Modernizing Nature
Forestry and Imperial Eco-Development 1800-1950
Series: Oxford Historical Monographs;
- Publisher's listprice GBP 237.50
-
113 465 Ft (108 062 Ft + 5% VAT)
The price is estimated because at the time of ordering we do not know what conversion rates will apply to HUF / product currency when the book arrives. In case HUF is weaker, the price increases slightly, in case HUF is stronger, the price goes lower slightly.
- Discount 10% (cc. 11 347 Ft off)
- Discounted price 102 119 Ft (97 256 Ft + 5% VAT)
Subcribe now and take benefit of a favourable price.
Subscribe
113 465 Ft
Availability
printed on demand
Why don't you give exact delivery time?
Delivery time is estimated on our previous experiences. We give estimations only, because we order from outside Hungary, and the delivery time mainly depends on how quickly the publisher supplies the book. Faster or slower deliveries both happen, but we do our best to supply as quickly as possible.
Product details:
- Publisher Clarendon Press
- Date of Publication 16 February 2006
- ISBN 9780199277964
- Binding Hardback
- No. of pages304 pages
- Size 223x146x23 mm
- Weight 490 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 4 figures, 1 table 0
Categories
Short description:
Professor Rajan explores the origins, institutionalization, and politics of the sciences and systems of knowledge underlying colonial frameworks of environmental management. He disagrees with those historiographical and social scientific approaches that look upon science and scientific institutions instrumentally as 'tools of empire'. Rather, he argues that the 'colonial' sciences had cognitive, ideological, and interventionist traditions distinct from each other and from the colonial bureaucracy and that histories of science, environmental management, and indeed of the colonial state, must comprehend these distinct cognitive traditions.
MoreLong description:
Modernizing Nature contributes to the debate regarding the origins, institutionalization, and politics of the sciences and systems of knowledge underlying colonial frameworks of environmental management. It departs from the widely prevalent scholarly perspective that colonial science can be understood predominantly as a handmaiden of imperialism. Instead, it argues that the myriad colonial sciences had ideological and interventionist traditions distinct from each other and from the colonial bureaucracy and that these tensions better explain environmental politics and policy dilemmas in the post-colonial era.
Professor Rajan argues that tropical forestry in the nineteenth century consisted of at least two distinct approaches towards nature, resource, and people; and what won out in the end was the Continental European forestry paradigm. Rajan also shows that science and scientists were relatively marginal until the First World War. It was the acute scientific and resource crisis felt during the War, along with the rise of experts and expertise in Britain during that period and the lobby-politics of an organized empire-wide scientific community, that resulted in resource management regimes such as forestry beginning to get serious state backing. Over time, considerable differences in approach and outlook towards policy emerged between different colonial scientific communities, such as foresters and agriculturists. These different colonial sciences represented different situated knowledges, with different visions of nature, people, and empire, and in different configurations of power.
Finally, in a panoramic overview of post-colonial developments, Rajan argues that the hegemony of these state-scientific regimes of resource-management during the period 1950-1990 engendered not just social revolt, as recent historical work has shown, but also intellectual protest. Consequently, the discipline of forestry became systematically re-conceptualized, with newapproaches to sylviculture, economics, law, and crucially, with new visions of modernity. This disciplinary change constitutes nothing short of a cognitive revolution, one that has been brought about by a clearly articulated political perspective on the orientation of the discipline of forestry by its practitioners.
Rajan's book is clearly a scholarly and significant contribution to the literature.
Table of Contents:
Introduction
A Contract with Nature
The Empire of Nature
The Empire Strikes Back
The Imperial Environmentalist
The Contested Legacy
Appendices 1-4
Bibliography
Index
