Historical and Ethnographic Analysis of the Conceptualization of Natural Landscapes

In Laura Ogden’s article of the politics of nature of the Everglades, the concept of the Everglades was transformed from Tansey’s original mechanistic concept, to the interconnected socio-ecological systems concept. Finally, this concept was further transformed through the bureaucratization of the ecosystem concept into separate and technocratically controlled units. This type of research can be said to be similar to theory laid out by Foucault’s analysis of madness, sexuality, and the body among others, wherein knowledge is created as a product of power, and power operates through this socially constructed knowledge. In this case, a certain type of knowledge is created that benefits the technocratic and bureaucratic agencies and the continued application of this knowledge. Laura Ogden’s use of ethnographic and historical methods has effectively revealed the gaps left open by this particular type of knowledge, and the importance for a greater degree of agency among a diverse group of people in knowledge production in the context of socionatural relations.

In the second article on the ‘smoothing out’ of the Royal Palm Hammock region of the everglades, rural whites were first depended upon as guides for naturalists, and later alienated from the land. This was done by the separation of European whites from nature, the concept that any ‘civilization’ is detrimental to the Royal Palm, and the emphasis on rational technocratic knowledge. This study, while similar in methods to the politics of nature article, emphasizes the creation of the “pristine myth”. To dispel this pristine myth is of importance to the re-establishment of other forms of knowledge. Sluyter’s (2003) study of the transformation of the landscape of early Colonial Mexico shows how the pristine myth can erase a history of potentially sustainable relations with the land by the construction and production of “pristine” environments. Similarly, Laura Ogden’s study reveals the history of a region that was both social and natural, while additionally being of great interest to naturalists and scientists.

While the below articles have revealed important gaps and political agendas in the dominant ecological knowledge, it is important to understand the objectives of this type of research. While some critics could liken this type of research to current streams of argument for the social constructivism of climate change, a distinction must be made between what Demeritt (2001) describes as construction-as-refutation and construction-as-philosophical-critique. While the former makes a giant leap from the social construction of certain types of knowledge to the refutation of that entire body of knowledge, the latter emphasizes the importance of being reflexive on our knowledge and contextualizing and situating our knowledge into a broad range of perspectives. It is in this sense that Laura Ogden’s study can be of great benefit to the conceptualization of the socionatural landscapes of the Everglades, and greater agency of different social groups in future management policies.

Sluyter, A. 2003. Material-conceptual landscape transformation and the emergence of the pristine myth in early Colonial Mexico. In. Political Ecology: an integrative approach to geography and environment-development studies Ed. Zimmerer K. Z. and Bassett. T. J. The Guilford Press, NY, pp. 221-239

Demeritt, D. 2001. Being constructive about nature. In. Social nature: Theory, practice, and politics. Eds. Castree N., and Braun B. Blackwell Publishes, MA, pp. 22-40

Part 1: The Everglades ecosystem and the politics of nature. Ogden. L. 2008.

In this article Ogden (2008) traces the institutional history of the scientific concept of the ecosystem as it was applied to policy and environmental science in restoration efforts in the Florida Everglades. She analyzes the quasi-government organizations and government bureaucracies involved in Everglades restoration planning and implementation, as well as the political agendas and knowledge systems and the knowledge production within these institutions.

From the early to mid 20th century, the Everglades were considered to be uncivilized lands to be drained, settled, and made productive by human hands. The Corps initiated a massive construction project to achieve these ends, diverting excess freshwater to the oceans. But this reengineering project was linked to ecological problems. Guided by the ecosystem approach, the U.S. congress authorized CERP. This ecosystem approach assumes that the natural world can be separated by semi-permeable boundaries with internal interactions, and that ecosystems are adaptable, resilient, and exhibiting alternative stable states. This concept of the ecosystems differs largely from Tansley’s original mechanistic modernist concept. Yet this concept was redefined as it became incorporated into the policy of state and non-state institutions. Ogden (2008) documents this process of bureaucratization of knowledge with the use of participant observation, semistructured interviews of policy makers and scientists, and the analysis of official documents.

Before the concept of the ecosystem was applied to the Everglades, the landscape was a set of resources to be managed. As this landscape was rapidly undergoing transformation, the scientific research of the Everglades was narrowly constrained by the bureaucracies that employed scientists. Through the control of funds and resources, and strictly defined boundaries to research protocols, the scientific approach to problem solving was fragmented and limited to local scales. Environmental NGOs helped to transfer information between scientists and administrators, allowing interagency collaboration, and helping to transform the culture of Everglades science and management. This led to a broader perspective on the Everglades as an ecosystem, but humans were not included in this model. Instead, they were abstract external impacts, and their variation as differently embedded into global and national markets was homogenized.

This ecocentric approach began to shift to reflect the interdisciplinary focus of ecosystem studies. Through the Commission for a Sustainable South Florida, the emerging concepts of the interconnectability inseparability of society, economy, and ecosystems was transformed as it was separated into domains, managed by separate entities. With the implementation of CERP, the ecosystem concept was bureaucratized resulting in conflicts between the attributing of expertise to those organizations (such as the Corps) that historically has failed in their stewardship roles, and the ecosystem as a nonlinear uncertain system. Ignoring the uncertainty of ecological knowledge, the approach to the everglades was transformed into a technocratic management plan.

Part 2: Searching for paradise in the Florida Everglades. Ogden L.A. 2008.

This narrative article accounts the rise of Royal Palm Hammock in the Florida everglades and the contributions of the local experiences to scientific knowledge. Ogden (2008) reviews scientific papers, letters, fieldnotes, photographs, bibliographies of naturalists, newspaper articles and published accounts of fieldwork from the late 1800s through to the mid 1930s, in order to understand the cultural history of the scientific process. Much of this literature has ignored the human history of the hammock, emphasizing ecological worth and rarity. This history includes the encroachment of white settlers on indigenous land , the genocide of indigenous people, as well as the subsequent removal of white settlers to create a ‘pristine’ national park. This type of research is essential to the understanding of the continuation of colonialist rhetoric that frame the disputes of land use between indigenous people and the national parks. Additionally, Ogden (2008) conducted interviews with alligator hunters to demonstrate how the once blurry distinction between human and natural world have now been separated.

While indigenous people were considered to be a part of nature, nonindigenous people were abstracted from nature and considered out of place. In order to protect Royal Palm Hammock, it needed to be transformed into a ‘smooth object’, ontology devoid of conflict, or incongruities, or human-nature entanglements. The Royal Palm Hammock and the people that inhabited the region were ‘generified’ into intelligible, stable categories. Naturalists from the late 1800s to mid 1930s did not recognize the connections rural whites had to the site, saw all white presence as detrimental, and portrayed the ways of knowing the landscape as intuitive despite their fundamental dependents on local rural whites.

In order to assert the ecological importance and rarity of Royal Palm, naturalists were required to conduct intensive research, surveys, fieldwork, and replicable scientific progress. To do this, naturalists depended upon the expertise of white rural guides, who knew the area as alligator hunters, trappers, and traders. Interviews with alligator hunters indicated that both Seminoles and whites continued to hunt and camp in the hammocks of Royal Palm, even after the establishment of the hammock as a state park in 1916 and a national park in 1947. This picture of the national park runs contrary to the narrative of the region as a pristine and undiscovered landscape, yet naturalists achieved this by categorizing the rural whites as deviant, unsophisticated and detrimental to the ecological integrity of the area.

To combat the unsophisticated and destructive activities of rural whites, the conservationist discourse emphasizes the rationality of technocratic expertise in managing land and resources. This technocratic knowledge, originally dependent on local knowledge becomes a means to the removal of rural whites from the Royal Palm region. To this conservation approach, all signs of ‘civilization’ (a term that excluded the Seminoles) is a threat to Royal Palm.