Industrialized Nature

Colby College, Waterville ME

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT SES 0113665 Paul Josephson, Colby College Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology and the Scientific Management of Nature Based on an innovative approach to the analysis of notions of sustainable development at the juncture of history of technology and environmental history, this project examines comparative issues of scientific management of natural resources in the Soviet Union and Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada and Brazil. The central task of this historical survey is to track the evolution of "brute-force" technology in these countries from the 1930s through the present. The focus falls on water, fish, and forest resources. The study identifies the challenges in adopting sustainable resource management techniques, designing appropriate technologies, and providing adequate resources for all citizens. Four case studies pursue the surprising richness and similarity of the subjects (in terms of research strategies, biological affinities, political and economic pressures. The first cases compares a massive Stalinist project to transform the Volga River basin into a unified transport, irrigation, and hydroelectric power system, with the taming of the Columbia River basin in Washington state. A second case study considers the Soviet conquest of Siberia and the so-called Angara-Enesei cascade in comparison with the development of Amazonia. The third study explores the role of scientific research in promoting brute force technology in the Norway and Soviet deep sea fishing industries. The final case study focuses on the forests of Arkhangelsk region of northwest Russia and the northern forest of New Hampshire and Maine. National politics, economics, culture, and science and engineering have had an impact on the genesis of scientific management and brute force technology. The study evaluates the impact these national features in shaping notions of scientific management of natural resources, and nature itself. It also describes the roots of the tendency to replace biological paradigms with industrial ones in which scientists treat nature as an efficient machine of monocultures, and look closely at the design of the technologies that powered the machine. In natural resource management, the driving force has been the effort to determine where production and biology meet. Cross-national comparisons will indicate what aspects of resource management are universal and what aspects reflect national determinants -- economic, political, social, ideological -- of scientific activity.