Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest

Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest PDF Author: Richard A. Rajala
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 9780774805919
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
This book integrates class, environmental, and political analysis touncover the history of clearcutting in the Douglas fir forests of B.C.,Washington, and Oregon between 1880 and 1965. Part I focuses on the mode of production, analyzing thetechnological and managerial structures of worker and resourceexploitation from the perspective of current trends in labour processresearch. Rajala argues that operators sought to neutralize thevariable forest environment by emulating the factory model of workorganization. The introduction of steam-powered overhead loggingmethods provided industry with a rudimentary factory regime by 1930,accompanied by productivity gains and diminished workplace autonomy forloggers. After a Depression-inspired turn to selective logging withcaterpillar tractors timber capital continued its refinement ofclearcutting technologies in the post-war period, achieving completemechanization of yarding with the automatic grapple. Driviing thisprocess of innovation was a concept of industrial efficiency thatresponded to changing environmental conditions, product and labourmarkets, but sought to advance operators' class interests byroutinizing production. The managerial component of the factory regimetook shape in accordance with the principles of the early 20th centuryscientific management movement. Requiring expertise in the organizationof an expanded, technologically sophisticated exploitation process,operators presided over the establishment of logging engineeringprograms in the region's universities. Graduates introducedrational planning procedures to coastal logging, contributing to a rateof deforestation that generated a corporate call for technical forestryexpertise after 1930. Industrial foresters then emerged from theuniversities to provide firms with data needed for long-rangeinvestment decisions in land acquisition and management. Part II constitutes an environmental and political history ofclearcutting. This reconstructs the process of scientific researchconcenring the factory regime's impact on the ecology of theDouglas fir forest, assessing how knowledge was utitized in theregulation of cutting practices. Analysis of business-governmentrelations in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon suggests that thereliance of those client states on revenues generated by timber capitalenouraged a pattern of regulation that served corporate rather thansocial and ecological ends.

Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest

Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest PDF Author: Richard A. Rajala
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 9780774805919
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 314

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book integrates class, environmental, and political analysis touncover the history of clearcutting in the Douglas fir forests of B.C.,Washington, and Oregon between 1880 and 1965. Part I focuses on the mode of production, analyzing thetechnological and managerial structures of worker and resourceexploitation from the perspective of current trends in labour processresearch. Rajala argues that operators sought to neutralize thevariable forest environment by emulating the factory model of workorganization. The introduction of steam-powered overhead loggingmethods provided industry with a rudimentary factory regime by 1930,accompanied by productivity gains and diminished workplace autonomy forloggers. After a Depression-inspired turn to selective logging withcaterpillar tractors timber capital continued its refinement ofclearcutting technologies in the post-war period, achieving completemechanization of yarding with the automatic grapple. Driviing thisprocess of innovation was a concept of industrial efficiency thatresponded to changing environmental conditions, product and labourmarkets, but sought to advance operators' class interests byroutinizing production. The managerial component of the factory regimetook shape in accordance with the principles of the early 20th centuryscientific management movement. Requiring expertise in the organizationof an expanded, technologically sophisticated exploitation process,operators presided over the establishment of logging engineeringprograms in the region's universities. Graduates introducedrational planning procedures to coastal logging, contributing to a rateof deforestation that generated a corporate call for technical forestryexpertise after 1930. Industrial foresters then emerged from theuniversities to provide firms with data needed for long-rangeinvestment decisions in land acquisition and management. Part II constitutes an environmental and political history ofclearcutting. This reconstructs the process of scientific researchconcenring the factory regime's impact on the ecology of theDouglas fir forest, assessing how knowledge was utitized in theregulation of cutting practices. Analysis of business-governmentrelations in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon suggests that thereliance of those client states on revenues generated by timber capitalenouraged a pattern of regulation that served corporate rather thansocial and ecological ends.

Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World

Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World PDF Author: Dominick A. DellaSala
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1597266760
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 333

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Book Description
Temperate rainforests are biogeographically unique. Compared to their tropical counterparts, temperate rainforests are rarer and are found disproportionately along coastlines. Because most temperate rainforests are marked by the intersection of marine, terrestrial, and freshwater systems, these rich ecotones are among the most productive regions on Earth. Globally, temperate rainforests store vast amounts of carbon, provide habitat for scores of rare and endemic species with ancient affinities, and sustain complex food-web dynamics. In spite of their global significance, however, protection levels for these ecosystems are far too low to sustain temperate rainforests under a rapidly changing global climate and ever expanding human footprint. Therefore, a global synthesis is needed to provide the latest ecological science and call attention to the conservation needs of temperate and boreal rainforests. A concerted effort to internationalize the plight of the world’s temperate and boreal rainforests is underway around the globe; this book offers an essential (and heretofore missing) tool for that effort. DellaSala and his contributors tell a compelling story of the importance of temperate and boreal rainforests that includes some surprises (e.g., South Africa, Iran, Turkey, Japan, Russia). This volume provides a comprehensive reference from which to build a collective vision of their future.

Pineros

Pineros PDF Author: Brinda Sarathy
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774821167
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
The exploitation of Latino workers in many industries, from agriculture and meat packing to textile manufacturing and janitorial services, is well known. By contrast, pineros -- itinerant workers who form the backbone of the forest management labour force on federal land -- toil largely in obscurity. Drawing on government papers, media accounts, and interviews with federal employees and Latino forest workers in Oregon’s Rogue Valley, Brinda Sarathy investigates how the federal government came to be one of the single largest employers of Latino labour in the Pacific Northwest. She documents pinero wages, working conditions, and benefits in comparison to those of white loggers and tree planters, exposing exploitation that, she argues, is the product of an ongoing history of institutionalized racism, fragmented policy, and intra-ethnic exploitation in the West. To overcome this legacy, Sarathy offers a number of proposals to improve the visibility and working conditions of pineros and to provide them with a stronger voice in immigration and forestry policy-making.

Property, Territory, Globalization

Property, Territory, Globalization PDF Author: William D. Coleman
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774820209
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In a world of flux, as old territorial borders dissolve and new nations come together, who controls ideas, information, and creativity? Who patrols the new frontiers? This volume opens a window to the dark side of globalization and the struggles for autonomy it has generated from forest disputes to Indigenous land claims to conflicts between farmers and the patent owners of genetically modified seeds. The work of Palestinian poets, whose attachment to the land is explored in a powerful Coda, shows that a politics of place brings to the fore intense feelings of attachment, something common to all struggles over territory and autonomy.

Made Modern

Made Modern PDF Author: Edward Jones-Imhotep
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774837268
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Science and technology have shaped not only economic empires and industrial landscapes, but also the identities, anxieties, and understandings of people living in modern times. Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History draws together leading scholars from a wide range of fields to enrich our understanding of history inside and outside Canada’s borders. The book’s chapters examine how science and technology have allowed Canadians to imagine and reinvent themselves as modern. Focusing on topics including exploration, scientific rationality, the occult, medical instruments, patents, communication, and infrastructure, the contributors situate Canadian scientific and technological developments within larger national and transnational contexts. The first major collection of its kind in thirty years, Made Modern explores the place of science and technology in shaping Canadians’ experience of themselves and their place in the modern world.

Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice

Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice PDF Author: Nik Janos
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295749377
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
How histories of environmental inequalities and settler colonialism undercut a famously “green” region In Portland’s harbor, environmental justice groups challenge the EPA for a more thorough cleanup of the Willamette River. Near Olympia, the Puyallup assert their tribal sovereignty and treaty rights to fish. Seattle housing activists demand that Amazon pay to address the affordability crisis it helped create. Urban Cascadia, the infrastructure, social networks, built environments, and non-human animals and plants that are interconnected in the increasingly urbanized bioregion that surrounds Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, enjoys a reputation for progressive ambitions and forward-thinking green urbanism. Yet legacies of settler colonialism and environmental inequalities contradict these ambitions, even as people strive to achieve those progressive ideals. In this edited volume, historians, geographers, urbanists, and other scholars critically examine these contradictions to better understand the capitalist urbanization of nature, the creation of social and environmental inequalities, and the movements to fight for social and environmental justice. Neither a story of green disillusion nor one of green boosterism, Urban Cascadia and the Pursuit of Environmental Justice reveals how the region can address broader issues of environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and the politics of environmental change.

Written As I Remember It

Written As I Remember It PDF Author: Elsie Paul
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774827122
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Long before vacationers discovered BC's Sunshine Coast, the Sliammon, a Coast Salish people, called the region home. In this remarkable book, Sliammon Elder Elsie Paul collaborates with a scholar, Paige Raibmon, and her granddaughter, Harmony Johnson, to tell her life story and the history of her people, in her own words and storytelling style. Raised by her grandparents who took her on their seasonal travels, Paul spent most of her childhood learning Sliammon ways, teachings, and stories and is one of the last surviving mother-tongue speakers of the Sliammon language. She shares this traditional knowledge with future generations in Written as I Remember It.

Managing the Unknown

Managing the Unknown PDF Author: Frank Uekötter
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1782382534
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
Information is crucial when it comes to the management of resources. But what if knowledge is incomplete, or biased, or otherwise deficient? How did people define patterns of proper use in the absence of cognitive certainty? Discussing this challenge for a diverse set of resources from fish to rubber, these essays show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress: these essays suggest more of a dialectical relationship between knowledge and ignorance that has different shapes and trajectories. With its combination of empirical case studies and theoretical reflection, the essays make a significant contribution to the interdisciplinary debate on the production and resilience of ignorance. At the same time, this volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.

In Search of Sustainability

In Search of Sustainability PDF Author: Benjamin Cashore
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 077484146X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
In recent years, the forests of British Columbia have become a battleground for sustainable resource development. The conflicts are ever present, usually pitting environmentalists against the forest industry and forestry workers and communities. In an effort to broker peace in the woods, British Columbia's NDP government launched a number of promising new forest policy initiatives in the 1990s. In Search of Sustainability brings together a group of political scientists to examine this extraordinary burst of policy activism. Focusing on how much change has occurred and why, the authors examine seven components of BC forest policy: land use, forest practices, tenure, Aboriginal issues, timber supply, pricing, and jobs.

When Money Grew on Trees

When Money Grew on Trees PDF Author: Greg Gordon
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 080614548X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
Born in the timber colony of New Brunswick, Maine, in 1848, Andrew Benoni Hammond got off to an inauspicious start as a teenage lumberjack. By his death in 1934, Hammond had built an empire of wood that stretched from Puget Sound to Arizona—and in the process had reshaped the American West and the nation’s way of doing business. When Money Grew on Trees follows Hammond from the rough-and-tumble world of mid-nineteenth-century New Brunswick to frontier Montana and the forests of Northern California—from lowly lumberjack to unrivaled timber baron. Although he began his career as a pioneer entrepreneur, Hammond, unlike many of his associates, successfully negotiated the transition to corporate businessman. Against the backdrop of western expansion and nation-building, his life dramatically demonstrates how individuals—more than the impersonal forces of political economy—shaped capitalism in this country, and in doing so, transformed the forests of the West from functioning natural ecosystems into industrial landscapes. In revealing Hammond’s instrumental role in converting the nation’s public domain into private wealth, historian Greg Gordon also shows how the struggle over natural resources gave rise to the two most pervasive forces in modern American life: the federal government and the modern corporation. Combining environmental, labor, and business history with biography, When Money Grew on Trees challenges the conventional view that the development and exploitation of the western United States was dictated from the East Coast. The West, Gordon suggests, was perfectly capable of exploiting itself, and in his book we see how Hammond and other regional entrepreneurs dammed rivers, logged forests, and leveled mountains in just a few decades. Hammond and his like also built cities, towns, and a vast transportation network of steamships and railroads to export natural resources and import manufactured goods. In short, they established much of the modern American state and economy.