American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges)
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.86 (760 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B06Y3G2ZYV |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 168 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-11-19 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. sc
Megan Raby is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.
Such insights will echo through our understandings of tropical life as a resource for generations to come.--Emily Wakild, author of Revolutionary ParksAmerican Tropics is not only the best book we have on the scientific reinvention of 'the tropics' across the twentieth century, but it is also a tour de force demonstration of how the ideal of biodiversity emerged from place-based field practices. Using these stations as launching points, Raby skillfully shows the strategic and serendipitous ways these encounters mapped onto political and economic imperial pursuits. Blending intellectual, institutional, social, environmental, and political history, Raby reveals that the now-abstract, theoretical concept of 'biodiversity' was rooted in the ideas and ambitions of several generations of U.S. mainland in Cuba, Jamaica, Guyana, and Panama. Built on a truly impressive ar