Adam Rome | from the editor | Environmental History, 10.3

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to Enviromental History online. About 279 words from this article are provided below; about 528 words remain.

If you are a individual subscriber to Environmental History, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a subscriber to the Environmental History, you can:: • get subscription information here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of Environmental History (8.1-present).
Instititutions can:: • get subscription information here to receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

Adam Rome | from the editor | Environmental History, 10.3 | The History Cooperative

from the editor

THIS ISSUE BEGINS with Douglas Weiner's 2005 American Society for Environmental History presidential address. Weiner picks up the gauntlet thrown down by poststructuralism: What is our subject, if "nature" is a social construction? For Weiner, the poststructuralist challenge to our authority as interpreters of the world is a blessing as well as a curse. By acknowledging that our interpretations are socially constructed, we may see more clearly that the stories we tell all are ultimately about power.	1
In different ways, the articles by Lisa Brady and David Biggs contribute to the growing literature on the environmental history of war. Brady argues that American ideas about nature played a key role in the success of the Union during the Civil War. By attacking the South's farms and plantations, the Union forced the leaders of the Confederacy to face the devastating prospect that their world once again would become a barren wilderness rather than a productive, well- ordered landscape. Biggs considers how war shaped the ways people viewed the U Minh forest in Vietnam. He concludes that decades of struggle intensified a pioneer land-use ethic that now works against international forest-preservation efforts.	2
Gregory Cushman's article on the fate of Peru's guano-producing birds is a provocative study of the strengths and weaknesses of the conservationist "gospel of efficiency." After a period of intense exploitation of the birds in the nineteenth century, Peruvian and American scientists were able to restore their populations in the first decades of the twentieth century. That success had far-reaching economic and intellectual consequences. But the same logic that helped to save the guano birds ultimately condemned them to suffer again.	. . .

There are about 528 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.