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science and
SPACES
INTHE NORTHERN ENVIRONMENT
STEPHEN BOCKING
ABSTRACT
Between the 1940s and the 1970s the environment of northern Canada was transformed, physically and politically. Scientists played a variety of roles in this transformation, assisting in forming an administrative regime for the region, as well as, on occasion, critiquing this regime and its environmental implications. These roles were expressed through a series of ideas and images about the northern landscape: as the habitat of wildlife populations that fluctuate dramatically, or conversely, that can be managed to provide a stable yield; and in a second dualism, as a uniquely fragile wilderness or a resource-rich hinterland balancing environmental and development goals. These roles and images were the product of interactions between northern political and economic imperatives, scientists' ideas regarding the theories and methods relevant to the North, and the northern environment itself. Understanding this history requires building bridges between environmental history and the history of science; a chief means by which this is accomplished is through "disciplinary space"—a concept that has broader implications for the practice of history.
| THE IMAGE OF NORTHERN scientists, circa 1964, was said to be one of contented indifference to political matters. They were a hardy few, "plying their erudite mysteries among the natives and amid the vastness in virtual aloneness and, to them, happy anonymity."1 But the claim rang false: scientists were neither alone nor anonymous. Accompanied by pilots and administrators, guided by priorities set in southern capitals and universities, scientists had become essential to the political and economic restructuring of northern Canada. |
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Historians have described how scientists have participated in exploiting and sometimes conserving the natural environment. Scholars in other fields have complemented these efforts, charting the complexity of scientists' roles in environmental affairs. Northern Canada offers opportunities to extend this work. The region presents an unusual, sometimes extreme environment—both a challenge and an attraction to scientists; scientists have also historically played a disproportionate role in shaping attitudes and decisions regarding the North. In this article I seek to explain the paths followed by scientists in the North: the topics they studied, the ideas that guided their work, their methods, their influence on decisions, and how these dimensions of scientific work related to the northern environment. My focus will be on two distinct episodes. In the first, extending over several decades but culminating in the early 1950s, northern Canada attracted the attention of ecologists debating the existence and significance of cycles in animal populations. In the second, which took place during the 1960s and 1970s, notions of ecological fragility again drew ecologists to the North, within a political culture newly sensitive to impacts on this environment. |
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In these episodes two themes will be most evident. One is the value of understanding the practical work of scientists, particularly in the field: how they gather knowledge, and assert its relevance and authority. The second is consideration of how scientists situate their practice: how, in relation to varied political and disciplinary contexts, they locate the northern environment, either defining it as unique, hence requiring special ideas and techniques, or as a place similar to (albeit colder or less productive) those with which they are more familiar. These contrasting perspectives will illustrate how between the 1940s and the 1970s the space occupied by the North—in environmental, political, and scientific terms—was itself a matter of negotiation, defined as much by its relation to elsewhere, as by its "essential" features. More generally, I will suggest that "disciplinary space"—a concept that draws on insights into the geography of science and the construction of scientific authority—can provide a foundation for a richer understanding of science within environmental history. |
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