Specifically, the book focuses on the place of conservation in the nation’s parks, exploring the history of the Adirondacks, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon. Many people, even many historians, have assumed that wilderness‚Äö√Ñ√Æareas untouched by human activity‚Äö√Ñ√Ælargely dominated these regions before the establishment of the parks. In fact, as Jacoby shows, Native Americans and rural whites had long seen these places as common lands, fishing, hunting, and gathering berries, nuts, wood, and other items on them that they then used themselves or sold to generate cash. Not only did they use these lands, some evidence suggests that they used them wisely, paying heed to the ecological impact of their actions.

As Jacoby goes on to explain, conservation interfered with the various ways in which Indians and whites had formerly used the land, turning such customary practices as taking game, collecting wood, and setting fires (to shape the land to meet their needs) into crimes. Often viewed by historians as an advance in human relations with the natural world, Jacoby uncovers the far-reaching social impact of the conservation process. He explores in detail the struggles of ordinary people to come to grips with this threat to their very way of life. Some will no doubt object to his characterization of the early conservation movement as “authoritarian” (p. 198). But there is no disputing the fact that many of the policies put in place to save the nation’s natural wealth came at the expense of the poor and dispossessed. Environmental historians have debated the ecological impact of conservation but to date have given very little consideration to its effects on issues of social justice. Jacoby, in league with other historians such as Mark Spence (see Dispossessing the Wilderness: Indian Removal and the Making of the National Parks [1999]), is finally calling our attention to the larger consequences of this important trend in the relationship Americans have had with the land.”

Steinberg, T. (2002). [Review of the book Crimes against nature: Squatters, poachers, thieves, and the hidden history of American conservation]. American Historical Review, 107(1), 214.

Synthesizing the most recent and insightful studies on the region, United States West Coast portrays environmental change in the far western United States from the emergence of humans in the Pacific Northwest (about 12,000 years ago), to the rise of European colonial trade networks, to the era of industrialization and urbanization, to present day activism and public policy responses to environmental damage. By investigating how humans interact with their nonhuman surroundings across a specific expanse that encompasses all kinds of landscapes, cultures, and commercial enterprises, this insightful volume shows just how interdependent the relationship between people and their environment is.”

Key Features

• Examines a range of themes characterizing different schools of thought and addresses long-standing topics, such as urban, economic, and medical geography, as well as contemporary topics, including feminism, the social dimensions of GIS, and the social construction of nature
• Explores many of the dualities that long characterized social science‚Äö√Ñ√Ænature versus society, the individual versus the social, the historical versus the geographical, consumption versus production‚Äö√Ñ√Æand breaks them down using postmodern and poststructuralist approaches
• Illustrates how social and spatial structures draw upon people‚Äö√Ñ√¥s daily lives, which in turn structures their actions
• Looks at how globalization has manifested differently from place to place by discussing topics such as transnational capital, international trade, global commodity chains, global cities, international financial and telecommunications systems, and how the global economy is reshaping geopolitics and governance

Key Themes

• Cartography/Geographical Information Systems
• Economic Geography
• Geographic Theory and History
• Political Geography
• Social/Cultural Geography
• Urban Geography”

‘The excitement of cultural geography lies in the ways that meanings and social understandings are constructed,
contested and negotiated, and in exploring the diverse ways these fuse and splinter around intersection notions of
culture, place and space. It lies in challenging theoretical arguments that pervade the field and that throw new light
on established ways of thinking geographically (p xv).’

This dual concern for writing the nuances of cultural geography and for questioning and disrupting conventional or essentialist ways of producing and presenting knowledges of space and culture is subsequently mirrored in all the contributions in the book. As Gear‚àö‚â•id ‚àö√¨ Tuathail succinctly reminds us in his chapter on geopolitics, geography is after all ‚Äö√Ñ√≤a geo-graphing, a form of ‚Äö√Ñ√∫writing the earth‚Äö√Ñ√π that necessarily involves culture, discourse and power/knowledge‚Äö√Ñ√¥ (p 65).”

Morrissey, J. (2006). Cultural Geography: A Critical Dictionary of Key Concepts by David Atkinson, Peter Jackson, David Sibley and Neil Washbourne. Area, 38(4), 476-478. Retrieved May 5, 2008 from Academic Search Premier.

Key Features

• Examines many new ideas about how the world works, what creates the daunting problems of our time, and how such issues might be addressed, whether by regulation, markets, or new ethics
• Demonstrates how theories of environmental management based on market efficiency may not be easily reconciled with those that focus on population, and both may certainly diverge from those centering on ethics, justice, or labor
• Offers contributions from experts in their fields of specialty, including geographers, political scientists, chemists, anthropologists, medical practitioners, development experts, and sociologists, among many others
• Explores the emerging socio-environmental problems that we face in the next century, as well as the shifting and expanding theoretical tools available for tackling these problems
• Covers regions of North America in greater detail but also provides a comprehensive picture that approaches, as effectively as possible, a cohesive global vision”