has argued, for instance, that political ecology, while claiming that it seeks to give voice to nature, has based its practices and ideologies on a thoroughly humanized account of the natural world (Latour 1998: 228). While such a misconception of its own stated aim is political ecology’s main weakness, Latour maintains that its discussion of the mutual associations of nature and political forms can also be its overarching strength. Political ecology, thus re-conceived, can help to dissolve boundaries between the political and the ecological and, we would argue, bring forth a more productive imbrication of states and natures. This may well be a long-term aim of political ecology but, for the present, nature’s incorporation into the state apparatus takes place on highly uneven terms, being determined by the latter’s political priorities and limited ecological vision. 26 See the discussion in accessed 20 May 2005.
6 Between Laboratory and Leviathan: Technological Development and the Cyborg State Technology is not something humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world. (Gray 2002: 14) A technological society is one which takes technological change to be the model for political invention. (Barry 2001: 2)
To talk about technology when exploring the relationship between states and nature may seem paradoxical. The paradoxical nature of this assignment is twofold. First, many argue that to speak of the technological is to speak of the anti-political—here technology is understood not as something of the state, but as an external arena that can simultaneously be used by the government to verify its policies, or, if unchecked, undermine the governing capacities of politicians (Barry 2001: ch. 1). Others claim that technology is the antithesis of nature—if nature is the un-produced eternal substratum of existence, technology is a socio-cultural artefact, a fragment of produced nature and a mechanism for ecological transformation (Luke 1996). Despite this apparent conundrum, this chapter argues that technology provides a crucial basis upon which many of the interplays between the state and nature continue to be expressed. Within his recent book on the links between states, government, and technologies—Political Machines—Andrew Barry (2001: 9) suggests that we need to think of technologies in two related but distinct ways. He argues that our Wrst recourse when considering technologies is often to technological devices—or those labour-saving and labour-enhancing gadgets, tools, instruments, and gizmos that make new socio-economic practices possible and speed-up existing exercises (see also Harvey 2002). Secondly, Barry discerns a broader understanding of technology, which incorporates a wider set of procedures, rules, and calculations in and through which a technological device is animated and put to use. In this chapter we explore the technological devices and supporting technological infrastructures through which the contemporary politics of state– nature relations are being played out. We interpret the role of technology within state–nature relations in two main ways. First, we explore the ways in
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which various technologies have been synthesized with and within the state apparatuses in order to enhance governments’ capacities to manage nature. The role of technology in facilitating the governance of nature can be conceived of at a number of levels. It can, for example, be related to a Marxist reading of technologies as tools/machines deployed in the physical transformation of the natural world (Harvey 2002: 534). At another level, it could also be interpreted in relation to the role of technologies in providing the monitoring apparatuses and digital archives through which an increasing amount of knowledge about the natural world can be channelled, or ‘brought together’ within new ‘centres of calculation’ (Latour 1990; see also Law 1991). Technologies, however—particularly in relation to the ever-improving capacity of micro-processing devices—can also enable the increasingly elaborate replication and simulation of nature and an associated capacity to predict its regular transformation (see Kitchin and Dodge 2001). Secondly, we recognize how certain ‘technological zones’—including laboratories, cyberspaces, and trans-national technological ensembles—have threatened the capacities of the modern state to regulate the transformation of the natural world and to manage associated forms of ecological risk. In this sense, we recognize the capacity of new, and in particular experimental, technologies to both challenge the authority of states and to enable social interventions in nature to slip beyond the Welds of power associated with national governments. It is in this context that John Gray’s quote (2004: 14) with which we began this chapter seems most prescient, as we are forced to reconsider our instrumentalist assumptions about the human exploitation of nature and embrace the uncomfortable idea that technology may well be beyond political control. This chapter presents an analysis of the opportunities for, and diYculties of, governing nature within an inherently technological society. Technological innovations have enabled new forms of territorial power to be realized and heightened degrees of centralization to be achieved over the natural world on behalf of the state. At one and the same time, however, technological innovations have enabled the proliferation of a series of centres of ecological calculation to be produced and new territorial zones to be consolidated which lie at a distance from state apparatus and routinely transect the territorial borders of nations. In order to develop this particular perspective on state–nature relations, this chapter initially focuses on one site and one moment of state–nature imbroglios—the Warren Spring Laboratory in the UK. Established to act as the UK state’s centre for monitoring atmospheric environmental change, we explore how the Warren Spring Laboratory became increasingly plugged into real-time environmental changes in the UK through the elaboration of a complex national network of environmental monitoring technologies and procedures. Moreover, through an analysis of the historical emergence of the Warren Spring Laboratory, this chapter
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considers how the ecological data produced and marshalled through the use of this centralized scientiWc institution has facilitated increasingly complex territorial simulations of nature by the British state. These have, in turn, enabled new forms of state intervention within the ecologies of the UK. This particular moment of state–nature imbroglios is then contrasted with a detailed consideration of the Weldon–Stupak Bill in the US, an act of legislation that has been speciWcally designed to ban all forms of reproductive and therapeutic human cloning in the US. It represents an attempt by the US state to govern social interventions within microbiological natures, which could potentially be practised in a range of biotechnology laboratories throughout the US. Given our concern with the operations of scientiWc laboratories, analysis draws heavily on the insights of those writing on the politics of ‘technoscience’ (Hables-Gray 1996; Haraway 1989, 1991, 1997, 2004a; Martin 1998). Drawing on the Wgure of the cyborg—a cybernetic organism which fuses together the organic and technological, the body and the computer, nature and technology—we claim that signiWcant analytical purchase can be gained from understanding the state as a cyborg. Understood as a cyborg, we argue that the state can be analysed as a political body that is technologically fused with nature. In this context, it is possible to understand state–nature relations not simply as a process by which the state acts on nature, but as the contingent outcome of the technological networks that simultaneously make state power over nature possible, while persistently undermining the ability of the state to manage nature because of the complex ecological mutants (or monsters) produced by these technological networks.
Monitoring national nature and the Warren Spring Laboratory1 In 1974 the UK Department of the Environment (DoE) proclaimed that ‘the United Kingdom is probably one of the most intensively monitored industrial countries’ (DoE 1974: 4). This proud boast was actually made in the publication Monitoring of the Environment in the UK and came with a signiWcant caveat. It appeared that despite being the most heavily monitored state in the industrialized world (with regard to the environment), much of this eVort was going to waste: although there are many monitoring programmes in existence, these have been designed with little regard for how, taken together they can be used to provide a coherent picture of national trends. We are therefore proposing to strengthen the machinery for co-ordinating the programmes in diVerent sectors—to ensure that the data collected is in a compatible form. (DoE 1974: iii; emphasis added) 1 This section is based upon material gathered from the Royal Society’s Library (London) and the London Metropolitan Archives. We would like to thank these institutions for allowing us to access their records.
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The Monitoring of the Environment report was actually a response to three interrelated pressures. First, there was a growing concern in the UK with the precise consequences of industrial development on the quality of air, water, and land throughout the country. Secondly, there were mounting international pressures (especially following the UN Conference on the Human Environment, which was held in Stockholm in 1972) on individual countries to accurately monitor national environmental change, so that progress towards the abatement of environmental pollution could be more eVectively assessed. Finally, there was concern within British government at the time over the ability of the state’s environmental monitoring infrastructure to deliver accurate and internationally comparable data on ecological change. What interests us most about the Monitoring of the Environment report is how it embodied a crucial moment in the UK state’s emerging relationship with both nature and technology. The unusual level of environmental surveillance achieved up to 1974 was the product of a complex web of private laboratories, research councils, local authorities, water authorities, meteorological oYces, university departments, and factories, all dutifully providing information on environmental pollution to the state. The tension raised by the DoE’s report was that, despite this collective monitoring eVort, a lack of coordination between the diVerent branches of Britain’s environmental monitoring network meant that it was still impossible for the state to gather a centralized picture of environmental conditions for its territory. This section seeks to consider environmental monitoring in the UK both before and after 1974. In doing so we hope to reveal how the development of new technologies made nature and the environment more open to surveillance, but also how initial vagaries in the use and application of these technologies ultimately inhibited their utility by the state. In response to these problems, we then uncover the diVerent strategies which the British state deployed in order to ensure that environmental technologies better served the state administration.
Collecting environmental information in the UK It should perhaps come as little surprise, given its rapid and extensive industrialization during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that the UK should have a long historical concern with pollution and with the transformation of its natural environment. The Public Health and Alkali Acts, passed in 1848 and 1863, respectively, are amongst the Wrst forms of environmental legislation pertaining to pollution anywhere in the world. If these pieces of legislation represented a desire by the British state to combat the social eVects of environmental pollution, they were also key stimuli to the emergence of environmental monitoring systems in the UK, systems that were devoted to assessing the eYcacy of these Acts at improving environmental quality. Consequently, following London’s International Exhibition and Conference on Smoke Abatement—which was held in the
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Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington, in 1912 (London County Council 1925–6)—the Wrst systematic survey of air pollution in the UK began in 1914. This purportedly national survey was coordinated by the Committee for the Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution and carried out with the help of local authorities, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society, and the British Meteorological OYce (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972). While initially inhibited by the onset of the First World War, this Wrst attempt at a national programme of air pollution was followed gradually by a broader system of environmental monitoring programmes, which incorporated inland water, marine, and land-based pollution throughout the UK, and which all relied on a number of local bodies, factories, and charities supplying information to the Minister for Health. We would argue that environmental pollution monitoring is essentially an exercise devoted to surveying nature. This surveying of nature can be understood in two ways. First, the monitoring of environmental pollution involves detecting fragments of (changed) nature such as sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, or alkalis that occur in the environment. Secondly, environmental monitoring is premised on the principle that pollution denotes the unwanted or excessive concentration of certain chemicals or physical compounds within nature. In this context, the idea of pollution presupposes an unpolluted environment, which can sometimes be conceived of as a form of unchanged Wrst nature, or more likely, as a scientiWcally calibrated ‘natural state condition’. In the context of this broad understanding of environmental pollution monitoring, it is clear that early attempts to explore pollution levels in the UK were devoted to understanding the local levels of pollution that speciWc communities were experiencing (see also the discussion of the US Environmental Protection Agency in Chapter 5). The governmental use of municipal authorities (in particular local government and water boards) reXected a particular political logic or ‘mentality’ of government, which appears typical of the types of bio-political power that Foucault (1990) observed emerging in nineteenth-century Europe, to the extent that it sought to extend the control the state had over the totality of conditions required for the reproduction of human life.2 According to Foucault, the exercise of biopolitical power (or the power over life) was premised upon the collation of knowledge that could be used as the basis through which disciplinary networks could be mobilized to control social behaviour and ensure that the appropriate conditions for social reproduction were secured. While many strategies for bio-political power focused upon health care, policing, sexual morality, and housing reform, it is clear that by the end of the nineteenth century industrial capitalism in the UK necessitated a political concern with a new object of governmentality—the environment. The extension of 2 See also here Driver (1988), Flick (1980), and Osborne (1996) for more speciWc analyses of the politics of environmental health reform in nineteenth-century Britain.
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governmental concerns to include environmental pollution essentially reXects an expansion of the role of governmental technologies from a focus on a national population to the broader ecologies upon which that population depends—an ‘environmental governmentality’.3 In this sense, the emerging concern of the British state with environmental problems in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a logical step for a state concerned with the totality of conditions and practices upon which human life depends—what Foucault referred to as the ‘whole space of existence’ (see Luke 1999: 144). What is interesting about the emergence of pollution monitoring in earlytwentieth-century Britain is the way in which it exploited a technological apparatus of municipal service delivery, which had been established in the nineteenth century. In this context, pollution monitoring in the UK emerged out of a rhizome-like network of local centres, which used various forms of monitoring equipment, sampling sites, and scientiWc techniques to assess environmental pollution. The technologies used to monitor local pollution included factory-based dry-deposit Wlters, lead peroxide cylinders, volumetric sulphur dioxide apparatuses, and water chemical testing equipment used by sanitation authorities and water pumping stations (London County Council 1925–6). Written records of these samples were taken at and stored in a variety of local sites, inventories, and public records oYces. By the time of the Clean Air Act of 1956, the reach of local networks of technological monitoring for air pollution alone had become extensive. There were 193 sites testing daily smoke concentrations, 140 sites sampling daily sulphur dioxide concentrations, 993 sites devoted to gathering monthly observations of grit and dustfall, and a staggering 1,115 sites testing monthly rates of the reactions between atmospheric sulphur with lead dioxide (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972). While initially instigated through voluntary associations and committees, the extensive exercise of environmental data collection, which was facilitated through local monitoring centres, was gradually supported during the twentieth century by a series of statutory interventions by the state. Successive rounds of legislation included the Alkali Works Regulation Act 1906, the Clean Air Acts 1956 and 1968, the Public Health Acts 1926 and 1961, the Public Health (Recurring Nuisance) Act 1969, the Control of Pollution Act 1974, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and the Road TraYc Acts 1972 and 1974; all served to both extend the reach of environmental monitoring and to provide a legal context within which the knowledge about environmental pollution could be converted into a power to act on its perpetrators (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972). Early environmental legislation was also supported by some limited central coordination of monitoring activities carried out by the Department of ScientiWc and Industrial Research 3 For more on the notion of ‘environmental governmentality’ see Darier (1996) and Luke (1999).
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(London County Council 1925–6). The expanding Welds of surveillance provided by these Acts is illustrated best by the Control of Pollution Act and the Road TraYc Acts, which respectively enabled local authorities to demand emission inventories for all premises apart from private dwellings and empowered local police authorities to run roadside checks on vehicle emissions. In diVerent ways these acts of legislation generated the ‘power to act’ on environmental pollution data by establishing certain environmental standards as a legal requirement. What is most striking, given our previous discussions of bio-power, is that many of the environmental standards established by this legislation continued to be deWned in human terms. The anthropocentric nature of these environmental standards is captured well in the 1936 Public Health Act, which deWned environmental pollution as ‘any dust or eZuvia caused by any trade, business, manufacture or process and being prejudicial to the health of or a nuisance to the inhabitants of the district’ (DoE 1976: 1). The power to control pollution through local networks of pollution monitoring and enforcement in the UK remained fundamentally an issue of the ability to control the conditions of human life.
From local monitoring to national environmental surveying: the Warren Spring Laboratory and the politics of scientiWc praxis The concerns over the state of environmental monitoring in the UK raised in 1974 must, at least in part, be understood as a response to the changing sense of what the goals of ecological surveillance actually were. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there was clearly a changing governmental rationality towards environmental pollution. With growing international concern over the trans-boundary eVects of air and water pollution on global ecological systems, new political pressures emerged, which meant that states could no longer limit their monitoring of pollution to its localized human impacts but had to demonstrate national action towards global environmental protection. A DoE statement at the time expressed the concern that existing environmental technologies had been located and mobilized in such a way as to only really monitor the human environment: But the direct eVects of pollutants on human health, although important, are not the only things with which we must be concerned. Man [sic] is sustained by other species in his environment—by crop plants, domestic animals and Wsh, and by a myriad of species often small and inconspicuous, that renew the oxygen in the air and water, break down dead matter, recycle essential elements and are the base of ‘food chains’ leading to ourselves and our livestock. If there is signiWcant enough scale of pollution, man [sic] himself cannot escape hazard. We need to organise our monitoring system to detect and forestall threats to these other organisms also on which we depend. (DoE 1976: 4)
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was one of the Wrst state bodies to raise concerns about the ability of the UK pollution monitoring network to deal with new threats to nature. The Royal Commission was an
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independent standing body established to advise the Queen, the British government, and Parliament on all issues pertaining to environmental pollution.4 In its Wrst report, which was published in 1971, the Royal Commission made two critical observations: Wrst, it recognized that the most serious consequences of late industrial air pollution were global in scale; and secondly, and in a related context, it was highly critical of the fragmented and localized system of environmental pollution monitoring then in operation. It was particularly critical of the local network for air pollution monitoring, because while it was relatively eVective at controlling the municipal consequences of pollution, it was unable to provide a clear insight into Britain’s broader contribution towards global environmental issues. The pressure for a more integrated system of pollution monitoring was further increased following the UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972. As part of the Action Plan for the Human Environment and the related Earthwatch programme, the United Nations stressed the role of individual states in contributing to global power/knowledge concerning environmental pollution threats.5 In this context, it is clear that the upscaling of political concern from the eVects of pollution on human health to the broader health of environmental systems, required an up-scaling in the modes of state-based monitoring systems and technological apparatus. As we have already mentioned, the Wrst major government statement on the restructuring of Britain’s environmental monitoring apparatus was the DoE’s 1974 report, Monitoring of the Environment in the UK. GeoVrey RiYn, of the DoE, begins the publication by clearly establishing the links between eVective environmental monitoring and governmental power: Before we can plan an eVective programme to control or reduce pollution, we need to know what harmful substances are being put in to the environment where, in what quantities, and by whom. Environmental monitoring is therefore fundamental; it enables us to measure the extent to which pollution is actually occurring; it provides us with a guide to how eVective our controls are proving; it also indicates where greater eVort is needed. (DoE 1974: iii; emphasis in original)
The problem that DoE oYcials realized at the time, however, was that the where, what and whom of environmental pollution had shifted from being a question of which individual polluter was causing a local nuisance where, to a question of which countries were accelerating global environmental change, and to what extent. It is in this context that the DoE started to present environmental monitoring within a distinctly national context. From the early 1970s onwards, we consequently see a shift in the focus at the 4 For an eVective critical overview of the work of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, consult the work of Susan Owens (1994, 1999, 2003). 5 These initiatives would eventually lead to the creation of a UN-based Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS). This initiative was further supplemented in Europe by the formation of a European Chemical Data Information Network.
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technological apparatus of environmental monitoring from the local to the national. Now technologies and monitoring stations were to be choreographed to provide a new frame for national nature. The main barrier to the technological construction of a national picture of environmental pollution was the highly fragmented technological infrastructure that was in place. By technological infrastructure, we refer here to both the technological devices, Wlters, and stations that physically detect pollution and also to the procedures and practices of the diVerent monitoring stations and laboratories running these apparatuses. The disjointed nature of the monitoring infrastructure was revealed in a government statement at the time: It is evident that the monitoring activities now going on in the United Kingdom are fragmented, and have been designed for many diVerent purposes, the methods used even to monitor the same things, diVer from area to area and from laboratory to laboratory . . . There is no single, central point in the country with the duty of drawing all the information together and evaluating the national situation. As a result, we have less coherent idea of what is happening than the total scale of the eVort might suggest. (DoE 1974: 4)
The variations that existed in the UK regarding the techniques used to monitor pollution are symptomatic of what anthropologists of science know as the ‘laboratory eVect’,6 which simply acknowledges that despite the apparent objectivity of scientiWc results, the practices and procedures used by scientists vary greatly between laboratories (Latour and Woolgar 1979). In response to the Wndings of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the British government consequently set out a vision of a centrally orchestrated network of monitoring sites utilizing standardized equipment and comparable techniques. The basis for this centrally administered and managed monitoring system would be a series of specialist ‘lead laboratories’, which would provide guidance on sampling techniques and ensure that standard monitoring technologies were used in local sampling sites. The paradigm for this integrated system of environmental monitoring laboratories was the National Survey of Air Pollution, 1961–1971 (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972). This survey was established in order to assess the impact of the 1956 Clean Air Act. Following the establishment of a Clean Air Working Group in 1959, it was decided by the government that a systematic body of national air pollution data was required so that the eYcacy of the Clean Air Act could be eVectively assessed.7 The National Survey of Air Pollution would be managed and coordinated by the government’s own Warren Spring Laboratory, the research centre for the Department of 6
See Barry (2001: 75–8) and his discussion of the politics surrounding the European Union’s attempts to monitor the quality of bathing water. 7 For further information and an analysis of the National Survey of Air Pollution, see Hall et al. (1975).
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Trade and Industry, which specialized in monitoring industrial air pollution. With its collection of air pollution experts and laboratory technicians, it was decided that the Warren Spring Laboratory would provide an ideal locus in and through which local data collection methods could be harmonized and recorded environmental data made compatible and comparable. Through the use of careful guidelines and on-site training, the Warren Spring Laboratory imposed national standards of practice and measurement on existing air monitoring stations. Previously there had been no strict guidelines either on the best techniques to use for monitoring air pollution, or on the amount of air monitoring that would constitute a signiWcant sample.8 In order to monitor national air, therefore, the Warren Spring Laboratory oVered theoretical and practical advice to local laboratories and monitoring stations. Central to this advice was the creation of a standard method of air monitoring, which could be replicated accurately throughout the country. In this context, the Warren Spring Laboratory (1972: 4–5) stated that in order to be nationally recognized ‘a sample of air [must be] drawn over a twenty-four hour period through a Wlter paper and the staining measured on a reXectometer’. This standard technique, supported by nationally supplied technological apparatus, was used to determine what become known as the ‘British Standard Measure of Air Pollution’ (measured in an equivalent amount of pollution in a cubic metre of air). In essence, the Warren Spring Laboratory had created a new chemistry for the study of British air quality. With this national standard in place, the Warren Spring Laboratory was able to abstract environmental data from local centres to produce the Wrst air-based environmental survey of the British atmosphere. This survey was based upon 552 sampling sites and stations located throughout the UK, with 352 in towns and conurbations and 200 in rural areas. The data collected from these sites were collated on the basis of a regional register (corresponding to the Registrar General’s Statistical Regions) and were stored on a computer tape at the Warren Spring Laboratory. While the partiality of the spatial sampling associated with the survey obviously meant that it did not represent an exact replication of the British atmosphere, it did instigate a system whereby the state could abstract environmental data on a territorial basis. The territorial basis of this abstraction process enabled the state to identify problem regions in terms of persistent forms of air pollution and, at a collective level, to present an overview of the UK’s own performance in reducing air pollution to other world states. For the Wrst time, a centrally harmonized network, or grid of technology, was providing a frame through which the state could understand its atmosphere. 8
See the by-law made under the 1926 Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act by Bradford City Council (London County Council 1925–6). This by-law was a local attempt to try and produce a quantitative measure of air pollution based partly on the duration of the pollution event. It was enacted because of the lack of national guidance on air pollution measurement.
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Following the purported success of the Warren Spring Laboratory’s survey of national air quality, the government wanted to develop an integrated network of environmental monitoring, which could cover all aspects of national nature. Utilizing the Warren Spring model, in 1974 the government began to develop a national environmental monitoring network, coordinated through a series of lead laboratories, which could give expert advice on equipment and methods and act as collection points for environmental data storage. In this context, it was decided that the Warren Spring Laboratory would retain control over air pollution monitoring; that the government’s Water Pollution Research Laboratory should be responsible for freshwater pollution; the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries would manage the monitoring of the marine environment; and land pollution would be overseen by the DoE’s Waste Disposal Division (DoE 1974: 15). In relation to the monitoring of water pollution, scientiWc practices were harmonized around the analytical methods that had already been prescribed by the Committee of the Director General of Water Engineering. It was further decided that this complex architecture of lead laboratories would be overseen by designated government management groups—one each for air, freshwater, marine, and land-based pollution—which would all feed their respective streams of environmental data to a National Focal Point, the Central Unit on Environmental Pollution at the DoE (see Figure 6.1). The complex hierarchy of monitoring stations, lead laboratories, and pollution management groups, which emerged in the UK during the mid-1970s, collectively represented a desire on behalf of the state to have continuous surveillance over all facets of the nation’s biosphere. This governmental strategy is reminiscent of what Andrew Barry (2001) has described as the creation of a ‘technological zone’, within which technological practice is made to correspond to political boundaries. The idea of a technological zone serves to remind us that the political utility of technology to the state is often dependent on the ability of technological devices and practices to be eVectively territorialized. Consequently, while it was, and continues to be, important for the UK to produce data on environmental change that is transferable to other, supranational monitoring programmes, it is the nation-state that continues to provide the technological and territorial frame within which nature is conceived of and delimited. In this instance, national nature is the product of a form of ‘smooth technological zone’, within which divergences in measurement techniques are reduced, and a more calculable set of sub-national (both local and regional) spaces emerge (Barry 2001: 43). The consequences of this technologically harmonized and nationally monitored system for the ways in which nature is understood and acted on by the state are profound. The territorial harmonization of technology is a prerequisite for the centralization of comparable social and ecological data. Fundamentally, the centralization of a national nature from a series of local ecological circumstances tends to produce a nature that is inherently
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Fig. 6.1.
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Integrated environmental monitoring in the UK.
simpliWed (Scott 1998: 30–3). This simpliWed nature is stripped of its ecological frame of reference to produce a Wgure, or datum, which can be entered into a spreadsheet cell or a statistical equation. The simpliWcation of nature, which national monitoring systems tends to produce, is captured well in the distinction that the DoE makes between environmental monitoring and environmental research: The term ‘monitoring’ is used both in a wide and a narrow sense. In the wider usage it means the repeated measurement of pollutant concentrations so that we can follow changes over a period of time. In its more restricted sense the term is applied to the regular measurement of pollutant levels, in relation to some standard, or in order to judge the eVectiveness of a system of regulation and control. In neither case does it encompass short-term studies which aim to identify relationships or causal factors: such studies are a kind of research. (DoE 1974: 3)
The distinction established here, between monitoring as the repeated measurement of one form of environmental output and research as an exercise in placing an environmental output within a broader ecological frame of
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reference, is critical. It serves to remind us that to talk of a nationally monitored nature should not be confused with comprehending the national environment as a complex and relational ecological system. Instead, national nature is better thought of as a series of ecological silos (concerned with air, freshwater, marine environments, and land), which are monitored in isolation from each other. Of course, this simpliWcation of nature into discrete silos is supported by the strong institutional barriers created by the British government’s lead laboratories and management groups. Such institutional barriers maximize the attention and specialist analysis that can be brought to bear on the environmental data produced, but tend to inhibit any analysis of the relational ecologies between diVerent environmental systems. The point is that while technologies provide humanity with the capacity to know nature in a range of new and dynamic ways, the state’s co-option of territorialized technologies as a means for the centralization of ecological knowledge fundamentally alters the ways in which technology can represent the natural world.
Atmospheric simulations: sampling national nature in real time During the late 1980s and early 1990s a series of environmental events and technological innovations occurred that were to have a signiWcant bearing on the form and function of Britain’s newly centralized environmental monitoring network. While these events aVected all aspects of the monitoring network, in this section we examine in greater detail the monitoring of the British atmosphere. During the late 1980s, prominent environmental campaign groups such as Friends of the Earth started to question both the extent and eVectiveness of the current environmental monitoring network (Barry 2001: 157). Friends of the Earth were concerned by the fact that Britain’s environmental monitoring capacity was much smaller than that of other European countries, like France and West Germany, and that where it did exist it was proving ineVective. By the early 1990s, further pressure had been placed on the network. Following severe smog pollution in London during the winter of 1991, the government’s own Chief Scientist to the DoE, D. J Fisk, questioned whether the estimated £5 million, which was being spent annually on environmental monitoring in the UK, was producing results that justiWed such a substantial investment.9 9 See the Independent on Sunday (17 October 1993) and Barry (2001: 157). In addition to questions being asked about the value of environmental monitoring in the UK, by 1992 the British government had agreed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This agreement, which has subsequently been reWned by the Kyoto Protocol, commits the British government not only to reducing the UK’s production of greenhouse gases (and in particular carbon dioxide), but also requires that the UK demonstrates this action through internationally validated environmental monitoring systems. Although the Kyoto agreement has not been ratiWed by all signatories, the UK government is committed to reducing its level of greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2008. In addition, the UK has voluntarily committed itself to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by 20% by 2010 (see DEFRA 2000).
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In response to these concerns, the 1990s witnessed the proliferation of new series of smart atmospheric technologies, which could provide regular, real-time readings of air quality. These new automated technologies were used to support and supersede the passive monitoring devices, which had been used as part of the Warren Spring Laboratory’s surveillance network. While these new automated technologies had been developed and implemented as early as 1972, it was the 1990s that really saw the spatial proliferation of automated atmospheric surveillance. The Warren Spring Laboratory’s network was consequently supplemented by the establishment of 116 automatic monitoring systems (collectively these are referred to as the Automatic Urban and Rural Network—or AURN) (see Figure 6.2). These automatic monitoring stations are usually located in self-contained and air-conditioned units, and are Wtted with standardized monitoring equipment that can detect a range of diVerent air-based chemicals. While administered locally, these monitoring stations have been established using central government standards to ensure that comparable data are produced on an hourly basis.10 Apart from maintenance, these stations are essentially people-free laboratories, sampling and analysing environmental data in real time and feeding results straight back to central government computers. Through such technological apparatuses, the state is now no longer dependent on local monitoring practices or laboratory techniques—each station is eVectively a miniWarren Spring!11 Despite the changing emphasis on pollution monitoring types and the use of newly automated sampling sites, what is most striking about the British government’s current air monitoring system are the ways in which environmental data are gathered, analysed, and used. There are now two main destinations for information on British air pollution–the national Air Quality Archive and the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. The Air Quality Archive receives digitized data in real time, directly from the automated air-monitoring stations located throughout the UK. These data are then assembled to produce an electronic archive of regional air quality, which can be accessed via a website.12 Government oYcials or concerned citizens can use this website to look at current air quality conditions or historical patterns of air quality in a given area. If the Air Quality Archive provides governments with tables of temporally arranged raw data collected from
10 All the government’s automated, non-automated, and carbon dioxide monitoring networks have either been designed, operated, or quality assured by NETCEN (the National Environment Technology Centre). 11 Supporting the automated data collection facilities are 1500 non-automatic centres, which collect air quality data on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. With regard to carbon dioxide, there are a staggering 723 sites—ranging from factories to government-run laboratories dedicated to collecting data on carbon dioxide emissions. 12 See accessed 12 September 2005.
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Fig. 6.2 Automated air quality monitoring sites in the UK, March 2004. Source: Reproduced with the permission of the Ordnance Survey. ß Crown Copyright. All rights reserved. Licence number 100008429.
monitoring stations, the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) provides statistical analyses of where pollution is coming from and how it is subsequently being distributed throughout the country. So while the Air Quality Archive centralizes atmospheric data, the NAEI territorializes these data. The use of archives and inventories for collecting and storing environmental data in Britain is an interesting governmental technology. It is interesting because it not only serves to provide an order
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to environmental history, but also facilitates the creation of an absolute, authoritative knowledge base upon which political action regarding the atmosphere can be justiWed.13 The production of environmental data in a digital form within automated monitoring sites has further implications for how those data can be used. At one level, the transformation of environmental data from stained Wlter papers to digital bits serves to remove the act of environmental assessment from human eyes and visual veriWcation. The digitization of environmental monitoring also serves to make data far more mobile and able to be rapidly moved between compatible computer-based devices and software. Suddenly it is not simply the technologies of environmental monitoring that are vital for how nature is (re)constructed, but the proliferated technologies of communication and electronic connection. As Baudrillard (1994) realized, by relocating the construction of nature from the laboratory to the miniaturized networks of globally compatible silicon chips and circuit boards, the potential for the continual simulation of the natural world, in isolation from its direct ecological settings, is greatly enhanced. It is in this context that the Air Quality Archive and the NAEI have facilitated the accelerated production of an increasingly complex pattern of ecological simulation in the UK. This process of simulation is particularly evident in the operational remit of the NAEI. Using the digitized environmental data produced within Britain’s extensive environmental monitoring network, NAEI statisticians can estimate the likely sources of air pollution and plot spatial maps of its likely territorial distribution, based upon complex modelling procedures (DEFRA 2001). The complex synthesis of digitized emissions data, with a cross-section of other data on population and industrial fuel consumption, have enabled the NAEI to produce ever more elaborate simulations of the British atmosphere. What is interesting, on spatial terms at least, is that while the data and statistical programs that are used to generate new representations of environmental pollution in the UK are cyberspatial in form, they continue to be presented in a distinctly territorial format (DEFRA 2001). Consequently, the NAEI converts nodal data into a territorial grid that provides national gradients of air pollution. It routinely produces maps of the distribution of benzene, carbon dioxide, ammonia, arsenic, lead, and sulphur dioxide, which are framed by a national grid. The point here is that despite the a-territorial nature of the digitized and synthesized natures produced by the NAEI and the Air Quality Archive, both institutions continue to simulate nature around national space. This process is akin to what Luke (1995) has described as the construction of ‘cybernations’—or nation-states which, while freed from their territorial moorings in Wrst and second nature, continue to express their (telemetric) territorial imaginary through various 13 See here in particular Foucault (2003: 143). Here Foucault reXects upon the birth and proliferation of catalogues, libraries, and archives at the end of the ‘classical age’ and the violence that these technologies cause towards alternative ways of telling history.
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expressions of ‘third natures’. Here we understand third natures (in contrast to Wrst and second natures) as those forms of nature that have become dislocated from the direct ecologies and human actions that produce them, and reside within the total simulations of cyberspace. The NAEI can now produce multiple versions and copies of a national (third) nature which, while having no original form, can be used to guide state policies or relayed to other international political authorities who continue to audit Britain’s environmental performance. The ‘automatic production of space’ instigated by the NAEI is seeing human beings (whether in the form of atmospheric scientists or laboratory technicians) being removed from the process by which nature is monitored.14 This of course has two implications: Wrst, it represents the ultimate standardization of state-based environmental data— within which the capacity for human error and interpretation is greatly diminished; secondly, however, it represents a new degree of abstraction of nature from human experience, as social understandings of nature are increasingly bounded up with and mediated through a series of mysterious computer codes and software packages. As we have witnessed in other chapters, the story of environmental monitoring in the UK is essentially a story of the struggles to frame a particularly national vision of nature. This struggle, through the heterogeneous relations of state laboratories, scientiWc techniques, computer programs, and statistical procedures, illustrates again that the production of state nature is not simply a deliberative act of sovereign power on behalf of the state, but a constant struggle within which the ability to construct and reconstruct nature is constantly changing. From the British state’s early use of a fragmented network of local monitoring equipment in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to its advanced statistical emulations of national nature in the twenty-Wrst century, its ability to construct and intervene in nature has been critically inXuenced by the technologies it has had at its disposal. The shifting political rationale, from the government of the socio-environmental conditions of the nineteenth-century city to the internationalist environmental governmentalities of the contemporary era, should not simply be interpreted as a product of changing political ideology, but of changing political technology. This is what Andrew Barry (2001: 2) means when he recognizes that ‘a technological society is a society which takes technical change to be the model for political intervention’.
In defence of human nature: ‘dark trends’ in the US Biotechnology Industry Organization If the case of environmental monitoring in the UK illustrates the diVerent ways in which the state can co-opt laboratory spaces and practices, the 14
We take the idea of the automatic production of space from Thrift and French (2003).
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second set of state–laboratory relations we want to consider in this chapter reveals how scientiWc procedures can often challenge the political and moral authority of the state over nature. Our story begins on the 22 July 2003 with a seemingly innocuous Appropriations Bill (HR 2799) being considered by the US Congress.15 The Appropriations Bill was concerned with the Xow of federal funding to key state agencies and was passing relatively smoothly until Congressman Dave Weldon, from Florida, took the Xoor. Congressman Weldon’s intervention set in motion a complex maelstrom of political antagonisms involving key agencies of the US government, the laboratory practices of bio-scientists, the White House, moral debates concerning human nature, and the powerful biotechnology industry. We argue that these debates—focusing as they do on complex legal and ethical debates concerning artiWcial interventions within human nature—reXect an increasingly prominent Wn de sie`cle entanglement of states and natures.
State, property, and microbiology: human cloning and the US Patent and Trademark OYce In order to understand the signiWcance of Dave Weldon’s intervention within this Commerce and State Appropriations Bill, it is important to reXect upon his long history of political opposition to the sciences and laboratory practices associated with human cloning. Dr David Weldon is a trained physician who, along with other prominent Republicans, has fought a long political battle against scientiWc developments in the Weld of human cloning research.16 This struggle culminated in 2001 in the Weldon–Stupak Bill (HR 534) to ban all forms of human cloning in the US.17 As the Executive OYce of the President (2003) stated, the fundamental aim of this bill was to ‘protect human life as the frontiers of science expanded’. While the bill has passed through the House of Representatives twice (in both 2001 and 2003), it has so far failed to gain the necessary support to pass through Senate and become law. It was in the context of the failed Weldon–Stupak Bill that Congressman Weldon used the Commerce and State Appropriations Bill of 22 July 2003 to pursue his concerns regarding human cloning. When Congressman Weldon took the Xoor on 22 July 2003, he did so to propose what is known as a limitation amendment.18 Weldon’s limitation amendment was addressed speciWcally at the US Patent and Trademark OYce, just one of the many state agencies whose funding was encompassed 15
HR 2799, the Commerce and State Appropriations Bill, FY 2004. For an intriguing analysis of the socio-cultural and political origins of the anti-abortion and anti-cloning movement in middle America, see Franks (2004). 17 HR 534, the Human Cloning Prohibition Bill 2001 and 2003. 18 See National Right to Life ‘Congress Bans Patents on Human Embryos—NRLC-backed Weldon Amendment survives BIO Attacks’, at accessed 22 November 2004. 16
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in the Commerce and State Appropriations Bills. The proposed amendment read: ‘none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this act may be used to issue patents on claims directed to or encompassing a human organism’.19 Essentially this amendment sought to restrict the viability of human cloning by the back door. By denying the biotechnology industry the ability to patent tissues and organisms developed during the process of human cloning, Weldon and his supporters hoped to remove the Wnancial incentives associated with human cloning. This initial attempt to create what would have eVectively been a de facto ban on human cloning—or at least a severe restriction on companies’ ability to carry out human cloning— appeared to catch the US biotechnology industry by surprise. The biotechnology sector did, however, eventually respond to the proposed amendment through the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).20 The ensuing debate between BIO and the anti-human-cloning lobby raised a series of crucial questions regarding the role of the state as the establisher and protector of property rights, the regulator of technological development, and the moral arbiter within discussions of human rights and natural law. As we saw in Chapter 4, the state’s role within the management of property relations has ensured that throughout recent history it has played a crucial role in regulating the spatial interactions between society and nature. The debates over human cloning instigated by the Weldon amendment caused the relationship between property, nature, and the state to be reconsidered; this time not in the spatial context of land, but in the context of the spaces and products of laboratories. The link between human cloning, the Weldon amendment, and proprietary relations stems from the fact that the US Patent and Trademark OYce—whose funding and activities were covered by the Commerce and State Appropriations Bill—is the government agency with responsibility for granting patent rights to individuals and companies throughout the US. Of course the essential function of a patent is to establish a system of ownership and concomitant property rights over a process, device, or object. The establishment of such a system of ownership, then, ensures that whenever a process, device, or object is reproduced the patent owner is legally entitled to some form of remuneration for the use of what is essentially their property. As we shall see, however, recent advancements in the science of human cloning have made the nature of this patented property relation legally and morally problematic. Before exploring the precise implications of the Weldon limitation amendment on state–nature relations in the US and the broader human cloning debate, it is important to establish a clear understanding of cloning science 19
HR 2799, op. cit.; see also National Right to Life, op cit. Letter dated 11 September 2003 from BIO President Carl. B Feldbaum to C. W. Young, Chairman, Committee on Appropriations, at accessed 21 June 2006. 20
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and its history. The term ‘clone’ was Wrst coined in 1963 by J.B.S. Haldane21 to refer to any form of direct biological/genetic copy of a plant, animal, or organism. Following signiWcant advances in genetic science and biotechnological techniques during the 1970s and 1980s, a range of diVerent organisms and animals have now been cloned. Perhaps the most celebrated events were the cloning of cattle in the mid-1980s by Danish scientist Steen Willadsen and the cloning of Dolly the sheep at the Roslyn Institute in Scotland in 1996. While the ethics of animal cloning were a matter of concern for many governments, it was only when the prospect of human cloning became a realistic scientiWc goal that state intervention within the cloning debate became prominent on the political agenda. Concerns over the moral implications of human cloning have been evident ever since the earliest developments in gene science made the prospect of cloning a human a distant, but nevertheless plausible, possibility.22 It was not, however, until the mid-to-late 1990s, as species similar in their genetic make-up to humans (like rhesus monkeys) were cloned, that states Wrst took oYcial measures to regulate and control human cloning within their borders. The gradual response of states to the perceived ethical threat of human cloning reXects a broader historical struggle between governments and experimental science described by Bruno Latour (1993: 15–32). According to Latour, the establishment of the modern laboratory in the seventeenth century represented the creation of new centres of truth and power lying beyond the formal apparatus of the state (see also Shapin and SchaVer 1985). As arenas of scientiWc, not political, consensus, laboratories have consistently challenged the power of the state and facilitated the production of a range of ‘fabricated objects’ over which states have had to struggle to establish ordered rule (Latour 1993: 21). It is now clear that with advances in the technologies and procedures of bioscience laboratories, cloned material is rapidly becoming the most diYcult fabricated object to govern in the contemporary world. In the context of the emerging possibility of human cloning, it remains unclear what sort of ethical position and political stance states should take on these issues. Consequently, following the advice of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, President Bill Clinton ordered a Wve-year moratorium in 1997, stopping the supply of federal funding to any form of human cloning research. The British government has, however, adopted a more moderate position, allowing, for example, the Wrst patent to be granted to the Geron Corporation for a cloned ‘early-stage’ human embryo in 2000. In many ways the dilemmas facing modern states concerning the complex morality of human cloning reXect a new front that has been emerging more 21 In a speech given in 1963, entitled ‘Biological possibilities for the human species of the next ten-thousand years’. 22 See in particular here David Rorvik’s book, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man (1978). This book sparked a widespread international debate about the rights and wrongs of human cloning.
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generally between society and nature. The political signiWcance of this new front has been expressed most poignantly in the publication of Bill McKibben’s book Enough: Genetic Engineering and the End of Human Nature (2004). The importance of this book lies not so much in what it says but more in what it represents. Fifteen years before its publication McKibben wrote a highly inXuential book entitled The End of Nature (1989). At the beginning of his contemporary critical analysis of genetic science, McKibben compares the two books: Fifteen years ago I wrote a book called The End of Nature. It dealt with the ways that one set of technologies—those that burn fossil fuels—were leading us into a new dangerous, and impoverished relationship with the planet we’d been born into. In a sense, this book follows from that one. It too posits that we stand at a threshold: if we aggressively pursue any or all of several new technologies now before us, we may alter our relationship not with the rest of nature but with ourselves. (McKibben 2004: ix)
McKibben’s two books reXect a shift from politico-ethical concerns with transformations of nature in the form of the physical environment to the transformation of nature in the form of the human self and body. The human body occupies a peculiar position within discussions of the politics of socionatural relations (Martin 1998). At one and the same time the body, from the beating of the heart to its broader metabolic systems, is all nature—that is, bodily functions are not things that we consciously control. Simultaneously, the body is the epicenter of the social, the Xeshy boundaries that mark human beings oV from the external realms of nature.23 It is, we argue, the fact that the human body is both a constant reminder of our inherent connection with nature, and our most immediate point of reference for deWning our humanness and diVerence from other facets of nature, that lies at the very heart of states’ contemporary moral uncertainties concerning the science of human cloning. The state has, of course, been instrumental in developing and implementing large-scale and systematic forms of medical intervention within human bodies. The medical intervention of states within bodies started on a large scale with national programmes of immunization delivered through schools and health clinics, and continues today through the state provision of numerous prescription drugs to assist with human fertility or to regulate a range of diVerent illnesses. At one level, state-sponsored medical prorgammes of immunization can be interpreted as a territorial strategy—focusing on the body—that seeks to mark out the realms of nature and humanity. The statesponsored technological intervention of medical sciences in the human body (through drugs or more overt technological apparatuses like pacemakers and cochlea implants) is not, however, necessarily a sinister, politically 23 For more on the cultural and scientiWc constructions of bodies as social entities, see the excellent work of Emily Martin (1991, 1992).
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orchestrated invasion of human biological space. Instead, it can be argued that the state-sponsored technologies of the body provide an ever-expanding set of technological contexts for the proliferation of cyborg forms. As Haraway (2004a) illustrates in her extensive writings, the Wgure of the cyborg—as a hybrid of cybernetic technology and living organism—reasserts the insoluble points of connection that make conceptualization of society and nature, or human and non-human, as separate entities increasingly implausible. To others, however, human cloning and related forms of genetic science involve an intervention within human nature that is of an altogether diVerent moral magnitude from that found in the socio-technological accoutrement of the cyborg. According to Habermas (2003: 17), then, contemporary debates concerning human cloning are, by deWnition, debates concerning the ability of humans not only to regulate their health and enhance their own bodily functions, but also to make a conscious intervention in the evolution of the human species. Drawing on the case of Germany, Habermas explains the ways in which the conscious control of human evolution oVered within cloning science presents certain foundational challenges to the operations of the state. He describes the struggles that have been waged by the German Science Foundation to repeal current legislation that prevents the scientiWc manipulation of embryos. The German Science Foundation argues that such legislation is in contravention of the state’s duty to foster and encourage scientiWc research that could greatly enhance human health and development (Haberms 2003: 17). Habermas points out, however, that to allow human intervention within embryonic development (and even inception) could compromise the state’s duty to secure freedom and equality among its subjects. In this context, then, it appears that selective human cloning and gene engineering could have two critical consequences for political communities: Wrst, knowledge of their hereditary conditioning could restrict the types of social choices and ways of life people decide to lead; and secondly, it seems likely that genetic enhancement (at least initially) will be limited to certain aZuent social groups, leading to the continued reproduction of social disadvantage—this time not through Wnancial inheritance but through enhanced mental capacities and bodily abilities. Now at one level, at least, such consequences illustrate the importance of some form of state intervention within the Weld of human cloning and human genetic engineering. But at another level, were the state to support cloning, it also brings into the question the historical function of the state as a collective institution at least notionally devoted to securing the freedom and equality of all its citizens. In this context, it appears that state intervention in cloning could be necessary in order to protect human freedoms, but in a way that Rousseau could never have imagined to have been necessary. Returning to Weldon’s controversial amendment, it is important to emphasize that this Bill was not a response to the potential emergence of
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genetically synthesized super-humans but to other developments within what is commonly referred to as the Weld of ‘therapeutic cloning’. The notion of therapeutic cloning is perhaps best understood in relationship to its counterpart, ‘reproductive cloning’. If reproductive cloning involves the production of a fully Xedged human being, therapeutic cloning involves the production of cloned organic eggs/embryos so that valuable stem cells can be removed and used for medical research and treatment. Stem cells are essentially very-early-stage cells, which have the capacity to be converted into other more specialist cell types. Because genetically compatible stem cells can be converted into a host of other cell types, they oVer a great potential for medical advances in the treatment of conditions as wide ranging as diabetes, brain diseases, and even cancer. The distinction that is routinely made by bio-scientists between reproductive cloning (as bad), and therapeutic cloning (as good), is for many deeply problematic. Writing for USA Today, Kenneth L. Connor, president of the Family Research Council, explains the problem: The distinction between ‘reproductive’ and ‘therapeutic’ cloning is utterly meaningless and intended to confuse American people. Cloning results in the creation of an embryo, a new human being. This is a scientiWc, biological fact. The only distinction here regards the intent of the researcher. The intention of therapeutic cloning is to create human embryos for the purpose of medical experimentation and, ultimately, to kill them. (Connor 2002)
In this context, although the Weldon amendment can be (and perhaps should be) interpreted as part of a broad attack on the morality of cloning, as a political act, it was designed at least in the short term to prevent the proliferation of therapeutic forms of cloning. It is in relation to discussions of therapeutic modes of cloning that the contemporary cloning debate in the US has become embroiled in the longerestablished and divisive debates surrounding abortion (Franks 2004: ch. 9). The links between therapeutic cloning and the abortion debate in the US can be clearly discerned in Kenneth L. Connor’s comments. The anti-abortion lobby in the US (as elsewhere in the world) is opposed to abortion because it argues that human life begins after conception and not after birth. In this context, the protection of the unborn pursued by the anti-abortion movement has clear implications within the Weld of therapeutic cloning. Just as the anti-abortion movement has protested against the termination of ‘unwanted’ foetuses, it is now becoming actively engaged in preventing what it describes as the ‘killing’ of early-stage foetuses for medical research. At the centre of this debate is the distinction between a cloned ‘egg’ and a cloned ‘embryo’. According to many working within the biotechnology industry, a cloned egg is a legitimate object for scientiWc research and its legitimacy stems from the fact that it is not yet human. For many in the now heavily intertwined anticloning and anti-abortion lobby, any egg or tissue with the capacity to produce human life is an embryo, and as such is not an object for any form
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of scientiWc exploitation. The debate surrounding therapeutic cloning is consequently important because it not only addresses the rights and wrongs of terminating a pregnancy (as in the abortion debate—and the distinction between an embryo and a baby), but it also delves more deeply into the nature of human existence. The question of when an egg stops being an egg (and presumably part of nature), and becomes an embryonic human (arguably part of humanity), represents a critical biological and ideological moment—a moment upon which much of our modern world is structured, a moment when the division between nature and humanity takes eVect. The precise role that the state should play in arbitrating this contested time-line, between nature (egg) and humanity (embryo), is a highly divisive area of contemporary socio-technological debate. At one level, many on the political right in the US argue that the state should establish a clear sense of moral leadership on the issue—defending the rights of embryonic humanity and by deWnition guarding the socio-ecological boundary between civic society and nature, or the citizen subject and the non-human world.24 Others, largely within the strong biotechnology lobby, have argued that the state’s role in cloning should be to protect the freedoms associated with science and economic activity and to support cloning research in order to bolster the American economy. As with the issue of abortion,25 it is clear that while those who hold executive power (particularly in the White House)26 may be opposed to therapeutic cloning, the biotechnology industry has been able to gain support from other parts of the state administration (particularly the Senate). While it still remains unclear precisely what, or how much, the US state can regulate cloning science, one thing that is clear is that the politics of microbiological nature invoked by cloning is a politics that cannot help but be about the state.
Patenting (almost) anything under the sun The main opposition to the Welden amendment was, as we have already mentioned, coordinated through the powerful BIO. When we look more closely at the concerns and arguments developed by the BIO, it becomes clear why the debate over therapeutic cloning is one that reaches to the heart of the modern state. The BIO was established in 1993 in order to provide 24 See here Whatmore’s (2002: ch. 7) analysis of the construction of human ethical communities (often within the state) and the associated exclusion of nature from designation as an ‘ethical subject’. 25 See here President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Personhood Proclamation’ (made on 14 January 1988) in which he opposed abortion and discussed the rights of all humans to life. This proclamation reXected the President’s own inability to alter the legislation governing abortion, but his desire nevertheless to provide moral leadership on the issue. 26 See here the Executive OYce of the President’s ‘Statement of Administration Policy’ (26 February 2003) in which President Bush oVers his support for the Weldon–Stupak Bill (HR 534).
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a political voice for both small and large biotechnology outlets. It now represents some 503 biotechnology Wrms and has brought the activities of the Industrial Biotechnology Association and the Association of Biotechnology Companies together within one organizational framework.27 Its stated role is to work with/lobby Congress and the Food and Drug Administration on issues relating to the pricing of new drugs and the regulation of biotech research, and to help to shape public opinion on key bio-ethical issues.28 In the context of this stated mandate, on 11 September 2003, Carl B. Feldbaum, President of the BIO, wrote to the Chairman of the Committee on Appropriations to challenge Weldon’s proposed amendment to House Resolution 2799. In this letter, Feldbaum talked about the importance of preserving the economic dynamism of America’s biotechnology industry and complained about the wording of the Welden amendment. According to Feldbaum, the failure of the Weldon amendment to deWne what it meant by the term ‘human organism’ (a deWnitional conundrum that we have already seen lies at the heart of the modern division of society and nature) could unnecessarily jeopardize future medical research and development.29 To understand the concerns of BIO with the Weldon amendment more fully, it is important to reXect upon the role and functions of patents. According to Whatmore (2002: 60–1), patents are interesting ‘property devices’, which are becoming increasingly implicated in the problematic regulation of the boundary between the social and natural worlds. The BIO actually provides a useful deWnition of precisely what a patent is: A patent is an agreement between the government and an inventor whereby, in exchange for the inventor’s complete disclosure of the invention, the government gives the inventor the right to exclude others from using the invention in certain ways. Note that the property right provided in a patent is quite diVerent from what we typically think of when we own property. What is granted is not the right to make, use, oVer for sale, sell or import, but the right to stop others from making, using, oVering for sale, selling or importing the invention.30
As this deWnition reveals, patents are a form of proprietorial contract between innovators and the state. Unlike the other proprietorial functions of the state, however, patents are not concerned with the territorial defence of spatial forms, but with the protection of intellectual rights. The patent as a property device or technology is important because it embodies a form of state intervention that enables economic, technological, and scientiWc innovations to Xourish. The point is that according to classical economic theory, in order for the creative energies of a free-market economic system to be realized, the freedom of the market has to be curtailed. The curtailing of 27 28 29 30
See BIO’s website at accessed 2 December 2005. Ibid. Letter dated 11 September 2003 from BIO President Carl B. Feldbaum, op. cit. BIO at accessed 14 December 2004.
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economic freedoms is perhaps most clearly expressed in the formation of property, understood as a spatial entity or body of knowledge over which an individual can claim some form of ownership and expect to receive economic remuneration for its use. This is precisely why patents are so important to the US biotechnology industry. Without a legal device for protecting the knowledge rights surrounding a particular scientiWc product or development, the economic incentive for innovation is removed (this is often referred to as ‘the incentive to discover’). While protecting the economic rights of patentholders, however, the patent system also allows for the free Xow of information concerning the patent in order to assist in the process of continued scientiWc and technological advancement and research. It is in this context that patents lie at the heart of the free-market liberal ideals of American society. Given the centrality of patents to America’s economic way of life, it should perhaps come as little surprise to Wnd the principles of patenting ingrained within the state’s constitutional structure.31 Before the establishment of a federal constitution, patent procedures existed in the laws of many individual States. The federalized patent system is today predicated upon the American constitution.32 The centrality of the patent system to the American way of life was aYrmed in 1952 when the US Supreme Court declared that it was possible to patent ‘anything under the sun made by man [sic]’.33 This regularly cited mantra is important because it succinctly expresses what American law designates a patentable object to be. While the notion of ‘everything under the sun’ seems all-embracing, the caveat that patents should be ‘man-made’ provides an altogether more restrictive deWnition of what a patent is. To clarify what is meant by the term ‘man-made’, the Supreme Court stipulated that ‘any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title’.34 By establishing that only new or signiWcantly improved compositions of matter can be legally patented, it becomes clear that under US law the products of nature are beyond the realms of the patent, but it allows patents to be granted on matter that has somehow been removed from nature and re-constituted into a socially useful form. Since this critical legal statement of 1952, the question of what is and what is not a product of nature has been at the centre of the legal struggles over the patent system. In 1979, for example, the Court 31
BIO at accessed 14 December 2004. Article 1, section 8, clause 8. This clause of the Constitution reads: ‘To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries’ (quoted on the BIO wesbite at accessed 14 December 2004). 33 This often-used quote is actually taken from the Committee Papers associated with the 1952 Patent Act. 34 Title 35 USC [United States Code] 101. 32
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of Custom and Patent established that a biologically pure bacterial culture was patentable because it was not naturally occurring.35 Then in 1980, the landmark Diamond v. Chakrabarty case resulted in the US Supreme Court pronouncing that genetically engineered bacteria could be legally patented.36 The Diamond v. Chakrabarty case was particularly signiWcant in the context of contemporary biotechnological developments because it established for the Wrst time that living things (albeit in this instance bacteria) could be patented providing they had been modiWed from their natural form. Before this case living entities were considered to be un-patentable because they were direct products of nature. While problematic and often contested, it is clear that in the US patents were able to regulate the various legal, economic, and moral disputes surrounding scientiWc discoveries from the 1950s onwards. The power of patents to act as ordering devices for socio-economic and socio-ecological relations is now becoming increasingly undermined by the hybrid ‘boundary objects’ being produced within modern biotechnology laboratories. In many ways cloned stem cells embody classical boundary objects, marking as they do a legitimate biotechnology invention for some, or the very beginning of human life for others. The contemporary scientiWc capacity to produce (therapeutically) cloned stem sells is challenging the conventional governing mechanism that the US state has used to regulate its political economy and political ecology. Historically, human cloning would have been negated by the fact that as living beings humans are a part of nature. The relaxing of patenting legislation during the 1970s and 1980s, to allow for plant and animal material to be claimed as property, now means that the defence of the human as a potential object of patenting is predicated on the fact that humans are not of nature, but of society. The duplicitous use of ‘nature’ within patent law as both the home of humankind and the antithesis of social forms is not uncommon within legal discourse and practice.37 As Whatmore (2002: 97) points out, patents are essentially legal devices devoted to conWguring relationships between inventors (subjects/people) and objects (inventions). In this context, of course, patents are explicitly concerned with the separating out of society (understood as the intellectual force of inventiveness) and nature (designated as the inert surfaces upon which inventions take place) (see also Strathern 1998). When the boundaries between the intellectual subject and the object of property become blurred, as they do in the case of cloned stem cells, the ordering capacity of patents (and the state) is called into question. How, for instance, can a subject have rights of use over an invented object if that invented object is actually 35
BIO website at accessed 14 December 2004. Ibid. 37 For more on the changing use of discourses of nature within legal dispute see Delaney (2002). 36
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designated to be an embryonic subject, with the same inventive and emotional capacities as the inventor? It is in the light of this question that we begin to see that the problems of governing boundary objects like cloned stem cells are not merely a product of the liminal qualities of the object itself, but are also the result of the contradictions that such objects expose in the bureaucratic heritage of states. The division of power within the US state system between the executive (the White House), law-making (in Congress), and law-enforcement (the Supreme Court) has made the regulation of stem cell research diYcult. Consequently, while the White House and the House of Representatives have consistently opposed therapeutic cloning (as in HR 534), the Senate has so far failed to validate related House Resolutions. Other contradictions can be discerned in the constitution itself. Consequently, while the constitution and its various interpretations within case law support the patenting of living organic matter, some are already arguing that any form of human cloning would be in contravention of the 13th Amendment—prohibiting slavery (Weiss 2003: 4)! The case of therapeutic cloning and patenting legislation in the US illustrates the challenges that often confront state systems when faced by new laboratory-based interventions within the natural world. The control of microbiological interventions within nature is not something that can simply be achieved within liberal democracies by the arbitrary intervention of the executive state. Instead, the regulation of bioscience is dependent upon the precarious framing of micro-nature through a range of legal processes, moral proclamations, and funding restrictions. The framing of micro-nature through this heterogeneous ensemble of political devices, legal practices, and institutional forms emphasizes the contingencies of state–nature relations and the constant strategic calculations that constitute and constantly reconstitute this relationship. In relation to our story, the Weldon amendment was eventually attached to the Appropriations Bill and took eVect on 24 January 2004. It eVectively prevents the US Patent and Trademark OYce oVering patents on cloned stem cells. While oVering a temporary resolution to this ongoing battle over microbiological nature in the US, limitation amendments only apply to a single Wscal year, meaning that the BIO can once again begin its campaign for stem cell cloning. This is sure to mean that the political battle over human nature will continue in the US.38 What is also clear is that this is a battle that will continue to be fought within the bureaucracies and legal domains of the state. It is an inescapable moment of state-nature!
38 George W. Bush has threatened to use his veto powers if Congress decides to support embryonic stem cell research: see BBC News, ‘Bush would veto stem cell bill’, 20 May 2005 at accessed 12 June 2006.
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Conclusion In this chapter we have considered the impacts that technology has had on emerging forms of state–nature relations in the twentieth and twenty-Wrst centuries. Within these explorations we have seen how, when territorially marshalled, technological devices can greatly enhance a state’s ability to monitor and control the natural world. In the case of environmental monitoring in the UK, for example, we saw how the formation of new technological infrastructures has enabled government departments to become increasingly plugged into their territorial natures. The use of technology as an instrumental tool for state intervention in nature has created a new capacity to produce knowledge about changes in the natural world. As part of this process, however, the increasing use of digitized computer technologies and complex software codes within British environmental monitoring appears to be heightening the potential for humans to become increasingly isolated from the machinic processes by which ecological knowledge is now created. In the second case study, we observed how technological developments—especially those associated with experimental science and private laboratories—can challenge the authority of the state. In our discussions of the emergence of therapeutic cloning in the US, it was possible to discern how new technologies can produce hybrid objects—like a cloned human egg/ embryo—which destabilize the systems of socio-natural order through which states govern. What perhaps interests us most about the case of therapeutic cloning in the US is that the related focus on the relationship between a fertilized egg and a human embryo arguably represents the most important moment of all when it comes to socio-natural relations. The point at which a fertilized egg stops being an egg and becomes an embryo is to some the precise moment when humans cease to be a patentable part of nature and become part of political society. What is signiWcant about this crucial moment of socio-natural relations, in the context of this book, is that again it appears to be the state that is called upon to arbitrate on the socio-economic and ethical complexities of this situation. While we have not explicitly developed the idea of a cyborg state—which we mentioned at the opening of this chapter—within our discussions and case studies, to us the idea of the cyborg state is an intriguing one. It is intriguing at one level because of the ways it immediately draws attention to the imbrications of technology and nature within the acts of governing. But beyond this obvious association, the notion of the cyborg state also suggests a series of fascinating real and metaphorical ways in which we can think about the relationships between states, technology, and nature. For example, can the idea contained within Haraway’s idea of a cyborg or cybernetic command and control of biological processes be extended to include an analysis of how states program nature within their laws, plans, and proclamations? It is also important to consider whether the idea of a cyborg state could
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be taken more literally. With emerging technological infrastructures dedicated to monitoring and simulating the environment, are states not themselves becoming hard-wired into the natural world? The Wnal implication of the idea of the cyborg state is an awareness of the hybrids and boundary objects that state-sponsored technological interventions within nature are promoting. As we saw in the case of therapeutic cloning in the US, there is a real danger that the proliferation of new techno-natures could seriously undermine the governing capacity of states and create a new series of regulatory conundrums.
7 Exploring Post-National Natures: Nature in the Shadow of the State From the beginning of this book we have consistently emphasized that our multi-faceted understanding of states cannot be simplistically equated with a nationally scaled and territorially bound institution. Despite this stated aim, in many of the preceding chapters we have described a series of ways in which state natures have been produced at a national level. Whether it has been through water supply networks, national mapping and land-use surveys, nationalized pollution monitoring networks, or nationwide judicial frameworks, we have described how nature has been framed at a distinctly national scale. While exploring the national framing of nature we have seen how the national centralization of ecological knowledge and the territorial framing of the natural world have transformed the social experience, understanding, and ability to transform nature. A closer inspection of our descriptions of the nationalization of nature within the modern state, however, revels that the process of nationalization is never quite as national as it may seem. Attempts to produce a national picture or vision of nature are always based upon more localized practices and conventions than may be immediately apparent. It is our contention that attempts to manage and regulate nature through the multifarious processes of nationalization are best conceived of as the unfulWlled desire of numerous state regimes. This statement has two implications. First, it indicates that nationally based strategies for the control and regulation of nature are only one among a series of scales in and through which states can potentially manage nature. Secondly, it suggests that states could develop other (non-national) territorial strategies in their evolving historical relationships with the natural world. This Wnal chapter is devoted to exploring these alterative sites and moments of contemporary state–nature relations. We begin by considering the rise of sustainable cities as alterative (‘post-national’) territorial strategies in and through which states are attempting to manage contemporary social relations with nature. As subnational, decentralized territorial units, sustainable cities provide an interesting spatial and institutional perspective on contemporary manifestations of state nature. Drawing on the example of Australia’s Sustainable Cities Inquiry, we consider how states attempt to regulate nature through the control and administration of urban space. In the Wnal part of the chapter
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we move on to consider the emergence of global strategies of ecological management. Exploring the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the associated Kyoto Protocol, we consider the role of supra-national institutions like the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in mediating humanity’s relationship with planetary nature. Through our analysis of these diVerent forms of subnational, international, and global expressions of socio-environmental management, we claim that despite initial appearances, these strategies are still deeply inXuenced and structured by (national) state power. We argue that not only do such contemporary frames of socio-ecological interaction reXect the continuing historical production of state nature, but they are also characterized by an underlying and recalcitrant sense of nature as a national entity.
Engineering nature through the city: Australia’s Sustainable Cities Inquiry Cities, natures, and states In his book New State Spaces, Neil Brenner (2004) provides an intriguing analysis of the spatial constitution of the modern state. He explores the evolving geographies of state power in the contemporary era of globalization. Echoing arguments that have already been rehearsed in this book (see Chapters 2 and 6), Brenner discusses how the trans-national Xows associated with globalization have been used as a basis upon which to question—and in many cases to critically undermine—the purported spatial integrity and power of the state. Interestingly, however, while Brenner does argue that the state continues to play a crucial role in shaping modern political and economic life, he does not base his argument wholly on an attack of theories of globalization, but also on conceptualizations of the state itself. According to Brenner, the globalization debate has only been able to bring in to question the spatial prominence of the state because of prevailing understandings of the spatial parameters of the state, which are predicated upon a ‘static understanding of state territoriality as a Wxed, unchanging grid of national borders’ (Brenner 2004: 70). It is in response to such antiquated accounts of state territoriality and power that Brenner has sought to expose the geography of the modern state within a variety of new (integral) state spaces (see Chapter 4). According to Brenner, West European states have rescaled their territorial strategies from national programmes to policies that strategically favour the development of key city-regions. As key sub-units within global capitalism, Brenner argues that state intervention within subnational urban space has been vital for mobilizing the current social and economic goals of states. Although Brenner’s analysis focuses upon issues of
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social and economic development, in this section we want to argue that urban policies are becoming an increasingly important context within which states are intervening, and governing, the natural world. Our focus on the relationship between cities and nature may appear peculiar, given the historical form that urban–nature relations have taken. We believe that the apparent peculiarity of our focus stems from two factors: Wrst, the modern dichotomy that has been constructed between cities and nature; and secondly, the role of modern industrial cities in the exploitative transformation of the natural world. In the Wrst instance cities have long been constructed as the puriWed social spaces of modern civilization, which have been sealed oV from the violent corruptions of nature.1 Cities have in some senses become synonymous with progress, enlightenment, and civility, while the exurban spaces of nature have been characterized as backward, feral, and immoral. This ideological distinction between cities and nature has been supported by modern states in a variety of ways, ranging from laws governing the presence of animals on city streets (Philo 1995, 1998; Philo and Wilbert 2000), to Wnancial support for projects devoted to the urbanization of spaces of nature (Binde 1999). At a second level, however, a parallel set of ideological constructions and material relations have depicted urban–nature relations in a very diVerent way. Despite modern attempts to construct an ideological gulf between cities and nature, cities remain crucial industrial epicentres through which nature has been used, exploited, and transformed (see Keil and Graham 1999; Whitehead 2005). As key spatial hubs within the industrial transformation of the natural world, cities have been reviled within the environmental movement as dystopic centres of pollution, vice, and environmental greed.2 Modern states have played an important role in supporting these ideologies of urban nature. Through teams of medical experts, planners, and nascent sociologists, states have sought to address the socio-environmental problems of cities by reconnecting them to the healing powers of nature (Gandy 2002: ch. 2; Gottleib 1993: 55–9; Harvey 2003b; Swyngedouw and Kaika 2000). From the eighteenth century onwards, we consequently see the rapid proliferation of urban parkland, environmental reform programmes, and back-to-nature initiatives, all designed to improve the quality of urban life and the health and well-being of metropolitan residents. It is on the basis of these historical reXections that we claim that cities have provided crucial spatial contexts in and through which the state has sought to control and regulate socio-natural relations. In many ways the proclivity of states to use cities to govern nature has been given extra signiWcance in the contemporary world. The latest United Nations statistics suggest that although cities now provide a home for approximately half of our planet’s population, within one generation current urban populations will have 1
See here Binde (1999) for a particular historical and geographical example of this ideological process; see also Kaika (2005: ch. 2). 2 See Gottleib (1993: ch. 2) on the relationship between the environmental movement in the US and urban industrialism.
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doubled (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements 2001; see also Whitehead 2003). It is on the basis of Wgures such as these that states and international bodies like the UN are now focusing on cities as key hubs of post-millennial socio-economic relations with the natural world. It is after all cities that are consuming the majority of the world’s energy needs, cities that are the largest sources of atmospheric pollution, and cities that are the dominant consumers of water. Much has already been written on the role of cities as economic and Wnancial centres in and through which a new geography of globalization is being forged (see Brenner 2004). The use of the city as a spatial focus for contemporary state nature is perhaps expressed most clearly in the concept and practices of the sustainable city. The idea of the sustainable city Wnds its origins in the international discourses of sustainable development, which Wrst started to emerge in the 1970s. In essence, the idea of sustainable urban development takes the principle of a balance being established between social justice, economic growth, and environmental conservation, which is emphasized within the discourses of sustainable development, and applies it to urban space. While much has already been written on the emergence of sustainable urban development and its associated planning and policy regimes,3 little attention has been given to the role of the sustainable city as a governmental link between the state and nature. In order to explore the role of sustainable cities in the constitution of contemporary state–nature relations, the remainder of this section focuses on the development of a sustainable cities inquiry in Australia. As this section shows, attempts to govern nature through cities raises signiWcant questions concerning which natures should be framed by the state and the most appropriate tools to use in this political process.
Nature, metropolis, and state formation in Australia As an event, the launch of Australia’s Sustainable Cities Inquiry was nothing out of the ordinary. As the press release statement read: Melbourne—8 August 2003—The Federal Minister for the Environment, the Hon. Dr. David Kemp today released details of an Inquiry into the sustainability of Australian cities at the Sandhurst Club, Victoria’s only major integrated water recycling project, located at Skye . . . The Sustainable Cities 2025 Inquiry will examine how cities of the future can meet the social, environmental and economic needs of Australia.4
Despite its relatively innocuous beginning, two things interest us about Australia’s Sustainable Cities Inquiry (SCI). First, we are interested in the ways in which cities are being used to frame and construct a distinctively Australian 3
For an extensive overview of diVerent practical and philosophical interpretations of the sustainable city, see Girard et al. (2003). 4 Medialaunch, 2003 Sustainable Cities Inquiry Launched at Sandhurst Club Wednesday August 24, 105.
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socio-environmental future. Secondly, we are intrigued by how the SCI is being used to explore ways in which cities can be used as governmental tools to enable the federal government to order and regulate socio-natural interactions. Responsibility for the SCI was bequeathed to the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage of Australia’s Commonwealth government. This committee is part of the Parliament of Australia’s House of Representatives and is responsible for carrying out nationwide inquiries concerning matters of environment and heritage which are referred to it by the House of Representatives or a Minister of Government. Before moving on to consider the work of the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage, it is important to position the SCI within the broader context of the emerging historical relationship between Australian cities, nature, and the federal state. Australia has a particularly high concentration of people in a relatively small number of cities. In part this situation is a product of its urban colonial past,5 but it is also because of a complex range of issues relating to the speciWc timing of Australia’s urban-industrial revolution.6 The unusual concentration of people and resources in a relatively small number of Australian cities can be detected in a number of ways. By 1947, for example, 50.7 per cent of Australia’s total national population was located within state capitals alone (Burnley 1974: 3). If we move forward to 1971 we Wnd that 60.1 per cent of Australians were living in state capitals, while 85.6 per cent of the total population were living in metropolitan districts (Burnley 1974: 3). While recent surveys have revealed a steadying, and at times declining, concentration of Australians living in key metropolitan centres (Forster 2004: ch. 1), Australia continues to have one of the most urbanized populations in the world. As an usually metropolitan nation-state, cities have provided important points of contact for the emerging historical relations between colonial and post-colonial Australian society and Australian nature. Perhaps the Wrst point to make when discussing the history of urban–nature relations in Australia is the role of nature in guiding the location of Australian metropolitan settlements. While we do not wish to imply that nature determined the unusual locational geography of Australian cities, it is clear that particular climatic, hydrological, and geomorphological factors conspired to give Australia its distinctive coastal metropolitan belt (see Figure 7.1). In his famous analysis of Australian urbanization—Urban Development in Australia—Max Neutze (1977: 7–12) describes the role of geology, soils, topography, and natural vegetation in inhibiting the development of large inland 5
Australia’s urban heritage is intimately tied to its colonial history. Many of Australia’s major cities started their lives as either convict settlements under British colonial rule (Hobart, Brisbane, Sydney), or as centres of administration for the diVerent colonial states. The fact that early colonial centres in Australia held a monopoly on custodial and political services meant that they rapidly became hubs for socio-economic growth and expansion (see Statham 1989). 6 For a sophisticated review of the complex processes informing Australia’s own brand of urbanization and a detailed discussion of the historical development of speciWc Australian cities, see Neutze (1977) and Statham (1989). Among the key factors aVecting urbanization in Australia were patterns of immigration and the emergence of mechanized transport technologies.
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Fig. 7.1.
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Cities and territories in Australia.
cities in the nation. If nature played an important role in shaping the early geography of Australian urbanism, it was not long before these newly emerging cities started to shape their surrounding natural environments. The early expansion of many Australian cities was based upon the supply of agricultural goods from their pastoral hinterlands (Forster 2004: 1–10).7 The ready supply of pastoral products such as wool, livestock, and wheat saw Australian cities develop into centres of expertise within the processing and transformation of the produce of nature. According to Cronon (1991), agricultural cities (like Australia’s early colonial settlements) provide markets and a relative concentration of the expert skills and technology needed to transform agricultural products. Through large-scale investments in grain mills, slaughterhouses, and even lumberyards, agricultural cities become crucial spatial interfaces, or 7 Due to the relatively late timing of industrialization in Australia, the country has never really had a signiWcant subsistence agricultural sector. With no major peasant agricultural systems, Australian agriculture has always been geared towards commercial framing. It was in the socioeconomic context of the almost immediate emergence of commercial agriculture that Australia’s towns and cities developed as market places and spaces of exchange for agricultural goods (see here Neutze 1977: ch. 1).
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sites, within the social transformation of the natural world.8 Consequently, while apparently devoid of nature, Australian cities have since their inception been deeply embedded in the natural world. Much of Australia’s early metropolitan wealth was based upon the agricultural exploitation of its nonmetropolitan interior for large-scale pastoral activities. Furthermore, it is also clear that much of Australia’s early colonial wealth was based upon the urban transformation of nature. Beyond the role of cities as centres for the transformation and trade of agricultural produce, the work of Anderson (2003) reveals how urban districts were used to co-ordinate and harmonize agricultural practices. In her analysis of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales, Anderson (2003: 431–6) describes the role that urban-based agricultural societies had in promoting and coordinating agriculture in the Australian colonies. Agricultural societies provided an important link between state governments and local farmers as they oVered agricultural training and animal registration facilities. They also promoted agricultural shows and displays in metropolitan areas. The fundamental purpose of such urban exhibitions, according to Anderson, was ‘improvement through competition’—or a belief that by comparing agricultural produce and parading prize livestock colonial farmers would be inspired to follow the practices of the most successful agriculturalists. Beyond such practical goals, however, Anderson notices how the symbolic collection and exhibition of agricultural products and various acts of prize-giving tended to produce a celebratory and triumphal narrative of colonial agricultural success. In all of this, urban centres like Sydney played a crucial role, providing key centres within which diVuse agricultural communities could be brought together with scientists, planners, and politicians. Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new set of relationships with nature started to emerge in Australian cities. Consequently, following the gold rushes of the 1870s and 1890s, and large-scale manufacturing expansion around coalWeld areas in the 1920s, new urban centres started emerging, which focused on, or related to, extractive industries (Forster 2004: 5). Just as Sydney had emerged as a key agricultural centre, now other towns and cities, like Wollongong and Newcastle, were growing on the basis of a new industrial relationship with the natural world (Forster 2004: 5). These new cities, replete with their coal mines and iron and steel works, would provide the industrial building blocks for the emerging Australian state in the twentieth century, and set in motion a new set of socio-ecological relations based upon the expansionist economic logics of capitalism.
Federal interventions within urban nature Given the close historical associations between natures and cities in Australia, it is perhaps unsurprising that emerging federal state intervention within 8
See in particular Part II ‘Nature to Market’ (pp. 97–259), where Cronon describes the emerging historical relationship between Chicago and lumber, grain, and livestock.
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Australian cities has often been connected to a related desire to manage nature. With a few notable exceptions,9 the Wrst major planning interventions within Australian cities began in the interwar years.10 According to Forster (2004: 12), it was during this time that a new breed of town planners, architects, and designers started to become involved in the management of Australian urban space. SigniWcantly, these new planners and designers (including prominent Wgures like John Sluman and Charles Reade) were heavily inspired by the principles and ideals of the Garden City Movement, which had sprung to prominence in early-twentieth-century Britain (Freestone 1982).11 The basic Garden City principles adopted by urban planners and designers in Australia were that future metropolitan expansion should be more carefully integrated with the natural world. In this context, it was felt that rather than allowing unregulated urban expansion in key strategic cities, new urban settlements should be designed in greater harmony with nature, allowing for more green spaces in cities themselves, but also facilitating greater opportunities for metropolitan populations to visit their surrounding natural landscapes (Garnaut 2000). Following the end of the Second World War, the lofty ideals of a nation of Garden Cities operating in careful accord with the natural world would be shattered by the ensuing period of rapid industrial expansion and urbanization (see Alexander 2000). Following, and in part informing, Australia’s long economic boom during the 1950s and 1960s, its cities saw an historically unprecedented increase in their populations. From a collective urban population of four million people in 1947, Australian cities had nearly eight million inhabitants in 1961 (Forster 2004: 13). This growth in their population size was paralleled by the expanding spatial scope of the metropolitan areas in the post-war era. Following the classical pattern of Fordist urban development, Australian cities rapidly became sprawling, car-dependent metropolises (Forster 2004: 13). Morrison (2000) captures the spatial form of Australia’s Fordist cities best when he described them as ‘corridor cities’. The expansive spatial trajectory of Australia’s corridor cities meant that they had a radically diVerent relationship with the natural world from that envisaged in the interwar Garden Cities Movement. Suddenly, the expansion of cities was leading to the erosion of valuable natural assets at the urban fringe, while the pollution created by increased car dependence had a more diVuse impact upon environmental quality.
9
We are thinking particularly here of William Light’s famous plan for Adelaide in 1836. For an excellent overview of Australian urban planning history, see Hamnett and Freestone (2000). 11 The Garden City Movement was really galvanized by the writings and philosophies of Ebenezer Howard. Interestingly, Peter Hall (1996: 89) is quick to point out that Howard’s idea of a Garden City was far from unique or wholly original. It appears, for instance, that Howard himself had been heavily inXuences by Light’s vision for Adelaide in the nineteenth century. 10
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One of the most consistent and inXuential critics of post-war urban development in Australia was Max Neutze. As head of the Urban Research Unit at the Australian National University, Neutze was highly critical of the wastefulness and pollution-ridden conditions associated with many Australian cities.12 Crucially, in his critique of Australian urbanism, Neutze (1977: ch. 8) called for greater federal state involvement in urban planning and management.13 In many ways the writings and ideas of Neutze underpin many of the goals and desires of the contemporary SCI. Up until the Whitlam Labour government (of 1973–5), urban policies had been largely coordinated through state and local governments (see Forster 2004: 22).14 Given the emerging scale of the urban-environmental crisis facing Australia, however, it was felt by writers such as Neutze that urban issues had reached far beyond the remit of any one state or local government jurisdiction. It was because of this that the Whitlam administration created the federal Department of Urban and Regional Development and placed the governance of cities Wrmly back on the political agenda of the nation-state. In partnership with state and local government, this new department started to shape urban development through Wnancial inducements and the enforcement of existing town planning legislation. While representing a landmark moment within Australian federal involvement in urban spaces, the Department of Urban and Regional Development deployed a fairly conventional approach to the governance of cities. Utilizing land purchases, development orders, and Wnancial inducement mechanisms the department (in partnership with state authorities) sought to control urban–nature relations by manipulating metropolitan spatial expansion. While relatively successful in the short term, such forms of federal interventions were to prove ineVective at governing the types of urban–nature relations that became synonymous with Australian cities at the end of the twentieth century.
Governing cities of the future: Sustainable Cities 2025 It is important to position Australia’s contemporary SCI within the context of this longer history of urban–nature relations because it serves to illustrate 12
See Otago University, ‘Max Neutze 1934–2000 Urban Researcher and University Professor’ at accessed 11 November 2005. 13 Neutze envisaged a decentralized pattern of urban development, which would reduce car dependency in Australia and improve the general living conditions associated with urban areas. While he was primarily concerned with improving the social conditions of urban life (see Otago University, op cit.), his ideas would have a profound impact on the role of the federal government in managing urban–nature relations in Australia. 14 The main form of federal intervention in urban space before the early 1970s came through the Department of Post-war Reconstruction. Before the Whitlam government, federal intervention in urban policy was restricted to telephonic and postal services provisions and airport policies (Neutze 1977: 224).
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how and why contemporary forms of state intervention within urban–nature relations are so diVerent from their historical predecessors. As an assessment and investigation into how Australian cities can be made more (ecologically) sustainable, the SCI reXects two important moments within the history of state–nature relations in the country. First, the Inquiry recognizes a new set of relations between Australian cities and the natural world. While still appreciating the links between cities and their productive, agricultural hinterlands, the Inquiry reXects a growing realization that cities have a much broader set of relations with larger-scale natural systems, including the global atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and even the cryosphere. This moment of urban–nature relations is a product both of the expanding ‘ecological footprints’ of modern cities and an increasing social and scientiWc awareness of the links between urban development and global environmental change (see Girard et al. 2003: ch. 1). The second process reXected in the Inquiry is a growing awareness of the diVerent ways in which state intervention within urban space can shape both the global and local natural relations of Australian cities. Given the limited nature and impact of federal intervention within urban nature in the post-war era, the period leading up to and incorporating the SCI has seen an intensiWed regime of national state engagement within urban issues. In part this process began in 1993 when the Commonwealth government initiated the Australian Urban and Regional Policy Review and an associated Task Force on Urban Design (see Troy 1995). The Australian Urban and Regional Policy Review considered how a more coherent programme of federal intervention could be developed. The Task Force on Urban Design, meanwhile, considered the diVerent grounds upon which governmental intervention within urban relations could be realized. In many ways the SCI can be seen as a descendent of these initiatives. The Australian SCI ran during 2003–5. Having discussed the historical imbroglios of urban–nature relations and state relations in Australia, it is instructive to consider the objectives and remit of the Inquiry. The Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage describes its general purpose in the following terms: To identify current and future patterns of settlement, the sustainability issues associated with these settlement patterns, and how government policy might ensure that developed areas retain an Australian lifestyle without diminishing the future value of Australian eco-systems. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage 2003: 2)
These sentiments illustrate how the Sustainable Cities Inquiry reXects the latest expression within the long historical struggle between Australian cities and Australian nature. At the heart of this struggle is a desire to conserve Australian ecological heritage while not undermining the ‘Australian’s way of life’. As with any reference to national lifestyles, it is diYcult to ascertain within the literature and plans surrounding the Inquiry precisely what an
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Australian way of life is. Looking more closely through the various submissions to the Inquiry, however, it is possible to discern what this lifestyle might entail. Despite passing references to Aboriginal cultures and needs, it is clear that the Australian way of life prioritized within the Inquiry is distinctively white and metropolitan in its style and substance. It is a lifestyle that is tied into a range of Australian national myths regarding the openness and freedoms of Australian society (which is mirrored of course in the open, spatial expansiveness of the nation), which are associated with an entrepreneurial and industrious post-colonial culture. The conundrum the Inquiry consequently sought to address is how to preserve this supposedly distinctive set of cultural traditions, while also conserving a series of natural assets which, while often threatened by the expansionist logics of metropolitan life, are also an intrinsic part of Australia’s heritage. The SCI was established primarily to gather intelligence on behalf of the Commonwealth government as to how urban development in Australia could be made to be more socially and ecologically sustainable. In order to gather this intelligence the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage (2003) initially produced a discussion paper outlining the key issues facing Australian cities and setting out a series of questions regarding the future direction which urban development in the country should take. This paper was circulated to a range of diVerent interested parties—including urban planners, architects, engineers, conservationists, transport policymakers, and energy supply oYcers—who provided written submissions responding to its ideas and recommendations.15 This process was followed by a series of public hearings, which were held throughout Australia.16 These public hearings were chaired and led by members of the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage and provided a context within which a range of experts could be consulted and questioned on what they perceived to be the best strategies for achieving sustainable development in Australian cities. By locating these hearings within a range of diVerent Australian cities, the Standing Committee hoped to be able to exploit good practices within particular cities and thus promote them at a national level. In all 192 written submissions were received by the Inquiry and Wfteen public hearings convened. These hearings were supported by inspection visits on behalf of the Committee to diVerent urban projects in Australia and a series of ‘roundtable events’ in and though which discussions over the most appropriate strategies for sustainable urban development could be held (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia 2005: 24).
15
Electronic versions of the submissions are available online at: accessed 21 November 2005. 16 Full transcripts of these public hearings are available at: accessed 21 November 2005.
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The initial discussion paper outlined the speciWc objectives of the Inquiry. These were to consider: 1 the environmental and social impacts of sprawling urban development; 2 the major determinants of urban settlement patterns and desirable patterns of development for the growth of Australian cities; 3 a ‘blueprint’ for ecologically sustainable patterns of settlement, with particular reference to eco-eYciency and equity in the provision of services and infrastructure; 4 measures to reduce the environmental, social, and economic costs of continuing urban expansion; and 5 mechanisms for the Commonwealth to bring about urban development reform and promote ecologically sustainable patterns of settlement. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage 2003: 3) This broad set of objectives reveals the growing governmental ambitions of the Australian national state to order urban space. In contrast to the relatively limited forms of federal intervention within urban areas evident since the end of the Second World War, the federal state now appears to want to plan urban development in a much more holistic and integrated way. In light of these ambitions we argue that the SCI reXects a kind of mobile ‘centre of calculation’ through which the federal state is attempting to absorb a range of strategies, tools, and technologies that could be used to govern its metropolitan districts.
Cities in the Bush—re-planning biodiversity in the metropolis One of the main concerns of the SCI was the relationship between Australian cities and their surrounding environmental hinterlands. In relation to the coastal location of many of Australia’s major urban settlements, urban centres were understood in the Inquiry as key environmental interfaces between marine and coastal ecologies and bushland environments. While the particular role of coastal cities in contributing to sustainable development is described at length in the Wnal report of the Inquiry—Sustainable Cities (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia 2005), in this section we are primarily interested in discussions concerning cities and terrestrial/ bushland environments. Our focus on bushland issues stems from two factors: Wrst, that urban encroachment onto bushland is seen as one of the most pressing environmental issues within Australia; and secondly, the links between the Bush and a particular sense of Australian national (and natural) identity. In Australia, the Bush is synonymous with Australia’s unique natural heritage (Short 1991: 197–222), but as a term it can often be used in a very broad set of contexts. In this sense the Bush is often understood as
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remote wilderness spaces that occur at great distances from cities and civilization. However, within Australian state and federal policies bushland has a very speciWc meaning. In New South Wales, for example, the State Environmental Planning Policy deWnes Bush as ‘land on which there is vegetation which is either a remainder of the natural vegetation of the land or, if altered, is still representative of the structure and Xoristics of the natural vegetation’.17 In some instances bushland can be deWned beyond associated vegetation to include soils, rocks, and stones.18 When understood in these more speciWc terms, the Bush is perhaps best thought of as a remnant of Australia’s Wrst nature—or nature that exists in a state that has not been signiWcantly altered by human intervention. There are two important implications of understanding bushland as ecological remnants of Wrst nature. First, it alerts us to the role of the Bush within Australian national foundation legends and myths. At one level, it is important within the Australian imagination because of its association with a primordial ecological past. As the work of Kay SchaVer (1990), however, illustrates, the Bush is also an important part of the story of the Australian nation’s struggle against a harsh and often treacherous environment, and the victories of the bushman and the colonizer.19 The preservation of bushland on both counts appears important to the conservation of a very particular sense of Australian heritage. Secondly, this ‘residual’ deWnition means that bushland is not something that is necessarily located at a distance from large metropolitan centres. The large number of urban bushland preservation councils currently operating in Australia, for example, attests to the fact that these facets of residual, Wrst nature can exist either within or on the fringes of urban centres. It is precisely because of this often-close spatial association between bushlands and cities that the SCI explored how urban policy could be used as a means to protect, regulate, and conserve the particular cultural and ecological values associated with bushland areas. The nature of urban bushland relations in Australia was expressed most clearly by the Chief Executive of Engineers Australia at a public hearing in Canberra: Increasing population, the movement of people from the Bush to the coast and the recent property boom in Australia have all had impacts upon urban expansion.
17 Nature Conservancy Council New South Wales 2005 at: accessed 23 November 2005. 18 Ibid. 19 In this volume, SchaVer describes the construction of an Australia national identity that is deWned in relation to the ability to survive the adversities of nature. SigniWcantly, as SchaVer recognizes, this national identity is typically associated with the masculine stereotypes of the bushman—this, of course, tends to have a marginalizing inXuence on the role that women are ascribed in Australian cultural history.
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Australian cities are experiencing signiWcant new urban development and redevelopment in existing suburbs.20
The often unregulated suburban expansion of Australian cities is of course not an unusual feature of contemporary urbanization. In Australia, however, such forms of spatial expansion have been linked to the increasing erosion of peripheral bushlands, leaving fragments of Bush surviving within urban districts. The pernicious eVects of urban expansion on bushlands tend to be experienced in four main ways (see Nature Conservancy Council of New South Wales 1997: ch. 2): 1 Urban expansion can lead directly to Bush clearances, whereby remnant ecologies are deliberately removed to make way for new urban development. 2 Incremental urban expansion within limited belts can, while not leading to the complete destruction of Bush, undermine the ecological balance of a bushland system and weaken the integrity of the environment as a whole. 3 The consolidation, or inbuilding, of existing urban districts can remove fragments of Bush that have previously survived urban expansion. 4 A much overlooked dimension of the urban erosion of bushland is that of ‘Bush degradation’, which essentially results from the spillover eVects of urban development. These range from the impacts of stormwater drainage on bushland soil to the damage that urban-based chemical pollution can cause to the Xora and wildlife of the Bush. In addition to the value of bushland to the Australian national consciousness, the contemporary loss of Bush as part of the quartet of processes described above has been opposed for a variety of diVerent reasons. The primary argument made for the preservation of bushland tends to pertain to its role in preserving biodiversity. Accordingly, the aforementioned State Environmental Planning Policy (Bushland in Urban Areas)21 for New South Wales states: Remnant bushland areas can play an important part in the conservation of plant and animal species, particularly in maintaining representative samples of plant communities over their whole range. They provide permanent or temporary habitat for wildlife, particularly for birds. While their habitat value depends on the area’s size, location and general condition, numbers of small bushland areas linked together can act as wildlife corridors, allowing for the movement of many species, particularly non-Xying mammals. (Quoted in Nature Conservancy Council of New South Wales 1997: foreword)
In this sense, it is clear that in addition to embodying an important fragment of primordial nature, bushland also provides a crucial ecological context 20
Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005, Canberra (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 1. 21 SEPP 19.
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within which a range of natural objects and systems depend. In relation to the intrinsic biological value of the Bush, it is also argued that bushland can provide an important context for scientiWc research and education: Natural areas may be used as living laboratories for the study of subjects such as biology, zoology, ecology and biogeography. Some contain important geological formations. The existence of these areas within cities and towns is valuable for educational purposes since they are readily accessible to schools, universities and adult education centers. (Quoted in Nature Conservancy Council of New South Wales 1997: foreword)
As living laboratories, it is also clear that the in the long term bushlands could have signiWcant economic value within the development of Australian bioscience and genetic research. Given the value attributed to bushland in Australia, it should perhaps come as little surprise that a number of prominent Bush preservation groups (including Bush Forever and Save the Bush) now operate in the country. These groups and campaigns have been calling for more concerted state intervention in Bush conservation programmes. At present Australian bushland is regulated and controlled through a series of diVerent policies and acts of legislation. These policies include the National Strategy for the Conservation of Biological Diversity, the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979, and the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974. Given the link between bushland and urban areas, many campaign groups have been calling for national policies targeted more speciWcally at urban bushland. Where urban bushland policies do currently exist in Australia, they tend to be addressed at a state rather than a federal level. Prominent examples of state-led urban bushland initiatives include Perth’s Bush Forever Strategy and New South Wales’ Urban Bushland Committee. Many of these statebased Bush initiatives want greater federal involvement and guidance on urban bushland management. There are two main reasons for this. First, and at a practical level, federal state involvement in urban bushland policy is seen as important because of the federal ownership issues that surround many Bush areas. Secondly, the involvement of the federal state is believed to be particularly advantageous when urban bushland relations cross over and intersect state boundaries. It was in the light of these issues that the SCI sought to explore the diVerent ways in which the federal state could marshal urban bushland preservation policy at an all-Australian level. At a public hearing in Perth (Western Australia) on 31 March 2005, the SCI sought to explore the potential for urban-based bushland management through consultation with members of the Urban Bushland Council for Western Australia.22 The Inquiry’s focus on Western Australia stems from two factors: Wrst, 22 Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005, Perth (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005).
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Perth’s status as a biodiversity ‘hotspot’; and secondly, the prominent role of the Bush Forever campaign in the state. While the Inquiry was keen to learn the practices of bushland conservation in Perth, what most interests us about the discussion at the public hearing are the concerns that were raised between the issues of national heritage, biodiversity, and nature conservation. One representative of the Urban Bushland Council of Western Australia explained the importance of bushland in and around Perth in the following terms: We know that this region is biodiverse and rich because most of the species here—75 to 80 per cent of the plants that occur in this south-west region—do not occur anywhere else on the face of the earth. That means they are endemic to the region. There are some species endemic to the metropolitan region.23
Urban expansion in Perth and associated forms of Bush clearance are obviously a major threat to the area’s biological diversity and in extreme events could lead to species extinction events. It was in the context of the threat to the area’s unique biodiversity that the Urban Bushland Council for Western Australia, and the associated Bush Forever campaign, rose to national prominence in the Australia. In the Inquiry’s hearings into urban bushland management, however, the meaning and nature of biodiversity came under question. Following the presentation of the Urban Bushland Council for Western Australia’s submission to the Inquiry, a member of the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage, who had travelled to Perth, questioned the notion of biodiversity: I want to test two propositions. My observation is that on the eastern seaboard— Sydney, Melbourne and my home town of Geelong—there is an increase in vegetation in the urban area with the introduction of urban population and the introduction of trees . . . given that generally speaking there is more vegetation in an urban situation with the urban dweller, how do you respond to that situation.24
The point being made was that with the introduction of an increasingly diverse array of urban gardens, parkland areas, and woodlands, urban expansion was a cause of an increase in, not an erosion of, biodiversity. The underlying sentiment within this observation was the question of why the federal government should become involved in the management of urban biodiversity when all urban areas have intrinsic forms of biodiversity associated with them. In response, the Urban Bushland Council for Western Australia representatives reasserted that urban expansion had caused a loss of vegetation cover. Unperturbed, the federal government representative asked: What evidence have you got for that? If you look at the total urban situation, if you just Xy over it and have a look at the amount of vegetation there is there in terms of trees in backyards et cetera, and compare it with the former.25 23 Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005, Perth (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005). EH 44. 24 25 Ibid, EH 44. Ibid, EH 45.
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In these sentiments we see the relationship between urban space, the Bush, and biodiversity starting to be reconWgured. The issue is whether the aggregate increase in biological assets associated with the artiWcially generated ecological spaces of cities can act as a counter-balance to the loss of biodiversity associated with the metropolitan despoliation of bushland. In riposte, the Urban Bushland Council for Western Australia defended its interpretation of biodiversity: A lot of that [artiWcial urban biodiversity] is not original; a lot of that is introduced species, which require looking after. The original species looked after themselves here for millions and millions of years . . . in technical terms biodiversity has a very speciWc meaning . . . if people plant jarrah trees and tuarts, which grow naturally in this part of the world and are good to have in your garden, that is a good thing to do. But we are talking about the remnants of the original vegetation.26
The crucial thing to notice within these debates is that despite the argument that was made for the preservation of bushland because of its associated biodiversity, it is not biodiversity but the preservation of remnant ecologies that continues to inform Bush conservation in ecology. For example, it is possible to imagine the construction of a city—replete with zoological gardens and parks—that was far more biologically diverse than any piece of bushland. This city could, however, be built potentially anywhere in the world. But the preservation of bushland in Australia continues to be preWgured by a desire to preserve what is ecologically unique about in situ national nature. The desire to preserve original facets of nature in Australia involved the reclassiWcation of other natures in the Inquiry as unwanted weeds: When you bring new things into that a lot of them actually become environmental weeds. We now have 1,700 environmental weed species in Western Australia alone. They are becoming rampant; they are just exploding . . . So what started out as garden species and plant species that were brought in here in good faith have now become major problems in their own right.27
What interests us most about the debates that surround urban bushland preservation and biodiversity is their relationship to state intervention. Through the SCI, various urban bushland councils are invoking the Australian state as the key institution with responsibility for regulating the boundary between biodiversity and remnant ecologies, between precious facets of nature and weed species. In an urban context, of course, the boundary between original and second natures is particularly diYcult to recognize and police. But once again it is the institutional capacity and power of the state that marks it out as the body that can delimit and frame nature. This example, however, also serves to illustrate the inherent artiWciality of state natures. Ironically, it is the remnant ecologies of the Bush—with their 26
Ibid, EH 45.
27
Ibid, EH 46.
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self-sustaining capacities—that appear to require state protection and political intervention to sustain them.
Trying to catch the wind: re-engineering the Australian metropolis Although Australia’s SCI devoted signiWcant amounts of time and energy to considering the local ecological impacts of urban development (particularly in relation to bushland), there was a clear desire throughout the prolonged proceedings to understand the connection between Australian cities and broader regional and global environmental issues. At one meeting with Engineers Australia in Canberra, during the summer of 2004, the SCI articulated this broader concern with the ecologies of urban development in relation to the ‘ecological footprint’ of urban areas.28 The idea of the ecological footprint is instructive, suggesting as it does a desire on behalf of the Inquiry to trace the ways in which Australian cities aVect other environmental systems, often located at great distances from the urban areas themselves.29 According to the Inquiry, then, the ecological footprints of Australian metropolitan centres were now being felt throughout the whole of Australia—in relationship to their demands for precious water resources—and increasingly throughout the whole world—as the energy demands of Australian cities contributed to the processes of global warming. In relation to these concerns, the Inquiry looked at ways in which Australian cities could become more eYcient in their use of energy and natural resources. In keeping with the philosophies of sustainable urban development, it was clear that the Inquiry wanted to look into the most eVective ways of restructuring the whole urban space economy of cities. In many ways the holistic approach to the creation of a more eYcient city pursued by the Inquiry is a contemporary manifestation of the visions of non-wasteful cities promoted by Max Neutze in 1960s and 1970s Australia. There were, however, two crucial consequences of this desire for the holistic transformation of urban space: Wrst, the need to consult with the specialist engineers, designers, and architects who must rebuild such cities; and secondly, the need for federal state intervention in urban space in order to coordinate the broad range of policy areas that are entailed by a holistic approach to city planning. It was in the context of the perceived need for the radical restructuring of urban spaces that the Inquiry consulted Engineers Australia, a not-for-proWt organization responsible for the professional development of 79,000 engineers in Australia and the promotion of engineering excellence in the country. It was in consultation with representatives from Engineers Australia that we 28
Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 17 June 2004, Canberra (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 4. 29 For more on the idea of an ecological footprint, see Wackernagel and Rees (1996).
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see the vision of the holistically re-engineered city Wrst emerging. Drawing on the case of Melbourne’s 2030 Programme,30 Malcolm Palmer of Engineers Australia envisioned the sustainable city in the following way: I guess the reason we focused on Melbourne 2030 was that it was a good package in that it addressed a range of issues to do with sustainable urban development. For example the urban growth boundary—that is throwing a ring around Melbourne. It also talked about liveable communities, having various buildings in local communities that have all of the facilities, childcare, schools and housing . . . It also talked about local transport and the number of trips people make . . . Also sustainable building design and other ways people who are living in urban areas can contribute to sustainable development. In essence the package represented a holistic approach to sustainable development.31
The invocation of Melbourne’s radical 2030 urban development plan by Engineers Australia is instructive with regard to how we understand the reengineering of cities. The Wrst thing to notice within these comments is the clear link between urban re-engineering and spatial planning. At one level, the role of spatial planning in sustainable urban development pertains to the control of unregulated urban sprawl at the peripheries of cities. It is, of course, the spatial spread of cities that has been associated with the new energy-intensive city—with its dependence on automobiles for transporting people over ever longer distances to work and leisure (Hall 1998). But beyond the territorial control of urban expansion, spatial planning is also perceived to have a crucial role in the rational ordering of urban land use and functions. The tighter integration of urban life within medium-density developments is thought to be crucial to the achievement of more sustainable cities and the reduced ecological footprints of large conurbations. Stopping urban expansion, however, will not necessarily reduce urban energy consumption. Only, it is claimed, will the careful spatial integration of home, work, leisure, and service needs reduce the need for personal mobility within the city and prevent wasteful energy use. Of course, the holistic restructuring of urban space in this way requires signiWcant interventions on behalf of planning authorities, house-builders, and engineers. While perceived to be good for the environment, the SCI did recognize that this new planned intensiWcation of urban space would lead to signiWcant social resistance. Mr Kerr of the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage consequently noted: One of the issues that interests me is community resistance to intensiWcation. The phenomenon has occurred in many cities notwithstanding that, from an overall
30 Melbourne 2030 is an innovative planning vision developed to guide urban and regional growth in and around Melbourne using the principles of sustainable urban development. 31 Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 17 June 2004, Canberra (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 4.
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perspective, it is a highly desirable feature. People in local situations often are antagonistic to intensiWcation in their own near neighbourhood.32
These comments, of course, serve to remind us that within the construction of more sustainable cities a certain amount of ‘creative destruction’ must occur, which undermines the existing social and economic fabric of cities. It is in this context that the power of the state to negotiate metropolitan resistances to urban re-engineering becomes most apparent. What is also evident in the original quote from Engineers Australia is the importance not only of spatially re-ordering the city but also of redesigning the fabric of the city. The importance of urban design has been a prominent theme within Australian urban policy debates since the 1990s. In 1994, for example, the federal government commissioned an Urban Design Task Force to look into ways Australian cities could be designed in more eYcient but distinctively Australian ways. Following this Task Force, the federal government pronounced 2004 to be the ‘Year of the Built Environment’ and made A$168.5 million available to support projects that protected the built environment and contributed towards sustainable development.33 The association between good urban design and transforming social relations with nature is evident in the 1994 Report of the Urban Design Task Force: The quality of urban design matters . . . functionally for the eYcient and eVective working of the city; environmentally for the way it can minimise waste, energy and pollution. Ecologically sustainable design is about amplifying and sustaining the quality of life for people. To do so environmental design needs to cushion the environmental eVects of urban development. It can help to reduce heat islands, improve micro climates, prevent contamination of land, [and] protect water supplies. (Urban Design Task Force 1994: 1)
It is on these broad terms that the Sustainable Cities Inquiry explored urban design as a way of regulating urban–nature relations. Through consultation with engineers, designers, and architects, the Inquiry established that urban design could contribute to sustainability in two main ways. First, through the more eVective design and construction of new buildings it was hoped that energy demands could be minimized. In many hot Australian cities such design strategies focused on the best ways to ensure natural cooling. In this context, a representative from the Conservation Council of Western Australia suggested to the Inquiry that:
32 Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005, Perth (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 15. 33 Commonwealth Government of Australia, $168.5 million for Built Environment in 2004. Media Release on behalf of Hon Dr David Kemp, MP (Federal Minister for Environment and Heritage) (Canberra, 13 May 2003).
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We could have an urban environment where people are trying to do the right thing and not use air-conditioners unnecessarily—and that is often a comfort factor as well; I think it needs to be recognized that it is sometimes more comfortable to live in a home where there is satisfactory natural cooling rather than excessive use of airconditioners—but if neighbouring properties have their air-conditioning blasting away the noise would come into the home that was trying to capture the breezes.34
We Wnd the idea of designing cities and houses that eVectively ‘catch the breeze’ or harness natural sunlight fascinating. In the Wnal report of the Inquiry, entitled Sustainable Cities, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage set out how it intended to regulate the design of new urban buildings. Consequently, through a series of new energy ratings, building codes of practice, construction material guidelines, and mortgage incentives, the Australian state is quite literally trying to re-orientate its cities within nature (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia 2005: ch. 7). Secondly, the Inquiry also explored ways in which eYcient design could be incorporated into Australia’s existing urban fabric. The retroWtting of new energy eYciency devices and insulation materials onto buildings, in addition to new policies on energy prices, has seen the Australian government delve ever more deeply into the domestic sphere in its attempts to structure social relations with local and international environments (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia 2005: ch. 8). Our reXections on the unfolding history of urban–nature relations in Australia have been designed with two intentions in mind. First, they illustrate the ways in which the state can use a variety of sub-national territories—like sustainable cities—to frame and manage socio-natural relations. Secondly, they also show the often banal and highly subtle ways in which states can attempt to assert their inXuence over socio-natural relations. In the case of the sustainable city, then, we see how planning regulations, energy eYciency ratings, and building codes of practice can all be used to structure socio-natural relations. To us, the contemporary emergence of sustainable cities reXects a new territorial strategy in and through which states are attempting to regulate and frame nature through urban centres. In the case of Australia, the fact that sustainable cities continue to be constructed in the shadow of the state can be seen both in the desire to create cities that are ‘distinctively Australian’ and in the enduring recognition that is evident throughout the SCI that only the federal state, with its unique institutional capacity and spatial reach, can coordinate an eVective programme of sustainable urban development.
34 Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005, Perth (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 31.
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Globalizing nature and risk management in the modern state: the case of climate change In mid-November 2005 a group of UK Greenpeace activists unceremoniously dumped a truckload of coal outside Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister (The Economist 2005a). This classic act of detournement was actually an act of environmental protest against the British state’s policies on climate change. The Greenpeace protesters were essentially concerned that despite promises to reduce its contribution to global greenhouses gas emissions by 20 per cent (on its 1990 levels) by 2010, the government was not doing enough to avert the threats of global warming on behalf of its people (The Economist 2005a: 27). We are particularly interested in the form this Greenpeace action took because of the way it weaves together the complex scales and spaces within which contemporary state–nature relations are being negotiated. At one level, this was a very local act, involving the delivery of coal—with its highly symbolic link to both British industrial history and the production of carbon dioxide—to a street in London. The choice of Downing Street, however, as an arena for this action was highly symbolic, placing—in this case quite literally—the problem of climate change on the doorstep of the state. Finally, as a protest concerning climate change, Greenpeace was essentially raising awareness of the ways in which nature is increasingly being transformed at a global level, far beyond the jurisdiction of any one state. Focusing on the speciWc example of climate change, this Wnal case study considers the emerging role of states within the management of supranational/global natures. In doing so it seeks to address a paradox—that despite global warming being apparently beyond the framing capacities of nation-states, state regimes remain the key agents charged with tackling the threat of global warming.
Climate change and the globalization of nature Climate change is arguably the most talked about environmental process in the world today. What interests us most about climate change, and more speciWcally global warming, are the ambiguous relations that it exposes between states and natures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2001: 21) estimates that as a result of elevated (humaninduced) levels of greenhouses gases in the earth’s atmosphere, by the year 2100 global temperatures will have increased on average by between 1.2 and 5.8 degrees Celsius (depending on the relative stabilization of greenhouse gas emissions over this time period). In their recent ‘synthesis’ report the IPCC summarized the situation in the following terms: The Earth’s climate system has demonstrably changed on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era, with some of these changes attributable to human
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activities. Human activities have increased the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and aerosols since the pre-industrial era. The atmospheric concentrations of key anthropogenic greenhouse gases (i.e., carbon dioxide (CO2 ), methane (CH4 ), nitrous oxide (N2 O), and ozone (O3 ) ) reached their highest recorded levels in the 1990s, primarily due to the combustion of fossil fuels, agriculture, and land-use changes. (IPCC 2001: 4)
While the IPCC’s estimates and the precise link between global warming and anthropogenic pollution are hotly contested (Lomborg 2004: 264), if they are true, these observations reXect what McKibben (2003: 99) famously described as an atmosphere that was no longer a facet of nature but a ‘human creation’. It is possible to trace a direct link between the ‘end of atmospheric nature’ described by McKibben and the state framing of nature within modern forms of industrial capitalism. Our concern, however, is with the emerging role of the state within the socio-political responses to the threats associated with climate change. One of the most poignant insights of Bill McKibben’s analysis of climate change is the scale of human intervention within nature that he describes. In his account of a ‘new atmosphere’ produced by humanity, McKibben inadvertently reveals one of the key consequences of climate change for state politics. The point is that climate change is not simply about the pollution of nature; it is about a systemic shift in how environmental systems operate at a global level. By deWnition these systemic operations of nature tend to operate and be controlled at spatial scales far beyond the remit of the narrow territoriality of states (Yearley 1996; Young 1994). It is because of the systemic, trans-national scale of climate change that global warming is routinely depicted as a phenomenon that is beyond the power of nationstates to manage and regulate. According to Held et al., then: It is only in the twentieth century, and the late twentieth century at that, that the environmental consequences of industrial production, combined with capitalist or state socialist economic organization have been widely and actively registered as environmental degradation and extended their spatial reach beyond the local or the national. The clearest examples of the decisive shift in the extensity and intensity of contemporary environmental problems are those of global warming and ozone depletion. (Held et al. 1999: 385)
But it is not just that the scales at which climate change operates have seen it apparently transcend the management capacities of states. The atmosphere is not a closed environmental system but provides a complex interface between the hydrosphere, biosphere, and cryosphere. Consequently, any change in atmospheric heat transfer (like that classically associated with climate change) is likely to have far-reaching implications for natural systems and objects, throughout the world. One of the most signiWcant shifts in the ways in which global nature operates, associated with climate change, relates to the earth’s hydrological cycle. The IPCC (2001: 6) have euphemistically referred
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to this process as the production of a ‘more active hydrological cycle’, but its consequences could be severe. One of the most immediate manifestations of this heightened hydrological activity is the melting of land and polar ice. In addition to disrupting fragile ecosystems and associated biodiversity, glacial melting could also increase the occurrence of local Xooding events and contribute to rising sea levels. While the precise links between global warming and sea level change are diYcult to gauge, the IPCC claim that in addition to glacial melt, the likely thermal expansion of the oceans could see sea levels rise between 9 and 88 cm between 1990 and 2100 (depending on greenhouse gas emissions) (IPCC 2001: 9). A Wnal aspect of the more active hydrological cycle associated with climate change is the likely increase in heavy precipitation events and extreme weather conditions, which will again contribute to the threat of Xooding (IPCC 2001: 6). Beyond the hydrosphere, many fear that climate change could have a signiWcant long-term impact on the earth’s biosphere resources. The WWF–Worldwide Fund for Nature (2000) claim that in regions that are particularly vulnerable to global warming, such as northern Russia and Canada, 70 per cent of the available habitat could be lost. When such habitat loss in arctic regions is combined with the increased incidence of coral bleaching in tropical latitudes, the WWF fear that climate change could lead to the extinction of a series of vulnerable species throughout the world. A Wnal area of public concern pertaining to climate change is the likely impacts that global warming could have on human health. While at one level the onset of milder winters in northern latitudes could be good for human health, there is a growing concern among health experts that climate change could have deleterious consequences for human well-being. The World Health Organization (2005), for example, has recently explored how climatic systems aVect the geographical spread of diseases such as malaria, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, and cholera. Consequently, in addition to its global scale of operation, it is also the complex of socio-biological and ecological problems associated with climate change that have led many to believe that it is beyond the power of nation-states to avert and control.
Planetary government and the return of Hobbes Given the global complexities associated with global warming, there has been a concerted eVort to explore how climate change can be governed at a global scale. Following the incremental increases in global carbon dioxide levels and worldwide temperatures detected by scientists during the 1970s and 1980s, the Wrst signiWcant international action on climate change was taken at a meeting in 1985 held in Villach, Austria (O’Riordan and Ja¨ger 1996: 17). The Villach Conference was convened by the UN Environment Programme, the World Meteorological Organisation, and the International Council for Science in order to discuss the threat posed by climate change (World
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Meteorological Organisation 1986). Drawing together some of the leading atmospheric and environmental scientists from around the world, this conference ultimately led to the establishment of the IPCC in 1988. The goals of the IPCC are signiWcant in the context of our discussions in this chapter. As an independent collection of leading scientists, the IPCC was designed to monitor the nature and extent of climate change from a position beyond the narrow territorial interests of individual nation-states.35 It was also designed to try and forge a degree of international consensus and to prevent the climate change agenda being portrayed as a schema for global political action that only reXected the political interests of inXuential states. In essence, the IPCC embodied an attempt to create a global ‘epistemic community’, which could both monitor and interpret global warming (Haas 1992). The construction of the IPCC as an independent and international body reveals one of the ways in which responsibility for climate change has been ostensibly removed from the remit of individual nation-states—the traditional loci of environmental research and monitoring (see Chapter 6). The extensive research conducted by the IPCC has helped to clarify the threats posed by climate change and to attribute the process to anthropogenic sources of greenhouse gas. But despite the fact that the IPCC provided a postnational institutional context for the construction of environmental knowledge, it did not oVer a context within which international action on climate change could actually be instigated. The lack of apparent governing capacity at global level led to a growing concern within key environmental groups that a chaotic system of ecological exploitation could prevail within international space. This geo-environmental concern had really been emerging since the late 1960s and was expressed perhaps most famously (if in a slightly diVerent ecological context) in William Ophuls’s call for an ‘international state of nature’, which could eVectively manage the use and exploitation of global commons (1977: ch. 7). Ophuls’s call for a new system of planetary or world government to deal with global environmental threats reXects a peculiar upscaling of Hobbes’s justiWcation for state governments (see Chapter 2). But by the late 1980s, it was clear that no international state of nature was in existence. Attempts to govern climate change at a global level really began as part of the UN programme of research into sustainable development. Consequently, at one of the hearings instigated by the World Commission on Environment and Development (the organization that would eventually produce the Brundtland Report), political and scientiWc leaders came together to discussion climate change (and more broadly the ‘changing atmosphere’) (O’Riordan and Ja¨ger 1996: 18). This meeting was convened in the Canadian city of Toronto in 1988 and is synonymous with the ‘Toronto goal’—a call for developed world nations to reduce their levels of carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent (of 1987 levels by 2005) (O’Riordan and Ja¨ger 1996: 18). The 35
For a detailed discussion of the role and operation of the IPCC, see Skodvin (2000).
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struggle to achieve international action on global warming continued at the Second World Climate Conference, which was convened in 1990 (O’Riordan and Ja¨ger 1996: 19). Ultimately the research conducted by the IPCC, and the various international conferences held on climate change, led to the establishment of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee. This was given express responsibility for forging a Framework Convention on Climate Change, which would be signed at the culminating event of the UN’s sustainable development programme, the Rio Earth Summit (the UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in 1992 (O’Riordan and Ja¨ger 1996: 19). What interests us about the Framework Convention and the subsequent agreements on climate change is that while they represent attempts to tackle climate change at a global level, they have all been forged and indelibly framed by the politics and sovereignties of nation-states. If we consider the Framework Convention on Climate Change, for example, it is clear that its Wnal form and content were heavily shaped by the sovereign interests of key states. Consequently, given US suspicion over the Framework Convention’s likely impacts on the US economy, the convention eventually only proposed non-binding requirements on signatory states to reduce their production of certain greenhouse gases to 1990 levels (O’Riordan and Ja¨ger 1996: 19). Following the rather weak agreements on climate change agreed at Rio, the interests and concerns of diVerent nationstates have continued to shape and preWgure the international government of the atmosphere. Through the various meetings of the Conference of the Parties (a group established as part of the Framework Convention process to monitor international progress on climate change policy), the climate change debate has become synonymous with recalcitrant states. The Kyoto Protocol for example—which was established in order to create much stricter guidelines to the Framework Convention—is now synonymous with the initial unwillingness of large greenhouse-gas producers like Australia, Russia, and the US to commit to the agreement. The Delhi Declaration (forged at the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties) is now most remembered for the reluctance of large greenhouse-gas producers in the developing world (like China and India) to sacriWce their economic development in order to make speciWc commitments to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. These state-based tussles and tensions have continued to frame the construction of an international governing mechanism to ameliorate climate change. Even as we were writing this chapter, for instance, tensions were erupting at the eleventh Conference of the Parties (this time convened in Montreal) between so-called Annex 1 countries (who have ratiWed the Kyoto Protocol) and states that remain opposed to aspects of the Framework Convention process. These tensions culminated in Paul Martin (the Prime Minister of Canada) accusing so-called ‘reticent nations’ (that is, states that oppose the Kyoto Protocol, and in particular the US) of displaying a lack of global conscience. Our point is that all the tensions, intrigues, and accusations surrounding
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global climate change negotiations reveal that far from putting an end to the state framing of nature, attempts to generate international action on global warming have actually created an intensiWed arena of state inXuence within environmental policy-making.
The state and the management of contemporary ecological risk In many ways the story of international action on climate change reached its zenith in October 2004. It was at this time that the Russia Duma (Parliament) eventually ratiWed the Kyoto Protocol, enabling the agreement to come into force. The Russian government had stalled on the Kyoto Protocol because of its uncertainty over the eVects that signing up to such an agreement would have on its post-socialist economy. While the role of Russia in enabling the Kyoto Protocol to proceed again reveals the connections that exist between national politics and global natures, in this section we are concerned with the role of states within the delivery and administration of a ratiWed climate change convention. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide by speciWc amounts (based upon a 1990 baseline) by the period 2008–12. In establishing this requirement, however, it is clear that contemporary global action on climate change is not being administered by an international leviathan but by nation-states. It is individual nation-states that are consequently responsible for implementing the policies and campaigns through which greenhouse gas emissions are actually reduced. These policies have ranged from advertising campaigns designed to persuade people and industrialists to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to more stringent systems of taxes and levies. In addition to the development of policies for climate change abatement, however, nation-states are also being used as the basic units of assessment in and through which the eYcacy of the Kyoto Protocol is being assessed. As part of the Kyoto process, individual states are expected to compile annual inventory reports of their greenhouse gas emissions (see Table 7.1). These Wgures are partly produced through the complex technological and statistical processes that we described in Chapter 6, but they are in many ways diVerent from conventional forms of national environmental surveys. They are diVerent precisely because they tend to focus on gases like carbon dioxide, which are not pollutants at a local and national level. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant at a global aggregate level, a level at which it impacts upon the process of climate change and global warming. In this context, these national inventories of greenhouse gas emissions do not serve to frame a national state nature, but rather to frame the substances that overXow and partially escape the territorial control of states. The framing of overXows is recognized by Callon (1998; see also Chapter 1) as an important part of the process of political and economic framing, revealing as they do an increasing desire to understand and control the whole space of socio-ecological eVect generated within
Table 7.1.
Summary of changing levels of greenhouse gas emissions for Italy, 1990–2002 (tonnes)
Greenhouse gases
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
CO2 CH4 N2 0 HFCs PFCs SF6
430,636 38,320 39,924 351 1,808 333
430,496 38,971 41,164 355 1,423 356
429,475 37,824 40,614 359 799 358
424,251 38,030 40,871 355 631 370
417,251 38,038 39,828 482 355 416
446,660 38,284 41,025 671 337 601
438,858 38,212 40,775 450 243 683
443,122 38,471 42,010 755 252 729
452,984 38,328 41,838 1,181 270 605
460,272 38,466 42,877 1,452 258 405
467,548 38,051 42,995 2,005 346 493
472,005 37,145 43,000 2,759 452 795
471,402 35,853 43,005 3,561 414 738
Total
511,371
512,766
509,428
504,670
496,369
527,588
519,221
525,340
535,205
543,729
551,438
556,157
554,972
Note: CO2 levels estimated without allowance for land use, land-use change or forestry. Source: Based on United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2005); see http://www.unfccc.int.
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politico-economic decision-making. This state-based process of emissions framing produces a peculiar situation whereby an a territorial substance (in this case carbon dioxide or any greenhouse gas), which contributes to a change in the operation of natural systems at a post-territoriality scale, is conceived of, classiWed, and managed through its association with the persistent territorialities of nation-states. The calibration of greenhouse gases with nation-states has, of course, been reaYrmed by provisions within the Kyoto agreement, which allow for the possibility of trade or transfer of one state’s emissions with those of another territory. While the decision of certain states to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is a preliminary act of risk aversion, in many instances it is clear that some states are beginning to plan what to do if the Kyoto process fails to prevent the worst consequences of climate change. In many states, government departments and ministries are beginning to produce ‘risk management frameworks’. These seek to make the largely unknowable long-term consequences of climate change calculable. In doing so, they also suggest ways in which the state can insulate its citizens from some of the worst socio-ecological consequences of global warming. A brief look through the pages of one state’s risk management framework provides a fascinating insight into how the global threat of climate change is being framed and governmentalized by states. The British government’s The Impacts of Climate Change (DEFRA 2003) provides a detailed analysis of how Britain’s climate will itself change in the future (largely, it would seem, becoming warmer and wetter). Supplementing this report, the government’s UK Climate Change Impacts Programme provides a detailed regional analysis of the consequences of climate change. In the West Midlands region the report predicts: Increased demand for irrigation because of drier soils—possibly up by 23 per cent by the 2020s. Higher winter temperatures easing cold-weather problems for livestock. Power cables may suVer increased sagging because of hot summers. Some land could become unstable because of Xooding as rainfall patterns change. Warmer, drier summers could encourage more walking and cycling, for both leisure and work travel.36
In addition to these regional estimates, the Department of Health also predicts that heat-related deaths in the UK could rise by 2800 every year (cold-related deaths are likely to fall by 20,000 per annum, however), while malaria could return to the UK by 2050.37 In the context of these calculated risks, the government’s risk management framework describes the need for
36
DEFRA ‘How will climate change aVect your region?’ at: accessed 15 December 2005. 37 DEFRA ‘How will climate change aVect your organization?’ at: accessed 15 December 2005.
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new coastal and river Xood defence systems, greater investment in wildlife conservation, and the need for new health-care strategies. What interests us most about risk management frameworks for climate change is the way they once again emphasize the role of the state in being able to forecast and manage ecological risk. This management is, of course, not simply a question of actually taking action on averting climate change, but also depends on displaying competence in planning and thinking through the consequences of global warming. In this context, the juxtaposition of malaria infection with sagging electricity cables in the UK’s risk management framework serves not only to raise public awareness about the terrifying dangers of climate change (i.e. the arrival of malaria) but to illustrate the state’s institutional capacity to think of—and by deWnition control—some of the most mundane side-eVects of global warming (i.e. sagging electricity cables). The juxtaposition of the most dramatic and the most mundane aspects of climate change reXect what Ulrich Beck (1992b) has described as the ‘discursive management of risk’, which is routinely practised by large hazard bureaucracies like states and multinational corporations. The discursive management of risk is not so much about averting risk but of managing it politically. It is the use of such discursive strategies that is enabling states to take greater and greater responsibility for ecological risks that are more and more beyond their control. The various relationships that we have outlined between states and climate change reXect what Held et al. (1999: 396–9) have described as the ‘enmeshing’ of nation-states in global nature. The enmeshing of states within global environmental issues emphasizes how states are both used to implement and monitor globally sanctioned policies and agreements, but also how states can use international political forums to further their own environmental interests and values. The idea of national enmeshment also appears to imply that even within global environmental threats like global warming, it is nations who will ultimately experience its consequence, through losses of territory, agricultural productivity, or population (Held et al. 1999: 397). It appears that in this increasingly global era of ecological risk nation-states are utilizing a whole series of territorial and non-territorial strategies to try and frame and manage nature.
Conclusion: natures in the shadow of the state In a recent article on environmental governance, Harriet Bulkeley (2005) describes a new and bewildering array of scales that are now associated with the political management of nature. According to Bulkeley, while scales such as the city, the region, and the planet are becoming increasingly important contexts for environmental policy delivery, it is crucial not to think of these as isolated scalar platforms, but as networked sites involved in the multi-scalar
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governance of nature. Bulkeley’s point is that when studying contemporary environmental policy regimes we should neither privilege the national scale as the dominant site for ecological management, nor understand environmental governance as something that is practised exclusively by territorially bound institutions. In this chapter we have seen that an analysis of state nature need not be restricted to a consideration of the national territorial production of nature. Despite an historical tendency towards the nationalization of nature, states have always to a greater or lesser extend invoked a whole series of variously scaled territorial strategies and sites of centralization within the governance of nature. With an increasing awareness of the globalization of nature within the contemporary era, however, it appears that states have undertaken an intensiWed process of government rescaling in order to improve the eYcacy of political intervention within environmental relations. The emergence of sustainable cities and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change provide insights into the new scales associated with state– nature relations in the twenty-Wrst century. What is important to note about both these examples of state–nature relations is that while operating at spatial scales other than the national, they still incorporate aspects of the processes of centralization and territorialization that we have been describing throughout this volume. In the context of the SCI in Australia, for example, the Australian government is using cities as centralizing sites through which it can calculate and understand the socio-economic impact of the nation on nature. At the same time, the federal government is using the idea of a more compact and carefully planned sustainable city to territorially restructure socio-economic relations with the natural world. In relation to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (and the associated Kyoto Protocol) it is clear that certain nation-states are using the UN as a context in and through which to achieve an expanded (post-national) territorial consensus on climate change. Despite this goal, however, it is apparent that the international climate change process still relies heavily on the use of national frameworks of centralization and data gathering when it comes to monitoring and assessing progress. In addition to illustrating the diVerent scales in and through which state– nature relations are realized, the two case studies described in this chapter also reveal the importance of understanding the relationships between the diVerent local and global contexts of state–nature enmeshment and the national scale. In Australia, for example, it is clear that while operating at a metropolitan level, the SCI continues to be heavily inXuenced by national agendas. Consequently, whether it is in relation to discussions of the unique role of the federal government in delivering a national sustainable cities agenda, or the framing of this agenda by a desire to create cities that are ‘distinctively Australian’ and protect uniquely Australian natures (like the Bush), the nation-state is clearly present at the metropolitan scale. At the
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same time, it is diYcult to imagine any meaningful account of international action on climate change that could be delivered without a description of the competing sovereignties of national governments, which continue to shape this process. In this context, while we broadly agree with Bulkeley’s call for a more diverse scalar reading of governmental relations with the natural world, we also assert that this diversity of scales must continue to incorporate the national within its descriptions of contemporary environmental politics. It appears that even within our intensely rescaled global era nature continues to exist in the shadow of the state.
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Index
Abercrombie, Patrick 74 Aborigines 187 abortion 169–70 acid rain 15, 139 administration 3–4, 36–8, 67–8, 118, 119, see also bureaucracy Afghanistan 6 Africa 46, 47, 83 Agassiz, Louis 78 Agnew, John 88 agriculture 4, 99 Australia 182–3 cash-croppers 5 industrialized 29 land-use maps 96, 114–15, 116 legislation 15, 111–12 National Farm Survey 109–10 pesticides 123, 125 pristine states 57 soil management 131–3 state system 38 air quality 124–5, 128, 150–1, 152, 153, 155–7, 158, 159, 160 Air Quality Archive 160–1, 162 Akeley, Carl 82–3 Alba, Duke of 67 Amazonia 4–5 American Museum of Natural History, New York 17, 59, 75–6, 77–84, 85 Anarchism 28–33, 59 Anderson, Benedict 59 Anderson, K. 183 Anderson, Perry 118 Andrews, Roy Chapman 75 Angola 6 ANT (Actor Network Theory) 51–3 anti-abortion lobby 169 arbitration 121, 130–6 Arctic 200 Aristotle 27 AURN (Automatic Urban and Rural Network) 160–1
Australia 177, 185–97, 202, 207 autonomy 35, 40, 42, 48, 65–6 Baginski, Max 29 Bahro, Rudolf 39 Baigent, Elizabeth 92, 94, 96, 97 Bakunin, Mikhail 28 Barlow Commission (1940) 110 Barry, Andrew 147, 157, 163 Basque region, Spain 10 Baudrillard, Jean 59, 76, 77–8, 84, 162 Beck, Ulrich 3, 38–9, 206 Belgium 86 Berkman, Alexander 29 Berman, Marshall 20 Bickmore, Albert 78–9 BIO (Biotechnology Industry Organization) 165, 170–1, 174 biodiversity 120, 190–2, 200 biopolitical power 48–9, 83, 151 biosphere engineering 39 Blaikie, Piers 46 Board, Christopher 101 Bookchin, Murray 32–3 bourgeoisie 41, 43 Bramhall, Richard 145 Brazil, IBAMA 4–5 Brenner, Neil 88, 117, 178 Bretons 10 Brown, Michael 4 Bulkeley, Harriet 206–7, 208 bureaucracy 4–5, 35, 118, 122–36 Bureus, Andreas 94–5 Burma 6 bushland 188–97 cadastral mapping 91–7, 114–15, 116 Callon, Michel 14, 54, 203 Cambodia 6 capitalism 21, 54, 118 Australian 183 Marxist theory of 41, 43, 44, 45 socialization and 50–1
228
Index
car dependency 184 carbon dioxide emissions 200, 201, 202, 204 Carneiro, Robert 57 Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring 123 Castree, Noel 44–5 Celts 10 centralization 7, 15, 20, 21, 36, 53, 207 administration 67–8 ecological data 157–9 framing 55 land-use maps 91–116 state apparatus 117–46 state surveillance 109 technology and 148–74 CEQ (Council on Environmental Quality) 125 Chadwick, Edwin 70–1 Charles V, King of Spain 65, 67 cities 178–97, see also urbanization civil society 26, 44, 79, 118 Clark, Gordon and Dear, Michael 117 Clean Air Act (1956) (UK) 155 Clean Air Act (1970) (US) 124–5 climate change 120, 141, 198–208 Clinton, President Bill 166 cloning 39, 149, 164–74 coal 198 Colombia 6 Communist Manifesto 41 conXict commodities 5 Connor, Kenneth L. 169 conservation 83, 89, 111–12 Australian ecological heritage 186–97 lobby groups 73–4, 99–100, 159, 198 Conservative Party (UK) 138–9 corruption 5 Cosgrove, D. et al 113 Cosgrove, Denis 12 CPRE (Council for the Preservation of Rural England) 99 CPRW (Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales) 73–4 Cronon, William M. 88, 182 Crosby, Alfred 61 culture: cities and 187 Dutch 63–4
landscape and 9, 69, 72–3 Maori 132, 134–5 nature and 12 signs/symbolism 10 cyborg states 53–4, 162, 175–6 cyborgs 149, 168 DaWs, Cynog 140, 142, 143–4, 145 Daniels, S. 11 Darier, E´ric 49 data-gathering 36, 155–63, 207 Davies, John 73 DDT pesticide 123, 125 decentralization 29 Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Fe´lix 49–50, 54 Delhi Declaration (2002) 202 Democratic Party 122, 137 desertiWcation 46 digitization 162 dioramas 75–6, 82–3 disciplinary society 48 DoE (Department of the Environment) 149, 150, 153, 154, 157, 158 Driver, F. 41 droughts 46 DTI (Department of Trade and Industry) 156 dyke system 66, 67 Eastern Europe 68–9 Eco, Umberto 59, 76–7, 77, 78 ecological patriotism 8–9 economic: assets 5, 96 contracts 14 shift 99 wealth production 8 Ecuador 46 Egypt 6, 7–8 elections 141, 143–5 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 30, 31 energy management 7, 38, 194–5, 197 Engels, Friedrich 41 England 11, 69–70, see also United Kingdom
Index environment/environmentalism 32, 34 globalization 198–208 governmentality 49, 151–2 history 60 monitoring 149–63 nationalism and 68 protection 4–5, 122–9 research 158–9 risk 38–40, 120, 139, 148 state apparatus and 119, 136 statistics 15 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) 122–9, 151 eugenics 82 European elections 141 Evans, Eric 119 Evans, Gwynfor 72 Evans, Vincent 74 Faggot, Jacob 96 famine 38, 46 Feldbaum, Carl B. 171 FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) 3–4 feudalism 60 Finland 86 Fisk, D. J. 159 Xoods 3, 63, 205 food shortages 46 food supply 38, 108 Fordism 184 forestry management 29, 38, 131 Forster, C. 184 Foucault, Michel 13, 18, 50, 152 biopolitical power 47–9, 151 natural history museums 80–1 Framework Convention on Climate Change (UN) 202, 207 framing: national nature 117–46 nature 15, 54–5, 69–75, 80–1 overXows 203, 205 by the state 61–8 France 42, 86 Friends of the Earth 159 frontier thesis 11, 88
229
GA (Geographical Association) 101 Gandy, Matthew 119, 120 Garden City Movement 184 gardens 12 genetic modiWcation 15, 39 geopolitics 6–7 Germany 43, 86, 168 Giddens, Anthony 35–7, 48 GIS (geographical information systems) 16 global warming 138, 194, 198–208 globalization 24, 50, 84, 135, 137, 178, 198–200 Godwin, William 28, 29 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust 64 GoVman, E. 14 Goldman, Emma 28, 29 Gramsci, Antonio 44, 79, 118 Grant, Ulysses S. 78 Gray, John 148 Green Party 139–46 Green politics 137–9 greenhouse gas emissions 198–9, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204 Greenpeace 198 GruVudd, Pyrs 69 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 93 Habermas, J. 168 Habsburg empire 65–6, 67–8 Haldane, J. B. S. 166 Hall, Peter 110–11 Hannah, M. G. 104 Haraway, Donna 53, 77 cybernetic technology 168, 175 natural history museums 79, 81–2 visualization 105 Harvey, David 44 Hayes, Rutherford B. 78 Hazen, Susan B. 129 Hearst, William Randolph 77 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 41 Held, D. et al 199, 206 Hobbes, Thomas 25–7, 32, 34, 40, 201 Hollander, Gail 121, 136–7 households 48 human bodies 167–8
230
Index
hunting 61, 83 Hurricane Katrina (2005) 2–4 hydrological cycle 199–200 IBAMA (Brazilian environmental protection agency) 4–5 immunization 167 individual freedom 30–1 Indonesia 6 industrialization 199 competition 135 ecological damage and 34 pollution monitoring 150–2 risk society and 38–9 state infrastructures for 43 water supply and 8, 70 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 198–200, 201, 202 Israel 7 Italy, greenhouse gas emissions for 204 JeVerson, Thomas 30 Jessop, Bob 44 Jessup, Morris K. 79 Johnston, Ron 37, 120 Kain, J. P. and Baigent, E. 92, 95–6 Kemp, Dr David 180 Klare, M. 6 Koenigsberger, Helmut 66 Kropotkin, Peter 28, 29 Kunz, George 80 Kyoto Protocol 202, 203, 205 labour 41, 42 Labour Party 140 land classiWcation categories 103–4 land pollution management 157, 158, 159 land use: intensiWed human 61 mapping 86, 89–115 landscape 8–9, 89–90 nation-building and 11–12 national parks 113 nationalism and 69 survey 100–16
Lantma¨tare 94–7 Latour, Bruno 53 on modern laboratories 166 modern state/modern nature 19, 122, 146 political ecology 137 puriWcation/translation 51 Lefebvre, Henri 89, 98 legislation 43 environmental 124–5, 139, 150, 152–3, 191 green 144 immigration 82 land use 109 patent 173–4 planning 110–11 pollution 152 public health 119–20, 150, 152, 153 resource management 121, 129–36 technology 149 Lewis, J. 123 Liberia 6 Liverpool 72–5 Luke, Timothy 77, 81, 83, 162 LUS (Land Utilisation Survey) 98, 100–16 McCormick, J. 138, 139 McKibben, Bill 167, 199 Macnaghten, P. and Urry, J. 105 MacNeill, J. R. 60 Mann, Michael 35–6, 57 Maoris 132, 134–5 mapping 77, 86, 89–110 marine pollution 157, 158, 159 Martin, Paul 202 Marxism 35, 40–3, 46, 148 Matless, David 99, 111 Melbourne, Australia 195 Memon, P. A., and Gleeson, B. J. 135, 136 Middle East 7 militarism 94 Mill, Hugh Robert 101 mining 96–7, 136, 183 Mitchell, Timothy 59, 77 modernity 19, 20, 39–40, 51, 57–8, 93–4
Index morality 27–8, 164, 169 Morgan, Elystan 73 Morgan, J. Pierpont 80 Morgan, Reverend Dyfnallt 69 Morocco 6 Morris, Jan 8 Mosby, J. E. 107 Mother Earth journal 29–30 Murdoch, J. 52 myths 10–11, 18–19, 26 NAEI (National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory) 160–1, 162, 163 nanotechnology 39 nation-states 1, 10–11, 13 climate change policies 203 conservation 83 contestation and 68 cybernations 53–4, 162, 175–6 land use 86 natural history museums and 81 spatiality of 88–116 Westphalian model 50, see also states National Farm Survey 109–10 national natures 117–46 national parks 16, 83, 89, 112–15, 191 national security 7, 94, 95 National Trust (UK) 99 nationalism 10, 17, 59, 63–4, 68, 69–75 nationalization 6, 111, 177 natural disasters 2–4, 46, 63, 205 natural history museums 17, 59, 75–6, 77–84, 85 natural resources 6, 30 conXict over 5–6 contestation 70–5 exploitation of 4–5, 39, 83 legislation 43 management of 34, 37–8, 121, 129–36 Maoris and 134 mapping 90, 96 search for scarce 61 urban consumption of 180 nature: administration 34–8, 119 centralized knowledge 15–16
231
framing 15, 54–5, 61–8, 69–75, 80–1, 117–46 globalization of 198–200 Hobbes on 25–7 land and 86 Marxist view of 43 myths and 10–11, 18–19 neo-Marxist theories of 45 people’s estrangement from 29 simpliWcation of 157–8 society and 34–5, 166–8, 175 surveys 101, 104–7, 151 territorialization of 47 third 163 urbanism and 12, 178–88, 180–97, 188–94 uses of term 13, see also conservation; environmentalism nature reserves 47 nature-state relations see state-nature relations neo-Malthusians 46 neo-Marxism 44–5 neo-Weberians 35–6, 37, 48 Netherlands 58, 61–8, 86, 118 Neumann, Roderick 47, 114 Neutze, Max 185, 194 New Zealand 16, 121, 129–36 Nietzsche, Friedrich 30 Nigeria 6, 46 Nixon, President Richard 122, 123 nuclear power 39 O’Brien, Jay 46 OVe, Claus 119 oil 7, 46 Olwig, Kenneth 11–12 ontology 51, 53, 77 Ophuls, William 201 Osborn, H. F. 82 overXows 15, 203, 205 ozone depletion 198, 199 Paine, Thomas 30 Palmer, Malcolm 195 Papua New Guinea 6 Paris Commune (1870) 42
232
Index
Paris World Exhibition (1889) 77, 80 patents 164, 165, 171–3 Peet, Richard 46 Perth, Western Australia 191–2 pesticides 123, 125, 128 Philip II, King of Spain 65 Pickles, J. 91, 92–3 Plaid Cymru 69, 72 and Green Party 140, 142–5 planning: Garden City Movement 184 New Zealand 121, 129–36 regional 88 town and country 110–15, 129, 131, 136 urban 194–7 zones 16 polders 17 political ecology 46–7, 121–2, 135–46 political freedom 29–30 political identity 61–8, 93, 97, 116, 118 political suppression 105 politics 118, 121–2, 135–46, 170, 174 pollution 122, 124–5, 128, 139 anthropogenic 199 control 35 monitoring 150–63 urban 179, 180 Porritt, Jonathon 140, 141, 143–4 and Winner, D. 137 post-colonialism 46 Poulantzas, Nicos 44 power 26, 43, 44, 47–9, 50–1, 57, 83, 92–3, 151, see also states Preston, Douglas 79 private property 50, 89, 98, 99, 109–10 privatization 43 property rights 15, 42, 89, 165 Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 28 public health 8, 118, 119, 120, 150, 152, 167 climate change and 205 global warming 200 monitoring human environment 153 pesticides 123 urban 179 water supplies and 70–1
race 81–2 radical feminism 46 rainfall rates 70, 205 rainforests 4–5 Reade, Charles 184 Reclus, Elise´e 28 regulation 118, 138, 191 religion 21 Republican Party 122, 137, 164 Richards, John 60–1 RiYn, GeoVrey 154 risk management 3–4, 38–40, 139, 205–6 RMA (Resource Management Act) (1991) (NZ) 121, 129–36 road construction 131 Robbins, Paul 46 Roberts, Michael 95 Roberts, O. 74 Roosevelt, President Theodore 81–2 Roosevelt Sr., Theodore 80 Rose, N. and Miller, P. 23 Roslyn Institute, Scotland 166 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 27–8, 30, 32, 41, 168 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 153–4 Ruckelshaus, William D. 127–8 Russia, Kyoto Protocol 202, 203 Rwanda 6 Ryecroft, S. and Cosgrove, D. 104 SchaVer, Kay 189 Schama, Simon 61, 62–3, 64 SchoWeld, R. 130 schoolchildren volunteers (LUS) 102, 103, 104, 106, 107 Scott, J. C. 15, 37–8, 92, 104 Scott Committee 110, 111 Scouting movement 102 sea level rise 200 Second World War 108–10, 123 Shoard, Marion 113 Short, et al 109 Short, John Rennie 10 Sierra Leone 6 simulations/simulacra 75–84
Index Sluman, John 184 Smith, Neil 44, 45 smog 159 social contracts 28 socialization 49–50 socio-natural relations 34–5, 166–8, 175 soil management 131–3, 136 Soja, E. 19 Spain 10, 65–6 Stamp, Sir L. Dudley 87, 98, 100, 101–7, 108, 111, 112 state-nature relations 2, 12 Actor Network Theory 51–3 Anarchism 28–32 cities 180–97 consolidation 32, 58, 60–8, 84–5, 118, 148 contestation 58–9, 68–75, 84–5 cyborgs 53–4 early philosophical accounts of 24–8 Foucault’s theory of 47–51 Marxism 42–3 neo-Marxism 44–5 overXows 15 political ecologies of 46–7 pristine states 57 remembering 59–60 risk bureaucracies 38–40 simulacrum 59, 75–85 spatialities of 86–116, 178–9 technology and 147–74 state of nature 25–8, 30, 32, 34 state theory: critiques of 23–4 Marxist 40–3 neo-Marxism 44–5 strategic relational 44 Weberian 35, 39–40, 119 states 9–12, 12–13, 29 administrative 35–6, 48 and agriculture 109–10 apparatus of 117–46 arbitration role of 121, 130–6 cyborg 54, 162, 175–6 data collection 104 educational function of 79–80 framing nature 54–5
233
governmental 48 guardian of nature 34–8, 138 integral spaces 88–9 interacting with nature 12–17 laboratory metaphor 20–1 legitimate violence 43, 44 modern 18–19 pristine 57 property relations 89, 165 risk society and 39 and science 147–76 surveillance by 36, 101, 105, see also nation–states stem cell research 169, 173, 174 suburbanization 131, 190 Sudan 6, 46 surveillance 36, 101, 105, 149–63 sustainability 16, 51, 136, 138, 141, 177, 194–7, 201 Sweden 17, 93–7, 116 Swyngedouw, Erik 45 Symonds, Reverend H. H. 74 technology: agricultural 57 environmental monitoring 155–63 state-nature relations 147–76 water supply 71–2 zones of 157 territorialization 6, 7–8, 15, 16, 20, 21, 32, 88, 207 city-regions 178 framing 55 mapping 91 of nature 47, 91 overXows 203, 205 politics 69–75 reconWgured 50–1 state-nature relations 32, 58, 60–8, 84–5, 118, 148 state power and 53 technology 157–9 Thatcher, Margaret 138 therapeutic cloning 169–70, 173, 174, 175, 176 Thoreau, Henry David 28, 31 TiVany, Charles 80
234
Index
Tilly, Charles 58 timber 5, 29, 38, 96, 131 Tolstoy, Leo 30 town and country planning 110–15, 129, 131, 136 traYc reduction legislation 144, 152 Tryweryn Valley project 17, 72–5 Turner, Frederick Jackson 11 Uganda 6 United Kingdom 9, 86 centralized environmental monitoring 148–63 climate change governmental reports 205 environmental protest 198 Green politics 137–8, 141–5 human cloning 166 land-use maps 97–115 national parks 16, 83, 89, 112–15 parliamentary politics 16 United Nations: Environment Programme 154, 200–1, 202, 207 human settlement statistics 180 sustainable development research 201, 202 United States: cloning debate 149, 164–5, 168–74 energy supply priority areas 7 EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) 122–9, 151 Everglades management 121–2, 136–7 frontier urbanization 11 Hurricane Katrina 2–4 Kyoto Protocol 202 regulation of national nature 122–9 urbanization 29, 88, 131, 182–7 Uthwatt Report 110 Vierlingh, Andries 66 Villach Conference (1985) 200–1 visualization 101, 104–6
Wales 8–9, 141–5 nationalism 17, 59, 69–75 Wallace, Joseph 75 Warren Spring Laboratory, UK 155–63 Washington, George 30 water cycle 199–200 water resources 46, 205 Australia 194 contestation 70–5 framing political identity 61–8, 118 management 38 Nile Basin 7–8 quality monitoring 124, 150, 153, 157, 158, 159 Watts, Michael 46 Weber, Max 41, 42 Weberians 35, 37, 39–40, 119 Weldon, Congressman Dave 17, 164 Weldon–Stupak Bill (2001) 149, 164–5, 168–70, 174 Western Australia 191–3, 196–7 Westphalia, Treaty of (1648) 25, 50 Whatmore, S. 173 Whitehead, Alfred North 14 WHO (World Health Organization) 200 Wilde, Oscar 30 wilderness 11, 30, 47, 113–14 wildlife reserves 89 Willadsen, Steen 166 Willatts, E. C. 108 William of Orange 65 Williams, Alun 144 Williams, Colin and Smith, Anthony 69 Williams, D. J. 72 Williams, Gwyn Alf 72 Williams, Raymond 13 Wittfogel, Karl 57 Woods, Denis 91 World Commission on Environment and Development 201, 202 Worldwatch Institute 5–6 WWF (Worldwide Fund for Nature) 200
