Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ecological Science and Natural Resource Management in the United States

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

Since the second half of the 20th century, ecology, the study of organisms and their environments, has been central to global political crises over whether and how to manage species, material waste, carbon emissions, and access to natural resources. Field sciences like ecology have shaped and continue to shape our understandings of other species, human nature, and the physical world. This historical study of the development of ecological science in the US will address how wilderness areas, originally set aside for aesthetic and cultural reasons, were re-negotiated into ecosystem protection areas and how understandings of what an ecosystem is and how it functions effect the management of endangered and invasive species. One of the most useful functions of the history of science, and science and technology studies, is to make clearer the hidden assumptions that inevitably accompany the construction of frameworks for understanding the natural world. This project is will provide that kind of utility. Results will be published and made available on Cornells eCommons, and shared with the public via a Scientific American blog.