This project is an environmental and cultural history of the sandhills region of North Carolina as it was transformed after the Civil War. It brings together agricultural science and the creation of a leisure industry in the sandhills to argue that they were interdependent in the transformation of the region. Chapter One narrates the gradual emergence and transformation of agricultural science in North Carolina from a venture of learned planters to a state-run institution, located in universities and government buildings, but still heavily influenced by the heirs of planters. Chapter Two examines the trajectory of resort creation in the sandhills after the region had been tapped out and cutover by naval stores producers and loggers. Its remained an agricultural problem area, while its acres of sandy land were available to be remade by developers. Importantly these new investors, like Pinehurst’s James and Leonard Tufts, reconstructed the sandhills to reflect a fantasy of yeoman agriculture—while deploying scientific findings and commercial fertilizers as advocated by state agricultural experts. Chapter Three analyzes a community that developed in the vicinity of Pinehurst after 1910, when a generation of idealistic Northern progressives turned to the sandhills, both to uplift the region and to escape the nervous problems they had experienced in the industrial North. Just as Pinehurst used agricultural science to create a leisure landscape, this group of Ivy Leaguers was inspired by visions of using agricultural technologies to turn the “sand barrens” into a state-of-the-art farmscape. Chapter Four turns to a literary account of the sandhills in the work of Charles Chesnutt, taking Chesnutt’s motif of gift-giving as a lens for understanding the author’s short stories set in the sandhills. This chapter focuses especially on Chesnutt’s conception of usufruct and an economy based in local social connections as an alternative to the version of commodity agriculture that had animated so many other projects in the sandhills. This dissertation reveals how the conceptual and material tools of an industrializing culture reconfigured this region, long seen as barren, from a cutover turpentine district into a tourist paradise.

The study of environmental history suggests that nature and culture change all the time, but that the rate and scale of such change can vary enormously. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Anglo settlement in the American West transformed landscapes and ecologies, creating new and complex environmental problems. This transformation was particularly impressive in Cache Valley, Utah's Bear River Range. From 1860 to 1910, Mormon settlers overused or misused the Bear River Range's lumber, grazing forage, wild game, and water resources and introduced invasive plant and animal species throughout the area. By the turn of the 20th century, broad overuse of natural resources caused rivers originating in the Bear River Range to decline. To address the water shortage, a small group of conservation-minded intellectuals and businessmen in Cache Valley persuaded local stockmen and farmers to support the creation of the Logan Forest Reserve in 1903. From 1903 to1910, forest managers and forest users attempted to restore the utility of the landscape (i.e., bring back forage and improve watershed conditions) however, they quickly discovered that the landscape had changed too much; nature would not cooperate with their human-imposed restoration timelines and desires for greater profit margins. Keeping in mind the impressive rate and scale of environmental decline, this thesis tells the heretofore untold environmental history of the Bear River Range from 1860 to 1910. It engages this history from an ecological and social perspective by (1) exploring how Mormon settlers altered the landscape ecology of the Bear River Range and (2) discussing the reasons why forest managers and forest users failed to quickly restore profitability to the mountain landscape from 1903-1910. As its value, a study of the Bear River Range offers an intimate case study of environmental decline and attempted restoration in the western United States, and is a reminder of how sensitive our mountain ranges really are.

This study of the institutionalization and professionalization of agricultural chemistry during the second half of the nineteenth century analyses the relationship between chemical theories and social issues, ideas and experience of recycling, the development of fertilizers, and industrialization of agriculture. The study mainly takes a history of science and environmental history perspective with focus on the Swedish case. It does, however, address the international context offering a historical perspective of issues such as the relationship between population and natural resources, the sustainability of society and connections between science, technology and nature. The center of this study consists of an analysis of the work of the following agricultural chemists employed by the Swedish Royal Agricultural Society, enumerated in chronological order: Alexander Müller, Carl Erik Bergstrand, and Lars Fredrik Nilson. Other actors, such as agriculturists, administrators and politicians, were also important in the formation of agricultural chemistry in Sweden. Changes of aims and agricultural chemical ideals during the period of study reflect changes in society and shifting ideologies. During the second half of the nineteenth century a national "agricultural scientific infrastructure" was erected with experimental stations, agricultural schools, local experimental fields and agrarian experts. This network constituted a basis for agricultural science in society and functioned as an important channel for the modernization of agriculture and society. With agricultural chemistry as an empirical point of departure, this thesis also analyzes the transformations of agriculture with the establishment of cultural, economical and physical links between agriculture and the surrounding world. Theories about chemical cycles promoted recycling of nutrition and other materials between the city and the countryside, thereby connecting agriculture to the city. The development of new mineral and nitrogenous fertilizers gradually involved an increased use of inorganic raw materials and energy to manufacture nutrition. This process resulted in the intertwining of agriculture, science, mining, industry and energy production and the creation of an agro- industrial network, which was crucial for the development of agriculture during the twentieth century. In this context, agricultural science legitimized the development toward resource intensive farming methods. / digitalisering@umu

Within the broad field of global environmental history this master thesis analyses transfrontier conservation areas (TFCAs) also known as 'peace parks', and explores how the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park (GLTP) has been envisioned, described, motivated and implemented. Using Actor-Network Theory and Framing Analysis, the thesis analyses how the idea of the GLTP and the critique against it has been framed over time through the analysis of official reports and academic research in combination with in-depth interviews with key actors. By approaching the topic of transfrontier conservation in a broad manner, and by incorporating a wide variety of sources, the thesis attempts to go beyond single explanations of the phenomenon and, instead, provide a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the transfrontier conservation idea linked to the GLTP and its history. The thesis shows that the rise of transfrontier conservation involves a complex network of actors, spanning over local-global and public-private scales. Integrated networks are formed between key actors including national governments and conservation authorities, donor agencies, NGOs – in particular the Peace Parks Foundation, and civil society. The GLTP has been framed as a way to achieve three main goals: biodiversity conservation, community development through ecotourism and public-private partnerships, and regional peace and security. The thesis shows that the framing has shifted over time, from a strict conservation focus to more inclusive approaches where social aspects are seen as increasingly important for the long term sustainability of TFCAs. But the idea that transfrontier conservation can resolve all regional problems, from political cooperation to wildlife management to local socio-economic development, is also contested in this study. The thesis illuminates a gap between official policy/management reports and academic studies related primarily to the role of community development in the framing and implementation of the GLTP. Despite various challenges that hinder the effective implementation of the goals and visions of the park such as wildlife crime, insufficient community involvement and problematic legal and policy arrangements, the thesis concludes that the GLTP represents an important contribution to global conservation commitments and needs to be viewed as a complex, long-term and constantly evolving project.

The wolf is an endangered animal in Sweden and the issue of conserving the species is a polarizing one. Specific attention has been given to this issue in environmental social sciences with studies focusing on the divide between wolf support and opposition. These studies include looking at historical interactions with the wolf, contemporary attitudes about the issue, and the way the law shapes policy. Following this focus on the disputed nature of wolf conservation, this thesis addresses whether polarization over the issue occurs between several stakeholders in large carnivore management in Sweden. Using Actor Network Theory, this thesis examines the similarities and divergences in the stakeholders’ conservation practices and maps their interactions with one another. Emphasis is placed on how the European Union’s regulations and the Swedish State’s policies conflict and/or influence the stakeholders. Overall results show that despite a discourse of polarization surrounding wolf management in Sweden, the actors in this study cannot be easily positioned against each other, and despite some divergences, share many similarities in their large carnivore management practices.

This dissertation draws from national and regional archives to argue that many important aspects of forestry science, education, and culture in colonial Australia, India, and South Africa developed according to unique local environmental, political, social, and cultural influences. Local environmental constraints, combined with unique cultures of experimentation, encouraged the innovation of new scientific methods for forming timber plantations that differed from existing European and British methods. Debates over how to create forestry schools to train foresters in each region emphasized local problems and contexts rather than focusing primarily on continental European precedents or methods. The culture of foresters in each region corresponded to local cultures and social conditions as much as to a larger imperial ethos inculcated by training in continental European or British forestry schools. / text

This dissertation analyzes the cultural significance of land relations and caste/religious identity to understand political subjectivity in Punjab, Pakistan. The ethnography details the vicissitudes of a peasant land rights movement, Anjuman-e Mazarin Punjab (Punjab Tenants Association) that is struggling to retain land rights on vast agricultural farms controlled by the Pakistan army. The dissertation argues that land struggles should not only be understood in tropes of locality, but also as interconnected processes that attend to global and local changes in governance. To emphasize these connections, the dissertation gives a relational understanding of 'politics of place' that attends to a range of practices from the history of colonial infrastructure projects (the building of canals, roads and model villages) that transformed this agricultural frontier into the heart of British colonial administration. Similarly, the ethnographic chapters relate the history of 'place making' to the present day uncertainty for small tenant sharecroppers who defied the Pakistan Army's attempts to change land relations in the military farms. Within these parameters, this ethnographic study offers a "thick description" of Punjab Tenants Association to analyze the internal shifts in loyalties and alignments during the course of the protest movement by looking at how caste, religious and/or class relations gain or lose significance in the process. My research seeks to counter the predominant understanding of Muslim political subjectivity, which privileges religious beliefs over social practices and regional identity. Another aspect of my work elucidates the symbolic exchange between the infrastructural project of irrigation, railway construction and regional modernity in central Punjab. The network of canals, roads and railways transformed the semi-arid region of Indus Plains and created a unique relationship between the state and rural society in central Punjab. However, this close relationship between rural Punjab and state administration is not void of conflict but rather it indicates a complex sense of attachment and alienation, inclusion and exclusion from the state. / text

The Arctic—warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet—is a source of striking imagery of amplified environmental change in our time, and has come to serve as a spatial setting for climate crisis discourse. The recent alterations in the Arctic environment have also been perceived by some observers as an opportunity to expand economic exploitation. Heightened geopolitical interest in the region and its resources, contradicted by calls for the protection of fragile Far North ecosystems, has rendered the Arctic an arena for negotiating human interactions with nature, and for reflecting upon the planetary risks and possibilities associated with the advent and expansion of the Anthropocene—the proposed new epoch in Earth history in which humankind is said to have gained geological agency and become the dominant force over the Earth system. With the Arctic serving as a nexus of crosscutting analytical themes spanning contemporary history (the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century until 2015), this dissertation examines defining characteristics of the Anthropocene and how the concept, which emerged from the Earth system science community, impacts ideas and assumptions in historiography, social sciences and the environmental humanities, including the fields of environmental history, crisis management and security studies, political geography, and science and technology studies (STS). The primary areas of empirical analysis and theoretical investigation encompass constructivist perspectives and temporal conceptions of environmental and climate crisis; the role of science and expertise in performing politics and shaping social discourse; the geopolitical significance of telecoupling—a concept that reflects the interconnectedness of the Anthropocene and supports stakeholder claims across wide spatial scales; and implications of the recent transformation in humankind’s long duration relationship with the natural world. Several dissertation themes were observed in practice at the international science community of Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard, where global change is made visible through a concentration of scientific activity. Ny-Ålesund is furthermore a place of geopolitics, where extra-regional states attempt to enhance their legitimacy as Arctic stakeholders through the performance of scientific research undertakings, participation in governance institutions, and by establishing a physical presence in the Far North. This dissertation concludes that this small and remote community represents an Anthropocene node of global environmental change, Earth system science, emergent global governance, geopolitics, and stakeholder construction in an increasingly telecoupled world. / <p>QC 20151211</p>

Despite being a country synonymous with fishing and having very strong maritime traditions, the clear origins and development of specialist fishing communities prior to the mechanisation era in Iceland, particularly the Vestfirðir region, remain unclear. Further to this, the details of their chronological development are often erratic if not unknown. Historical records often recollect periods of success or failure, largely driven by economic narrative, however, the context, factors and responses to these changes have never been fully explored. Compounding this absence of information is the tendency for narratives to be accounting for Iceland as a whole, without giving allowance to any regional differences. By adopting an interdisciplinary methodology, underpinned by the application of geoarchaeology (the interpretation of the cultural record contained within soils and sediments), the chronological developments and historical narrative can begin to be established. The result of this research is a clearer understanding of the environmental history of fishing communities in the Vestfirðir region spanning over eight centuries, displaying evidence of a resilient and responsive society. As a result of this research, a clear distinction can now be made between sites which served maritime and terrestrial purposes based on the interpretation of the cultural material. The findings have produced a narrative detailing how a society has responded to wider environmental and social pressures driven by changes within Iceland and throughout Europe. The sites surveyed display unique variance in their characteristics of adaptation, reflecting a society which maintained a high degree of resilience and flexibility which essentially provides the foundation for one of the most successful fishing grounds in the world today.

The thesis is an attempt to write the environmental history of the Modern Turkey from the second half of the 19th century to today. The central research focus and aim of the thesis is to explore the role of the modernity project at the transformation of the environment of Turkey during the republican period. For this, water and soil resources are taken to the core of the research, as both water and soil have the potential to highlight the transformative impacts of modernity project in most detail. Because of this, the conceptual framework of environmental history has been examined to outline its characteristics within the environmental sciences. Next, the development of the modern though has been scrutinized by the means of the transforming relation between human and nature, and through the development of human culture and society. For this, the shift from biological evolution to cultural evolution and its outcomes have been summarized. Finally, and the emerge of modernity and the development of the market society has been highlighted to define the relation between nature and human in according to the supply and demand relation in society. An institutional analysis is adopted to analyze the social, political and ideological forces that influenced the environmental impacts of the modernity project of Turkey. The impact of modernity project is analyzed through the relation between the increasing demand for natural resources, and the organization of supply processes within the modernization of Turkey.