Acknowledgments Introduction From Social Psychology to Imperial Ecology General Smuts's Politics of Holism and Patronage of Ecology The Oxford School of Imperial Ecology Holism and the Ecosystem Controversy The Politics of Holism, Ecology, and Human Rights Planning a New Human Ecology Conclusion: A World without History An Ecology of Ecologists Notes Sources Index
Anker has written a ruthlessly honest political and cultural history of ecology, setting it firmly in the world of nineteenth-century colonialism. Illusions vanish here: turn of the century ecology did not stand for a pure pacifism or an eden of natural harmony. Instead, we find that both the liberal mechanism of British ecologist Arthur George Tansley and the holistic ecology of South African statesman Jan Christian Smuts were both firmly built upon nationalism--and a nationalism that mattered a great deal, militarily, racially, and socially. This is important work and a riveting read. -- Peter Galison, Harvard University
Anker has written a ruthlessly honest political and cultural
history of ecology, setting it firmly in the world of
nineteenth-century colonialism. Illusions vanish here: turn of the
century ecology did not stand for a pure pacifism or an eden of
natural harmony. Instead, we find that both the liberal mechanism
of British ecologist Arthur George Tansley and the holistic ecology
of South African statesman Jan Christian Smuts were both firmly
built upon nationalism--and a nationalism that mattered a great
deal, militarily, racially, and socially. This is important work
and a riveting read.
*Peter Galison, Harvard University*
Peder Anker's Imperial Ecology is the unexpected story of how
late-imperial British ecologists took their arcane studies of
marine life off Spitzbergen or the game of southern Africa and
brought them to bear on very different areas of interest. These
ecologists fashioned from their studies a view of human ecology
broad enough, in this telling, to embrace cycles of sexual activity
in Japanese brothels, famine in central Asia, the building blocks
for national economic planning and the cultural underpinnings of
Nazism. An eye-opener.
*New Scientist*
Few books are truly original; however, Anker...puts an original
perspective on the history of ecology, linking two major schools of
thought...to the imperial aspirations of Great Britain. The UK
provided patronage (grants) to support ecologists who in turn
provided important concepts strengthening Britain's imperial grip
by enhancing resource management and incorporating human ecology
into colonial ecosystems...This thought-provoking book provides
many new insights into the history of a discipline. It will be news
to most ecologists, whose knowledge of their own history is often
sketchy at best.
*Choice*
Anker's book is particularly strong in bringing out the way in
which the debate was fought outside science and in the popular
media. However, his main story is one which is intended to show how
developments within scientific ecology were shaped by the
ideological and philosophical division within the intellectual
world of early twentieth century Britain and South Africa. In the
end Tansley and Elton succeeded in stamping their authority on the
newly emerging science, but thanks to Anker we can now see how they
were forced to shape their theories in opposition to an influential
alternative that had considerable intellectual and social support
within Britain and, especially, within the colonies whose resources
the British sought to exploit. This book will provide a wealth of
ideas and information for historians seeking to further the cause
of understanding science as a product of social forces.
*Annals of Science*
This is a fascinating account of how ecology emerged from botany as
a discipline in parallel (but competing) schools of thought in
Britain and in South Africa during the first half of the 20th
century. The extraordinarily detailed book contains at least two
major themes: how, in each school, what had been natural science
became not just transdisciplinary but a worldview including human
beings; and how, despite sharp differences between the mechanistic
British school and the holistic South African school, both schools
supported imperialist policies and colonial administrations...Anker
writes well... and has an eye for juicy tidbits.
*Alternatives*
Anker captures the essence not only of the political and academic
climates of turn of century Empire but also the personalities of
the focal players and the exhilaration of defining a new scientific
discipline. Engaging and illuminating, this book highlights the
interrelations of politics and ecology in the past, a reminder that
not much has changed in a hundred years!
*Biologist*
Imperial Ecology is a significant work in the history of ecology
that deserves a place on the bookshelves of all those historians
and philosophers of science who delighted in the attention to the
ideological agendas that have framed ecology's development...Anker
is concerned with the historical dynamics of the human relationship
with nature and the naturalization of politics...Imperial Ecology
is an outstanding piece of scholarship and an important
contribution to the field.
*British Journal of the History of Science*
This instructive and award-winning book examines the development of
ecology as a flourishing discipline within the confines of the
British Empire. The author...describes his goal as being to deploy
new research materials to explain how elements of botany evolved
into the discipline of human ecology...One of Anker's main goals in
writing this book was to make writing on ecology interesting to
readers. He achieves this goal resoundingly. The research conducted
is impressive, both with regards to its depth and range.
*History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences*
In Imperial Ecology Peder Anker provides a very significant account
of leading British and South African ecologists from the turn of
the century to the Cold War, with a focus on environmental or
"ecological" politics as part and parcel of policy pushed forward
by scientists...Anker's broad approach provides many interesting
insights into the normative policies of "environmental order." This
well-written book should find a broad audience--and not only among
historians of ecology, environmental historians, and environmental
activists.
*Isis*
Peder Anker's stimulating discussion of the entanglements between
ecological science and imperial ambitions goes some way towards
explaining how concepts and ideas from the life and human sciences
served to create a new kind of environmental order in the British
Empire...The book is beautifully written and well-researched, and
makes important and useful contributions to our understanding of a
network of scientists and statesmen kind of environmental order in
the British Empire...His is an original and thought-provoking study
that should do much to contextualize the imperial history of
ecology.
*Journal of the History of Biology*
This is a fine analysis of an important aspect of the history of
twentieth century ecology, as valuable for the questions it raises
as for its conclusions. It is particularly rich in the
possibilities it suggests for comparative study of ecology
elsewhere in the empire, such as in Australia, Canada and India, as
well as in the United States and other European empires...Anker's
exploration of these psychological dimensions of ecology is
original and overdue: few have examined in any detail the
historical links between psychology and ecology.
*Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences*
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