(Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, Martin Jones) The Nat

OXFORD GEOGRAPHICAL AND
ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Editors: Gordon Clark, Andrew Goudie, and Ceri Peach
THE NATURE OF THE STATE
Editorial Advisory Board

Professor Kay Anderson (Australia)
Professor Felix Driver (United Kingdom)
Professor Rita Gardner (United Kingdom)
Professor Avijit Gupta (United Kingdom)
Professor Christian Kesteloot (Belgium)
Professor David Thomas (United Kingdom)
Professor B. L. Turner II (USA)
Professor Michael Watts (USA)
Professor James Wescoat (USA)
ALS O PUBLISHED BY
O XF OR D U N I V E RS I T Y P R E S S
I N T HE O XF ORD G EOGRAP HI C A L A ND
E N V I R O N M E N T A L S T U D IE S S E R I E S
ConXict, Consensus, and Rationality in Environmental Planning

An Institutional Discourse Approach
Yvonne Rydin
Social Power and the Urbanization of Water

Flows of Power
Erik Swyngedouw
An Uncooperative Commodity
Privatizing Water in England and Wales
Karen J. Bakker
Manufacturing Culture
The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice
Meric S. Gertler
Thailand at the Margins

Internationalization of the State and the Transformation of Labour
Jim Glassman
War Epidemics
An Historical Geography of Infectious Diseases in Military ConXict and Civil Strife,
1850–2000
M. R. Smallman-Raynor and A. D. CliV
Industrial Transformation in the Developing World

Michael T. Rock and David P. Angel
Worlds of Food
Place, Power, and Provenance in the Food Chain
Kevin Morgan, Terry Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch
Decolonizing the Colonial City

Urbanization and StratiWcation in Kingston, Jamaica
Colin Clarke
Poliomyelitis
A World Geography: Emergence to Eradication
M. R. Smallman-Raynor, A. D. CliV, B. Trevelyan, C. Nettleton, and S. Sneddon
Putting Voters in their Place

Geography and Elections in Great Britain
Ron Johnston and Charles Pattie
The Nature of
the State
Excavating the Political
Ecologies of the Modern State
Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones,

and Martin Jones
1
3
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Whitehead, Mark, 1975–
The nature of the state:excavating the political ecologies of the modern state
Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, and Martin Jones.
p. cm.
ISBN–13 : 978–0–19–927189–4 (alk.paper)
ISBN–10 : 0–19–927189–5 (alk.paper)
1. Human geography—Political aspects. 2. Human ecology—Political aspects.
3. Political geography. 4. Political ecology. 5. Enviromental policy—Political aspects.
I. Jones, Rhys, 1971–II. Jones, Martin, 1970–III. Title.
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EDITORS’ PREFACE
Geography and environmental studies are two closely related and burgeon-
ing Welds of academic enquiry. Both have grown rapidly over the past few
decades. At once catholic in its approach and yet strongly committed to
a comprehensive understanding of the world, geography has focused upon
the interaction between global and local phenomena. Environmental studies,
on the other hand, have shared with the discipline of geography an engage-
ment with diVerent disciplines, addressing wide-ranging and signiWcant
environmental issues in the scientiWc community and the policy community.
From the analysis of climate change and physical environmental processes to
the cultural dislocations of postmodernism in human geography, these two
Welds of enquiry have been at the forefront of attempts to comprehend
transformations taking place in the world, manifesting themselves as a
variety of separate but interrelated spatial scales.
The Oxford Geographical and Environmental Studies series aims to reXect
this diversity and engagement. Our goal is to publish the best original
research in the two related Welds, and, in doing so, to demonstrate the sig-
niWcance of geographical and environmental perspectives for understanding
the contemporary world. As a consequence, our scope is deliberately inter-
national and ranges widely in terms of topics, approaches, and methodolo-
gies. Authors are welcome from all corners of the globe. We hope the series
will help to redeWne the frontiers of knowledge and build bridges within the
Welds of geography and environmental studies. We hope also that it will
cement links with issues and approaches that have originated outside the
strict conWnes of these disciplines. In doing so, our publications contribute to
the frontiers of research and knowledge while representing the fruits of
particular and diverse scholarly traditions.
Gordon L. Clark
Andrew Goudie
Ceri Peach
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book reXects the culmination of ten years of collective engagement with
the testing notions of state and nature. As part of this collective endeavour
we have travelled many miles, searched through numerous archives, and
received various forms of advice and guidance. We would consequently like
to recognize the personal and intellectual debts we have accrued in the
completion of this volume.
We want to acknowledge, Wrst and foremost, that this book is the product
of the uniquely supportive and creative environment provided by the
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences at the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth. Over the years we have all beneWted from the ‘Aber eVect’,
which is produced by the geographers working in Aberystwyth and the
special qualities of the place itself. At a more speciWc level we would like to
thank Tim Cresswell, Luke Desforges, Deborah Dixon, Bob Dodgshon, Bill
Edwards, Kate Edwards, Gareth Hoskins, Mark Goodwin, Robert Mayhew,
Pete Merriman, Heidi Scott, Mike Woods, and all our graduate students for
their advice, loaned books, and constant support as we completed this book.
In addition to our colleagues at Aberystwyth, this volume has also beneWted
from the input and guidance of a range of people from outside our depart-
ment. We would like to thank in particular Elizabeth Baigent, Neil Brenner,
Gavin Bridge, Allan Cochrane, David Demerrit, Marcus Doel, David C.
Harvey, Bob Jessop, Craig Johnstone, David Keeling, Gordon MacLeod,
John Pickles, Simon Naylor, Paul Robbins, and Erik Swyngedouw;
while they may not realize it, they have all helped to shape the form and
content of this volume.
The book is based upon a range of interrelated research projects. We
would like to acknowledge all of those organizations that have provided us
with the necessary funds and time to complete these projects. These include
the Board of Celtic Studies (of the University of Wales), the Economic and
Social Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Geographical
Society’s HSBC Small Grant Initiative, and the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth Research Fund. We are also grateful for the advice and time
of librarians and archivists working at the British Library, the London
Metropolitan Archives, the National Archives (Kew), the National Library
of Wales, the Royal Society Library, and the Special Collections section of
Sussex University Library. We would like to extend particular thanks to
Huw Thomas (of the National Library of Wales) and the contributors to lis-
maps@JISCMAIL.AC.UK (a Forum for Issues Related to Map and Spatial
Data Librarianship) for helping us with our work on Swedish cadastral
maps. Thanks are also extended to Anthony Smith, for the time he spent
producing the artwork in this volume; members of staV at the Waikato
x Acknowledgements
Regional Council; Carwyn Fowler for his tireless eVorts on the Board of
Celtic Studies project; and those interviewees who agreed to participate in
this project.
As with the production of any book, in many ways our academic debts are
far outweighed by our personal ones. It is in this context that we would like to
extend special gratitude to all of our friends and family, whose emotional
support and empathies have made the writing of this volume possible. It is to
these friends and family that this book is dedicated. Finally, we must
acknowledge the following organizations for granting us permission to
reproduce certain material presented in this volume: the Special Collections
Section of Sussex University Library, for allowing us to reproduce material
from the L. Dudley Stamp Papers (Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966)
Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection Box, 19.1) on
pp. 99, 102, 105–6, and 107 the Ordnance Survey, for permission to repro-
duce as Fig. 6.2 the map of air quality automated monitoring sites in
operation, United Kingdom, March 2004, on p. 161; Blackwell Publishers
for allowing us to reproduce Fig. 4.1 on p. 114; and Taylor & Francis for
allowing us to reproduce Table 5.1 on p. 118.
Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones, and Martin Jones
Aberystwyth
March 2006
CONTENTS
List of Figures xii

List of Tables xiii
List of Abbreviations xiv
1. States and Natures: An Introduction 1
2. Seeing Double: Thinking about Natures and States 23
3. The Moments of Nature–State Relations 56
4. Mapping the Land: Spatializing State Nature 86
5. Nature and the State Apparatus 117
6. Between Laboratory and Leviathan: Technological

Development and the Cyborg State 147
7. Exploring Post-National Natures: Nature in the

Shadow of the State 177
Bibliography 209
Index 227
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1 The framing of state nature 16

3.1 Map of the Dutch Netherlands 62
3.2 Map of Wales, showing the main reservoirs 71
4.1 The spatial ordering of British nature 114
5.1 Map of the EPA’s boundaries 126
5.2 Map of Waikato Region within New Zealand 132
5.3 Map of the Ceredigion constituency within the UK 142
6.1 Integrated environmental monitoring in the UK 158
6.2 Automated air quality monitoring sites in the UK, March 2004 161
7.1 Cities and territories in Australia 182
LIST OF TABLES
1.1 Major resource conXicts since 1945 6

4.1 Land-use classiWcation scheme used by the
British Land Utilisation Survey 103
4.2 A scientiWc discourse of agricultural land:
classiWcatory schemes deployed by the Land
Utilisation Survey 104
5.1 The manifold apparatuses of the modern state 118
5.2 Danger levels for air pollution deWned by the EPA in 1971 128
5.3 The scales and territories of the RMA 130
5.4 Soil issues and management in the Waikato Region,
New Zealand 133
5.5 Maori conceptions of nature and resource use 134
5.6 General election result for the Ceredigion and
Pembrokeshire North constituency, 1992 144
7.1 Summary of changing levels of greenhouse
gas emissions for Italy, 1990–2002 (tonnes) 204
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
ANT Actor Network Theory

AURN Automatic Urban and Rural Network
BIO Biotechnology Industry Organization
CEQ Council on Environmental Quality
CPRW Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales
DEFRA Department of the Environment, Food and Rural AVairs
DoE Department of the Environment
EPA Environmental Protection Agency
GA Geographical Association
IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
LSE London School of Economics
LUS Land Utilisation Survey
NAEI National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory
RMA Resource Management Act
SCI Sustainable Cities Inquiry
UN United Nations
1
States and Natures: An Introduction
Nature does not respect national boundaries; human beings seem incap-
able of managing their aVairs without them. (Elhance 1999: 3)
Before continuing to read this book, stop, place this volume back on the shelf
and take a moment to look through the pages of an illustrated atlas of the
world. At least half of this atlas will probably be given over to illustrating one
of the dominant political ordering principles around which our world con-
tinues to be constructed and conceived—the nation-state. If your atlas is
similar to ours, however, you will also notice that nation-states are not only
represented and recognized according to their territorial shape and oYcial
political nomenclature. Skimming through the glossy colour pages of our
atlas,1 a continual cross-referencing appears between the political, ecological,
and geological motifs of nation-states. The political map of the US, for
example, is surrounded by images of the forests of New England in the fall
and the spectacular geological strata of the Grand Canyon. Turning the page
you Wnd an immediate association being made between Iceland and the
volcanically heated Blue Lagoon Lake, the Bahamas and its golden sandy
beaches, Belize and banana trees, Peru and the cloud-laden Andes. Further
into the atlas the fjords are deployed as an icon for the Norwegian state, barren
deserts are used to denote Western Sahara and Mauritania, and a dramatic
picture of Victoria Falls is carefully positioned below a map of Zambia. These
images are, of course, as with so much of what is routinely produced within the
visualizations of state and nationhood, crude stereotypes of complex geo-
graphical entities. However, we want to argue that this collection of ecological
and geological imagery does reveal an interesting relationship, a relationship
that is central to the ways in which our worlds are constructed, ordered, and
reproduced—the relationships between states and natures.
This book is premised upon the exploration of a paradox. While contem-
porary discussions of global environmental change, trans-boundary
biological communities, and systemic ecological threats routinely emphasize
the irrelevance of state systems and boundaries as means for understanding
and addressing questions of nature, everywhere you look nature is continually
being ordered and framed by nation-states. From President Sarney’s stringent
1
Ours is The Complete World Atlas (Leicester, Silverdale Books, 2000).
2 States and Natures
defence of the Brazilian state’s sovereign right to utilize natural resources

located in the Amazon to the complex electoral politics surrounding attempts
to preserve the Everglades in the US (Hollander 2005), state politics continues
to be bound up with the treatment and fate of the natural world. An explor-
ation and analysis of diVerent forms of what we term state nature lie at the heart
of this book. We deWne state nature as those strange but inherently familiar
fragments of nature that have been politically removed and abstracted from
their ecological contexts. Understood on these terms, fragments of state nature
include: the various ecological emblems that are routinely used to represent
national political communities (including plants, animals, and scenery); par-
ticular places/landscapes of ecological signiWcance (such as national parks and
nature reserves); ecological phrases, narratives, and myths (incorporated into
foundation legends and nation-forming stories); territorial maps and land-use
surveys; and even micro-biological organisms and molecules whose trans-
formation is regulated by various national laws and restrictions. In this con-
text, to speak of state nature is to make reference to an historically speciWc form
of nature and an associated set of understandings of the natural world. We
claim that this form of (state) nature marks a radical disjunction with pre-
modern understandings and treatments of the natural world.
It is our contention in this volume that while much has been written on the
role of religion, scientiWc method, cultural tradition, and capitalist industri-
alization in shaping social understandings and transformations of the natural
world (see Latour 1994; Smith 1984; Thomas 1983; Wilson 1982), there have
been far fewer systematic analyses of the role of states in the construction of
modern nature.2 While analysing the relationships between states and
natures, this book draws particular attention to the production of politically
centralized and territorially bounded conceptions of nature. State nature is
understood, then, as a form of territorially framed and administratively
governed nature, which has been brought into existence as part of the
processes that have resulted in the formation of modern nation-states. Before
we outline in greater detail the particular way in which we intend to analyse
state–nature relations, we want to brieXy consider some of the myriad ways
in which states and natures connect in the world around us.
Preliminary explorations in state nature
Hurricanes, ecological Leviathans and the administration of nature
[A]fter Hurricane Katrina, the balance between protecting people from nature, and
protecting nature from people, has become an urgent matter of public policy. (The
Economist 2005c)
2
Notable exceptions include Johnston (1996), Scott (1998), Sheail (2002).
Introduction 3
As we were Wnalizing this volume for publication, Hurricane Katrina hit

the Gulf Coast of the US. The social and environmental events and subse-
quent political responses associated with this disaster resonated strongly with
the issues and concerns we had hoped to address when we began writing this
book. At one level Hurricane Katrina was a so-called natural disaster—a
product of what Ulrich Beck (1992b) has described as ‘unavoidable eco-
logical risk’. As a natural disaster, initial responses to the hurricane and its
associated devastation were of sympathy for the communities who had been
randomly struck by an event that was beyond human control. But gradually,
as the images of Xood-devastated New Orleans, ruined homes, disposed
families, and squalid temporary shelters spread through global media net-
works, the discursive emphasis of the event shifted from one of natural
disaster to that of governmental failure. This shift was captured in The
Economist’s leader ‘The shaming of America’:
Since hurricane Katrina, the world’s view of America has changed. The disaster has
exposed some shocking truths about the place: bitterness of its sharp racial divide, the
abandonment of the dispossessed, the weakness of critical infrastructure. But the
most astonishing and most shaming revelation has been of its government’s failure to
bring succour to its people at their time of greatest need. (The Economist 2005b)
Initial criticism of the US government largely related to its slow response

to the crisis facing Gulf Coast communities. But as time went by the con-
demnation of the government moved from seeing the state as negligent in the
disaster, to arguing that the (in)actions of the state were actually a contribu-
tory factor to the crisis.
While local and state governments did take some of the blame for the
Hurricane Katrina crisis, it was the federal state that came in for the harshest
condemnation. To understand this criticism it is important to consider the
institutional links that have been established between nation-states and
nature. As large-scale, heavily funded bureaucracies, one of the key roles of
nation-states is to insulate and protect their populations from large-scale
natural disasters. This responsibility stems from the unrivalled resources,
institutional supports, levels of coordination, and funding associated with
states. It is this institutional capacity to act that means that nation-states are
supposed to be able to respond quickly and unfalteringly in the face of
natural disaster. It was the failure of the US state to act quickly and decisively
following Hurricane Katrina that led to so much public disapproval. While
criticism was levelled at a range of US government targets, including the
President himself, it was the government’s Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) that came under closest scrutiny. FEMA is the US govern-
ment agency charged with coordinating the federal government’s response to
disaster circumstances that outstrip the ability of state governments to re-
spond to them eVectively. Despite the sophisticated and advanced environmental
monitoring provided by the US government’s early warning hurricane
system, many felt that FEMA failed to coordinate a quick enough response to
the ensuing disaster (The Economist 2005d). Such accusations were made
worse by the fact that FEMA had been relegated from its former position as
a cabinet-level agency. Ultimately, following FEMA’s perceived failing, its
director, Michael Brown, resigned. Our concern, however, is not so much
with whether FEMA and the US government were culpable in the Hurricane
Katrina disaster, but with the links this example highlights between state
bureaucracies and nature. The events surrounding Hurricane Katrina illus-
trate how there continues to be a belief that state institutions should be able
to predict, administer, and respond to nature in certain ways. Yet despite
their often elaborate bureaucratic infrastructures, it is also clear that states
are often unable to deal with the vagaries and power of the natural world
eVectively.
The administrative apparatus of the modern state, according to certain
scholars, provides the key to understanding the power and inXuence of the
state (see Chapters 2 and 5). According to Weberian and neo-Weberian state
theorists, the sheer scale of the administrative capacity associated with
national governments (which includes its various departments, agencies,
personnel, and civil servants) means that states continue to embody unique
sites of political organization and power in the world today. In relation to
nature modern states have developed a range of specialist administrative
structures to frame and manage the natural world. The administrative archi-
tectures of states are often characterized by specialist institutional subdivi-
sions with responsibilities for managing diVerent aspects of the natural
world. Such institutions include agricultural ministries dedicated to ensuring
a regular harvest from nature (see Chapter 4), environmental departments
and agencies designed to monitor and protect the natural world (see Chapter
5), and rapid response units created to deal with ecological risk management
and catastrophes (including FEMA) (see Chapters 5 and 7).
In addition to illustrating how the production of state nature is informed
and conditioned by institutional practices, analyses of the bureaucratic man-
agement of nature also reveal the social and political complexities that shape
state–nature relations. In this context, when studying the state administra-
tion of nature one immediately discovers a bureaucratic infrastructure that is
far removed from the modern myths of objective rationality and eYciency we
often associate with the state. Instead, one is routinely confronted with
a complex web of state oYcials, civil servants, political struggles, and envir-
onmental events that mix the human, the non-human, and the social and
ecological in ever more complex ways. The activities of Brazil’s environmen-
tal protection agency, IBAMA, and its interventions in the Amazonian
rainforest, are illustrative of this point. The Brazilian government established
IBAMA in order to eVectively coordinate the government’s environmental
protection programme. Given this remit, IBAMA has focused much of
its resources, time, and energy on Amazonia. With its extensive tropical
Introduction 5
rainforest and associated timber and ecological resources, Amazonia is

Brazil’s key natural resource. The problem facing the Brazilian government
is that while the Amazonian rainforest represents a key economic asset
(particularly in relation to timber production and the productive agricultural
land that forest clearances can open up for cash-croppers to use), preserva-
tion of the rainforest ecosystem is also seen as a vital national and inter-
national objective (largely because of its untapped bio-ecological resources
and the role of the forest in global atmospheric systems).3 IBAMA has
consequently provided an important institutional context within which eco-
logical information about Amazonia has been gathered and economic activ-
ity in the region has been regulated (largely through licensing systems). The
centralization of knowledge about, and control over, Amazonian nature
facilitated by IBAMA has provided the Brazilian government with a mech-
anism for institutionally framing the rainforest as a national resource and
property. The complexities of IBAMA’s institutional structure and the sheer
scale of the Amazon region have, however, made eVective regulation of
the area diYcult. (For example, the Brazilian government recently admitted
that the rainforest had been diminished by approximately 10,000 square
miles between August 2003 and August 2004: Usborne 2005). To compound
this situation, it has recently been revealed that civil servants working for
IBAMA have been involved in covering up illegal logging operations, which
has led to the arrest of forty oYcials and civil servants from IBAMA,
including its lead oYcial in Amazonia, Mato Grosso (Usborne 2005).
The case of IBAMA reminds us that far from being neutral agencies of the
state, government bureaucracies are made up of humans who are capable of
mistakes and corruption. In this context, it is diYcult to understand the
institutional relationship between the Brazilian state and nature without
considering the clandestine meetings of IBAMA oYcials and illegal logging
Wrms, the global trade in mahogany, and international conventions on forest
conservation. These are the processes that condition state–nature relations
and continually complicate the simplifying logics of modern state interven-
tion within nature.
Nature wars and the geopolitics of states and natures

The Worldwatch Institute (2002) has estimated that wars fought over natural
resources were responsible for over Wve million human deaths and the
displacement of a further twenty million people from their homes in
the 1990s alone. In addition, it was estimated that the ‘conXict commodities’
produced through these wars raised funds in access of US$12 billion a year for
the rebels and authoritarian states involved in these conXicts (Worldwatch
3
For a wonderful insight into the complex politics and ecology of the Amazonian rainforest
and the ebb and Xow of state–nature relations there, see RaZes (2002).
Table 1.1. Major resource conXicts since 1945

States involved Natural resources involved
Afghanistan Heroin, opium, lapis lazuli, emeralds

Angola Oil, diamonds
Burma Timber, jadeite, natural gas, rubies, opium
Cambodia Timber, rubies, sapphires
Colombia Oil, coca, cocaine
Democratic Republic Coltan, diamonds, gold, cobalt and copper
of Congo/Rwanda,
Uganda
Republic of Congo Oil
Indonesia Natural gas, timber, minerals
Liberia Diamonds, timber, rubber, gold, iron ore, cannabis
Morocco Phosphates and oil
Nigeria Oil
Papua New Guinea Copper
Rwanda Coltan
Sierra Leone Diamonds
Sudan/Egypt Water
Sudan Oil
Source: Compiled from information in Elhance (1999); Klare (2001); Vidal (2002); Renner (2002: 7).
Institute 2002). It is of course diYcult to validate such shocking Wgures.

Things could, however, actually be worse than these statistics suggest. But
even if these numbers represent a gross exaggeration, it seems that nature, in
the form of valuable resources, has a crucial role in shaping the geopolitical
existence of many modern states. What we do know is that struggles over the
control and utilization of natural resources are already leading to the prolif-
eration of environmental conXicts (see Table 1.1), or what Klare (2001) terms
‘resource wars’. In relation to this book, resource wars highlight three crucial
processes:
1 the link between the control of nature and the realization of state power;
2 that in order to secure access to, and power over, nature, states persistently
attempt to nationalize environmental assets through the securing of terri-
torial boundaries;
3 that despite continued historical attempts to territorially and administra-
tively control nature, the geographical location and movement of nature
continue to defy its framing by the state.4
It is clear that the control and management of nature has always been
central to the realization and consolidation of state power. Early analyses of
the geopolitical origins of nation-states, for example, revealed how nature
played a crucial role in both inXuencing the external geopolitical terrain upon
4
For a more detailed analysis of the relationship between state, nature, and geopolitics, see
Dalby (1992, 1996, 2002a, b), Dodds (2000).
Introduction 7
which states were forged and in stimulating the internal expansion of states in
the quest for geographically ‘good lands’, with fertile soils and favourable
natures.5 But if nature played an important role in the geopolitical constitu-
tion of modern states, it is also clear that the struggle for natural resources
continues to underpin political and military struggles within a range of con-
temporary states. We claim that at the heart of resource conXicts is the
political framing of nature as a national resource and its associated discursive
association with national security. In the Wrst instance, the procurement of
natural resources from particular regions to serve abstract national agendas is
often a stimulus for conXict, as regional militia attempt to claim sovereignty
over their own local assets. But it would be impossible to understand these
conXicts without appreciating the historical processes of territorialization and
centralization that made nature an object of political struggle in the Wrst place.
In the context of the links between nature and issues of national security, many
now claim that the concentration of key energy resources in what are deemed
to be ‘politically unstable states’ has become one of the driving forces behind
contemporary military and geopolitical strategy in the West. The intervention
of the US in so-called ‘energy supply priority areas’ (particularly, it would
seem, the oil-rich Middle Eastern region and the Andean states), for example,
has been interpreted by some as an attempt to militarily frame natural
resources that actually lie beyond the formal territorial borders of the US.6
One conXict of particular relevance to this volume is the contemporary
struggle for water supply in the Nile Basin.7 Due to its exceptionally dry
climate, Egypt depends on the River Nile for much of its water needs. The
problem for Egypt is that the headwaters of the Nile pass through and supply
eight African states before the river eventually reaches Egypt. This does of
course make Egypt exceptionally vulnerable to attempts by other states to
capture water from the Nile through irrigation schemes and dam-building
projects. From the late 1970s onwards, the supply of water has been the top
geopolitical priority of the Egyptian state—even more important, it is now
argued, than its strained political relations with Israel.8 Egypt’s concerns
5
For more on the relationship between nature and the formation and expansion of early
modern states see Mackinder (1904) and Ratzel (1896). Notice in particular how Mackinder’s
famous analysis of the ‘pivot of history’ reveals the role that nature (in the form of geographical
landscapes and geomorphological forms) conditioned the geopolitical context for state formation
in continental Europe. It is also interesting to note the inXuence that Ratzel’s ideas of territorial
expansion and the enclosure of ‘good natures’ had on the geopolitical ambitions of the early
Prussian state and the territorial expansions devised by the German Nazi Party in the 1930s.
6
See Harvey (2003a) for more on the Carter Principle; see also Vidal (2002).
7
For a detailed review of water resource management conXicts in the Nile Basin, see Klare
(2001: chs 6–7) and Elhance (1999).
8
More detail on the geopolitical signiWcance of water supply can be found in Klare (2001: chs
6–7). Indeed the key focus of Egypt’s diplomatic policies and international relations strategies
now appears to be Sudan and Ethiopia—two states with inXuence over the Xow and utilization of
Nile water—not Israel.
with water supply issues stem from the fact that without water the state
would simply stop functioning. Clean water is vital at the most basic level for
human health and survival, but water is also a prerequisite for key industrial
processes and the production of economic wealth (see Chapter 3). What
interests us about this case study is that water supply has obviously been
an issue in the Nile Basin ever since its settlement by large numbers of people.
Despite this, it is the post-colonial carving up of the basin into individual
nation-states that is the key to understanding contemporary conXicts in
the region. The point is that modern states continue to use territorial strat-
egies to control facets of nature that are aterritorial in essence. Despite the
dam-building projects undertaken by the Egyptian state (the most famous of
course being the construction of the Aswan High Dam), the River Nile is not
the exclusive property of Egypt and it continues to Xow through other states
and across other territorial borders in the region. To many, the persistent
leakage of nature across sovereign territorial boundaries in places like the
Nile Basin makes discussions of the state meaningless within environmental
debate (see Kuehls 1996; Young 1994). Our point is, however, quite the
reverse, because we claim that it is the historical legacy and continued desire
of modern states to territorially frame nature that is generating this era of
resource wars. In this time of escalating nature wars, understanding the logics
that undergird the relationship between the modern state and nature is now
more, not less, important than it ever has been (see Chapter 7).
Nations, nature, and ecological patriotism9

In her celebrated exposition of the Welsh nation—The Matter of Wales—Jan
Morris (1984) begins with a detailed discussion of its distinctive nature.10
While discussing a range of diVerent facets of Welsh nature, including rivers,
trees, and animals, it is the landscape to which Morris (ch. 1) devotes
particular attention. According to Morris, what makes the Welsh landscape
so distinctive is its geology and the preponderance of rock at the surface of
the landscape created by this geology. Morris asserts:
The substance of Welsh nature is largely rock; some four-Wfths of the surface of Wales
is hard upland, where the soil is so thin that the stones seem always to be forcing their
way restlessly through . . . the real thing, the dominant, is hard, bare grey and stony.
(Morris 1984: 17)
The landscapes of surface rock that are found throughout Wales have, so
Morris claims, played a crucial role in the imagination and physical experi-
ence of Welsh nationhood.11 In terms of the national imagination, such harsh
9
We borrow this phrase from Matless (1998).
10
The Matter of Wales was later republished (with additions) as Wales (London, Penguin 2000).
11
For more on the links between Welsh national identity and landscape, see GruVudd
(1995, 1996).
Introduction 9
landscapes have been utilized as part of nation-building in Wales in a variety

of ways. At one level, the natural landscape has provided a visual marker
through which Wales has consistently asserted its distinctiveness from
England (and Britishness) and the typically more ‘picturesque’ imagery of
the English landscape. Secondly, the harshness of the Welsh landscape has
also been used in rather dubious attempts to explain the character of the
Welsh person as ‘hardy’, ‘determined’, and ‘hardworking’ (GruVudd 1995).
Returning again to Morris:
Watch how a Welsh farmer picks up one of those boulders! It is as though the two
of them are Xesh and blood. A preliminary Xexing of the shoulders, a bending of
tough stocky legs, a bit of a grunt, and the things, is up in his arms like a baby. (Morris
1984: 17–18)
It is through this close association of the Welsh landscape and the Welsh
people that nature has been incorporated within the narratives of
Welsh cultural history. What is perhaps important about the particular role
of the Welsh natural landscape within the imagination of a Welsh community
is that it has not only enabled the cerebral creation of a Welsh nation, but has
provided a point of physical and sensual contact through which the nation
has become an embodied experience. In this context Morris reXects:
The whole sensation of rural Wales can be concentrated into one small patch of
ground, a foot or two square, if that ground is Welsh enough: if it is tufted and ferned
and mossed enough, that is, if its slab of stone is suYciently mottled, if the earth is
properly peaty and the air slightly mushroomy . . . the truest Welsh places oVer
experiences as much tactile as visual, for everywhere there are stones that seem to
invite your stroking, your rolling, your sitting upon. (Morris 1984: 17)
While characterized by a rather naive environmental determinism, the

meshing together of Welsh nature, landscape, and biology has become a
central part of many of the foundation legends that are told of the gradual,
organic emergence of the Welsh. The natural landscape consequently pro-
vides an important collective touchstone within the national imagination
of Wales and, as we shall see later in this book, a cultural resource that has
been actively defended within a series of nationalist campaigns against the
modernizing logics of the British nation-state (see in particular Chapter 3).12
Throughout this book we continually emphasize the important role that
nature plays in the socio-cultural fabric, as well as the political and economic
well-being, of nation-states. In this context, it is important to be clear from
the outset about the distinction we discern between nations and states. We
understand states as demarcated political entities, with bureaucratic systems
12
For an interesting discussion of the role of natural landscapes in the politics of insurgent
nationalism, see Nogué and Vincente’s (2004) work on Catalonia. Matless’s (1998) analysis on
the landscape preservationist groups and their opposition to modern post-war planning in
Britain is also very interesting in this context.
of administration, rules of law and sovereign powers. States, if you like,

represent the realpolitik of a given country, its oYcial political system. The
idea of the nation is, however, less easily deWned. Part of the reason for this
diYculty is because nations often do not correspond to state boundaries (as in
the Celtic nations of the UK, the Basque Country of Spain, or the Breton
nation in France), or follow easily identiWable rule systems and political
practices. Nations correspond to an alternative (but no less powerful or sign-
iWcant) form of social organization to states. Nations are the cultural systems
and modes of ethnic identiWcation that bind groups of people together.
Nations embody the collective signs and symbols with which people of the
same nation identify, invest cultural meaning in, and invoke at key socio-
political moments. The signs and symbolism of nations can take diVerent
forms, from national Xags, music, poems, literature, and newspapers, to
television shows, dress, language, and historical narratives. The cultural
artefacts of nations essentially act to ensure that while individuals will never
meet all of those who share their national identity, it is possible to imagine a
community of fellow citizens experiencing nationhood in a similar way.13
While nations do not always correspond to, or indeed support, state forma-
tions, the imaginary geography, foundation legends, and cultural myths of
nationalism are often used to undergird state authority. States often make
reference to key national motifs, historical events, and cultural values in order
to support their own legitimacy and policy decisions. At other times, however,
ethnic nationalisms can be mobilized against dominant forms of state power
and politics and be used to resist the logics of modern state development.
In relation to our discussions of nationhood, it is interesting to emphasize
the important role that nature plays in the cultural production of nations (as
we have already seen in the case of Wales). Indeed the etymology of the
words ‘nation’ and ‘nature’ are remarkably similar—both of course being
suggestive of something native, original, or genuine.14 Nature often provides
the most obvious and readily available material resource around which to
construct national legends and modes of identiWcation. Nature, for example,
is often incorporated into the stories and myths of state formation that are
used to forge a sense of common national heritage and belonging
(see Chapter 3). John Rennnie Short (1991) has described the multifarious
cultural appropriations of nature within state/nation formation as ‘national
environmental ideologies’. Perhaps one of the most common and transfer-
able national ideologies, which weave together nature and culture, is the
‘myth of blood and soil’.15 Prominent within many West European states
such as Britain, Germany, and Italy during the interwar period, this myth
13
In his now celebrated book, Benedict Anderson (1991) describes nations as ‘imagined
communities’.
14
For more on the common etymology of the words ‘nation’ and ‘nature’, see Williams (1998).
15
For a fascinating discussion of the role of soil debates within the construction of English
national identity in the interwar years, see Matless (1998); see also Bramwell (1989: 163–6).
Introduction 11
describes the organic synthesis of nations in terms of the intimate mixing of

nature (in the form of agricultural land) and humans (in the form of manual
labour and political struggle) (Matless 1998: ch. 3). The ‘myth of blood and
soil’ thus constructs the nation (and the associated political apparatus of the
state) as the historical product of the mixing of culture and nature, human
endeavour and ecological fecundity, blood and soil. Nations are thus seen to
be distinct not because of their people, or their ecological assets, but because
of their unique combinations of these social and natural forces. Such stories
ultimately serve to naturalize nation-states, suggesting as they do that states
are not artiWcial political constructions but the products of organic processes
of evolution (Matless 1998: ch. 3). Nature can of course be woven into the
narratives of nationhood in other, perhaps less inclusive, ways. In Fredrick
Jackson Turner’s famous frontier thesis of American history, he describes the
emergence and consolidation of the US in the context of the continual
struggle between human civilization and the wild spaces of the North Ameri-
can continent.16 According to Turner, the frontier was where America
encountered, subjugated, and transformed nature in the process of building
a modern state. In this popularized myth of American history, then, nature
becomes the oppositional force against any socio-political progress, but its
place in the story of national history is still prominent.
If certain foundation legends and national narratives involve the temporal
appropriation of nature into the cultural project of nation-building, it is clear
that landscape reXects the spatial equivalent of this process. Landscapes have
been incorporated into nation-building projects in two main ways. First,
iconographic landscapes have consistently been promoted within art and
within acts of planning preservation as key signiWers of nations.17 According
to Daniels (1993), landscapes oVer one of the most immediate senses of a
nation’s ‘shape’ and form. In this sense landscapes quite literally provide
a visual frame within which state natures can be isolated, observed, and
understood (see Chapter 4). In his detailed analysis of the construction of
landscape in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Kenneth Olwig (2002)
describes how certain visions of the quintessential English landscape came to
denote a sense of organic unity across the whole (British) country. Olwig
(2002: xxx–xxxii) argues that in seventeenth-century Britain, landscape
became a political tool used simultaneously to ‘mask’ the socio-political
divisions of the emerging British state and to forge a coherent vision of
national unity. In this context, he argues that the process of landscaping also
involved the ‘mindscaping’ of the nation, as nature became the basis for
imagining national space and veiling the abstract power of the state. In addition
16
For an interesting and alternative reading of Fredrick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis, see
Cronon (1991a: 46–54, 1999b).
17
For an overview of analyses of the relationship between landscape, nature, and nation-
states it is useful to turn to the work of a number of prominent landscape geographers: see, for
example, Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), Daniels (1993), Matless (1998).
to the use of natural landscapes, nation-states also rely upon the artiWcial
construction of parks and gardens to convey the cultural ecologies of the
nation. For example, in his analysis of the incorporation of nature into major
European cities since the eighteenth century, Denis Cosgrove (1993) describes
how nature was manipulated to serve certain political ends. According to
Cosgrove, the use of picturesque garden design within royal parks and public
spaces conveyed important messages about national history and unity. As
a meeting place of culture and wilderness, or society and nature, the garden
came to symbolize the harmony that had been established by a nation and its
ecological inheritance. Cosgrove describes urban gardens as ‘middle natures’,
where through the proper arrangement of water, grass, trees, and native species
of Xowers, a nation could celebrate its nature, and perhaps more importantly,
its transformation and improvement of the natural world.
As this section has illustrated, the framing of nature by the modern state
does not only operate at political and economic levels. State–nature relations
clearly involve a series of cultural processes within which nature is framed
by a mix of narrative, landscape design, art, photography, and monuments.
As we have seen in our previous discussion of the administrative and
geopolitical farming of nature by the state, the cultural appropriation and
use of nature can often overXow and escape from its narrow codiWcation by
nation-states. In this context, it is clear that as well as supporting nation-state
building, natural landscapes have also been mobilized in a series of cultural
and political movements that question the modernizing logic of modern
nation-states.
Studying state–nature relations: sites, moments, and the

framing of state nature
Having established some of the ways in which it is possible to discern the
entanglements of states and natures in the world around us, it is important to
brieXy outline how we intend to approach and study the interaction between
states and natures. Before we consider this, however, some words of warning.
To talk of the interaction or relationship between states and natures is
a problematic thing to do for two main reasons. First, it tends to suggest
that there are things called ‘the state’ and ‘nature’, which can be
easily identiWed and delineated. The terms ‘nature’ and ‘state’, however,
actually represent two of the most internally diVerentiated categories within
the English language.18 For example, when we talk of the state, are we
18
See Williams’s (1998) careful etymology of the word ‘nature’ for more on the particular
diYculties of deWning the term. He actually claims that nature represents one of the most diYcult
words to deWne in the English language. According to Williams, however, this diYculty is
directly related to the importance of the processes to which the word actually refers.
Introduction 13
referring to parliaments, governments, executives, legislatures, bureaucra-

cies, spatial territories, or parts of civil society like schools, hospitals, and
community organizations, which could be considered to be part of the
apparatus of the ‘ideological state’? In a similar sense, should discussions
of nature be interpreted as a reference to ecological systems, biological
processes, environments, or moral law? In this volume we focus our attention
on nation-states. We understand the nation-state to be one relatively recent
manifestation of the state form, characterized by a centrally orchestrated and
extensive administrative apparatus, and a territorial area or space of oper-
ation over which it holds sovereign power.19 In this volume, however, we are
not just concerned with what nation-states are, but with what they do and
how they carry out their various operations. In this context, we emphasize
that the nation-state is distinguishable from other historical state forms not
only because of its administrative capacity and territorial scope but also
because of its art of governing. Following Foucault (2002), then, we interpret
the modern nation-state as a state that has been ‘governmentalized’. As
a governmental entity the nation-state is characterized by a rational science
of government, which is based upon the systematic collection of knowledge
concerning that which is to be governed, and the use of that knowledge to
ensure the ordered government of a particular people and territory through
various techniques and tactics (Foucault, 2002: 212).
In terms of our approach to nature we draw inspiration from the cele-
brated analysis of the historical evolution of human understandings of nature
provided by Raymond Williams (1998: 219–24), who warns the analyst of
nature to be ‘especially aware of its diYculty’. At the heart of his warning was
a realization that nature has been and continues to be used in very diVerent
ways to refer to very diVerent things. In this book we discuss what Williams
(1998: 219) describes as the ‘abstract singular’ use of the word ‘nature’ in
reference to either the forces guiding the world (as in ‘mother nature’), or the
material world itself (often understood as excluding humans). While we
discuss both uses of the term ‘nature’, we do focus in particular on its
manifestation as the material world. When we speak of nature as the material
world, however, we are not simply referring to static objects (landscapes,
mountains, trees), but also to the inWnite array of processes that constitute
nature: whether it be photosynthesis or the circulation of the atmosphere,
human cell division or evapotranspiration. At one level then, nature, under-
stood as the material world around us, can be thought of as the substratum of
our existence, or all those processes, both within and beyond our body,
that operate with or without human intervention. Having said this, however,
throughout this volume we argue that it is erroneous to conceive of
nature as a sort of pristine realm, untouched by human actions and power.
19
For a more detailed analysis of the various spatial scales and institutional modes of
operation associated with contemporary states, see Brenner (2004).
Consequently, whether it is in terms of the construction of nature within art

or literature, or the transformation of nature through science, technology,
and industrial development, we argue that all forms of nature, or the material
world, must now be understood, at least in part, as social products or
artefacts.
The second reason we are suspicious of discussions of states interacting
with natures is because such phrases tend to suggest two already established
entities doing things to each other—the state aVecting the natural environ-
ment, or changes in nature somehow inXuencing the policies and dictates of
the state. In light of this reservation, throughout this volume we attempt to
develop an account of states and natures which, rather than interpreting
them as Wnished things or objects, instead analyses them as collections of
interrelated processes. But what does this actually mean? At one level it
suggests that in order to analyse state–nature relations it is important to
unpack both categories so as to understand how their constituent parts are
intermeshed and connected. At a second level, by understanding natures and
states as processes we argue that state forms and natural systems are always
already deeply implicated moments within a complex system of mutual co-
evolution. As is illustrated later in this book, such a perspective challenges
and destabilizes many of the fundamental assumptions that tend to be made
when deWning and conceiving of both states and natures. This approach to
the relationship between states and natures is inspired partly by the writings
and philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead (1985).20 In his analysis of the
constitution of reality (and the methods of science in disclosing that reality),
Whitehead asserts that we should understand ‘the world as a process and that
process is a becoming of actual entities’ (1985: 30). We argue that states and
natures are not pre-given, already completed entities, but continually emer-
ging realities. Crucially, throughout this volume we also claim that facets of
the emerging entities, which we now refer to as the state and nature, have
provided important contexts for each other within their respective historical
evolutions.
In our exploration of the relationships between modern states and natures
we focus upon the processes through which states attempt to frame the
natural world. We take our understanding of the processes of framing from
the work of Michel Callon (1998) on economic contracts and market ex-
change. Developing GoVman’s (1990) earlier analysis of the framing of social
encounter, Callon argues that the frame is simply a context within which
‘action and eVects are known and measured’ (1998: 261). A frame could thus
be a chemical factory, a theatrical performance, a laboratory, or a legal
contract negotiation. Framing is a process that involves the ‘bracketing
oV’ of the things and objects interacting in a certain context (Callon 1998:
20
See also Barry (2001: ch. 7) for more on notions of process and becoming in the constitution
of objects of government.
Introduction 15
249). A frame of interaction involves a degree of focus, a focus on the things

that can be measured and changed—and a subsequent ignorance of the
things that are located beyond this calculation process. In this book we
argue that nation-states have provided crucial framing devices within
which social interaction with nature has been negotiated and realized in the
modern era. As we see later in this volume, the framing of nature by the state
only rarely involves the construction of a physical framework or territorial
barrier, and can take the diverse forms of agricultural laws, scientiWc pro-
cedures, property rights, environmental statistics, and engineering infrastruc-
tures. What such framing processes invariably involve, however, is the
‘violent extrication’ (to use Callon’s term (1998: 253)) of nature from its
broader ecological context. This violent extrication takes two basic forms:
the extrication of nature from its local ecological context (as regularly occurs
within the simpliWed practices of state-sponsored resource surveys); and the
extraction of one state’s nature from the broader international environment
with which it shares numerous biochemical relations. In the context of this
second point, we should also mention that our invocation of framing should
not be interpreted as a suggestion that nature is ever successfully or unprob-
lematically framed by the state. Indeed, Callon (1998: 252–5) is quick to
recognize that any discussions of framing must be coupled with an analysis of
the concomitant processes of overXow. OverXows are perhaps best thought of
as leaks, or the things that spill out and escape framing processes. In relation
to state–nature interactions, overXows can be seen in the form of acid rain or
genetically modiWed organisms, which have both at diVerent times eluded the
framing of nation-states and Xowed across national borders. What is inter-
esting within the contemporary era, however, is that these overspills are now
being framed in such a way that they too can be measured and attributed to
individual states (Callon 1998: 257) (see Chapter 7).
In the speciWc context of modern state systems, we understand the process
of the framing of nature in relation to two interrelated tendencies—the acts
of centralization and territorialization. Both processes are synonymous with
modern state systems. We understand centralization as having two vital
eVects on the framing of state nature. First, centralization involves the
gathering of standardized knowledge about nature through complex webs
of institutional arrangements and technological devices. This centralized
collection of knowledge about nature may include estimates of the concen-
tration of chemicals in the atmosphere, national soil surveys, or water reserve
analyses. As Scott (1998) recognizes, the gathering of this ecological know-
ledge within state laboratories, government departments, and various other
‘centres of calculation’, involves the production of a highly simpliWed nature,
which has been abstracted from its geographical context and shorn of all
those things that do not interest the state. The centralization of nature should
not in this context simply be interpreted as a process of simpliWcation.
Centralization is about making nature mobile (in both a literal and
metaphorical sense)—so it can be gathered in both a simpliWed form (as in

the environmental statistic) or as an actual object (as in the laboratory or
museum piece). Secondly, the centralization of knowledge about nature
involves the creation of a Weld of power. This is essentially a Weld of state
power over nature that is generated on the basis of the new understandings of
nature that are created by the centralized concentration of knowledge about
the natural world. This Weld of power not only frames the natures that are to
be understood and governed by the state (i.e. state nature), but also suggests
those natures—both within and beyond a state’s territory—for which it does
not have governmental responsibility.
We understand the process of territorialization as the use of space to
control and regulate nature. In this context the territorialization of nature
can be seen to operate in at least two ways. First, it involves the construction
of spaces that facilitate and order the gathering of political knowledge. This
knowledge can be the product of various mapping exercises or even geograph-
ical information systems (GISs), but essentially enables the state to know
nature through its spatial form and location (see Chapter 4). Secondly, the
modern state often uses territorial strategies to physically control nature and
social interactions with the natural world. At one level, such territorial
strategies may involve the regulation of nature through the use of national
boundaries, but it can also involve the control of nature in sub-national spaces
like national parks, sustainable cities, or planning zones. Throughout this
volume, we consider how the processes of centralization and territorialization
interact within the continual framing and reframing of nature by the state (see
Figure 1.1). Crucially we claim that the interaction of these processes not only
determines what nature a state is to govern, but also inXuences the ways in
which it is possible to understand and experience the natural world.
In order to operationalize this view of state–nature relations we explore
the complexities of state nature through what we term diVerent sites and
Fig. 1.1. The framing of state nature

Introduction 17
moments of connection. The terms ‘sites’ and ‘moments’ are important here
because they draw attention to the important role of both space and time
within the constitution of state nature. By focusing upon the sites and
moments (or speciWc spaces and times) of state–nature relations we reveal
the geographical complexities and temporal diversities that characterize these
relationships. In this way we aim to avoid oversimplistic and abstract
accounts of ‘the state’ and ‘nature’, and consider instead very speciWc imbri-
cations of certain states with particular facets of nature, within particular
spatio-temporal coordinates. We use the terms ‘sites’ and ‘moments’ because
at one level they suggest the existence of discrete bounded spaces and times
we can study—a national park or the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, for
example, or an atmospheric monitoring laboratory, or a Xood event. In this
context, a focus on sites and moments gives us something to grasp onto as we
attempt to explore the pervasive yet strangely elusive relations between states
and natures. Following Harrison et al. (2004: 130), we argue that sites and
moments ‘are places and times of concentration and intensity of process and
energy’. As intense concentrations of process and energy we claim that the
various sites and moments we study in this book (including the American
Museum of Natural History in New York, the early modern Swedish state,
the Trewern Valley Reservoir, and even a particular day (22 July 2003) when
Congressman Dave Weldon addressed the American House of Representa-
tives) can all provide rich and complex insights into the ever-shifting rela-
tionships between states and natures. We consequently use diVerent sites and
moments of state–nature relations not to limit and bound our investigations,
but as points of departure as we become ever more immersed in the entangle-
ments of states and natures. Sites and moments thus force us to consider the
negotiated connection of the material and the discursive, the human and the
non-human, society and nature, in the perpetual reconstruction of space and
history. Throughout the seven chapters of this book we have deliberately
chosen to look at a variety of what may seem at Wrst glance unrelated sites
and moments of state–nature relations. Even in individual chapters we often
move between Welds as diverse as the Dutch polders and Welsh nationalism,
or governmental reform in New Zealand and parliamentary politics in the
UK. We have deliberately chosen this strategy so that we can more eVectively
convey the multitude of diVerent sites and moments where and when state–
nature relations operate and in turn convey the pervasive and critical nature
of this relationship to our contemporary modes of existence.
State, nature, and modernity’s laboratory
While it is possible to chart the relationship between political authorities and

the natural world through a range of ancient regimes and historical empires,
in this volume we focus upon state–nature relations speciWcally within the
modern period. We explain what we understand by the modern period in

greater detail shortly (p. 19), but our reason for studying this particular
historical epoch requires some initial explanation. We are concentrating
upon the modern era primarily because this is a time that is synonymous
with the centralization and territorialization of political and ecological power
described in the previous section. When exploring the modern era we are
primarily interested in two of its most important myths—the myths of the
modern state and modern nature. These myths are essentially based upon the
twin scientiWc codiWcation of political power and ecological process wit-
nessed in the modern era.
In terms of the state, the formation of modern government is typically
associated with the emergence of a new ‘science of the state’ in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries (Foucault 2002). It was at this time that the so-
called ‘problem of government’ was transformed from being a question of
securing sovereign power to one concerning the proper accumulation and use
of knowledge as a basis for political regulation (Foucault 2002: 215). While
Foucault does not expand in detail on precisely what the science of the state
is, or was, we interpret it as a deWnitive model of good government, based
upon standardized bureaucratic procedures and territorial controls and
dedicated to uncovering an underlying and predictable truth within the
things that are to be governed.
The emerging myth of modern nature is, we claim, intimately tied to the
operations of the modern state. We thus understand modern nature as
a construction of the natural world within which nature is shorn of its social
attachments, values, and meanings and is presented as a puriWed object of
scientiWc reXection, exploration, and exploitation. In this context modern
nature was invented, at least at a conceptual level, within the methodological
convulsions and epistemological revolutions associated with the birth of the
classical scientiWc revolution (Latour 1993; Thomas 1983). As a partial
product of the scientiWc revolution, modern nature traces its historical origins
to a similar time as the modern state. As subsequent chapters will show,
however, this is no temporal coincidence—the modern state has continued to
provide the political context within which the modern construction of nature
as a knowable object of control and (scientiWc) government has been con-
tinually rehearsed, consolidated, and preserved.
Having established this fairly rudimentary understanding of the modern
state and nature it is important to reXect upon their mythical characteriza-
tion. To speak of the myths of the modern state and nature may appear
peculiar, given that they are the combined objects of analysis upon which this
book is based. But by emphasizing their mythical status we are not trying to
deny the profound eVects that notions of the modern state and nature have
had on the world. Rather, we seek to explore how the myths of a cold,
calculating, bureaucratic state, whose modes of operation transcend the
messiness of everyday life, and an abstract, apolitical nature have actually
Introduction 19
enabled the deepening of ever more complex state–nature relations. In this

way we partially concur with the parallels that Bruno Latour (1993: ch. 2)
famously draws between the modern state and modern nature. The work of
Latour has shown that while the visions of a ‘gigantic rational state’ and
objectiWed nature have never been fulWlled, as popular myths they have both
facilitated and fuelled the economic and political transformations that are
synonymous with modernity (1993: 122). Our aim in this book is conse-
quently twofold: Wrst, to explore the eVects that the modern myths of the
state and nature have had on human understanding and experience of both
politics and ecology; and secondly, to expose the complexities of both the
state and nature, which are largely ignored within their mythical construc-
tion. In exposing these myths we seek to show a state which, far from being
objective and removed, is dependent on a whole range of social actors and
ecological processes for its existence. In a related sense, we reveal a nature
which, far from being the objective product of science, is a socially con-
structed and politically infused product of modernity. Our analysis of the
myths of both the modern state and modern nature thus become crucial
moments within their respective demystiWcations. In attempting to uncover
the complexities of the modern state, modern nature, and the connections
between them, our project draws in part on the wider work of Bruno Latour.
In his explorations of nature as a socio-ecological hybrid, and the state as
a ‘skein of networks’, Latour (1993: 120–2) attempts to uncover the inherent
messiness that lies behind our ordered understandings of both nature and the
state. Where we diVer from Latour, however, is in our insistence on the
continuing importance of both the state and nature as conceptual categories
and ontological realities. While Latour’s hybrid interpretation of reality
leads him to a point whereby both the state and nature become meaningless
simpliWcations of our networked existence,21 we argue that both the state and
nature continue to channel and mobilize important forms of socio-environ-
mental power and agency, and as such are crucial loci of analysis.
We are conscious that great care must be taken when speaking of the
modern era. The idea of the modern actually refers to a diverse set of
political, economic, and cultural processes to which a single term can hardly
do justice. Literally meaning ‘of the moment’, or ‘just now’, the term modern
tends to refer to processes of historical change associated with moderniza-
tion—or what Soja (1987: 27) has described as ‘the continuous process of
societal restructuring that is periodically accelerated to produce a signiWcant
recomposition of space–time–being’. We will return to the links between the
modern and space–time–being shortly, but it is important to recognize at this
point that while the modern is often referred to as an era (modernity) its
precise history is diYcult to delimit. In the celebrated analysis of modernity
21
In particular note Latour’s (1993: 122) criticisms of the conceptualizations of the ‘total
State’.
provided by Marshall Berman (1983), we see the history of the modern era
presented not as a continuously unfurling historical project, but as a series of
intense periods of modernization, including the aforementioned political
and scientiWc revolutions of the sixteenth century (where modernity became
a force to oppose the ancient world) and the more recent technological
transformations associated with the industrial revolution during the nine-
teenth century.22 It would thus be erroneous to interpret our mobilization of
the notions of the modern state and modern nature as distinct historical
categories or types. It is quite clear that during the era of modernity (when-
ever that may actually be) states have taken very diVerent forms and fulWlled
varying functions, while nature has been understood and used in a variety of
ways. It is our contention, however, that as a ‘programmatic vision for social
change and progress’23 modernity has provided the ideological and techno-
logical context within which the intensive centralization and territorialization
of the natural world (which we claim characterizes contemporary state–
nature relations) has Xourished. Consequently, while Berman (1983: 15, 26)
describes modernity as a ‘vital mode’ of largely social experience, we also see
it in relation to a set of ecological ‘ways of being’ that have been shaped by
the ‘technocratic pastorals’ of the modern state.
In order to conceptualize the relationship between state, nature, and
modernity we Wnd the metaphor of the laboratory particularly helpful. The
modern scientiWc laboratory has a long historical association in the public
imagination with the objective uncovering of nature’s secrets. This idealized
vision of the laboratory has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years
from sociologists who have explored the cultural and political fabric of
laboratory life.24 Within these varied studies, the laboratory has been
shown to be an intensely cultural and political site within which conventions
(not truths) about the natural world are produced through everyday prac-
tices and struggles. By oVering the idea of the state as modernity’s laboratory
we are suggesting that the state not only be understood as a site for the
production of a deWnitive vision of (modern) nature, but as a political
context within which struggles over the properties, meanings, and values of
nature are being constantly expressed, managed, and partially regulated. As
a laboratory space, of course, the modern state does not frame nature in the
same way as real laboratories (through walls, experimentation columns, Petri
dishes, and refrigerators) but through territorial borders, institutional struc-
tures, and laws. We claim, however, that just as laboratories produce legit-
imate knowledge concerning nature, and physically transform fragments of
the natural world, so too states are actively engaged in the reiWcation of
22
See also Soja’s (1989: 24–31) analysis of Berman.
23
We use here Maria Kaika’s term (2005: 4).
24
See in particular here Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s (1979) celebrated anthropology of
the work of scientists sharing laboratory space. For a broader discussion of the politics of the
laboratory, see Barnes and Shapin (1979), Latour (1983), Shapin and SchaVer (1985).
Introduction 21
modern state nature. By drawing the parallel between the role of the state and
laboratory in the construction of nature, we are also mindful of Latour and
Woolgar’s reXection on the relationship between the laboratory and the
natural world: ‘ScientiWc activity is not ‘‘about nature’’, it is a Werce Wght to
construct reality. The laboratory is the workplace and the set of productive
forces, which makes construction possible’ (Latour and Woolgar 1979: 243;
emphasis in original). The distinction that Latour and Woolgar make
between nature and the reality produced in the laboratory is important for
us because it serves to highlight the diVerence between the natural world and
the reality of state nature that has been produced under modernity. Like the
reality produced in the laboratory, state nature is not simply an objective
reXection of the natural world, but rather a form of nature that is both
possible and politically useful to construct.
As a kind of virtual laboratory of nature, we claim throughout this book
that the state has been central in orchestrating our modern conceptions of the
natural world. In making this assertion we do not wish to deny the crucial
role that both capitalism (see Smith 1984) and religion (see White 1967) had
and continue to have in shaping the modern perception of nature. But we do
argue that by focusing on the state we are able to perceive the particular
impacts that the processes of territorialization and centralization have had
on our understanding and treatments of nature. Implicit within this agenda is
a belief that the emergence of modern states has fundamentally transformed
how we experience and can experience the natural world (see e.g., Harvey
1989a, b; Soja 1989: ch. 1; Thrift 1996).
Structure of this book

In this chapter we have sought to introduce the reader to our broad agenda
and theoretical framework of analysis. The remainder of this volume is split
into six main chapters. Chapter 2 supplements and extends this opening
chapter, outlining and exploring the diVerent ways in which state theorists
and ecological thinkers have conceived of the complex relationship between
the state and nature. Together these two chapters outline the main theoretical
traditions and ideas upon which this volume in based. In Chapter 3 we
explore the historical relationships between states and nature and how states
have utilized nature within their ideological and material development.
Chapter 4 considers how nature–state relations have been spatialized as
part of an emerging nation-state system, in particular through the carto-
graphic practices associated with land-use mapping. Chapter 5 considers the
role of political administrations and bureaucracies in mediating state—nature
relations and Chapter 6 moves on to explore how technologies have facili-
tated new forms of state–nature interaction while at the same time under-
mining certain forms of state power over nature. Finally, Chapter 7 explores
the changing constitution of state nature in diVerent post-national contexts.

In relation to the political, economic, and environmental processes associated
with globalization, it considers how contemporary state–nature relations are
increasingly being forged around a series of sub-national and supra-national
sites and spaces.
2
Seeing Double: Thinking about

Natures and States
Without their countless objects that ensure their durability as well as

their solidity, the traditional objects of social theory—empire, classes,
profession, organizations, States—become so many mysteries . . . The
very size of a Totalitarian State is obtained only by the construction of
a network of statistics and calculations, of oYces and enquiries, which in
no way corresponds to the fantastic topography of the total State.
(Latour 1993: 120, 122)
The disintegration of the atlas: mythical abstractions and

fantastic topographies
This chapter is about how we think about states, natures, and the relationships
between them. Despite this book’s assertion that an understanding of the
relations between states and natures is vital for any interpretation of contem-
porary political life or ecological existence, it is important to recognize the
growing sense of antipathy towards theories of the state within work on
nature. This antipathy is based on two broad critiques of state theory—one
epistemological and the other ontological. At an epistemological level, chal-
lenges to work on the state can perhaps best be understood in relation to the
consistent tendency of certain strands of political theory to use the deWnite
article when referring to ‘the’ state. Reference to ‘the’ state, however inno-
cently deployed, implicitly suggests a clearly designated, singular entity of
government. But it is precisely this view of states as sovereign, territorially
autonomous containers of political life that has led to a concerted wave of
theoretical criticism. The reiWcation of a deWnitive vision of the state has
tended to create a very narrow view of the state within certain strands of
contemporary political theory. It is in this context that Rose and Miller (1992)
argue that the state is nothing more than a ‘mythical abstraction’ (see Chapter
1), or an attempt to simplify the complex networks and practices through
which governmental power is realized into narrowly conceived, centralized
visions of authority. Consequently, to many writing within what could
24 Thinking about Natures and States
broadly be deWned as a Foucauldian school (Hobbes 1996: 82) of political

theory, notions of the state are anathema to the careful and systematic study
of the governmental technologies, modes of calculation, and institutional
procedures through which socio-political power is realized. At an ontological
level, it is argued that even if vestiges of the mythical abstractions (or ‘fantastic
topologies’) associated with state theory persist, the power of states to shape
the political, economic, and social worlds has been seriously undermined.
Much of the purported reduction in the state’s sovereign power has been
associated with the rise of globalization1 and the associated socio-ecological
relations and transactions that now routinely traverse national territories.
Within both these critical perspectives on state theory issues of nature
feature prominently. In the Wrst instance, for example, many now working
on the complex networks of ecological governance, which characterize sys-
tems of environmental governmentality, claim that notions of the state obfus-
cate the subtle connections between political power and ecological process
(Darier 1999). In the second context, certain scholars of globalization now
argue that the key issues in contemporary socio-natural relations (whether it
be climate change or ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere) are global in
form and thus beyond the territorial remit of nation-states (Ophuls 1977).
Despite these contemporary manifestations of the tensions between theories
of the state and nature, in this chapter we explore how the separation of states
and natures within critical study actually has much longer historical antece-
dents within western political thought and philosophy. Having considered the
ideas informing the separation of states and natures within critical analysis,
the remainder of the chapter examines how ideas of states and nature have
been combined within diVerent theoretical traditions. Sometimes these con-
nections are clear and explicit; in other instances they are merely implied. By
excavating these diVerent theoretical traditions we consider a range of pos-
sible ways of understanding and discerning state–nature relations. Ultim-
ately, we use these varied perspectives to better explain and position our
own interpretation of the relationship between states and natures, which is
based upon notions of territorialization, centralization, and framing.2
Rethinking states and natures I: first nature and the early

modern state
States of nature: Hobbes and Rousseau

It is instructive to begin our discussions by referring back to some of the
earliest philosophical accounts of the state and nature. What is interesting
1
For an overview of globalization see Held et al. (1999).
2
For a much shorter but related theoretical review of state–nature relations see Whitehead
et al. (2006).
Thinking about Natures and States 25
about some of these is that while often coming from opposing political
perspectives they have one thing in common—a tendency to create a tem-
poral and ideological dichotomy between states and natures. Let us begin
with one of the most celebrated writers on the state and political sovereignty,
Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was born prematurely on 5 April 1588 in the
English county of Wiltshire. The seemingly apocryphal tale was told that
Hobbes’s premature birth was a result of his mother’s concern with the
imminent arrival of the Spanish Armada to English shores. We note this
rather peculiar tale because it is suggestive of the times within which he lived
and wrote. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe was a place and an era
of transition, when the political hierarchies of the medieval world were
gradually being replaced by early modern state systems. Hobbes witnessed
the kinds of social and military turmoil these transformations created—from
the English naval struggles with Spain to the internal conXicts over the form
and functions of the English state that raged during the civil war of 1642–48.
On the basis of these experiences Hobbes wrote a series of manuscripts in
which he reXected on nature, humanity, and social organization—including
De Cive (1642) and De Corpore (1655). His most inXuential work, however, is
undoubtedly Leviathan (1651), which, signiWcantly, was published only three
years after the cessation of the English civil war and the signing of the Treaty
of Westphalia.
In Leviathan Hobbes explores the role that emerging systems of govern-
ment (or embryonic states) should have in resolving social anarchy and war.
According to Hobbes the leviathan was a hybrid political structure, combin-
ing the ‘sovereign power’ and ‘the people’ within a system of political control
and obedience. While it would be erroneous to equate Hobbes’s vision of the
leviathan with the modern state, what is interesting, in the context of our
deliberations, are the discussions that he initiates regarding the relationship
between nature and political government.3 Hobbes refers to nature not as
a thing or as a set of ecological processes, but as a condition. In this context, it
is wrong to associate Hobbes’s use of the term ‘nature’ with its contemporary
manifestations. The condition of nature was, according to Hobbes, the type of
social relations that did (or would) exist in the absence of a sovereign power.
This idea of nature as a time or condition of ‘primitive’, savage society is often
referred to as a state of nature. The idea of the state of nature clearly resonates
with the contemporary idea of ‘Wrst nature’, or that time within human
prehistory and ancient times when humans were still a product of nature
and its laws, not a producer of nature themselves.4 As with all other species,
Hobbes (1996: 82–6) argued, humans were a product of a state of nature
3
Caloyn Merchant (1989: 206–15) provides a more detailed analysis of Hobbes’s account of
the natural world.
4
For more on the ideologies of Wrst nature and the idea of the production of nature, see Smith
(1984) and Luke (1995: 3–4).
within which their animalistic instincts and capabilities were set. The problem
for Hobbes was that he believed that the natural impulse of humanity would,
if left to its savage freedoms and unchecked desires, result in a system of social
anarchy, destruction, and perpetual warfare. In his now (in)famous reXection
on the state of nature, Hobbes emphasizes this fundamental belief:
Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men [sic] live without a common power, to
keep them all in awe, they are in a condition which is called war . . . where every man
is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without
other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall Xourish
them withal. In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof
is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth . . . no knowledge of the face of
the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worse of all,
continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short. (Hobbes 1996: 84)
Perhaps what is most signiWcant about this often-cited quote is not so
much the notoriously bleak picture it paints of early human existence, but the
direct parallel it draws between the absence of the state (or a common power)
and the presence of an uncivilized natural realm. Debate still rages as to
whether Hobbes believed this state of nature (or ‘war’) actually existed, or
whether he was using it as an ‘apocalyptic myth’ against which to counter-
point his theories.5 Hobbes did, however, predicate that the only way of
resolving the natural inclination of humanity to follow selWsh desires and
generate divisive conXict was to cede certain natural freedoms to a sovereign
power. This sovereign power could then, through the advantages of the power
vested within it, provide an authoritative framework within which conXicts
and disputes could be resolved and social harmony achieved.
While Hobbes’s vision of a sovereign or common power cannot be read
simply as a call for a modern nation-state, it is clear that his idea of a civil
government with national territorial scope is an authoritarian precursor of
the modern state. What is also clear, however, is that when discussing issues
of government and society, Hobbes establishes a clear temporal/metaphor-
ical dichotomy between systems of nature and the laws and practices of
government. To Hobbes, the state, or common power, replaces or supersedes
nature—as the body of nature (‘primitive man’) is replaced by the body politic
(the leviathan).6 The demarcation of a state of nature (or the original state of
humanity), either in time or intellectually, from what we term the nature of
the state (the establishment of a system of civil society centred on a sovereign
government) is a common and persistent move within analyses of natures
and states. The separation of nature and the state in this way operates at
a number of levels, but is undergirded by a particular ideological vision of
nature as an alien, uncivilized, external realm, over which human rationality
5
See the editor’s introduction to Hobbes (1996: xxxii).
6
See ibid. (xviii).
and good government must prevail if a morally virtuous society is to be

achieved (Smith 1984).7
A second key writer who discussed the relationship between the functions
of early states and the natural world was Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The son of
a Swiss watchmaker, Rousseau lived in Geneva as a child, eventually moving
to Paris, where he began to write some of his most famous philosophical
work. He is of particular interest to this book for two main reasons: Wrst,
because he was a philosopher of the Enlightenment who was concerned
with the establishment of a modern rational and representative state that
could replace the systems of feudal servitude that existed in Europe during
the eighteenth century; and secondly, because his work provides an alterna-
tive view on the relationship between states and natures to that oVered
by Hobbes.
In his famous Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1755) (or the Second
Discourse),8 Rousseau presents a detailed exegesis on Hobbes’s notion of the
state of nature. Critically, within his discussion of the state of nature, Rous-
seau rejects Hobbes’s vision of the state of nature as nasty and brutish and
argues that it is the emergence of modern political society (and in particular
authoritarian states) that has created social inequality, repressions, and
political unrest. In this context, Rousseau argues that rather than supplant-
ing nature, the function of states should be to re-establish and preserve the
personal freedoms associated with the state of nature, or the natural state of
humanity. It is the need to re-establish natural freedoms that Rousseau is
referring to in that famous Wrst line of his The Social Contract, when he
states, ‘Man [sic] is born free; and everywhere he is in chains’ (Rousseau 1993:
181). Many have argued that Rousseau’s invocation of the state of nature as
a time of timid harmony and freedom is nothing more than romantic natur-
alism.9 At one level there can be little doubt that he utilized a very diVerent
ideology of nature from that deployed by Hobbes. This divergence in Rous-
seau’s understanding of nature from that of Hobbes is expressed perhaps
most clearly on the opening page of his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality,
when he quotes Aristotle’s reXection on the relationship between nature and
moral order: ‘We should consider what is natural not in things which are
depraved but in those which are rightly ordered according to nature.’10 It is in
this context that Rousseau’s vision of nature is perhaps best thought of in
terms of the contemporary notion of an internal ideology of nature—an
ideology that attributes moral virtue, wholesomeness, and divine order to
7
The taming, or civilizing, of nature by modern state institutions has been likened by Tim
Luke (1997) to the imposition of an artiWcially generated ‘techno-sphere’ (or second nature) onto
a pre-historical ‘eco-sphere’ (or Wrst nature).
8
Its full title was A Discourse on a Subject Proposed by the Academy of Dijon: What is the
Origin of Inequality Among Men, and is it Authorised by Natural Law?
9
See the editor’s introduction to Rousseau (1993).
10
This quote was taken by Rousseau from Aristotle’s Politics (Book I, ch. 2).
the natural world (Smith 1984: ch. 1). Nevertheless, Rousseau did not advo-
cate a romantic quest in search of a lost Eden or natural order, but rather the
creation of an artiWcial system of political government to preserve the natural
rights of humanity to freedom. According to Rousseau, this system of
political government was best achieved through a social contract, or bond,
forged (and constantly re-aYrmed) between people and the state. On Rous-
seau’s terms the role of the state should be to deliver the collective will of the
people and to preserve their right to individual freedom. To Rousseau, then,
the state was a necessary institution in preserving nature or at least the
natural order of the world.
The signiWcance of the work of Hobbes and Rousseau for this book lies not
in their respective portrayals of the pre-statal realms of Wrst nature, but in the
fact that in order to theorize the political and moral functioning of states they
had to invent a natural world. In order to comprehend what living in a state
system was, it is clear that both Hobbes and Rousseau created a vision of an
antecedent regime of nature, and used this vision to justify absolutism and
republicanism, respectively, within the governments of their time. For both
writers it is clear that nature became a mirror for the state. For Hobbes this
mirror showed the problems that an absence of state power could create,
while for Rousseau nature was invoked to illustrate the intrinsic failure of
early modern governmental systems. This mirror for the state, oVered by
both Rousseau and Hobbes, is consequently best conceived of as a ‘stripped-
down’ vision of humankind—in Rousseau’s terms, humanity as it came from
‘the hand of nature’ (Smith 1984: ch. 1).
Anarchists, states, and natures

The third and Wnal set of philosophies on the relationship between the early
state and nature we wish to reXect upon come not from individual writers but
a collection of political thinkers and activists collectively known as the
‘Anarchists’. While Anarchism has contemporary connotations with various
nihilistic actions, political protests, and radical resistances, we are concerned
here with the philosophies of a group of thinkers who emerged in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These writers, who became know
by the collective term ‘Anarchists’, include prominent Wgures like Mikhail
Bakunin, William Godwin, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin, Pierre-
Joseph Proudhon, Elisée Reclus, and Henry David Thoreau. Despite its
varied political and philosophical roots, the basic premise of Anarchism
can be summarized as an opposition to the imposition of any form of
authority that serves to erode the personal freedoms and creative powers of
the individual. (It is salient to note that the word ‘anarchism’ can be taken to
literally mean the absence of a leader or commanding authority.) Anarchist
suspicion of authority has taken various forms, with numerous treatises
written on the corrupting powers of both religion and science in the erosion
of personal liberties (see Bakunin 1970; Kropotkin 1974). The state, however,
has remained the central target of Anarchist writings and actions.
The Wrst clear articulation of Anarchist philosophies on political hierarchy
and the liberty of the individual was provided by William Godwin in his
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793). In his famous reXections on the
nature of political justice, Godwin claims that the presence of the state has
two pernicious eVects upon the society over which it presides (Godwin 1976).
First, states tend to produce a condition of dependence, whereby individuals
turn to the state to provide the basic things they need to live rather than
securing these things themselves. Secondly, and in a related sense, Godwin
argues that states engender regimes of ignorance among their national popu-
lations, as individuals become increasingly alienated from the processes by
which their lives are made possible. While the problems of dependency and
ignorance identiWed by Godwin were invoked in a wide range of political
contexts to justify Anarchist-inspired visions of society, many Anarchists
equated these problems directly with the social experience of, and interaction
with, nature. Anarchist writers claimed that the emergence of the modern
state had eVectively severed people’s routine interactions with the natural
world and undermined the valuable ecological knowledges produced by these
immersions within nature. State-sponsored programmes of scientiWc forestry
and industrialized agriculture, and the shift of population from rural to
urban areas inspired by this transition were, according to the Anarchists, to
blame for the growing estrangement of people from nature. It was this belief
that inspired one of the most famous of all Anarchist writers, Peter
Kropotkin, to write his celebrated blueprint for an Anarchist society—Fields,
Factories and Workshops Tomorrow (1899). In this book Kropotkin argued
for the decentralization of society from a nationally integrated system of
industry and agriculture into a federated system of self-contained communes.
While inspired by the desire to create a better quality of life for people,
through the careful integration of industry, agriculture, and the home, at
the centre of Kropotkin’s vision was a clear desire to remove the barriers that
he believed the state had placed between people and the natural world.
Perhaps the clearest indication of the Anarchists’ concern with socio-
natural relations is captured in the publication of one of their earliest jour-
nals, Mother Earth. Edited by Alexander Berkman and published by Emma
Goldman, Mother Earth provided a framework within which Anarchist
concerns with political society were combined with deliberations on envir-
onmental change and ecological destruction. The dual purpose envisaged
for Mother Earth is perhaps captured best in Emma Goldman and Max
Baginski’s introduction to the Wrst issues of the magazine in March 1906:
MOTHER EARTH will endeavor to attract and appeal to all those who oppose
encroachment on public and individual life. It will appeal to those who strive for
something higher, weary of the commonplace; to those who feel that stagnation is
a deadweight on the Wrm and elastic step of progress; to those who breathe freely only
in limitless space; to those who long for the tender shade of a new dawn for a
humanity free from the dread of want, the dread of starvation in the face of mountains
of riches. The Earth free for the free individual! (Goldman and Baginski 1906: 1)
The mantra of ‘the Earth free for the free individual’ espoused by Mother
Earth encapsulates the relationship that Anarchists regularly constructed
between political freedom and ecological harmony.
During the early part of the twentieth century Mother Earth became a very
fashionable place to publish, numbering among its varied contributors Frie-
drich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Leo Tolstoy.
Combining poetry with political philosophy and ecology with historical
commentary, the pages of Mother Earth reveal the links that Anarchists
discerned between the erosion of political liberty and freedom within emer-
ging state systems and the social estrangement and destruction of nature.
ReXecting on the consolidation of state power in the US, Emma Goldman
and Max Baginski make the political ecology of anarchism clear:
To the contemporaries of George Washington, Thomas Paine and Thomas JeVerson,
America appeared vast, boundless, full of promise. Mother Earth, with the sources of
vast wealth hidden within the folds of her ample bosom, extended her inviting and
hospitable arms to all those who came to her from arbitrary and despotic lands—
Mother Earth ready to give herself alike to all her children. But soon she was seized by
the few, stripped of her freedom, fenced in, a prey to those who were endowed with
cunning and unscrupulous shrewdness. They, who had fought for independence from
the British yoke, soon became dependent among themselves; dependent on possessions,
on wealth, on power. Liberty escaped into the wilderness, and the old battle between the
patrician and the plebeian broke out in the new world, with greater bitterness and
vehemence. A period of but a hundred years had suYced to turn a great republic, once
gloriously established, into an arbitrary state that subdued a vast number of its people
into material and intellectual slavery, while enabling the privileged few to monopolize
every material and mental resource. (Goldman and Baginski 1906: 1)
In this zealous passage on the socio-ecological consequences of state
formation it is possible to discern a clear distinction between the purported
slavery of arbitrarily imposed state systems and the inherent freedoms of
nature, and in particular wilderness. The connection between wilderness,
liberty, and nature is a consistent theme within the various issues of Mother
Earth and other Anarchist writings. It is of course not diYcult to draw
parallels between this vision of nature and freedom and Rousseau’s invoca-
tion of the state of nature. What appears to be diVerent, however, between
the state of nature envisaged by Rousseau and the Mother Earth invoked
by Anarchists are the political motives that informed these constructions.
While Rousseau used the idea of a state of nature to imagine a state system
that preserved the natural freedoms of humankind, the Anarchists’ recourse
to Mother Earth had much more to do with the creation of individual
freedoms, which were based on the independence of people from the state.
On Anarchist terms, personal independence from state systems was to be
realized through a re-engagement of people with the substratum upon which

their existence depended—nature.
If Mother Earth represented the intellectual exegesis of Anarchist thinking
on the proper ordering of society and nature, Henry David Thoreau pro-
vided its practical counterpart. In many ways Thoreau embodies the type of
Anarchist ecologism envisaged within the pages of Mother Earth. Thoreau’s
Anarchist sympathies are perhaps expressed most clearly in his suspicion of
the state. (During his life, it is claimed that he never voted or paid taxes!)
Thoreau’s ecologism is evident in his varied writings on, and his persistent
desire to reconnect with, the natural world. Perhaps the most famous expres-
sion of his particular brand of eco-anarchism (or anarcho-ecologism) was his
retreat to live in the Massachusetts woods and the subsequent publication of
his famous book Walden (or, Life in the Woods) in 1854. During July 1845,
while still mourning the death of his brother, Thoreau took up residence at
a woodlot on Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts. His good friend Ralph
Waldo Emerson owned the Walden Pond woodlot and it was Emerson’s
writings on nature that inspired Thoreau to embark upon his retreat.
Altogether, Thoreau only lived on Walden Pond for two years and two
months his record of his time there remains essential reading for Anarchists
and environmentalists alike.
In many ways the illustrated front cover of the 1942 Signet Books reprint
of Thoreau’s classic tale conveys the meaning of his sojourn at Walden. It
shows Thoreau learning against a wooden cabin, surrounded by nature, in
a deep state of contemplation and free from any discernable authority or
government. This is the Anarchist ideal, an individual free of the pandering
dependencies of the state, in a condition of reXective harmony and under-
standing with the natural world. In his account of his two-year separation
from mainstream society at Walden Pond, Thoreau describes an intimate
relationship emerging between himself and his surrounding natural environ-
ment. Shorn of the complexities and demands of modern life, he describes
a growing interdependency emerging between himself and the cycles and
seasons of Walden’s ecologies. Crucially, and echoing the transcendental
philosophies of Emerson, Thoreau claims that his reconnection with nature
not only facilitated the gathering of important forms of environmental
knowledge, but a spiritual awakening of the self. It is this belief in the
discovery of the true self (within the realms of nature from where that self
Wrst originated) that lies at the heart of Anarchist philosophies of freedom,
the state, and nature. This process relies fundamentally on the gradual
discernment of a human ‘species being’, which is only recognized when a
broader consciousness of ecological being is comprehended. According to
Anarchists, it is this conscious species being that is denied within the alien-
ated ecological realms of the modern state.
It is important at this point to recognize the limitations of our brief review
of Anarchist philosophies. As we have intimated, Anarchism is a broad and
ongoing philosophical tradition, and as such our brief, historically limited

review of its luminaries fails to grasp the complex variations within Anarchist
writing and thought. While admitting this, however, it is clear that the early
writings of the Anarchists continue to be invoked within various facets and
strands of contemporary environmentalism, and persistently inform the en-
vironmental movement’s suspicion of the modern state. Our primary concern
with the enduring inXuence of Anarchist philosophies relates to their tendency
to create a potentially pernicious zero–sum game in discussions of the state
and nature. The point is that through the Anarchist characterization of the
state as repressive and nature as freedom, there is a tendency to suggest that
more state power means less space for nature, while the re-emergence of
nature concurrently reXects an erosion in the inXuence of the state. This is
clearly absurd! It is absurd because of the implicit assumptions that such a
perspective makes about both the state and nature. First, it assumes that all
forms of state are hierarchical and suppressive. While there is a clear tendency
within modern state systems to favour hierarchical systems of command and
control, this tends to overlook the potentially empowering and heterarchic
networks through which state power can be realized (Robbins 2004, forth-
coming). Secondly, this perspective rests upon a rather idealized view of
nature as a non-hierarchical entity of mutual cooperation and support. In-
creasingly, scientiWc study has revealed the discordant hierarchies through
which nature operates, which, while liberating certain species and biological
forms, inhibit and subjugate others. The point is that just as with Hobbes’s
and Rousseau’s ‘states of nature’, certain Anarchists have been guilty of
creating an arbitrary division between states and natures. While in part
informed by the temporal assumptions of accounts of a primordial state of
nature (or Mother Earth), it is interesting that the division that Anarchists
make between states and natures is a very spatial aVair. Consequently, within
the Anarchist tradition the state is equated with industry, the city, and the
nation, while nature becomes synonymous with agriculture, wilderness, and
the local. Here nature and the state are not so much times (the state of nature/
the nature of the state) as spaces and places (Walden/Washington, DC). It is
our contention in this book that the spatial spread, or consolidation, of states
(that is, their territorialization) should not be equated with an associated loss
of space for nature. Instead, we argue that rather than replacing nature, states
have provided new spatial and institutional contexts through which nature is
being understood and experienced.
Before leaving Anarchist writings, it is important to recognize a shifting
emphasis in neo-Anarchist thinking on the relationships between the state
and nature. This is perhaps captured best in the diverse and inXuential
writings of Murray Bookchin (1980, 1986, 1991). What is interesting about
Bookchin’s work is that while his writings on social ecology and ecological
democracy emphasize the importance of abandoning forms of social organ-
ization that are predicated upon the state, his critique of the state is not based
upon the state as a political principle but on the modes of rationality and
socio-ecological ordering that states tend to produce. This, of course, is much
more a critique of the modern logics of states than simply their institutional
existence. If we look, for example, at Bookchin’s reXections on states and
natures in his Post-scarcity Anarchism, this distinction becomes clear:
The cast of mind that today organizes diVerences among humans and other life-forms
along hierarchical lines, deWning the external in terms of its ‘superiority’ or ‘inferior-
ity’, will give way to an outlook that deals with diversity in an ecological manner.
DiVerences among people will be respected, indeed fostered, as elements that enrich
the unity of experience and phenomena. The traditional relationship that pits subject
against object will be altered qualitatively; the ‘external’, the ‘diVerent’, the ‘other’ will
be conceived as individual parts of a whole all the richer because of its complexity.
This sense of unity will reXect the harmonization of interests between individuals and
between society and nature. Freed from an oppressive routine, from paralyzing
repressions and insecurities, from the burdens of toil and false needs, from the
trammels of authority and irrational compulsion, individuals will Wnally, for the
Wrst time in history, be in a position to realize their potentialities as members of the
human community and the natural world. (Bookchin 2004: 57)
The issue for Bookchin here is clearly not so much with the existence of
political authority in the form of a state or government, as with the ordering
logics that this centralized authority imposes upon the natural world and the
impacts that these ordering techniques have on subsequent social experiences
of nature.11 As opposed to a conscious unity of experience between the social
and ecological worlds, Bookchin sees a dual tendency within state systems.
At one level states impose a hierarchical order which reduces nature to its
component parts and establishes clear boundaries between the social and
natural worlds. Secondly, Bookchin discerns that as the social and natural
worlds are ordered hierarchically by state institutions, a process of othering
emerges through which nature loses much of its social and spiritual meaning.
Of course what both the processes of hierarchical ordering and othering have
in common is that that they tend to simplify nature into a series of socially
discernable and manageable categories and simultaneously obfuscate other
systems that could be used to understand nature and ecology.
Rethinking states and natures II: second nature,

administrative power, and the ‘ecological leviathan’
Weber and the ecological leviathan

The second set of theories we wish to explore reXects a more sanguine
interpretation of nature–state relations than those recounted so far. We are
11
This is perhaps why Bookchin advocated a vision of state decentralization that was not
based upon ecological principles but on the structures of libertarian municipalism.
primarily concerned in this section with how a political and cultural conscious-
ness of an emerging form of second (or socially changed) nature is intimately
connected to the conceptual embracing of the state as a necessary manager of
natural resources and ecological risk. When we speak of second nature, we do
so in direct and deliberate contradistinction to the idea of Wrst nature we
discussed in the previous section. Consequently, if Wrst nature is the primordial
substratum of existence, or that which pre-exists social production, second
nature is a nature that has been constructed and produced, an artiWce of a
prevailing socio-technical order (Smith 1984: ch. 2). While we are suspicious
of the widespread use of the term ‘second nature’ within contemporary philo-
sophical debate,12 what is interesting about the term is that it describes a form of
nature that humanity is responsible for producing. This notion of social respon-
sibility for nature has been manifest in two main ways. First, there has been a
growing awareness—often driven through the environmental movement, but
also through environmental sciences—of the unprecedented ecological damage
that the industrial generation has done to the natural world. Secondly, and
strangely allied to the production of environmental damage, has been an emer-
ging socio-cultural and techno-scientiWc belief that human society can control
and manage the environment in new ways. This process of environmental
management is based upon maximizing environmental resource use while alle-
viating the eVects of environmental damage. It is in this dual context of environ-
mental change and increasing political power over the environment that the idea
of the state as manager or caretaker of nature Wrst emerged.
In many ways the idea of the state as caretaker, or guardian, of the
environment is a philosophy not too distant from the Hobbesian state (see
Johnston 1996: 131–2). Consequently, and in the context of capitalist social
relations in particular, it is not diYcult to imagine how the selWsh pursuit of
individual economic agents, if unchecked, could have devastating eVects on
the welfare of environmental commons like the atmosphere, biosphere, and
hydrosphere. The somewhat simplistic and economically Xawed argument
goes that in such circumstance, each economic agent would be impelled to
exploit the environment to his or her fullest capacity, while avoiding any
form of environmental reparation for fear of subsidizing the resource use of
competing economic agents.13 This is in eVect the eco-industrial equivalent of
Hobbes’s chaotic vision of the state of nature.14 From this perspective the
12
This is primarily because of the way in which the term has been used to deny the continuing
reality of Wrst nature—which, if not in terms of ecological space, at least in relation to eco-
biological processes, endures.
13
See in this context Garret Hardin’s (1968) famous, if controversial, tragedy-of-the-
commons thesis.
14
While conceived of in relation to the need for collective international action to protect the
global commons, the classic exegesis on the economic exploitation of global commons was
provided by Garret Hardin in his Tragedy of the Commons (1968). See also Hardin (1974) for
a discussion of the need for global or world government.
state’s institutional capacities and territorial coverage enable it to assume an

important position within the Weld of environmental management—inter-
vening in pollution control and abatement, coordinating large-scale environ-
mental clean-up operations, devising new acts of legislation to control socio-
industrial interventions in nature, granting licences and permits for new
scientiWc techniques and engagements with nature, and constantly providing
matrices and calculated formulae of estimated environmental change and
likely resource availability. This interpretation of the relationship between
the state and nature essentially sees the state as a collective ecological agent,
acting either in the best interests of the population as a whole (a neo-pluralist
perspective), or on the best available judgement of scientiWc experts and state
personnel (a neo-elitist position).15
But the question remains as to why the state, and not other politico-
economic agents, should assume the position of guardian of the natural
world. The idea of the state as an ecological manager derives from a collec-
tion of writings that have focused upon the political apparatus and admin-
istrative resources associated with state bureaucracies. These theories are
often referred to as Weberian, or neo-Weberian, after the German sociologist
Max Weber (1864–1920). While Weber wrote on a broad range of topics, he
developed a particular interest in the nature of political bureaucracy (Weber
1947), which he interpreted as a form of labour division applied to systems of
political administration. In this context, he saw the state as a set of emerging
bureaucratic structures with an increasingly specialized set of institutions (or
departments) and state personnel (civil servants) dedicated to political man-
agement tasks. Weber’s analysis of the state as a complex system of admin-
istrative structures led to his famous four-part deWnition of the state as:
1 a diVerentiated set of institutions and personnel embodying
2 centrality in the sense that political relations radiate outwards from a centre to
cover
3 a territorially demarcated area, over which it exercises
4 a monopoly of authoritative rule-making, backed up by a monopoly of means of
physical violence. (Quoted in Mann 1984: 185)
According to Weber it was the institutional capacity and associated rule-
making ability that set the state apart from other institutions. Drawing
inspiration from Weber, modern neo-Weberian theorists like Giddens and
Mann have developed sophisticated accounts of the state as a set of admin-
istrative structures that have a degree of autonomous power. The idea of
autonomous power is important here because it opposes Marxist theories of
the state, which often portray it as merely the expression of class forces and
the interests that control it (see the next section, p. 38). Neo-Weberians like
15
For more on the links between the state and collective environmental action, see Johnston
(1996).
Giddens and Mann assert that the gradual accumulation of centralized

institutional support, political bureaucracy, and trained policy elites has
created a situation whereby the state has its own particular brand of power
and inXuence, which is partially autonomous from class power or military
might.
Mann (1984) describes the authoritative resources of the state as its ‘infra-
structural power’, while Giddens (1985: 19) prefers the term ‘administrative
power’. In both instances, the processes they describe are recognizable by
their contrast to traditional forms of absolutist or despotic state power.
According to Mann (1984), the infrastructural power of the state is the
product of the varied accumulation of institutional mechanisms and organ-
izational procedures. In a related sense, Giddens’s notion of administrative
power emphasizes the role of states in mobilizing administrative techniques
in the increasingly detailed surveillance of society (1985: 181). Giddens
(1985: 178) argues that states are essentially ‘reXexively monitored systems
of reproduction’, which not only provide the necessary judico-political
conditions for social reproduction, but also routinely scrutinize the changing
circumstances of a nation to ensure prolonged security. Giddens recognizes
that while states have always acted as systems of reXexive monitoring, within
the modern period their technological capacity to perceive and respond to
change within their territories has been greatly enhanced. Indeed, he goes so
far as to argue that the emergence of systematic data-gathering and data-
management techniques marks the end of authoritarian state forms and the
birth of the modern state. The key state technology of reXexive monitoring
identiWed by Giddens is that of information gathering, documentation, and
storage. With the assistance of advanced communication systems and new
data-gathering and accumulation techniques, Giddens observes a great
advancement in the institutional capacities of the state during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. This was based upon the regularized production and
storage of information gathered through national censuses, tax registers,
factory returns, and health statistics. Tied into the institutionalized data-
gathering practices of the state was of course an ability to control informa-
tion and intervene more eVectively within the social and economic activities
of the nation.
In his related analysis of infrastructural power, Mann (1984) is quick to
point out that many of the administrative techniques of the state are neither
unique to it as a socio-political organization, nor were they deliberately
devised by calculating state elites. Instead, he sees the state’s infrastructural
power as being part of a general pattern of heightened social resource
mobilization. What sets the state apart, on Mann’s terms at least, is the
way it wields accumulated infrastructural resources over a Wxed territorial
area and through a system of continual centralization. The link between
infrastructural power and territorial control is echoed in the work of Giddens
(1985), who argues that the administrative power of the state is both
a product and a facilitator of the ordering of time/space at a national level. In

this context, the infrastructural/administrative unity of the state not only
enables it to control social activity within its territory, but also facilitates the
deliberate choreography of the time/space of social life within a national
framework.
While the work of Weberians and neo-Weberians tends to focus on the
exercise of state infrastructural/administrative power on society (in the form
of the gathering of social statistics or through social institutions like the
school, hospital, prison, and factory), it often ignores the related adminis-
tration of nature, which has been an implicit part of the emergence and
consolidation of the modern state. The administration, or management, of
nature can be observed in two mains ways. First, the state administration of
nature has evolved in relation to the gathering of information on environ-
mental resources and ecological change. Secondly, the state’s administrative
reach into nature is the product of their accumulated technologies, which
enable them to assume a relatively unchallenged management position when
society is confronted with ecological risk or environmental problems (see
Chapters 5 and 7).
The role of the state as a privileged institutional player within the Weld of
environmental management is a theme developed by Ron Johnston (1996) in
his explorations of the links between nature, state, and economy. According
to Johnston, the accumulated administrative/infrastructural capacity of the
modern state is important in the management of nature for two main
reasons:16 Wrst, because the state was able to act as a collective agent,
regulating the competitive and often unsustainable economic exploitation
of nature pursued by individuals; and secondly, because of the constitution
of nature as a complex of interlocking and diverse systems, the state is often
presented as the only body able to eVectively reach into the diverse Welds that
make up the ecologies of nature and provide eVective management. It is
consequently argued that only the modern state with its specialist environ-
mental ministries, agricultural departments, state laboratories, and legisla-
tive powers is able to marshal and control the complexities of nature. Such
views on the relationship between the state and nature have led some writers
to emphasize the need for authoritarian state systems to manage environ-
mental problems.17
Perhaps the clearest example of the state’s institutional management of
nature can be seen in the Weld of resource management. In his inXuential
book Seeing Like a State, James Scott (1998) provides a fascinating insight
into the historical role of the state in the administrative management of
16
See also Bridge and Jonas (2002) for a more recent discussion of the links between state
government and nature.
17
It was issues of scarcity and the problems of global resource management during the 1970s
that led Ophuls (1977) to call for an ecological leviathan.
nature. While not written from a strictly Weberian perspective, the work of
Scott (1998: 29) reveals that one of the key resource management issues
facing early modern states was securing a regular and suYcient supply of
food (see Chapter 4). With variable harvests and diVerent local methods for
measuring agricultural yields it was diYcult for early modern states to be
certain that in any given year nature would provide a suYcient quantity of
food to feed the population. Social unrest, which regularly followed food
shortages and famines, meant that the monitoring and management of
agricultural production became one of the prime functions of early state
systems in Europe. In order to manage agricultural nature eVectively, the
early modern state rolled forward its administrative capacity into local
agricultural communities, forcing farmers to adopt standard measures for
agricultural returns. Gone were parochial, imprecise measures like ‘basket-
fuls’, ‘cartloads’, and ‘handfuls’, to be replaced by the centrally approved
measures of the state (Scott 1998: 25). The critical eVect of such uniform
measures was that nature became something that could be seen by the state,
its likely returns calculated and predictions made on future harvests, poten-
tial food storage, and territorial redistribution requirements (Scott 1998).
The early state administration and measurement of nature in this way not
only made the vagaries of nature politically manageable but also transformed
the natures that were subject to such techniques. At one level this transform-
ation was ideological, as facets of the agricultural landscape were converted
by the logic of state administration from nature to existing only as ‘natural
resources’ (Scott 1998: 13). At another level, the transformation of nature
was more material as the early modern state promoted standardized agricul-
tural systems to complement their measurement regimes. While these systems
involved regimented Weld patterns and new harvesting techniques, they often
undermined the varied ecologies of local nature that had existed before. Of
course, what began with the management of agricultural resources during the
early modern period has now been extended to the management of water,
forestry, minerals, and energy supply within the complex systems of state
administration, techno-science, and engineering in the late modern era.
Risk bureaucracies and the reXexive state

If resource management has been an ongoing historical objective of states,
the control and amelioration of ecological risk is a much more recent political
goal. In his famous exposition of the proliferation of risk within the modern
world, Ulrich Beck (1992a, b) describes how accelerated industrialization has
created a new mode of social order—a risk society. According to Beck
(1992b: ch. 1), this new world order can be distinguished from the pre-
industrial society on the basis of two processes—the rejection of tradition
and the transformation of nature. In the context of nature, Beck identiWes an
increasing tendency within modern society to transcend the limits that have
historically been imposed by the natural world at both a global scale (in terms
of extended resource exploitation, nuclear power, and biosphere engineering)
and at a microbiological level (in relation to genetic modiWcation, nano-
technology, and cloning). The combined transcendence of tradition and
nature has, according to Beck, not only resulted in the proliferation of risk
but also given rise to a whole new brand of risk: he calls these new forms of
risk industrial or ‘avoidable’ (1992a: 97). Industrial risk diVers from pre-
industrial risk to the extent that it can be calculated and partially con-
trolled—it cannot simply be interpreted as a product of fate or a ‘freak of
nature’.
While Beck (1992a: 113) is highly critical of the ability of territorially
constrained nation-states to address the increasingly global patterns of eco-
logical risk, it still appears that the state has an important role in the so-called
risk society. Within the risk society it is clear that the role of the state changes
from being an institution primarily concerned with wealth/resource (re)dis-
tribution to one focusing on the management and distribution of socio-
ecological risk (see Chapter 7). But in this context, the administrative
power and infrastructural reach of the state means that it has a crucial role
in both managing the material eVects of risk-taking and in making risk
politically acceptable. In relation to managing the eVects of ecological risk,
Beck (1995: ch. 4) comments on the emergence of ‘hazard bureaucracies’
within the contemporary state, which are based upon complex systems of risk
assessment calculation, contingency plans, and rapid-response units, which
respond to the worst eVects of ecological disaster.18 Beyond the actual
manifestation of ecological risk, however, the state also has a critical function
in the political and cultural management of risk. Consequently, in liaison
with the scientiWc and technological communities, the state has a central role
in alleviating social anxiety about risk through various assessment exercises
and public outreach campaigns. The continual liaison between state and
scientiWc oYcials within the discursive management of risk reXects what
Rudolf Bahro (1987) described as ‘elite stewards’ who act as dedicated
guardians of society against environmental harm. Bahro’s vision of
elite stewards of nature was based upon a belief that the state had a crucial
role in marshalling the wise deployment of ecological knowledge. In both
the management of actually occurring and potential risk, certain Weberian
state theorists argue that the state now has an important reXexive role in
monitoring the worst socio-ecological side-eVects of industrial modernity.
This is a process of which Beck was well aware, referring to it as ‘reXective
modernity’—a process whereby ‘modernization becomes its own theme’
(1992b: 19).
18
Beck’s notion of a hazard bureaucracy is echoed in the earlier writings of Rudolf Bahro
(1987) when he described the need for a ‘salvation’ or ‘rescue’ government that is able to
intervene in the face of the most extreme forms of ecological crisis. See also here Gandy (1999).
While sensitizing us to the important role of the state as an institutional

agent of unusual reach and power, Weberian-inspired approaches to the state
continue to reinforce a distinctly dualistic interpretation of the relationship
between states and natures. Through their study of the state apparatus,
Weberians tend to see the state as a manager who intervenes in an inert
sphere referred to as nature. In a tone that is reminiscent of Hobbes, the
administrative intervention of the state within nature is seen as a civilizing
process, wherein the dangers and threats of nature are suppressed and society
is insulated from the natural world. The problem here is that the Weberians’
institutional state is often conjured up as a pre-given entity with little under-
standing of the ways in which state formation has been informed by an
ongoing historical interaction between political and ecological processes.
Consequently, in attempting to establish the autonomous power of the
state, Weberian-inspired theory tends to construct a state that is autonomous
of nature. As such, the emergence of the state is once again constructed as an
oppositional force to the natural world.
Rethinking states and natures III: Marxism and the nature of

the relatively autonomous state
Committees of the bourgeoisie
If Max Weber stands on one side of a spectrum of state theorists, in many ways
it would be necessary to place Karl Marx at the opposite end. At a simple level
the contradistinction between Weberian and Marxist state theory is expressed
in Marx’s famous assertion that the state was merely a ‘committee of the
bourgeoisie’—serving the needs of the ruling capitalist class. The idea that
the state is merely the instrument of capital, of course, runs in opposition to
the Weberian endeavour, which aims to reveal the autonomy of the state’s
power as a complex system of bureaucratic inXuence and administrative
control. To talk of a Marxist theory of the state, however, is misleading. It is
misleading because it suggests that there is a single vision of the state running
through the work of Marx, when in fact it is possible to observe competing
ideas of the state throughout the collected works of Marx. Despite this,
Marxist state theories and their associated elaborations do provide some
important insights into state–nature relations within modern capitalist society.
Marx’s main Wrst-hand experience of state systems came from his time
working as an underpaid journalist in modern-day Germany and in exile in
England. He did, however, also spend a lot of time in Paris (including his
honeymoon19) and became a keen observer and commentator on changing
19
Indeed, it was during his honeymoon in Paris in the summer of 1844 that Marx (perhaps
rather unromantically) penned his famous Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.
political circumstances in France during the nineteenth century. Marx’s

combined observations of the British, French, and German states resulted
in a series of inXuential writings on the form and function of the modern state
system. One problem with critical accounts of Marxist state theory is that
they tend to rely on stereotyped critiques of Marxian approaches to the state.
In this section we start with the stereotypes before uncovering a Marxist
approach to the state that is not as far removed from that of Max Weber as
one might think.
Given Marx’s staunch focus on economic structures and in particular the
mode of production as the key driving forces behind the history of capitalist
society, it should come as little surprise that many Marxian accounts of the
state are derived from economic, not political, reasoning. Accordingly,
Driver (1991) summarizes the classical Marxian vision of the state through
the use of three interrelated assumptions:
1 that the state is a ‘superstructural’ institution;
2 that this institutional form is created by the ‘basal’ forces associated with
the capitalist mode of production;
3 that the state’s key role, or function, is to enable the continued accumula-
tion of capital and to ameliorate the socio-economic crisis tendencies
associated with this accumulation process.
This vision of the state is clearly evident in the early writings of Marx,
where he espoused an instrumentalist notion of capitalist state forms. In the
German Ideology of 1846, for example, Marx and Engels (1999: 54) empha-
sized the important role of the state in mobilizing the collective energies of
national labour under the banner of an ‘illusory general (or universal)
interest’. The illusory nature of this general interest was, according to Marx
and Engels, based upon the fact that it was not general at all, but really an
expression of the interests of the bourgeoisie. Of course this vision of the
capitalist state as a mechanism for orchestrating labour to suit the needs of
the ruling economic class culminated in Marx and Engels’s most famous
aphorism concerning the state in their Communist Manifesto of 1848:
The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and the world
market conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political
sway. The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common
aVairs of the whole bourgeoisie. (Marx and Engels 1985: 82)
Their assertion that the state was nothing more than the instrument of the
ruling capitalist class led them to be highly critical of prevailing bourgeois
ideologies of the state (like those of Rousseau, described above, and Hegel) in
which the state was presented as a progressive framework of enlightened
social empowerment.
The instrumentalist vision of the state developed in the early writings of
Marx and Engels is perhaps stereotypically the one most associated with
Marxian writings on politics. However, Marx’s later writings on state politics

in France (particularly the Class Struggles in France and The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) provide a much more detailed historical
materialist account of the capitalist state.20 Two things are most striking
about Marx’s analysis of state politics in France during this period: Wrst, he
noticed how, due to the relative balance of class forces, under Louis Bona-
parte the French state was able to exercise a degree of independence from the
dominant bourgeois interests of the time; and secondly, he noticed that when
class support for Louis Bonaparte was evident it came from the small-
holding peasant class, not the bourgeoisie (Marx 1963: ch. VII). Here we
see a very diVerent view of the state from that routinely presented within
post-Marxist attacks on Marxist state theory. Marx recognized that while the
state may always be subject to class interests, political contingencies and
various political tactics and manoeuvres can often aVord the state a degree of
‘relative autonomy’ in the exercise of political power. While the recognition
of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state brings Marx closer to Weber
than we may think, there was something distinctive in Marx’s reXections on
the institutional form and functioning of the state. In his analysis of the Paris
Commune uprisings of 1870 (in his Civil War in France), Marx asserted that
a socialist revolution cannot simply proceed through the communist pro-
curement of the existing capitalist state system (Joseph, 2003; Marx 1974). In
this context, he recognized that the state was capitalist not simply because it
was controlled by the capitalist bourgeoisie, but because its institutional
form, administrative functioning, and infrastructural power had all evolved
in such a way that they served the particular needs of capitalist society.21
With its role as guarantor of private property rights and the regulator of the
labour relations, the capitalist state was not a political system that could
easily be converted to serve the needs of a communist movement (Joseph,
2003). As we argue later in this volume, the idea of the state as an adminis-
tratively autonomous form, which is nevertheless deeply inscribed by the
capitalist system within which it has evolved, provides a powerful analytical
framework for contemporary work on the state.
While much has been written on both Marxist theories of the state and
nature, Marx himself speaks very little of the direct relationship between
states and the natural world.22 One instance, however, where we do see Marx
discussing the relationship between the state and nature explicitly is instruct-
20
Focusing on the period from 1848 (the year of a revolutionary socialist uprising in Paris) to
1851 (the year of the coup d’état of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte), Marx
provides a wonderfully detailed and sophisticated reading of the relationship between class,
revolution, and state power in France.
21
For more on Marx’s analysis of the institutional functioning of the capitalist state, see
Joseph (2003: 17–18).
22
For a review of Marxist theories of the nature, see Schmidt (1971) and Smith (1984). For
more on Marxist theories of the state, see Jessop (1982, 1986, 1996).
ive. In one article for the Rheinische Zeitung (where he began work as
a newspaper columnist), Marx discusses the introduction of the Wood
Theft Law in Germany.23 As with many other similar acts of legislation in
Europe at the time, it was designed to stop peasants from exercising their
rights to collect kindling wood from local forests. In eVect such legislation
served to transform nature (in the form of woodland) from a communal
resource into a privatized economic good. Marx was, as you might expect,
scathing in his criticism of the Wood Theft Law. But within this criticism we
see traces of the themes that recur within Marxist discussions of the relation-
ship between the state and nature:
1 the role of the state in favouring certain class interests above others in the
use of contested natural resources (in this particular case favouring the
forest owners above the peasants);
2 the state reinforcing social alienation from the natural world (in this case
the local socio-ecological metabolisms of forest and local community).
The links between class interests, disputes over nature, and social estrange-
ment (or alienation) from the natural world have become recurrent themes
within contemporary Marxist analyses of nature–state relations. At one level,
the relationship between the state and nature can be understood on Marxist
terms as a largely economic aVair. As Marx pointed out in the famous
opening lines of his Critique of the Gotha Programme (Marx 1971), nature
is a crucial source of economic wealth (labour in this sense was understood by
Marx (p. 11) as a ‘manifestation of a force of nature’). According to Marx, as
the vital substratum for wealth creation, the bourgeois exploitation of nature
was a central component of capitalist society.24 In this context, the state has
had an important historical role in providing the necessary conditions
through which the wealth of nature can be abstracted. The role of the state
within the economic exploitation of nature can be seen in a variety of ways.
The state has, for example, consistently provided the material conditions
under which the industrial utilization of nature has been able to proceed. It
has often been the state, through national programmes of road- and rail-
building, that has provided the basic infrastructures through which nature
has been excavated and transformed within the industrial production pro-
cess. States have also provided the conditions under which facets of commu-
nal nature have been converted into private assets which can be freely
appropriated for individual gain. In this context, the state has also been
able to exercise its legitimized monopoly on the use of violence to police
unpopular industrial interventions within the natural world (Watts 2001).
23
For a more detailed discussion of this article, see the editor’s 1999 introduction to Marx and
Engels (C. J. Arthur: 12).
24
See Burkett (1999: Part II) for a recent review of Marxist work on the link between
capitalist society and nature.
Neo-Marxists and the strategic relational state

A number of contemporary state theorists have challenged prevailing Marx-
ist orthodoxies concerning the exercise and class functions of state power,
while still trying to preserve an essentially Marxist interpretation of the state.
Drawing on key twentieth-century Marxist theorists of the state, like Anto-
nio Gramsci (1973) and Nicos Poulantzas (1978), neo-Marxists have devel-
oped new ways of conceptualizing the operation of the state. Bob Jessop, one
of the most prominent of the contemporary school of neo-Marxists state
theorists, has utilized the writings of both Gramsci and Poulantzas in his
recent writings on the state. Through his reading of Gramsci, Jessop argues
for a new understanding of the exercise of state power in Marxism. Recog-
nizing that modern states only intermittently exercise their ‘legitimate mon-
opoly on violence’ (or coercive power) in order to force populations to obey
their dictates, Jessop explores the more subtle and perhaps indiscernible
operation of the state in gaining the willing and active consent of its citizens
in the enactment of national policies.25 It is here that we see perhaps the
greatest divergence between Marx and Gramsci in relation to their ideas of
the state, with Marx emphasizing the authoritative power of the state over its
citizenry (through the police and military forces), while Gramsci draws
greater attention to the exercise of state power in and through civil society
by way of various ideological strategies (Jessop 1997: ch. 5). In other work,
Jessop (1985) has used the inXuential, if often overlooked, writings of the
Greek political theorist Nicos Polantzas to constructively challenge trad-
itional Marxist accounts of the state. Through the work of Poulantzas,
Jessop stresses the impossibility of the state simply following the will of the
capitalist class. The impossibility of this task stems from the fact that the will
of any capitalist class is always divided. In this context, Jessop (1996)
develops a strategic relational account of the state, in order to account for
the ways in which states formulate policy and action in the context of
competing ‘class fractions’. The importance of Jessop’s strategic relational
state theory is that it recognizes the inXuence of class forces on the state (the
state as relational) while simultaneously allowing for the relative autonomy
of state apparatus in developing courses of actions that best suit the diVerent
and competing needs of diVerent class interests (the state as a site of strategy
development). As we explore later, the strategic relational understanding of
the state developed by Jessop provides an interesting perspective on the ways
in which the state manages and regulates the competing economic, political,
and cultural appropriations of nature within a given territory.
Drawing on Marxian dialectical thought, geographers such as Noel
Castree (2002), David Harvey (1996, 2000: ch. 11), Neil Smith (1996, 1999)
25
See in particular Jessop (1982, 1985, 1996, 2002) to chart Jessop’s continuing Marxist
engagement with the capitalist state.
and Erik Swyngedouw (1993, 1997) have recently questioned the ontological
division that is regularly constructed between society and nature. While not
writing explicitly about the state, the collective work of these authors does
provide us with some fascinating insights into what neo-Marxism can oVer
work on nature. In line with classic dialectical thinking, these writers have
shown that the categories of nature and society cannot exist (in any mean-
ingful sense at least) without their relative positioning to each other. Beyond
the linguistic dialectics of society and nature, however, these Marxist geo-
graphers have also stressed the material relations that make nature and
society categories that are always already deeply implicated moments of
each other. By combining analyses of the ideological and material dialectics
of society and nature, they have questioned the ontological foundations of
the natural world. They argue that instead of seeing nature as something that
is an eternal and pre-given fragment of reality (Wrst nature), or merely a
mental or linguistic construct, nature should be seen as a produced outcome
of the dialectical interplay of ideologies and the material practices though
which it is created. This interpretation of nature has been articulated most
clearly in Neil Smith’s (1984: ch. 2) production of nature thesis. According to
Smith (1999), the idea of the ‘production’ of nature is important for two
reasons: Wrst, because of the distinction that can be made between the
‘production’ and the ‘construction’ of nature; and, secondly, because of the
emphasis that the term ‘production’ places on the prevailing capitalist rela-
tions within which nature is continually being (re)produced. Smith asserts
that the idea of a socially produced nature is diVerent from the notion of the
construction of nature by virtue of the fact that it considers the socio-
economic and political practices in and through which nature is transformed
(at a simultaneously ideological and material level), rather than simply
drawing attention to the social representation of an underlying natural
world. While rarely developed in relation to the politics of the state, it is
not diYcult to extrapolate, from Smith’s work, an understanding of the role
of the modern state within the various moments of production through
which nature has its contemporary existence.
Marxist work on the state and nature, then, suggests some potentially
dynamic ways in which the emerging dialectics of states and natures can be
studied. We do, however, perceive a danger within Marxist analyses of states
and natures: they tend to resolve the dichotomy between the political and
ecological worlds by making them both ultimately subservient to capitalism
(see Castree 2002). In Marxist theory it is consequently capitalism that in the
last instance moulds the state and it is capitalism that ultimately drives
the social production and transformation of nature. In this context, there is
a danger within Marxist theory of providing an integrated account of the
state and nature, whose integration depends on the theoretical diminution of
both the political capacity of the state and the ecological power of nature in
order to make way for a broader theory of capitalism.
Rethinking states and natures IV: political ecologies,

governmental technologies, and the cyborg state
The political ecologies of the state and nature

Over the past thirty years a new set of ways of analysing and interpreting the
relationships between states and natures has emerged. Some of these the-
oretical perspectives have been inspired by Marxist ideas of the state, whereas
others are a direct critique of Marxism. One tradition that embodies both of
these positions is political ecology.26 The notion of political ecology is per-
haps best thought of as a blend of work within social theory, political
economy, and analyses of the ‘ecologies’ of nature. Prominent political
ecologists like Piers Blaikie (1985), Jay O’Brien (1985), Richard Peet
(1991), and Michael Watts (2001) have emphasized the need to understand
natural issues like food shortages, droughts, desertiWcation, and various
forms of natural disaster, not simply as products of nature, but as the hybrid
outcomes of politics and ecology. In this context, early forms of political
ecology were very much a reaction against prevailing neo-Malthusian
accounts of resource shortages and population pressures during the 1970s
and 1980s. In these accounts the problems of nature were constructed as
precisely that: problems of the natural world, or a product of encountering
natural limits. To political ecologists, however, there are no such things as
‘natural’ limits; to talk of scarcity is consequently interpreted as a device for
obscuring the social, class, gender, and race relations that prevent a more
equal distribution of nature’s wealth among the population. Early Marxist-
inspired work within political ecology studied the ways in which landowner-
ship and resource exchange issues shaped political and ecological life. More
recent post-Marxist work in political ecology, inspired by radical feminism
and post-colonial study, has explored the roles played by imperial and
masculinist discourses and practices in shaping and transforming the natural
world (see Escobar 1998; Seager 1993; Shiva 1998).
With its clear desire to fuse the political with the ecological, the political
ecology tradition obviously has signiWcant implications for how we under-
stand and interpret state–nature relations. The work of Paul Robbins (forth-
coming) serves to illustrate the various ways in which the state appears within
the work of political ecologists. Certain political ecologists study the ways in
which capitalist political economies mesh with ecological processes within
particular nation-states. Jay O’Brien (1985), for example, has focused upon
the production of famine conditions in the Sudan, while Michael Watts has
explored the political ecologies of oil extraction in Nigeria and Ecuador.
While the state often only Wgures implicitly within these accounts of political
26
For good overviews of the work of political ecologists see Peet and Watts (1996) and
Robbins (2004).
ecology, it is clear that it is a key component within the maelstrom of political

institutions, economic practices, and ecological processes that produce
nature in diVerent parts of the world. At other times the particular eVects
of state power and inXuence have been integrated into the work of political
ecologies in a more explicit way. The work of Roderick Neumann (1995,
1998, 2004) on wilderness enclosures in Africa, for example, reveals the
importance of territorial strategies designed to order and control nature
within the speciWc processes associated with state-building. Through a care-
ful analysis of state-sponsored wildlife reserves and national parks on the
African continent, Neumann (2004: 203–4) describes how the territorial
designation of wilderness areas has tended to create zones within which
nature can be simultaneously preserved and contained in a way that allows
other forms of agricultural and economic development to occur. He claims
that the territorialization of nature within nature reserves is not simply about
giving order to nature, but about the broader coordination of national state
space. Neumann goes as far as to claim that ‘the process of mapping,
bounding, containing and controlling nature and citizenry are what make
a state a state. States come into being through these claims and the assertion
of control over territory, resources, and people’ (2004: 202). The work of
Neumann serves to illustrate that the creation of human territoriality is
indivisibly related to the territorial management of nature or, as Neumann
(2004: 203–4) says, the ‘containment and control of nature in conservation
territories was inseparable from the colonizing state’s eVorts to control its
African subjects and ultimately create a new kind of person: civilized, pro-
ductive, and observable’. While the work of Neumann does make an explicit
link between the state and nature within emerging forms of political ecology,
there is signiWcant scope to incorporate the state more fully into contempor-
ary political ecologies (Robbins, forthcoming).
Foucault, the state, and environmental governmentality

Within and beyond post-Marxist political ecology there is a broad and diVuse
body of work that has been inspired by Foucault’s writings on power, feminist
analyses of social structures, and post-structuralist ideas. This corpus of work
is oVering a signiWcant challenge not only to how we analyse the state, but to
the very essence of state power itself (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: ch. 13;
Foucault 1990, 1991, 2002b, 2003).27 At the centre of this broad post-Marxian
movement has been a critical rejection of analyses of power that focus on its
most obvious manifestations; namely spectacles of violence and force, and the
centralized sources of state power from which such acts of overt control
Xow. Through his archaeology of the ‘art of government’ (see Chapter 1),
27
See also the work of Jane Jenson (1993, 1995) for examples of feminist/discursive analyses
of national politics.
Foucault identiWed a transition within both the operation of state power and
ultimately the relationship between the state and the exercise of wider forms
of social control. In relation to the operation of state power itself, Foucault
(2002a) charts the emergence of a new type of government from the sixteenth
century onwards (see also Hardt and Negri 2000: chs 1–2; Ótuathail 1996:
ch. 1). No longer concerned expressly with the interests of the king or prince,
this was a state devoted to the careful administration of its population. This
form of state is perhaps most easily identiWable with Giddens’s ‘administra-
tive state’, regulating its population through statistical surveys and tax
registers. According to Foucault (2002a), this administrative state governed
through the household—by monitoring the household as its basic govern-
mental unit and by ensuring social reproduction through the provision of
household welfare. From the eighteenth century onwards, however, Fou-
cault discerns an altogether diVerent state in operation. This was a form of
political rule that Foucault referred to as the governmental state, and is
largely synonymous with the character of the modern state we outlined in
Chapter 1. The key diVerence for Foucault between the administrative state
and the governmental state was the expanded vision of power associated with
the latter. No longer simply concerned with discrete households, the govern-
mental state was a system of government concerned with the management of
a national population and the ordering of the entirety of its territorial
resources (Foucault 2002). This period of state (trans)formation is particu-
larly pertinent to our discussions of state–nature relations because it corres-
ponds to the emergence of a series of new ordering devices for quantifying
and delimiting national natures (including systematic national mapping
programmes, biological catalogues, and various ecological inventories
designed to describe the nature of the nation) (Ótuathail 1996: 7–12).
According to Foucault, both the administrative and governmental forms
of the state were expressions of a disciplinary society—based upon the overt
application of political power and discipline on to the national population
(Ótuathail 1996: 7–12). In the late modern era, Foucault charts a diVerent
constellation of social power, however, based less on overt discipline and
more on social control, or the ‘regulation of social life from its interior’
(Hardt and Negri 2000: 23). This was a ‘society of control’ not discipline, a
society characterized by a far less centralized apparatus of governance and
a more diVuse Weld of social power.28 A critical aspect of Foucault’s reXec-
tion on the changing form of governmental power was his emphasis on the
increasingly biopolitical form that power takes in the late modern world
(Foucault 2002). Hardt and Negri capture well the signiWcance of biopolitical
power when they observe that:
28
While Foucault never actually used the terms ‘disciplinary society’ and ‘society of control’,
we borrow the terms here from Hardt and Negri (2000: 23–4) as useful ways of expressing
Foucault’s argument.
Biopower is a form of power which regulates life from its interior, following it,
interpreting it, absorbing it and re-articulating it. Power can achieve an eVective
command over the entire life of the population only when it becomes an integral,
vital function that every individual embraces and reactivates of his or her own accord
. . . The highest function of power is to invest life through and through, and its
primary task is to administer life. (Hardt and Negri 2000: 23–4)
In the emergence of biopower, of course, we see the paradox of the modern
state. In order to achieve total socio-territorial command, the state, at least as
a centralized bureaucratic locus of power, must disperse so that it can
become a behavioural principle of the individual. The goal of state power
can only be achieved with the Xow of power from the state to the individual,
to life itself. This is why many Foucauldians argue that the study of political
and social power should focus on the micro-politics of everyday life and
language, not the formal structures of government and the state.
Despite providing a radical disjuncture with existing approaches to the
state, Foucault provided little indication of what his approach to power
meant in relation to the state’s control and utilization of nature (see Darier
1996: 6).29 Throughout this book we argue that Foucault’s focus on human
life, within his excavations of biopower, can be usefully extended to cover
a much broader range of life sources—including the non-human and eco-
logical. In this way we argue that the state has become increasingly impli-
cated in the routine disciplining and control of nature, both in regulating
social actions towards the natural world and in terms of altering bio-
ecological processes themselves. The extension of Foucault’s theories of
power to work on the government of nature has been partly developed within
an emerging group of writings on environmental governmentality (Darier
1996, 1999; Goldman 2004; Luke 1996, 1999). Within this emerging body
of work, writers such as Éric Darier (1996: 601) have considered how Fou-
cault’s analysis of the technologies of government and associated knowledge-
gathering institutions could be deployed in order to expose the inner work-
ings of the intensiWed Weld of power that governments are bringing to bear on
the natural world (see Chapter 6).
Networks of power and the new topographies of state nature

Related to, though far from synonymous with Foucault’s analysis of power
are the inXuential writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari (1984, 2002).
Within their extended study of the modes of socialization associated with
29
One instance when Foucault does talk about nature is in the preface of The Order of Things
(2003: xvi), when he discusses Borges’s reXections on a Chinese encyclopaedia’s division of
animal types. Foucault notices how the modern rationalization of nature into logical categories
leaves little room for alternative visions or knowledges of nature—which could include (in
Borges at least) the Chinese classiWcation of animals as ‘belonging to the Emperor’ or those
that ‘from a long way oV look like Xies’!
global capitalism (Capitalism and Schizophrenia), Deleuze and Guattari pro-

pose a universal history of state forms. Within this history they chart the
changing power relations running through early archaic states, monarchies,
city-states, and the modern nation-state. In accordance with Foucault,
Deleuze and Guattari argue that modern expressions of power cannot easily
be reduced to either systems of repression or ideology that are historically
synonymous with the state, but instead ‘impl[y] processes of normalisation,
modulation, modelling, and information that bear the language, perception,
desire, movement, etc., and which proceed by way of microassemblages’
(Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 48). The idea of microassemblages of power
is important here because it reXects Deleuze and Guattari’s assertion
that global capitalism has ushered in a new era of socialization, within
which global economic power subsumes all aspects of social life and cultural
practice within the choreographies of capitalist development. The implica-
tions of these emerging microassemblages of power for the macroassemblage
of the modern nation-state are explained in the following passages:
But this is precisely the sense in which the State is termed ‘territorial’. Capitalism, on
the other hand, is not at all territorial, even in its beginnings: its power of deteritor-
ialization consists in taking as its object, not the earth, but ‘materialized labor’, the
commodity. And private property is no longer ownership of the land or the soil, nor
even the means of production as such, but of convertible abstract rights. That is why
capitalism marks a mutation in worldwide or ecumenical organizations . . . From all
these standpoints, it could be said that capitalism develops an economic order that could
do without the State. (Deleuze and Guattari 2002: 454; emphasis added)
According to Deleuze and Guattari, late capitalism embodies a new world
order, or ‘Empire’, whose power rests not on macroassemblages of hierarch-
ical power and whose form is increasingly non-territorial. What is particu-
larly interesting about their work in the context of this book, however, is that
despite questioning the Westphalian model of the nation-state as a ‘tran-
scendent paradigm’ of and for social organization, they do recognize the
continuing role of the state as a model of realization for capitalism. Thus,
perhaps surprisingly, they assert:
Thus the States in capitalism, are not cancelled out but change form and take on a new
meaning: models of realization for a worldwide axiomatic that exceeds them. But to
exceed is not at all the same thing as doing without. We have already seen that
capitalism proceeds by way of the State-form rather than the town-form . . . It is
thus proper to state deterritorialization to moderate the superior deterritorialization
of capital and to provide the latter with compensatory reterritorializations. (Deleuze
and Guattari 2002: 454–5)
While we prefer the notion of reconWgured territorializations (as opposed

to the de- and re-territorilizations used by Deleuze and Guattari), the work
of Deleuze and Guattari reXects a growing realization of the new sub-
national and supra-national territorial forms that the state takes under global
capitalism.30 As we will see later in this volume, the reconWguration of state

territory in and through emerging urban agglomerations and supra-national
spaces has important implications for nature, and in turn for the state (see
Chapter 7). As part of the same globalization processes that exceed the
national bounds of the nation-state, nature is thus transformed from being
national to simultaneously being global and sub-national at the same time.
Thus sustainable regions, green cities, and ecological zones supplement pre-
existing fragments of national nature, but remain natures that are still
produced as part of a re-articulated state system.
Related to the more decentralized and diVuse conceptualization of
political power developed within the Foucauldian and Deleuzian traditions
described above, has been a changing conceptualization of the power
relations existing between nature and society. Increasingly, new theories of
nature have suggested a need to focus less on the social transformation and
control of nature and more on the mutual imbrications of society and nature
(or ‘socio-nature’) within various political and scientiWc projects. One of the
leading exponents of this view of nature is Bruno Latour, whose work has
consistently returned to the question of the relationship between society and
nature in the modern world (see Latour 1986, 1993, 1998, 1999, 2004; Latour
and Woolgar 1979; see also Chapter 1). Through his studies of modern
politics, science, and social discourse, Latour has observed the ways in
which modernity has been characterized by an insidious separation of the
social and natural spheres of existence. He claims that modern society has
been marked by two distinct but deeply related practices: the processes of
puriWcation and translation (Latour 1993: 11). According to Latour (1993:
10–11), the process of puriWcation has involved a series of attempts to mark
out two separate and tightly sealed ‘ontological zones’: the zones of human
life and culture, and the arena of the non-human and the natural. Ironically,
however, Latour illustrates how puriWcation accelerates the practices of
translation, through which new combinations of nature and society mix to
create novel and increasingly complex socio-ecological ‘hybrids’ or ‘quasiob-
jects’.
The work of Latour on the imbroglios of modern society and nature has
led to a broader theoretical project that is customarily referred to as Actor
Network Theory (ANT). ANT is devoted to studying how nature and society
are, and always have been, ‘stitched together’, and the heterogeneous asso-
ciations of society and nature.31 Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is the network that
provides the key epistemological and methodological framework for ANT.
30
For more on the post-Westphalian territorial forms of the state, see Brenner (1998, 1999,
2001, 2004), Jones (1998), and MacLeod and Goodwin (1999).
31
For an example of the broad cross-section of work that has been carried out under the
banner of ANT, see a selection of the following: Callon (1986), Castree (2002), Law (1992),
Murdoch (1997, 1998), Swyngedouw (1999), Whatmore and Thorne (1998).
According to ANT theorists, networks are complex webs of ‘heterogeneous

associations’ forged between human and non-human entities. By focusing
upon the constitution and maintenance of these intricate systems of organic
and inorganic forms, ANT asserts that the dichotomies that have been
constructed between society and nature, and between the global and the
local, simultaneously dissolve. Murdoch captures the essence of ANT well
in the following quote:
Latour wishes to by pass the dualisms of micro/macro, local/global and even subject/
object by focusing upon the ‘blind spot’ where society and matter meet and, import-
antly, exchange properties . . . [material] resources frame, deWne and conWgure inter-
action. And without such resources humans could never hope to act upon others
distant in time and space. (Murdoch 1997: 329; emphasis added)
According to Latour (1986), it is the constant exchange of properties

between social and material forms that makes non-localized human
interaction possible—and, moreover diVerentiates human from simian soci-
eties. By recognizing the role of non-human forms in the creation and
maintenance of systems of power and strategic organization, ANT argues
that a symmetry of exchange exists between society and nature, within which
both human and non-human actors (or actants in the lexicon of ANT) play
crucial roles in the constitution of socio-ecological change and stability
(Murdoch 1997).
In relation to our deliberations on the relationships between states and
natures, this body of thought appears to have two important implications.
First, by suggesting that social interactions with nature are constituted
through complex networks that stretch across diVerent levels of social
organization, ANT implies that it is erroneous to draw too sharp a distinc-
tion between the state and nature. In this context, it is important not to
simply understand state–nature relations as the state unilaterally acting on
nature—whether it be in terms of the social construction, or production, of
the natural world. Instead, it is crucial to recognize how state power is only
realized through the ‘enrolment’ of nature within complex networks of
power. By focusing upon networks of power, as opposed to more hierarch-
ical models, ANT also questions the focus on centralizing, institutional forms
of state power developed within Marxist and Weberian theory. We argue
that the recourse to networks, however, does not necessarily have to mean
that we abandon a concern with the hierarchical institutions of the state, but
that we recognize the ways in which these forms of administrative
power connect with more diVuse systems of localized social control and
political power.
Secondly, ANT also reveals that despite the role of the state—within both
scientiWc practice and cultural discourse—in attempting to gradually disentangle
society from nature (the act of puriWcation), modern states have actually driven
an intense era of translations within which new and increasingly indissoluble
hybrids of society and nature have emerged.32 While the approach to

state nature we adopt in this volume is sympathetic to the methodological
insights oVered by actor network approaches, we stop short of adopting a
full ANT-based perspective on state natures. We argue that within ANT
there is a danger that the state can be reduced to one component within a
socio-ecological network. The problem with such a scenario is that the sig-
niWcance of the centralizing and territorializing processes associated with
state power can be lost within an account of networks of exchange. Instead,
we prefer to think of the state as a socio-ecological network or ‘framing
device’ itself, which engages a range of human and non-human objects within
its centralizing and territorializing desires.
Cyborgs, technological amalgams, and the state

Related to the work of Bruno Latour has been the pioneering analysis of
nature developed by Donna Haraway (1989, 1991, 1997, 2004a; see also
Hables-Gray, 2003). Focusing on the links between gender, technology,
and nature, Haraway has developed an innovative reading of social–natural
interactions centred on the Wgure of the cyborg. The cyb(ernetic)org(anism) is
important to Haraway precisely because it fuses the technological (in the
form of cybernetic systems of command and control programming) with
organic matter (humans, animals, and nature). In this sense Haraway’s use
of cybernetic technology is similar to the way in which Latour uses networks
to analyse the mixing of society and nature in everyday life. While originating
within science Wction, Haraway observes that cyborgs are now an increas-
ingly prominent part of science fact and social reality. From gene program-
ming to antibiotics, from prosthetics to pacemakers, from pollution
monitoring to environmental modelling—new fusions of technology and
nature are seeing diVuse bodies and ecologies being programmed and regu-
lated in increasingly sophisticated ways. Perhaps the central insight of Har-
away’s cyborg politics is the way in which it challenges our most basic
ontological assumptions. Haraway argues that if we understand society
and nature as essentially fusions and products of technology, we begin to
understand the fundamental artiWciality of existence. To ground existence in
32
Here it is important to note the similarity between Latour’s work on puriWcation and
translation and Deleuze and Guattari’s (2002) reXections on the processes of coding, overcoding,
and decoding within the modern state. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the state gives form
to its territory and subjects through a continual process of classiWcatory coding. As the state’s
institutional apparatus expands, however, Deleuze and Guattari notice how the state tends to
overcode its objects of power by more and more sophisticated systems of coding. The result of
this is that increasingly the state sets in motion expanding systems of decoding within which the
various forms (labour, Wnance, tax) created by the state generate new types of power that elude
state-coded surveillance. The objects of translation identiWed by Latour appear to reXect what
Deleuze and Guattari would recognize as decoded facets of nature.
technology as opposed to nature is important because it suggests that there is

nothing natural about gender disadvantage or racial exploitation, that there
is nothing inevitable about ecological disaster. Cyborg politics is conse-
quently a politics of responsibility, within which society recognizes its role
in the inWnite simulations of social nature within which we all carve out our
existence.
In considering the relationship between states and nature, Haraway’s
reXections on cyborgs are vital. As Deleuze and Guattari (2002: 458–9)
point out, states can be thought of as ‘human–machine systems’—techn-
ological centres within which national populations become increasingly en-
slaved to machines. They notice two distinct ages of machine–human
intersections under capitalism: the enslavement of labour to the motorized
machine within industrialism, and the cybernetic capture of people within the
expanded information technologies and electronic surveillance systems avail-
able to the state. Throughout this book (and in particular in Chapter 6) we
explore the value of understanding the state as a cyborg system. At the centre
of this endeavour is a desire to show that the modern state has not only been
responsible for the proliferation of individual cyborg forms under industrial
capitalism, but that the state itself is a cyborg, an amalgam of technology and
nature, a political system that is quite literally plugged into nature. What we
propose to do in this book is to understand both the state and nature as
products of the technical age—as artiWces of industrial capitalism.
Approaching state–nature relations and the process of

heterogeneous framing
The approach to state–nature relations, which we set out in Chapter 1, draws
inspiration from many of the theoretical traditions discussed in this chapter.
By focusing on the ways in which states ‘frame’ nature, however, we attempt
to realize an approach to states and nature which, while recognizing their
myriad interconnections, does not dilute their respective values as categories
of analysis. In the remainder of this book we consequently explore the
diVerent technological, institutional, territorial, and administrative ways by
which modern states frame nature. In doing so, however, we do not see this
framing process as a simple exercise in absolute state power; in Callon’s own
account of the frame he does not understand it as a Wxed object, but as the
contingent outcome of an agent’s ability to mobilize a series of objects and
forces that make framing possible (Callon 1998). We argue that in order to
frame nature the state itself must become involved with, and entangled in,
a range of objects, devices, and things. It is when trying to negotiate this
complex terrain by which nature is framed that we claim the state itself is
transformed—both in terms of its institutional forms and its modes of
practice. In this sense, we want to explore how nature has both facilitated
the formation of modern state power, and has in turn been framed by the
nation-state. The notion of the frame, then, becomes a useful way of under-
standing the ways in which the centralizing and territorializing desires of the
state are both realized in and compromised by the objects, techniques, and
devices that mediate state–nature relations and make framing possible. In the
shadow of the modern state we argue that the purpose of framing continues
to be preWgured by the acts of centralization and territorialization. This is not
to say that acts of framing become any less dependent upon a complex set of
political and ecological struggles for their realization, or any less prone to
incidences of overXow, leakage, and failure.
The framing of nature by the state can be seen all around in the world
today: the passionate defence of the right to exploit national resources
oVered by many developing nations in the face of international pressure for
them to pursue environmental protection (see Seager 1993: 141–7); the use
of nature within various eco-nationalist movements as an iconographic
resource through which to assert national identity and diVerence; and the
technological monitoring of nature in order to produce national archives and
inventories cataloguing environmental change within national borders. We
assert that the continual framing of nature by the state in this way has
produced (and continues to produce) a particular historical form of
nature–state relation. Within all these examples, however, it is important to
see the act of framing not only as a practice of limiting nature (either
territorially or administratively) but also as a call to recognize the heteroge-
neous ways in which states and nature interconnect. State–nature relations
are heterogeneous because they operate not just in state departments but
also in museums, laboratories, health clinics, parks and gardens, and even
corporate boardrooms. Throughout this book we attempt to combine a
conscious awareness of the centralizing institutional/territorial capacity of
the state with an appreciation of the changing nodes and diVuse networks
through which many forms of state power are now being realized. This
requires us to steer a careful route through the macro and micro-worlds
of state–nature relations, between Weber/Marx and Foucault/Haraway,
between state institutions and cybernetic technologies, between the nation
and the body, the past and present. Holding these apparently contradictory
perspectives together may seem almost impossible, but we feel that this task
is important if the heterogeneous associations that exist between states and
natures are to be revealed.
3
The Moments of Nature–State

Relations
States and natures in historic context
A key consideration when explicating the character of nature–state relations

is their historical geographies, or what we may term their key ‘moments of
mutual association’. But despite the obvious importance of nature and the
environment for shaping the character of the state and the equally crucial
role played by physical and environmental processes in reproducing political
forms, it seems clear to us that the majority of work in history and historical
geography has tended to separate the two themes from one another: at one
extreme lie studies of the changing political form of the state; at the other, an
environmental history that is usually concerned with the history of the
environment for its own sake. The not immodest aim of this chapter is to
forge a more productive link between these two academic traditions. We
attempt to do this through illustrating the key moments that have helped to
structure nature–state relations.
In talking about moments, we do not refer simply to particular times or
periods that have been crucial for the forging of nature–state relations. Our
emphasis on the notion of moments does not seek to give primacy to
temporal issues as such. Rather, in referring to nature–state moments, we
emphasize the characteristic or indicative associations that have existed
between states and natures. We seek to stress, therefore, a range of diVerent
types of association that have been important in structuring nature–state
relations. Obviously, the issue of time is important since the character of
nature–state relations would have been extremely diVerent in the Greek polis
when compared with the state of high modernity. The degree to which nature
could be modiWed obviously varied between the two time periods, as did its
potential impact on political processes. Even within the modern period, the
character of nature–state relations has varied considerably. Changing tech-
nologies and political and ecological ideologies have ensured a diVerent
repertoire of associations between states and natures throughout the whole
of the modern period. But it is not the issue of time per se that explains these
The Moments of Nature–State Relations 57
diVerent associations; rather, it is the diVering ideological, technological, and

material relations that exist between speciWc states and natures at particular
points in time.1
Although the main focus of this chapter, and of this book, is on the key
modern moments of nature–state relations, we do not seek to underplay the
signiWcance of earlier and equally (if not more) important moments of
interactions between states and natures. The most important moment, argu-
ably, in nature–state relations lies outside the purview of this book, since it
took place in antiquity. This was the formation of the so-called ‘pristine’ or
‘primary states’. These were pristine states since they represented the Wrst
known examples of state formation in human history. Crucially, nature and
the environment have been deemed to have played a crucial role in the
formation of these states. Karl Wittfogel (1957) noted, for instance, that
these early societies were located in fertile river basins. Their agricultural
productivity was based to a large extent on patterns of irrigation and it was
the increased agricultural productivity aVorded by such technology that
enabled these civilizations to reach far higher levels of sophistication than
had previously been the case. Although the speciWc aspects of Wittfogel’s
theory have now been rejected on the whole, others have still maintained that
ecological matters were of great import in shaping primary states. Robert
Carneiro (1970), for instance, developed a notion of spatial ‘caging’, drawing
attention to the fact that these riverine civilizations were, without fail,
surrounded by deserts. For Carneiro, therefore, it was the relationship
between fertile alluvial basins and the surrounding deserts that enabled a
concentration of population, which, in turn, facilitated the development of
state organizations. Michael Mann (1986), in his study of the changing forms
of social power over time, has furthered this thesis by elaborating on the
impact of the twin processes of spatial and social caging that were key to
the development of the great riverine state civilizations. He argues that the
individuals living within these early states were socially and spatially con-
strained by the agricultural technology that supported their swollen popu-
lations. Mann, therefore, portrays a state-making process where the
inhabitants of a given region become dependent upon the environment, the
advanced agricultural capabilities, and the concomitant societal develop-
ments facilitated by the existence of state institutions. New state organiza-
tions came into being as a way of regulating new ways of transforming the
environment. Similarly, the existence of these new state organizations was
supported by the transformed natures they controlled.
Despite the signiWcance of this earlier moment of nature–state relations,
our main focus in this chapter is on the key moments of nature–state
relations within modernity. We want to suggest in this chapter that three
1
Alternatively, see Schatzki (2003).
58 The Moments of Nature–State Relations
diVerent nature–state moments have been crucial over the modern period.2
The Wrst key nexus of nature–state relations is what we term the moment of
consolidation. The moment of consolidation refers to the beginnings of the
relations between modern states and natures. The term ‘consolidation’, of
course, draws on Charles Tilly’s account of the process of state consolidation
that characterized the modern period, where the multiple political forms and
identities of the Middle Ages were gradually and, in most cases, painfully
rationalized into a more horizontal association between sovereign states
(Tilly 1975, 1990; see also Mann 1988). We want to focus in this chapter on
the way in which nature was intimately intertwined with the process of state
consolidation. As well as the attempts made during this period to deWne
national languages, laws, and customs, considerable eVorts were directed
towards the deWnition and consolidation of ‘national natures’. The discursive
construction and the subsequent material transformation of a national
nature facilitated and constrained the process of state consolidation that
was taking place during the period. We examine this theme by focusing on
the early modern period, paying especial attention to the complex inter-
actions between the state and nature in the Dutch Netherlands.
The second key nexus of nature–state relations, we argue, is a moment of
contestation or, in other words, a particular set of nature–state associations in
which nature is used to challenge and contest state forms and ideologies. If
one key facet of the political geographies of the modern period has been the
gradual and tentative consolidation of the state, another equally important
process has been the contestation of the selfsame institutions and ideologies
of the state by various organizations, groups, and individuals. In this regard,
it can be dangerous and misleading to attempt to talk of a moment of
contestation that is somehow separate from a moment of consolidation.
Many authors have attempted to show the interdependency of relations of
domination/resistance or, alternatively, of the ‘entanglements of power’ (see
Pile and Keith 1998; Sharp et al. 2000). We agree fully with the sentiments of
these authors. One cannot speak of a moment of ‘nature–state’ consolida-
tion, for instance, without focusing on the various uses of nature as a means
of contesting the consolidation of the state. Similarly, the moment of con-
testation—where nature is used as a way of challenging state forms and
ideologies—structures and is structured by the forms of political and eco-
logical domination that are prevalent in that place at that time. We believe,
nonetheless, that there is a need to emphasize certain contexts within which
2
We do not doubt, in this regard, that it would be possible to expand this list to take account
of other nexus of nature–state relations. We limit ourselves to the three that are discussed in this
chapter since they illustrate, in our minds, the range of key relations that have existed between
political and ecological processes and institutions throughout the modern period. In doing so, we
do not want to classify these diVerent types of association as ‘ideal types’, of the sort so popular
in some branches of the social sciences. Instead, we view them as indicative and particularly
crucial instances of nature–state relations.
nature has been used speciWcally as a way of challenging state forms and
discourses. It is in this sense, we maintain, that a speciWc focus on a moment
of contestation is warranted. Indeed, there are numerous examples of the use
of nature as a way of contesting and challenging dominant state institutions
and ideologies. The various writings of the Anarchists, discussed in Chapter
2, illustrate the way in which nature could be mobilized as part of a broader
political strategy to challenge the dominance of the state. We focus in this
chapter on the use of nature and ecological arguments as a way of sustaining
challenges to the state by sub-state territorial movements or nations. SpeciW-
cally, we discuss the contestation of the use of water resources in Wales and
its use as a discourse around which Welsh nationalism has been mobilized.
We maintain that a third form of nature–state moment lies in the recon-
stitution or re-fabrication of political and ecological relationships in the form
of simulacra. Authors such as Umberto Eco (1987), Jean Baudrillard (1994),
and Timothy Mitchell (1988), argue that we are witnessing a present in
which representations of the past are deemed to be far more real that the
past itself. It is in this context that we can speak of a moment of simulacrum,
in which actual human relations are reworked through ‘protection, embalm-
ing, restoration’ and are, thus, reborn into the ‘eternal birth of the simulac-
rum’ (Baudrillard 1994: 41). In the context of the current project, we need to
think about the way in which the representation of nature–state relations—
potentially in a variety of diVerent forms—assumes a reality in itself, more
potent than that which it seeks to represent. We argue that a key moment of
simulacrum for nature–state relations lies in the context of the natural
history museum, where the national natures of the state are displayed. The
representation of nature–state relations reaches its apogee within natural
history museums with regard to the diorama (see especially Mitchell 1988).
In devising a ‘true’ representation of habitats and ecosystems within particu-
lar dioramas, we argue that natural history museums seek to incorporate
nature into state history. We examine such ideas empirically in this chapter
through a discussion of the American Museum of Natural History.
Speaking of museums alludes to another important theme that will emerge
within this chapter, namely the signiWcance of remembering nature–state
interactions. Much has been made of the importance of narrating pasts and
histories as a way of shaping present individual and group identities or, in
other words, of the need to ‘historicize our understanding of identity’ (Somers
1994: 6). In the context of nationalism—the group identity most relevant
to the themes discussed in this chapter—there is a clear emphasis on remem-
bering national pasts as a way of inspiring national presents and futures. The
contested, plural, and political aspect of this process has been described
by Benedict Anderson (1983: especially ch. 11) as one of ‘remembering/
forgetting’: certain aspects of national pasts are remembered whereas other
aspects, conveniently, are forgotten. The key point we want to stress in this
chapter is that nature is often incorporated into this narrative of the nation,
and implicitly therefore, of the state. Natures are utilized as means of

reinforcing the identity narratives of the nation-state but can also be used
by those seeking to challenge the dominance of the state through the devel-
opment of alternative narratives of nature. Such themes of remembering
nature—for a variety of diVerent reasons—emerge through our three case
studies.
The ‘moment of consolidation’: states and natures during the

early modern period
The process of state consolidation has been the subject of much academic
debate in a variety of disciplinary contexts. Various authors have noted how
societies in Europe from approximately the beginning of the sixteenth cen-
tury experienced a number of interrelated institutional changes as they
gradually discarded feudal methods of organizing people and land and,
instead, adopted more rational, bureaucratic, and territorial forms of societal
organization. With the formation of the modern state, the feudal commenda-
tio, which was characterized by ‘an intensely personal relation, envisaging
two partners [lord and vassal] who choose, aid, and respect each other as
individuals’ (Poggi 1978: 21), slowly gave way to a more impersonal, uni-
form, and territorial method of governance.
Numerous authors have focused on diVerent aspects of this process but
they have, on the whole, paid little explicit attention to the role of nature,
natural resources, or the environment in facilitating the process (see Chapter
2).3 A particular set of literatures that rectiWes this deWciency to some extent
is that concerned with environmental history. The branch of ‘political envir-
onmental history’, in particular, has focused on the interrelationships
between the histories of the environment and state policies and laws. As
J. R. MacNeill (2003: 8) has shown, however, this work has tended to focus
explicitly on the imbrications of politics and the environment during the
relatively recent past—especially the period after 1880.4 The two major
exceptions to this unwarranted narrow temporal focus are John Richard’s
(2003) magniWcent account of the global interrelationships between states,
3
See Giddens (1981), Mann (1986), Tilly (1975, 1990), see also Giddens (1985) and Foucault
(2002). For a discussion of the growth of rationality in a more general context during this period,
see Weber (1985).
4
McNeill’s account of the scope of political environmental history would seem to be relatively
narrow, being conWned to state policies and laws. Material environmental histories—concerned
with the material transformation of the environment in an historic context—and cultural
environmental histories—which focus on the past representation of the environment—are
bracketed oV as diVerent and separate branches of environmental histories. We would con-
tend—and hope to demonstrate in the current volume—that it is impossible to compartmentalize
environmental histories neatly in such a way. The politics of the environment, of necessity,
involve both material transformations and cultural representations of the environment.
markets, and the environment in the period between 1500 and 1800 and
Alfred Crosby’s (1986) discussion of the importance of environmental con-
cerns for the development of political forms throughout the whole of the
modern period. Richards discusses the role of states and empires in trans-
forming the environment at ever-greater rates during the early modern
period in four interrelated contexts: the intensiWed human land use along
settlement frontiers; biological invasions; commercial hunting of wildlife;
and the search for scarce energy resources. Crosby, similarly, focuses on
the way in which the European empires of the modern period were able to
transform global environments in more drastic ways. Importantly, these
global environments also helped to shape the form and functions of the
new empires of the modern period as various European states sought out
‘new Europes’ located in the furthest reaches of the world and relocated their
‘portmanteau biota’ there (Crosby 1986: 7, 89). While these contributions are
to be welcomed, their explicit focus on the intermeshing of global environments
and equally global empires would seem to downplay a far more fundamental,
common, and productive association between states and national natures,
and its impact on the process of state consolidation that so characterized
the early modern period.
We would argue that there needs to be a more sustained enquiry into the
political and ecological transformations of the early modern period, particu-
larly with regard to the framing of national natures by emerging states. The
Dutch Netherlands (see Figure 3.1) is the locus classicus of the mutual
transformation of state forms and national natures during this period.
Simon Schama, who has written so eloquently on the topic, argues for
instance that:
it can never be overemphasized that the period between 1550 and 1650, when the
political identity of an independent Netherlands nation was being established, was
also a time of dramatic physical alteration of its landscape. In both the political and
geographical senses, then, this was the formative era of a northern, Dutch, nation-
hood. (Schama 1987: 34)5
Schama’s account focuses, in particular, on the relationships between the
contemporaneous transformation of Dutch nature and of Dutch political
identity during the crucial ‘golden age’ of the seventeenth century, but his
work also has much to say concerning the inXuence of Dutch national
natures on the development of new state organizations during the same
period. We want to argue that nature, in the form of water, was framed
into the development of the Dutch state since it brought many advantages
with regard to trade and agriculture. At the same time, considerable eVorts
were made to frame nature, in the form of water, out of Dutch national space
5
The following paragraphs are based on Schama’s account of the penal system adopted in the
Dutch Netherlands during the seventeenth century.
because of its threat to people, livestock, and land. In this section, we focus
on this tangled association between nature and Dutch political identity
before moving on to examine the relationship between Dutch nature and
state organizations.
The link between nature and political identity is illustrated most poetically
in Schama’s description of the ‘drowning cell’, a feature of the Dutch penal
system during the seventeenth century. The drowning cell was a means of
correcting the behaviour of prisoners who were too lazy or uninterested to
work. The slothful convict would be placed in a small enclosed space, into
Fig. 3.1. Map of the Dutch Netherlands.

which water would be subsequently poured. A hand pump was, thankfully,

located within the cell and could be used by the prisoner to discharge the
water. After a suitable period of hard work and, thus, of penal correction, the
prisoner was released from the cell and would, presumably, have seen Wt to
adopt a more industrious attitude towards his work within the prison.
Whether the drowning cell was actually used within Dutch prisons or was
merely a myth propagated as a means of coercing the inmates into more
useful activity is in some doubt. Travellers to the Dutch Netherlands during
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries allegedly bore witness to the exist-
ence of drowning cells. Few physical remains exist, however, to help to
corroborate such claims. What is more important, we would argue, is the
widespread use of the drowning cell as a metaphor for the perilous link
between an emerging Dutch nation—and by implication Dutch state—and
the North Sea. The metaphor alluded to the need for the Dutch people, as a
whole, to demonstrate an industrious character if they were to survive the
perils of the sea. For Schama (1987: 40), this was literally a ‘Xood society’, in
which the Dutch people were in a constant state of war with nature.
The way in which such a sentiment coloured Dutch political identity can
be illustrated by the St Elizabeth’s Day Xood of 1421. Although pre-dating
the modern period, this Xood was remembered well into the early modern
period within Dutch society as a symbol of the constant struggle between
the Dutch nation and its surrounding seas. The impact of the Xood on the
Dutch national psyche can be appreciated when one considers its physical
magnitude. During the month of November 1421, a storm breached the sea
defences at Broek and Xooded an area of 500 square kilometres. At the time,
it was estimated that 100,000 people had perished. More recent estimates
have reduced the extent of the disaster, arguing for a death toll of approxi-
mately 10,000 (Schama 1987: 35). During the early modern period, however,
the St Elizabeth’s Day Xood became seared on the Dutch historical con-
sciousness and inscribed as a feature of Dutch art. The Xood was viewed in
biblical terms, most particularly with regard to the tale of Noah and his ark.
Importantly, the Xood was remembered as something that contributed key
aspects of the Dutch national character. Sin had been cleansed away as a
result of the Xood, it was argued, enabling a pure and childlike Dutch nation
to appear in its aftermath. Seawater and the associated dykes, estuaries, and
meres—the key aspect of an emerging Dutch national nature—shaped
people and their identities as much as it shaped the physical lie of the land.
The relationship between Dutch identity and the sea was, however, more
than a simple one based on fear and loathing. It was recognized that the sea
also brought many advantages to the Dutch people, in terms of their capacity
for trade and agriculture. The extensive system of internal waterways, for
instance, proved to be immensely beneWcial in enabling a trade in Dutch
agricultural goods. At the same time, these waterways were a great threat to
inland settlements. It has been argued that such a tension between the
beneWcial and pernicious inXuences of the sea can be viewed as a symbol of

a broader conXict within the emerging Dutch national identity of the early
modern period. The signiWcance of Protestantism, and especially its more
extreme Calvinistic form, within the Dutch Netherlands speaks of a national
culture that was based on a conXict between the necessity of thrift and hard
work—witness the drowning cell discussed above—and a related wariness of
the material beneWts deriving from it. In this way, the Dutch placed great
store on hard work, which would lead to individual and common wealth, but
were equally wary of an ‘overXow of riches’. As Schama (1987: 47) succinctly
puts it, a ‘fear of drowning in destitution and terror was exactly counterbal-
anced by a fear of drowning in luxury and sin’. The recurring Wgure that
helped to symbolize this tension within the Dutch national psyche during
later times—and, we would argue, at a broader level illustrates the conXictual
relationship between the Dutch people and Dutch national natures—was
Goethe’s creation of Faust. Faust’s dying speech was seen by the Dutch
people as one that encapsulated the tortuous relationship between the
Dutch people and Dutch nature. It was through continuous hard labour,
Faust maintained, that the (Dutch) land and people were to be made free and
were to attain moral wealth. Indeed, it was through the facing of the ‘peren-
nial danger and ordeal’ of the conXict with nature that the moral qualities of
the Dutch were to be improved. For later readers of Goethe’s tale, the fact
that Mephistopheles joins forces with Neptune to liquefy Faust’s mortal
body merely illustrated the way in which nature, left unchallenged, could
undermine the moral and national progress of the Dutch people. Faust’s
dying words illustrate this threat and related challenge in an admirable
fashion:
I work that millions may possess this space

If not secure, a free and active race
Here men and herds, in green and fertile Welds
Will know the joys, that new-won region yields,
A paradise our closed-in lands provides
Though to its margins rage the blustering tides
When they eat through in Werce devouring Xood
All swiftly join to make the damage good. Ay, in this
Thought I pledge my faith unswerving
Here wisdom speaks its Wnal word and true
None is of freedom or life deserving
Unless he conquers it anew
With dangers thus begirt, defying fears
Childhood, youth, age shall strive through strenuous years
Such busy teeming throngs I long to see
Standing on freedom’s soil, a people free. (Quoted in Schama 1987: 50)
But if the struggle for survival against the sea was viewed as a key
contributor to the emerging Dutch national identity, it also, equally, helped
to shape the development of the political organization of the Dutch state. At
a general level, a strong connection was envisaged between the act of forging
the new and independent political organization of the Dutch state and the
physical struggle against the tides of the sea. This was especially the case
given the fact that the Dutch state was created in opposition to a dominant
Habsburg empire, based in Spain.6 The Dutch Netherlands had been inher-
ited by Charles V, King of Spain, through his paternal grandmother, Mary of
Burgundy, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. From then on, conXict
raged between the Dutch and their Spanish overlords. At certain times, the
focus of the conXict would centre on what we would term proto-national
issues: the need for the Dutch people to govern themselves independently and
to be freed from a distant oppressor. At other times, religious issues would
come to the forefront. For instance, Philip II, son of Charles V, could declare
to the Pope that he would ‘rather lose a hundred lives, if I had them, than
consent to rule over heretics’ (quoted in Koenigsberger 1987: 117). The
breaking point was reached in 1581, when William of Orange of the House
of Nassau proclaimed on behalf of the Dutch people that ‘God did not create
people slaves to their prince to obey his commands whether right or wrong,
but rather the prince for the sake of his subjects’ (quoted in Koenigsberger
1987: 117). This declaration led to a long and bloody war of secession
between the Dutch and the Spanish, one that also intermittently attracted
the interests of the other great European powers (Koenigsberger 1987: 146).
The struggle for independence from Spain was to last eighty years and was
successful only with the recognition of the independence of the United
Provinces of the Northern Netherlands in 1648. In many ways, the struggle
for independence brought together notions of political identity with more
abstract notions of state government. The declaration contained in the
so-called PaciWcation of Ghent in 1577 illustrates the way in which notions
of Dutch identity became associated with the need to create new Dutch
political formations. The various signatories of the PaciWcation agreed to
create a political federation in the Dutch Netherlands, stating that they
oblige[d] all inhabitants of the provinces to maintain, from now on a lasting and
unbreakable friendship and peace and to assist each other at all times and in all events
by words and deeds, with their lives and property, and to drive and keep out of the
provinces the Spanish soldiers. (Quoted in Mackenney 1993: 303)7
Crucially for our argument, a clear analogy was drawn during this period
between the tyranny of the Spanish Habsburg empire and the tyranny of the
sea, to the extent that ‘in the minds of those who fought this battle on two
6
For a brief account of the Dutch revolt against Spanish Habsburg rule, see Mackenney
(1993: 300–5).
7
See also Koenigsberger (1987: 140).
fronts, they were causally connected’ (Schama 1987: 42).8 The Spanish and
the sea were two external forces that needed to be resisted and tamed if an
independent and economically thriving Dutch state was to be created. The
description of the Dutch struggle against the sea given by the sixteenth-
century hydraulic engineer Andries Vierlingh could equally well be applied,
as Schama argues, to the struggle against the Spanish:
Your foe Oceanus, does not rest or sleep, either by day or by night, but
comes, suddenly, like a roaring lion, seeking to devour the whole land. To have
kept your country, then is a great victory. (Andries Vierlingh, quoted in Schama
1987: 42)
At a more fundamental level, we can also think about the emerging
organization of the Dutch state and the way in which it was linked to its
need to inXuence and withstand the vagaries of nature. The social and
political organization of a system of dykes was crucial in this respect. From
the Middle Ages onwards, when the Dutch had begun the process of draining
the polders and reducing the potential impact of the sea on their society and
agriculture, the organization of the dyke system had been based on a high
degree of local autonomy. This had been especially important in the more
precarious provinces of Holland and Zeeland, where the pernicious impact of
the North Sea was experienced more readily. As Helmut Koenigsberger
(2001: 21–2) has so aptly put it: ‘here life was dominated by water—the sea
and the great tidal estuaries, lakes and meres’. The highly devolved character
of the Dutch political system during the Middle Ages and at the beginning of
the sixteenth century derived in part from the autonomy granted to commu-
nities in Holland and Zeeland with regard to the maintenance of dykes. Local
communities were left to develop a shared responsibility for maintaining
their own section of dyke with little interference from the emerging Dutch
state. The key political Wgures within this system of government were the
local reeves, the dyke-wardens (dijk-graven), and the heemraadschappen (the
so-called water guardians), rather than any overlords located in distant
major settlements. The Count of Holland, for instance, was merely one
individual on a larger council of people involved in the erection and main-
tenance of sea defences within his territory (Koenigsberger 2001: 40). This
led to an ‘ascending’ conception of political power, one that diVused outwards
from Holland and Zeeland to the whole of the Netherlands: political author-
ity was derived from local consent rather than being imposed from above.9
The contours of political power within this system were essentially far ‘Xatter’
than in other countries in medieval Europe, where it was organized along
8
See also Schama (1987: 35).
9
As Mackenney (1993: 303–5) notes, the lack of central authority in the Dutch Netherlands
proved to be somewhat of a drawback when contesting the sovereignty of the King of Spain over
Dutch lands. If the King of Spain was not sovereign, then who was?
feudal and hierarchical lines (Koenigsberger 2001: 22).10 This illustrates

clearly the ways in which the means developed to control water in certain
parts of the Netherlands aVected the character of political organizations
throughout the whole country. A regional nature was essentially recast as a
national nature, which, in turn, shaped the character of political authority.
The particularities of the Dutch system of government were thrown into
sharp relief with the advent of Habsburg rule in the Netherlands. Perhaps as
a result of their inherent distrust of the Dutch—borne out of religious
diVerence as well as outright instances of revolt—the Habsburgs sought to
promote a far more centralized approach to government. At one level, the
new form of rule was concerned with political and military issues. The
infamous Duke of Alba’s period as the governor-general of the Netherlands
was characterized by considerable bloodshed and an eVort to develop more
systematic means of taxation. The proposed tenth-penny tax of 1569 was
viewed by the Duke of Alba as a way of supporting the Spanish troops based
in the Netherlands, as well as enabling the repayment of moneys that had
been sent from Spain to support its previous regimes in the Dutch lands
(Koenigsberger 2001: 224V).11 And yet it is signiWcant that part of the eVort
to centralize methods of rule during the sixteenth century focused on the
governance of water within the Netherlands. In 1544, Charles V instigated a
new centralized body of ‘hydraulic administration’, both to coordinate the
system of dykes within the Netherlands and to act as a clearing house for
a more systematic taxation regime, which would enable the erection of
further sea defences. The new ‘national’ body was not well received. Riots
took place in Edam and Assendelft in North Holland. Matters were exacer-
bated as alleged Habsburg placemen were elected as dyke reeves. These were
subsequently accused of a lack of knowledge of the local circumstances
surrounding the maintenance of dykes and of a related lack of accountability
and moral authority within the various local communities charged with
maintaining the dykes. The conXict came to a head over the new centralized
system of taxation put in place as a means of Wnancing the new ‘nationalized’
sea defences. These were uniformly perceived as a foreign and unwarranted
Wnancial imposition on communities, which had successfully managed the
maintenance of their own dykes for generations. Many assumed that the
taxes were used to Wnance activities other than dyke extension and mainten-
ance. Whether such accusations were true or not is largely irrelevant. What
was more important was the belief among the Dutch that the Habsburgs had
10
Koenigsberger also argues that part of the reason for the lack of developed social hierarch-
ies within the Netherlands derived from the importance of the merchant class within the various
provincial estates, something that led to a far more dispersed patterning of political power. On a
broader note, see Dodgshon (1987: 166–92).
11
The Duke of Alba’s scheme was ultimately unsuccessful due to combination of a concerted
eVort on the part of the various provinces to resist it and political intrigue in the royal court in
Madrid, which served to undermine the Duke’s credibility.
transformed ‘morally authorized contributions into morally repugnant

forced levies’ (Schama 1987: 42).
In a broader context, we would argue also that the Habsburg rationale
for a systematic and centralized form of government Xew in the face of the
more community-based forms of government that had existed in the Dutch
Netherlands prior to Habsburg intervention. Key to this whole debate was
the control of water through sea defences. Who should be responsible for the
sea defences? How should they be funded? What was the appropriate scale
for the social control of an unruly sea? All of these were key questions in the
Dutch Netherlands during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
as it began on a slow and contested road to state consolidation. The Dutch
Netherlands’ declaration of independence during the mid-seventeenth cen-
tury put paid to the centralizing project promoted by the Habsburgs (Davies
1997: 538). Nonetheless, attempts to resolve these conXicts over the appro-
priate management of water in the polders in no small part conditioned the
trajectories taken by the developing Dutch state of the period. In this way,
the contested and tortuous process of state consolidation within Dutch
lands shaped, and was shaped by, the continuing contestation over the
control over nature.
The moment of contestation: territorial and environmental

politics
Although processes of contestation were apparent in the period discussed in
the previous section, we think it important to emphasize a separate moment
of contestation that connects nature–state relations. A recurring feature of
modern politics and political geography has been the eVort made by various
territorial groups to undermine established nation-states. Theoretical explan-
ations for the break-up of established nation-states are numerous and need
not detain us at the present (Gellner 1983; Hechter 1975; Nairn 1981; Smith
1982). What is common to many of the diVerent instances of territorial
politics is their appropriation of nature as a way of furthering their contest-
ation of state forms. Much work has been conducted on the galvanizing role
of nature in general, and of environmentalism in particular, in relation to
East European nationalist movements, which have sought to undermine the
established states that existed in that region (Dawson 1995; Eckersberg 1994;
Podoba 1998). Admittedly, the role played by environmental concerns within
these nationalist movements has been, in many cases, temporary. Group
loyalties in Eastern Europe are now more deeply aligned with issues of
economy, identity, and language than they are with nationalist accounts
of ecological problems. But this need not detract from the importance of
environmental concerns as a way of promoting eVorts to contest established
state forms and ideologies. Indeed, there is a strong argument that these
environmental concerns were crucial to the successful challenge made by a

variety of sub-state groups to established nation-states throughout the whole
of Eastern Europe in the period subsequent to 1989.
As a way of explicating the moment of contestation within nature–state
relations, we focus in particular on Welsh territorial politics during the
twentieth century. We believe it oVers an unparalleled illustration of a
continuing process of contestation within British and Welsh nature–state
relations. More speciWcally, it shows how alternative framings of nature
can be enrolled by diVerent groups in their political debates and contesta-
tions. The main impetus for the development of Welsh nationalism came
with the formation of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, in 1925,
although it would be diYcult in some ways to equate its political strategy
with more contemporary sub-state nationalisms. Pyrs GruVudd (1994, 1995)
has made it clear that Plaid Cymru’s main aim at the time of its inception
was to secure the future of the Welsh nation as a Welsh-speaking and moral
people. Issues of political representation and of the need for political inde-
pendence—the questions with which we associate sub-state or territorial
politics—were, therefore, secondary during this early period in the party’s
development. The Reverend Dyfnallt Morgan, one of the early members of
Plaid Cymru, clearly illustrated the overarching moral concern of the party
when he argued that ‘the new order that is being thrust upon us is a Godless
civilisation. Do our Churches realise that when Welsh civilisation disappears
they too will disappear?’ (quoted in Williams 1982: 152).
It is signiWcant, nonetheless, that even during this early period we also
witness the inXuence of normative environmental accounts of the Welsh
nation within the rhetoric of Plaid Cymru. GruVudd (1994) has shown how
during this period Plaid Cymru advocated that the members of the Welsh
nation should ‘return to the land’, since it was only by living in rural areas
and through being close to the soil of Wales that the linguistic and moral
future of the Welsh nation could be secured (see Chapter 1). In many ways,
therefore, a moral distinction was made by the early members of Plaid
Cymru between the closeness of the Welsh people to the natural environment
of Wales and, in a related sense, to the cosmopolitan inXuences of the English
culture and nation, which was to be found in the towns and cities of Wales.
Nature, or rather the alleged closeness of the Welsh nation to nature, was
used as a way of contesting the growing pernicious inXuences of Englishness
on a Welsh way of life. Of course, the association between a nation and its
rural areas and ‘natural environment’ has been a longstanding emphasis
within the ideologies of nationalism. Colin Williams and Anthony Smith
(1983), in their seminal paper on the geographies of the nation, illustrated the
common emphasis on notions of habitat, folk cultures, and autarchy within
nationalist ideologies. In all these themes we witness the way in which the
‘true’ members of nations are said to exist in a close relationship with the
rural landscape and nature of the nation.
But it is in debates surrounding water resources that we see the clearest

manifestation of a moment of contestation with regard to nature–state
relations in Wales and the broader United Kingdom. It is fair to say that
the geographical location of Wales makes it an ideal source of water. Its
location on the western seaboard of the UK and its relatively mountainous
terrain ensure that it is a country that is blessed—if that is the correct term—
with a bountiful supply of water in the form of rainfall. One author has even
stated that ‘rainfall is perhaps the most noticeable feature of the Welsh
climate’ (Sumner 1977: 45), something that the authors of the present volume
can well attest to! Annual levels of rainfall can be as low as 800 mm along
the north coast and the Welsh borderland but can reach 4,000 mm in the more
mountainous areas. To think about it in another way, total precipitation
in Wales is equivalent to 3802 daily gallons per capita, compared with 662
daily gallons per capita in England (Davies 1998–2001: 167). Welsh water
resources are also valued since they are located relatively near to some of the
larger urban areas of England and Wales: Merseyside; Greater Manchester,
the West Midlands, and South Wales in particular (see Figure 3.2). All this has
meant that Welsh water resources have become a key asset in the society and
economy of the UK.
The exploitation of Welsh water resources, however, possesses a long and
chequered history. Not surprisingly, the most contentious instances—and
most signiWcant as far as the arguments made in the current volume are
concerned—relate to the use of Welsh water resources by English towns and
cities, and we concentrate speciWcally on this territorial aspect in this chapter.
Since the late nineteenth century, municipalities located along the western
border of England had sought to discover new sources of clean and soft water
in Wales as a means of countering the alarming decline of the largely
subterranean water supplies that existed in their localities. These additional
supplies—part of a process of the territorial capturing of nature—were
needed not only in order to fuel increased industrial growth in towns and
cities such as Birmingham and the Liverpool conurbation, but also as a way
of securing purer and healthier water supplies for the populations of these
urban areas. It has been argued that the quality of water had come to be
viewed as a key determinant of a population’s health by the late nineteenth
century, and the various municipalities at the leading edge of Britain’s
industrial revolution actively sought to secure the best possible supplies for
their inhabitants (Roberts 2000). The demand for new water supplies was
clear for all to see. In a survey into the water demands of Liverpool,
conducted in the late nineteenth century, one respondent argued that ‘Liver-
pool is one of the most unhealthy towns in England’, further maintaining
that ‘to the want of a suYcient supply of water for general domestic purposes
much of that unhealthiness and shortness of the lives of the inhabitants must
be attributed’ (quoted in Coopey et al. 1999: 95). The public health move-
ment, led by inXuential individuals such as Edwin Chadwick, promoted an
Fig. 3.2. Map of Wales, showing the main reservoirs.
argument regarding the utilization of new technologies in order to bring

additional supplies of clean water to service Britain’s urban population.
The speciWc consequence of these arguments was an increased attempt by
English municipalities from the nineteenth century onwards to appropriate
Welsh water resources: the Elan and Vyrnwy Lakes were created in the late
nineteenth century as a means of servicing the water requirements of the
cities of Birmingham and Liverpool, respectively; the Alwen water scheme
was promoted at the beginning of the twentieth century in order to supply
Birkenhead’s needs; Warrington Corporation’s attempts to drown the Ceiriog

valley were thwarted in the 1920s; and the last major scheme targeted the
Tryweryn river as a means of supplying water to Liverpool during the 1950s
and ’60s (see Coopey and Roberts 1999; Roberts 2001).
We focus, in particular, on this Wnal water scheme, since it illustrates most
clearly a moment of nationalist contestation of nature–state relations. Since
1955, it had been rumoured that Liverpool Corporation had been searching
for additional sources to supplement its dwindling water supply. Its earlier
foray into the Welsh mountains, the product of which was the Efyrnwy
reservoir, was struggling to cope with Merseyside’s domestic and industrial
demand for water. Much of Liverpool Corporation’s justiWcation for creat-
ing a new dam was based on its suVering during the Second World War. The
promoters of the Tryweryn scheme argued that the great sacriWce that they
had made during the conXict far outweighed any minor inconvenience caused
to a small number of households, which would have to be relocated from a
remote village in north-west Wales. Furthermore, it was argued that there
was a dire need to improve levels of sanitation amongst the city’s poorer
inhabitants. The proposed reservoir of Tryweryn, it was maintained, would
help to address this issue (Davies 1998–2001: 167–8).
The Tryweryn episode become a crucial touchstone for much of Welsh
nationalist politics during the 1950s and ’60s and, indeed, still touches
something of a raw nerve even today. As Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams
(1985: 291) argues, ‘control over its own water became . . . an inXammatory
issue in Wales’ during the period. Crucially, as well as mobilizing a discourse
that sought to engage with the importance of preserving local cultures, many
protesters during the period sought to promote a more nationalist set of
discourses, ones that deWned the water of Wales as a natural resource that
belonged to the land and people of Wales, rather than one that was the
property of the UK state. Water, it would seem, was being utilized as a means
of furthering a sub-state territorial politics. For instance, key Wgures in Plaid
Cymru were involved in the protests against the drowning of the valley,
among them individuals such as Gwynfor Evans, the party’s Wrst Member
of Parliament, and long-term activist D. J. Williams. Pamphlets published by
the party at the time argued that
These plans should not be allowed to damage the incomparable beauty of our
country. This beauty is part of the national heritage of the Welsh nation, one of the
noble inXuences that moulded the special character of our nation, one of the
inXuences that continues to mould and sustain our nation. (Quoted in Roberts
2001: 180)
For people within the Welsh nationalist movement, the area in which the
condemned community—Capel Celyn—was located was a key location
where the folk culture of the Welsh people still survived and thrived. Echoing
themes discussed earlier, it was also portrayed as a community that lived in
harmony with its natural environment. In eVect, the people of Capel Celyn
were close to the land and close to the culture of Wales, whereas the new and
foreign technologies and inXuences represented the antithesis of this close
relationship to nature.
Building on these themes, it is useful to follow John Davies’s distinction
between the political context and the linguistic and/or cultural context for the
nationalist protests of the time. At one level, many activists stressed the
broader political context for the Tryweryn farrago. SpeciWcally, many argued
for the distinctiveness of Wales as a separate nation, which should possess
various territorial rights regarding the use and transformation of, inter alia,
nature. This viewpoint was summed up impressively by Elystan Morgan, the
barrister who represented two protestors against the scheme, who were
brought to trial for acts of vandalism in 1962. He argued that ‘if the Welsh
nation exists and if it possesses rights over its assets, then we should believe
that these two young men acted in order to protect those assets’ (quoted in
Davies 1998–2001: 169). In this statement, it is the territorial coherence of the
Welsh nation that takes precedence, along with a related argument concern-
ing the validity of the nation’s claim to control its own natural resources.
This was Welsh water, not British water. Similar arguments arose in the
context of the need to develop a Welsh Water Board, which would be able to
manage the exploitation of a key natural resource located within the bound-
aries of Wales (Davies 1998–2001: 179). Other protesters were more con-
cerned with the cultural or linguistic contexts framing the proposed
Tryweryn project. The main signiWcance of the proposed scheme was the
fact that it destroyed a culturally vibrant Welsh-speaking community. As
John Davies notes, it was widely known by the 1950s and ’60s that the
number of Welsh-speaking communities was deteriorating rapidly. To des-
troy a classic example of a Welsh-speaking community in such a way,
according to many activists, was tantamount to a direct attack on the heart
of the Welsh nation. In this sense, the proposed scheme would have been
criticized and withstood even if it were meant as a source of water for towns
and cities within Wales (Davies 1998–2001: 179). While it is useful to separate
out the diVerent contexts within which the national rhetoric of the time was
embedded, we maintain that in practice there is a strong and productive
relationship between the two. Although individual activists may well have
stressed one aspect at the expense of the other, much of the later signiWcance
of the Tryweryn episode lies in its symbolic expression of a territorial and
cultural injustice.
Of course, one should not overemphasize the support of the Welsh people
towards the Tryweryn campaign. Much has been written about the varie-
gated character of Welsh politics during the period, especially with regard to
the policies and strategies of the Council for the Preservation of Rural Wales
(CPRW). At a national Welsh scale, the CPRW was conspicuous by its
absence from any eVort to resist the construction of the dam. Indeed, the
plans for the dam found favour in the ranks of the national-level CPRW.
Patrick Abercrombie and the Reverend H. H. Symonds, for instance, were
far more in favour of the Tryweryn project than they were of an alternative
project to develop a hydro-electric scheme on the Conwy river. Symonds
noted as follows:
Liverpool’s Tryweryn scheme is far preferable to the . . . Conwy scheme; it involves far
less civil engineering (and what there will be would be far less injurious to the
landscape) and, above all, no power stations and linking pylons. (Quoted in Roberts
2001: 176)
As Owen Roberts (2001) has rightly pointed out, such sentiments Wtted in
with the CPRW’s aim to preserve and enhance the aesthetic and visual
qualities of the Welsh environment. Indeed, some within the CPRW at a
national level went as far as to argue that the Xooding of the Tryweryn valley
could actually enhance its visual appeal! What is signiWcant, in this respect, is
the wholly diVerent attitude taken by the local Merionnydd branch of the
CPRW. Vincent Evans, for instance, a local branch member of the CPRW,
was keen to distance himself from the strategy being adopted by the CPRW
at a national level. He referred admiringly to the particular way of life that
existed in the village about to be submerged as part of the proposed scheme
and contended that:
My Committee rightly or wrongly believe that . . . the destruction of the village of
Capel Celyn and the Welsh way of life that has grown up with the village cannot be
replaced by the rebuilding of the village elsewhere . . . The new village will be Wlled up
by outsiders brought in to look after the Reservoir and another where the Welsh way
of life is practised will disappear. (Quoted in Roberts 2001: 183–4)
We witness here the drawing up of a close discursive link between the
impact of the proposed water scheme both on one particular locality in
North Wales and the wider Welsh nation. For many activists during the
period, whether members of national or environmental movements, aban-
doning this Welsh village could be equated with abandoning a distinctive
Welsh way of life and nature–culture connections therein.
The other signiWcance of the Tryweryn episode is the way in which it has
entered the Welsh popular imagination as an instance of an insensitive
interference by English governmental authority in Wales. As such, it has
assumed an iconic status within Welsh nationalist circles and become a
symbol of the various woes suVered by the Welsh people at the hands of an
English state, industry, and culture (Davies 1998–2001: 167).12 Liverpool
12
On a broader level, Welsh nationalist sentiment has drawn much ideological support from
the notion of internal colonialism, popularized by Michael Hechter (1975). During the 1960s and
1970s, for instance, Plaid Cymru based much of its political ideology on ideas related to internal
colonialism. The abstraction of Welsh water from the valleys of Wales was seen to be but another
example of an historic process of economic, political, and cultural oppression of a Welsh people
by English institutions.
Council’s recent formal apology for their past insensitivity will do little to
appease Welsh nationalists. The phrase ‘Remember Tryweryn’, indeed,
seems set to retain its potency within the Welsh nationalist lexicon as a
form of shorthand to describe the perceived oppression of the Welsh
people by English and British institutions. Indeed, the Tryweryn reservoir
is remembered on a subliminal, day-to-day, and banal level in Wales today
through various artistic practices and graYti (Jones 1988; Thomas 1997).
Nature, thus appropriated, is used as a means of contesting dominant state
ideologies.13
The moment of simulacrum: nation-states and natural history

museums
Look up at the leviathan. Extending for a total of ninety-four feet, it hangs,

suspended in mid-air as if by magic. The shimmering blue steel and plastic
model in the Hall of Ocean Life of the American Museum of Natural History
represents the awe, the immensity, and the grace of the largest living mam-
mal, the blue whale. Visitors to the museum today accept the model as an
eVective depiction of the physical characteristics of the blue whale, trans-
ported en masse to uptown New York. But it is instructive to consider
the historic trajectory of the exhibit that one can witness today. Debates
concerning the appropriate means of depicting the blue whale within the
museum continued for much of the twentieth century (Wallace 2000: 24–30).
Some favoured a model based on an assemblage of the bone structure of the
blue whale, a format used in dinosaur exhibits, but this was deemed to lack
‘the spark of life’ for it gave no ‘sense of the power, grace and harnessed
energy that a living whale possesse[d] in such abundance’ (Wallace 2000: 26).
The alternative option was to create a diorama of the blue whale. Museums
had experimented from the outset with the creation of dioramas: ‘lifelike’
depictions of living things, often placed within their broader ecological
contexts. But the sheer scale of the blue whale, for many, all but precluded
the creation of a lifelike depiction of a whale and of its living circumstances.
In any case, a whale’s skin was far too brittle to attempt to recreate what
would, in eVect, be the largest stuVed model in the world.
The Wrst attempt to represent the whale came in the form of a model
created by Roy Chapman Andrews in 1907. It consisted of a steel frame,
plaster of Paris, and other modelling materials; according to many visitors, it
resembled a torpedo far more than it did a living whale! The model lasted
until 1959, when the museum decided that a new and more realistic model
needed to be constructed. Various options were considered, including
13
For a discussion of the concept of banal nationalism or, in other words, the way in which
nationalism is reproduced in a mundane and everyday context, see Billig (1995).
a model hung from the ceiling by wires, a helium-Wlled inXatable model, and
a model that would be supported from below by a metal rod. None were
deemed to be appropriate. One seemingly madcap idea, which gained much
support for a while, was to exhibit a dead whale in the museum, half-covered
in seawater and surrounded by the sounds of lapping water and crying gulls.
The proposal was not scrapped until the smell of a decaying whale carcass
was demonstrated to the museum’s Women’s Committee. It seemed as if the
reality of museum exhibitions could only be taken so far before museum
patrons protested. Finally, it was agreed that the most practical and elegant
solution would be to bolt the model to the museum’s ceiling. Opened in 1968,
the gallery now, according to Joseph Wallace (2000: 30), represents one of
the ‘most spectacular and popular displays ever mounted at any museum in
the world’.
This debate surrounding the creation of an appropriate exhibit for the blue
whale, we would argue, begins to illustrate the moment of simulacrum within
nature–state relations. The whole tenor of the various discussions regarding
the blue whale exhibit were based on deciding the most eVective and real
ways of depicting nature. Which technologies and materials should be used?
How should the visitor’s experience of the exhibit be regulated? How real
should the exhibit be? Which senses should be appealed to within the exhibit?
It is signiWcant that Joseph Wallace, almost as an afterthought to his account
of the creation of the blue whale exhibit in the museum, comments that
scientists now know that not every physical detail of the model is completely accurate.
The color, for example, isn’t blue enough. But without doubt, this superb exhibit
comes breathtakingly close to capturing the spirit that animates the real blue whale.
(Wallace 2000: 30)
Yet whereas Wallace argues that the model of the blue whale does not
approximate in every detail to the blue whale of reality, what we would
argue—following authors such as Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco—is
that it is the reality of the blue whale as it is exhibited in the museum that is
most signiWcant. In this simulacrum of the blue whale, the reality as repre-
sented is far more important than the blue whale’s reality in the world’s
oceans.
Speaking of the simulacrum, Baudrillard (1994: 2) has maintained that the
postmodern present is characterized by an ‘era of simulation’ in which an
original reality is being erased. Simulations and simulacra become the new
reality, which entails ‘substituting the signs of the real for the real’ through
the creation of an ‘operational double, a programmatic, metastable, perfectly
descriptive machine’. For Eco (1987: 7), too, this ‘furious hyperreality’
involves the replacement of a thing by a sign—a representation, a memor-
ialization, or an image—which, in turn, assumes the signiWcance of the thing
that it replaces. Similar to Baudrillard, Eco (1987: 21–2) maintains that the
thing itself can lose all sense of integrity, as in William Randolph Hearst’s
castle in Santa Barbara, where sections of European castles, convents, and

monasteries were reassembled into one giant collage of a building. Here, once
again, the simulacrum clearly attains a greater sense of reality than that
which it seeks to re-enact. It is the process of representation that is the key
to the creation of the simulacrum, as Timothy Mitchell (1988) has noted.
This is a representation that seeks to depict the ‘real world’ in incredible
detail, to the extent that the boundaries between the representation and that
which is represented become blurred. Mitchell’s account of the Paris World
Exhibition of 1889 speaks of the blurred boundaries between the exhibition
and what lay outside its walls: ‘a labyrinth which includes in itself its own
exits’. The representations within the Exhibition ‘became so accurate and so
extensive, no one ever realised that the ‘‘real world’’ they promised was not
there’ (Mitchell 1988: 10).
The key site that enables this act of representation is the museum; the key
technology, that of the exhibit or the diorama. The growing preponderance
of museums and heritage sites on a global scale illustrates their signiWcance
for new and everlasting representations of old places and practices (Belcher
1991: xiii; Urry 1990: 104–12). Timothy Luke (1997:1) argues, for instance,
that ‘in a hyperreal time . . . museums function as critically important mod-
elling agencies and mapping centers to meld ontological meanings with
cultural terrains’. The key aspect of this quote, we believe, is its reference
to the role of museums as ‘mapping centers’. Museums centralize a whole
range of diVerent variables under one roof and, in doing so, make the social
and natural worlds knowable and mappable. If museums play a key role in
signifying and representing nature–culture relations, then the technologies
used to achieve this end are that of the exhibit and the diorama. The diorama
aims to ‘establish itself as a substitute for reality, as something even more
real’ (Eco 1987: 8) or, as Donna Haraway (2004b: 186) has put it, ‘meaning
machines’. These dioramas were of great signiWcance in natural history
museums, where, as noted in the introductory paragraphs of this section,
great store was placed on the realistic depiction of Xora and fauna.14 Develop-
ments in taxidermy, in modelling, and in art all served to enable the
exhibitor to create a ‘peep-hole’ into the jungle or, in other words, more life-
like representations of specimens and their related ‘habitat groups’ (Haraway
2004b: 155). Once again, the aim was to create something that equated to reality
or, indeed, something that exceeded reality in terms of the quality of the
visitor’s experience.
SigniWcantly—given the focus in this section on the American Museum of
Natural History—both Baudrillard and Eco contend that the emphasis on
remembering and immortalization that is associated with the simulacrum is
14
Other venues exist for the protection and embalming of nature: they range from national
parks to the idealized human–nature relationships portrayed in theme parks, such as Disney’s
EPCOT (see Fjellman 1992: 319–47).
a particular facet of Americans and American culture. For Baudrillard,

Americans, having missed out on the original running of history, are forced
to make do with its re-running:
They will be the Wrst to immortalize everything by reconstitution (by putting things in
museums, they can match in an instant the fossilization process nature took millions
of years to complete). But the conception Americans have of the museum is much
wider than our own. To them, everything is worthy of protection, embalming,
restoration. Everything can have a second birth, the eternal birth of the simulacrum.
(Baudrillard 1988: 41)
Eco (1987: 6), too, maintains that ‘there is a constant in the average
American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and
celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as dupli-
cation’.
There is no better example of a museum that has striven to recreate reality
in such a manner than the American Museum of Natural History. It is
important to note here the contribution of key individuals in shaping the
destiny of the museum. Indeed, it is possible to argue that the opening of the
museum in 1877 would not have come about had it not been for the remark-
able energy and commitment of one individual, Albert Bickmore (Preston
1986: 13–23).15 After graduating in geology and chemistry from Dartmouth
College, Bickmore studied under Louis Agassiz, who had founded the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. It was Bickmore’s
time studying under Agassiz, and especially their subsequent estrangement,
that convinced him of the need to locate a new and more impressive Museum
of Natural History in the largest and most vibrant city of the US, namely
New York. His commitment to this project over subsequent years was
unfailing. Blessed with an ability to persuade politicians and potential bene-
factors alike of the worth of the proposed museum, he won approval from
the State legislature to erect a new building to house the museum on New
York’s Upper West Side, fronting Central Park. The Wrst stone was laid by
US President Ulysses S. Grant in 1874 under the gaze of a number of key
government oYcials, while the building was opened oYcially by President
Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877.
But, of course, a museum is more than a mere building; the true sign-
iWcance of the American Museum of Natural History from the outset was its
vast collection of important exhibits. Many collections were bought whole-
sale by the museum and it was Bickmore’s enthusiastic pursuit of these
opportunities to augment the museum’s collections—allied with low visitor
Wgures—that led to the institution’s Wnancial troubles during the late nine-
teenth century. By 1880, it was on the brink of closure. The saviour Wgure
15
Much of what is discussed in this paragraph derives from Preston’s (1986) account of
Bickmore’s contribution.
came in the form of Morris K. Jesup, employed as a troubleshooter by the

trustees. Bickmore’s enthusiasm for the project, obviously, was infectious.
Jesup became convinced of the need for the museum in New York and set
about, as the new president of the museum, to invigorate its collections. He
instigated two key transformations to the way in which the museum was
organized. First, he placed an increased emphasis on what we may term
entertainment, as opposed to hard science. Exhibits of large mammals, he
argued, would attract far more visitors through the museum’s doors
than would those of molluscs or beetles. The second great change was the
emphasis on ‘active collecting’. The period of Jesup’s presidency, according
to Douglas Preston (1986: 23), represented the beginning of the ‘golden age
of exploration’ between 1880 and 1930, when over a thousand expeditions
were sent by the museum into all parts of the globe (Wallace 2000: 23–45).
Jesup’s astuteness as president led a sustained period of growth in the
fortunes of the Museum of Natural History. In 1881, when his term as
president began, there were only 55,000 square feet of exhibits but by 1906
this Wgure had increased to 600,000. Employee Wgures had also increased
dramatically during the same period, from twelve to 185 (Preston 1986: 22).
It is not an overstatement to suggest that Jesup’s period as president wit-
nessed the laying of crucial foundations for the museum’s success during the
twentieth century. By the end of the century, the scope of the museum’s
activities had grown to staggering proportions: it is now a workplace for 200
scientists and twenty-Wve million specimens and is visited by a total of Wve
million visitors each year (American Museum of Natural History 2001: 5). It
acts today as an organization that focuses on the entertainment and educa-
tion of visitors, as well as being a research establishment of the highest order.
At Wrst glance, the story of the formation of the American Museum of
Natural History would seem to contradict a simple account of the increased
inXuence of the state on the memorialization and representation of nature.
This is especially the case when considering the fact that it lies outside the
direct control of the state institutions at either the federal or state level. The
museum has always been a charitable, private, and, ostensibly, independent
organization governed by a Board of Trustees. Indeed, Haraway (2004b:
188) argues that it can be contrasted with the natural history museums of
Europe, which are organizations that lie directly within the control of their
respective states (see also Luke 1997:1). But this is to adopt too narrow an
understanding of the state. Antonio Gramsci, in particular, has argued for
the need to view the state as something that is dependent upon a range of
institutions that seemingly exist in civil society. In order to achieve its
political, social, and economic hegemony, the state must educate the mass
of the people to a certain moral and cultural standard. In addition to its key
educational and juridical functions, the state achieves this aim through ‘a
multitude of other so-called private initiatives and activities’, which ‘form the
apparatus of the political and cultural hegemony of the ruling classes’
(Gramsci 1978: 258). It is clear, in this respect, that the American Museum of
Natural History played a key role in facilitating this broader educational
process that has been crucial to the reproduction of the political and cultural
hegemony of the US state.
The extent to which the museum can be viewed as a state project can Wrst
be elucidated through reference to those key individuals involved in its
formation and development. At a quite straightforward level, the presence
of two US presidents at key stages in the erection of the museum’s Wrst
purpose-built building would seem to indicate the extent to which the insti-
tution was viewed as a symbol of American national esteem. Other individ-
uals involved in the setting up of the museum were also key Wgures within
both the Wnancial and political establishment of New York and the wider US,
including J. Pierpont Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt Sr. Similarly, it is
possible to argue that many of the museum’s early activities reXect a concern
with the need to promote the national natures of the US. We bear witness to
this national concern in the development of the museum’s gem collection,
whose formation derived from the activities of George Kunz, gem expert for
TiVany and Co. and honorary curator in the museum, and J. Pierpont
Morgan, the wealthy New York Wnancier and museum trustee. A combin-
ation of Kunz’s expertise and Morgan’s money led to the formation of one of
the best gem collections in the world at the tail end of the nineteenth century,
containing as it did the much-vaunted sapphire, the Star of India. Much of
the impetus for the formation of the collection, however, came from the Paris
World Exhibition of 1889, which we have already discussed. It is signiWcant
that Kunz was able to convince Charles TiVany, founder of TiVany and Co.,
of the need to show European jewellers the quality of North American gems.
Driven by a combination of professional and national pride, Kunz set out on
a nationwide journey across the US to acquire the best examples of precious
stones that he could Wnd. The collection, subsequently, won the Gold Medal
at the Paris Exposition and, upon its return to New York, was bought for the
museum by Pierpont’s money (Preston 1986: 219–20; Wallace 2000: 101–2).
The signiWcance of this brief example, we would maintain, is the way in which
the museum was involved in taking natural artefacts formed under the
geological conditions of a prehistoric past—a past in which humans and
nation-states were evidently non-existent—and framing them as part of the
national nature of the US. In this crucial shift, gems were transformed from
being products of the natural processes taking place beneath the earth’s
surface to being national products that could elicit a national sense of pride
amongst Americans.
The role of natural history museums in enabling humans to impart a sense
of order on the natural world has been made clear by Michel Foucault. In the
process, rational thought ‘operate[s] upon the entities of our world, to put
them in order, to divide them into classes, to group them according to names
that designate their similarities and their diVerences’ (Foucault 2003: xix).
This process of classiWcation is especially pertinent in the context of natural

history, with botanical gardens and natural history collections being its
concrete manifestation. These latter sites hide as much as they reveal, and
are ‘books furnished with structures, the space in which characteristics
combine, and in which classiWcations are physically displayed’ (Foucault
2003: 150). Importantly, this gaze or vision, as Luke has maintained, is
both ‘totalizing’ and ‘particularizing’: natural history museums seek to
embrace and represent the whole of life on earth but do so as a means of
subdividing it into interrelated categories. ‘Museums of natural history are
essentially attempts to collect all of the world’s facts, as artifacts, specimens
or examples, and then classify, organize, and interpret their meanings’ (Luke
1997: 18–19). One crucial element within this process of classiWcation and
organization is the nation-state and it is here that we witness the mutual
imbrication of nation-states and natures within the natural history museum.
As Luke (1997: 59) has so aptly put it, museums are both ‘products and
producers of national modernization for the state’.16 At one level, they reXect
and reify the nation-state’s eVorts to segment space, so that museums speak
of our natural history as opposed to the natural histories of other nations and
peoples.17 Here, museums attain the status of a ‘complete microcosmic
representation of the nation-state . . . the building contains representatively
everything in the state territory—and in this way becomes itself a symbol of
the power relationship’ that lies at the heart of the nation-state (Prösler 1996:
35). At another important level, natural history museums also emphasize
particular national ways of thinking about nature. All natures presented
within the space of the natural history museum are viewed through a mental
framework derived from the national space within which the museum resides.
In these two senses, nature does not merely enter history within natural
history museums, as Foucault has maintained. In framing nature using the
lens of the state, we contend that nature actually enters state history within all
natural history museums.
One way in which we can examine how natures have entered US state
history within the American Museum of Natural History is to focus on the
importance of ideas relating to race, which were being propounded in the
US during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Donna Haraway (2004b)
has outlined in great detail the way in which the fabric of the museum, as well
as its various displays, were shot through with telling statements regarding
the racial ideas that were prevalent in the US during this period. As one
approaches the building along Central Park West, one is struck by the
immensely large statue of Theodore Roosevelt, mounted on a horse as a
16
As Luke notes, this tendency is partly linked to the shift identiWed by Francis Bacon as
universal nature was made private. One key way in which nature was made private was in the
context of the nationalization or statization of nature (see Impey and MacGregor 1985: 1).
17
In a related context, see Billig (1995).
father Wgure to two ‘primitives’, a Native American and an African. The

statue also contains a dedication to Roosevelt as ‘a great leader of the youth
of America, in energy and fortitude in the faith of our fathers, in defense of
the rights of the people, in the love and conservation of nature and of the best
in life and in man’. The racial undertones of the statue are plain for all to see
but the dedication, as Haraway (2004b: 153) argues, also draws our attention
to other themes: ‘youth, paternal solitude, virile defense of democracy, and
intense emotional connection to nature’. The connections between a racia-
lized US federal state and the museum are clear: the one serves to reinforce
the other in the statuary located at the museum entrance.
Other threads attach a racialized US state to the American Museum of
Natural History. The link between the museum and the science of eugenics
clearly illustrates the organization’s role as a useful tool of the US federal
state. The Second International Congress of Eugenics, held in the museum in
1921, was believed by H. F. Osborn (President of the American Museum of
Natural History at the time) to be ‘perhaps the most important scientiWc
meeting held in the Museum’ (quoted in Haraway 2004b: 190). Various state
and educational representatives attended the Congress—both from the US
and further aWeld—and the conference proceedings were published under the
title Eugenics in Family, Race, and State. After an initial lukewarm response
to the Congress’s proclamations, they were increasingly taken up by politi-
cians and the press. Two years later, the US Congress passed laws containing
new restrictions on immigration, which would protect the ‘American Race’
from undesirable external inXuences. A private institution it may have been,
but the museum was also clearly a handmaiden of the US federal state in
which it was located.18
Even in the simulacrum of the diorama, the notion with which we started
this section, we can witness the important connections between states and
natures. Perhaps the most famous group of dioramas is that located in
the Akeley Hall of African Mammals. These are a testament to the high
level of skill and ‘realistic’ representation achieved in the museum’s exhib-
itions, especially under the leadership of Carl Akeley.19 Haraway expands
on the narrative or the story contained within the dioramas that appear in
this Hall:
Gradually, the viewer begins to articulate the content of the story. Most groups are
made up of only a few animals, usually a large and vigilant male, a female or two, and
one baby. Perhaps there are some other animals—a male adolescent maybe, never an
aged or deformed beast. The animals in the group form a developmental series, such
18
It is also possible to position the concept of race, and its association with both the museum
and the US state, within a broader context of social anarchy and disorder (see Rexer and Klein
1995: 25).
19
For a discussion of the new techniques of taxidermy developed by Carl Akeley in the
African Hall of Mammals, techniques that enabled him to create hyperreal exhibits, see Haraway
(2004b: 166–71), Luke (1997: 27), Preston (1986: 92–3), and Wallace (2000: 13).
that the group can represent the essence of the species as a dynamic, living whole . . .
Each group forms a community structured by a natural division of function; the
whole animal in the whole group is nature’s truth. (Haraway 2004b: 156)
The pivotal diorama is the group of African mountain gorillas, with the
male silverback gorilla, the Giant of Karisimbi, as its centrepiece. Perhaps as
a result of the genetic closeness of the gorilla to humans, the quality of the
panoramic artwork, or the Werceness and integrity of the ‘Giant’ himself, this
diorama has been viewed as the apogee of the taxidermist’s art: a spiritual
vision of nature and of humanity’s place within it (Haraway 2004b: 157).
But these dioramas, not least that of the mountain gorillas, also comprise a
narrative of state–nature relations. Luke (1997) argues that Akeley’s experi-
ences in Africa—where he was nearly killed by a charging elephant, and
where he witnessed Wrst hand the damage inXicted by ‘European’ hunters on
African wildlife—led him to re-evaluate the narratives contained within
the African dioramas. At one level, their implicit message is of an anthropo-
genic and state-centred transformation of nature within Africa—through the
hunting of wild animals and the exploitation of natural resources (Luke 1997:
28–9). But, at the same time, the dioramas’ act of freezing nature and time in
an everlasting set pose, or, as Luke (1997: 31) has put it, ‘slowing or stopping
civilization’s spoilage with simulations of Nature’, could be viewed as a
symbol of the ability of states to attempt to freeze nature in reality, or, in
eVect, to develop means of conserving threatened species and habitats.
Akeley, for instance, was a keen advocate of the need to form a national
park within the Belgian Congo, which would serve to protect the habitat of
his beloved mountain gorillas (Wallace 2000: 19). Similarly, the freezing of
nature–state relations within the diorama can be viewed as a metaphor for
the increasing eVorts made to conserve and ‘freeze’ national natures within
the US at the same time. The 1920s, when Akeley carried out his expeditions
to the Belgian Congo and when he planned and produced the gorilla dio-
rama, were, after all, in the middle of a period when national natures were
being preserved at an unprecedented rate in the US (Wilson 1992: 224). The
reasons behind this process were the same in the US as they were in the
Belgian Congo: namely, the need to protect species and environments that
were in danger of despoilation (Green 1996: 95). In this light, the gorilla
diorama can be viewed as a symbol of a further state transformation, or,
alternatively, the reiWcation of nature through the creation of new state
conservation bodies within the US and further aWeld.
Natural history museums, such as the one in New York, are involved in a
process of deWning and classifying national natures, which are represented
through the hyperreality of the exhibition and/or the diorama. Natural
history museums are, therefore, ‘biopolitical acts’ in which curators
and other technocrats contribute to a process of Wxing and Wnalizing ‘the
empiricities of humanism and naturalism as complex clusters of practicable
representations, carrying stabilized accounts of normalizing knowledge’
(Luke 1997: 47). They are infused with political meaning: in their mechan-
isms of classiWcation, in their use of technologies, and in their representations
of nature. It is the world of hyperreality that enables this moment of simu-
lacrum within nature–state relations to be produced by curators and con-
sumed by museum patrons.
Concluding comments
The connections between nature and the modern state have unfolded in
certain key momentary associations. While we have stressed that these
moments of nature–state relations do not strictly adhere to historic time
periods as such, but rather reXect particular conWgurations of practices,
ideologies, and materialities of states and natures, it is likely that particular
types of momentary relations will assume greater signiWcance at certain times
more than others. In this regard, the moment of consolidation was of greater
signiWcance during the period between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries
in the majority of European states. The moment of contestation became
more prevalent from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, as various forms
of sub-state or insurgent nationalism sought to counter the processes of
consolidation that had taken place throughout the modern period. The
moment of simulacrum, too, is one that is part of a postmodern contempor-
ary world, where new technologies and cultural forms have enabled the
replacement of realities by more eYcient and eVective substitutes.
But while such a temporal framework might prove alluring at Wrst glance,
it can ultimately oversimplify a reality—in terms of nature–state relations—
that is far more complex. At one level, we need only think of a process of state
consolidation and a related moment of consolidation of nature–state rela-
tions that is proceeding at a tortuously slow pace in some developing coun-
tries in the contemporary period. In countries that still suVer under the
neocolonial rule of multinational corporations and other global agencies,
there is little sense of a successful historic process of deWning national
natures. Indeed, and as we shall see in Chapter 7, the moment of consolida-
tion of national natures is an ongoing process for the vast majority of states
in the contemporary world, in the face of continuing global appropriations of
nature and natural resources. Similarly, and as noted in the introduction to
this chapter, it is likely that moments of contestation have coexisted, and
continue to coexist, with moments of consolidation. The manifold processes
of state consolidation that have taken place during the whole of the modern
period have always been contested by various groups and individuals. Nature
has formed one key battleground within this process of territorial domin-
ation of, and resistance to, the state. Even the moment of simulacrum,
ascribed by Baudrillard (1994) to a contemporary, postmodern period, has
been in evidence over a far longer term. The desire to represent natural
realities—and to make them more real than reality itself—proved problem-

atic for the curators of the American Museum of Natural History through-
out the twentieth century. It is not merely a feature of a postmodern museum
space. Taken together, such comments further emphasize the need to think of
moments, not in a strictly temporal sense, but rather as a means of consider-
ing the diVering ideological, technological, and material relations that exist
between speciWc states and natures at particular points in time. The exact
form of those moments—and the way in which they manifest processes of
consolidation, contestation, and simulacrum—is essentially something that
must be determined through empirical study.
4
Mapping the Land: Spatializing State

Nature
Introduction: land, nature, and the map
In 1965 it was estimated that Belgium had 607,142 hectares (ha) of forested
land, while Finland had 21,800,000 ha (6,500,000 of which were swamp
forest).1 France, meanwhile, had 111,800 ha of swamps and marshes (étang
en rapport), compared with the Federal Republic of Germany’s 188,000 ha.
Of its total land area of 24,402,000 ha, the UK had 7,541,400 ha of unim-
proved grazing land being grazed by a staggering 28,967,000 sheep. Further
estimates revealed that the Netherlands had 7,990 ha of dunes and 50,700 ha
of land designated as muddy Xats. Perhaps what is most unusual about these
Wgures is that they don’t appear at all unusual. What, after all, could seem
more normal than knowing such detailed statistical facts about a series of
modern European states? These Wgures are actually taken from a World
Land Use Survey, which was conducted in collaboration by a series of states
during the middle of the twentieth century.2 Despite their seemingly routine
character, however, what interests us about these Wgures are the links they
reveal between nature, the state, and space (or more speciWcally land). The
Wgures presented above have two things in common: Wrst, they are all
statistics about the natural world, which have been organized through spe-
ciWc reference to nation-states (France, Belgium, the UK); and secondly, they
all (with the exception of the statistics on British sheep) describe nature by
making reference to its spatial form—or more accurately its extent (hectares
of marsh, forest, dune, etc.). This association between nature and land is, we
argue, a signiWcant one. We claim that historically the idea of land has
1
The statistics quoted here are all from Stamp (1965: 8, 12–14, 29, and 21, respectively).
2
The World Land Use Survey was established by the International Geographical Union and
sought to use a standard set of land-use classiWcations (which were agreed in 1949) to provide
a global survey of land uses. L. Dudley Stamp (the famous geographer and land-use specialist)
was given the responsibility of collating standardized land-use Wgures for European states, which
were ultimately presented in Occasional Working Paper 3 of the World Land Use Survey (see
Stamp 1965).
Spatializing State Nature 87
provided diVerent nation-states with a mechanism for making sense of nature

and for ordering it spatially.
In light of the historical perspective on nature–state relationships provided
by Chapter 3, this chapter analyses how state–nature interactions are medi-
ated and played out within space. While recognizing the diverse range of
ways in which state–nature relations have been spatialized over time, here we
focus our attention on one crucial site of state nature—the land-use map. To
speak of the land-use map is slightly misleading, given the miscellaneous and
assorted forms that land-use maps have taken in diVerent states and nations.
What counts as a land-use map, for example, could range from the rudimen-
tary sketches of early state surveyors right up to the modern-day, multi-
layered, and computerized displays of land generated within geographical
information systems. We actually adopt a very inclusive deWnition of what
a land-use map is—any cartographic representation of space that contains
details of the social and ecological properties of, and processes that occur
within, the area delimited by the map.
This chapter begins by charting the various ways in which state–nature
relations can be thought of spatially. After reXecting in greater detail on the
political utility of land-use maps, the analysis then moves on to consider two
cases of land-use mapping in action. The Wrst case study considers the emer-
gence of cadastral mapping in early modern Sweden. By focusing on the
emergence and training of a new breed of Lantmätare (land cartographers),
this section considers how land-use maps helped to consolidate the territorial
integrity and military-economic strength of the early Swedish state through
the production of a spatial dataset of nature. The second case study considers
the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain, which was conducted during the
1930s. We describe how this initially voluntary exercise, commissioned by
the untiring geographer L. Dudley Stamp, become vital within the re-nation-
alization of land during the Second World War in Britain and the subsequent
spatial reordering of nature in the post-war years. Through these two case
studies, we consider how the act of land-use mapping, and its associated
practices of visualizing and charting space, serve to produce particularly
centralized and territorialized ways of knowing and understanding nature.
Thinking through the spaces of state nature—or avoiding the

‘territorial trap’
From narrow to integral space: the spatialities of state–nature

relations
In many ways the spatial form of nation-states represents their most obvious
manifestation within the social imagination. Returning to the atlas with
which we began this volume, the association between nation-state and nature
88 Spatializing State Nature
evident, there is of course a spatial one, predicated as it is upon the juxtapos-

ition of fragments of nature and depictions of states expressed through
territorial maps. Often when we refer to nation-states, our Wrst thoughts
turn to a particular state’s spatial form and location. The spatiality of na-
tion-states is in this sense obvious—the spatial shape of any given nation-state
is part of its unique identity, the spatial equivalent of its Wngerprint. But there
is a danger in this intuitive association between states and the colour-coded
grid of international state space. The danger lies in interpreting nation-states
on narrow spatial terms.3 John Agnew (1994) has described the dangers of
narrow conceptualizations of state space through the rather sinister notion of
a ‘territorial trap’ into which unsuspecting state theorists and political scien-
tists can easily fall. Agnew’s trap is really a set of assumptions, which equate
the spatiality of the state to the maintenance of its national territorial borders,
and consequently assume that state power is somehow circumscribed by its
external territorial markers. The reduction of state space to territorial bound-
aries is problematic for two main reasons: Wrst, because it ignores the import-
ant spatial relations and conWgurations through which states extend their
power and inXuence beyond their own territories; and secondly, because it
fails to appreciate the role of the state in moulding and forging spaces that lie
within its own political borders. It is in this context that the recent work of
Neil Brenner has called for a rejection of the spatial fetishisms associated with
narrow, territorially conceived notions of state space, and for greater atten-
tion to be given to the integral spaces of states (Brenner 2004: 78). According
to Brenner, integral spaces are ‘the territory-, place-, and scale-speciWc ways in
which state institutions are mobilised to regulate social relations and to
inXuence their locational geographies’ (2004: 78). The integral spaces of the
state consequently correspond to the spaces that are produced as the intended
or unintended consequences of state strategies and policies. Such spaces can
include planning regions and urban agglomerations within states, and supra-
economic complexes that cut across diVerent national territories. A concern
for integral space, then, draws attention away from the Wxed spatiality of
the boundary line to the complex and Xuid spaces that are constantly being
made and remade within and beyond states.
There is a series of diVerent ways in which the spatial relationship between
states and natures has been explored. These varied approaches range from
the simpliWed ‘linear spatialities’ (RaZes 2002: 153) of state nature described
within theories of the frontier, to more sophisticated accounts of the brico-
lage of the spaces of state nature provided by writers such as Bill Cronon
(1991).4 In this chapter we focus upon the integral spaces through which
3
For an excellent discussion of narrow territorial understandings of state space oVered by
many political scientists and state theorists, see Brenner (2004: chs 1–3).
4
See also Kaika (2005). In this compelling account of water supply in Athens, Kaika describes how
the modern technological appropriation of a lasting supply of water for the city was enrolled within
a narrative of national development and the political control of the natural world by the Greek state.
states mould, and are in turn shaped by, the natural world. In adopting
this perspective, however, we are not abandoning our sensitivity to the
territorial strategies through which states seek to control nature through
controlling space (i.e. through wildlife reserves, conservation areas, or
national parks: see Neumann 1995, 1998, 2004), but rather attempt to
understand how territorial techniques are used alongside a range of spatial
strategies to frame and manage social relationships with the natural world. In
exploring these varied spatialities of state nature, however, we are
particularly interested in the tension that the great theorist of space, Henri
Lefebvre (2003), discerns within the state’s spatial relations. This contradic-
tion is based on two interrelated but antagonistic processes. The Wrst involves
the constant desire by states to homogenize the natural spaces they inherit
(according to Lefebvre the homogenization of space is about trying to
make the territorial area of nation-states function as socio-ecological
wholes). The second, apparently contradictory, process that Lefebvre dis-
cerns within the state management of space is its support for systems of
private land and property. He argues that within advanced capitalist eco-
nomic systems, the proliferation of private property relations tends to pro-
duce a chaotic and fragmented spatial system. This chaos of space is
a product of individual landowners following their own narrow interests
and failing to recognize the importance of a spatially integrated society to
the maintenance of the overall economy. A paradox thus emerges: while one
of the most important roles of the modern state is to preserve and maintain
property relations—and by deWnition the basis for capitalist economic
expansion—this very act tends to undermine the capacity of the state to
create an eVectively coordinated national space for the use and conservation
of nature. It is this paradox that provides the broad context for the remainder
this chapter.
The land-use map and the spatialization of nature

In this chapter we focus on the spatial paradoxes of states and nature
through the case of the land-use map. Our focus on the land-use map
draws particular attention to the role of both land and maps within state–
nature relations. Of course the idea of land has played an important role
within the historical depiction of national state natures. References to ‘our
land’, for example, have long been the mantra associated with national
ideologies and state-building. The idea of land within a national context is,
however, at one and the same time ambiguous and intriguing. It is ambigu-
ous to the extent that reference to land can sometimes be made in relation to
the abstract territorial bounds of a nation’s space, or to the particular socio-
natural qualities of a country. In the latter use of the term, of course, the idea
of land is often co-opted within the creation of particular modes of national
identity around iconic ‘land’ scapes.5 The idea of land is, however, intriguing
to us precisely because of its association with landscape and ‘the country’.
Despite ‘land’ being a very general term (which incorporates both social and
natural spaces and landscapes), it has become synonymous with accounts of
natural landscapes, soils, and pastoral ideals (Short 1991). To us, then, the
notion of land has been used to understand space both politically (and in
particular nationalistically as ‘our land’) and ecologically (in relation to
certain understandings of natural landscapes as places of nature). In this
context, we claim that the notion of land attributes certain political and
ecological qualities to more abstract spaces—in other words, the notion of
land is often used to give space simultaneous political and ecological meaning
(see Olwig 2002). To this extent, we suggest that land can be thought of as the
ecological equivalent of place. Consequently, just as places are spaces that
have been imbued with socio-cultural meaning and value,6 we claim that land
is equivalent to space that has been given both political and ecological signi-
Wcance.
In the context of this broad understanding of land as a meeting point of
state, space, and nature, the land-use map takes on a new level of sign-
iWcance. We interpret the land-use map as an attempt to articulate, represent,
and produce land through the rigorous and standardized practices of carto-
graphic science. In this sense, land-use mapping is an exercise in making the
often vague cultural invocations of a nation’s land into an actually knowable
spatial entity. As we shall see, this process involves a signiWcant amount of
time, political coordination, and expertise, but it can result in the production
of land that is not only of cultural utility to states, but can also facilitate an
expanded governmental reach of the state over its territorial natures.
Accordingly, we do not see the mapping of land as simply a neutral recording
process, but as a strategy with particular political goals and aims.7 From the
surveying practices through which cartographers compile the data that is to
be represented in maps to the drafting of map sheets themselves, we argue
that it is important to consider what types of map are being produced, and
perhaps more importantly, which cartographic modes of representation are
being deployed.
As with many other types of map, land-use surveys record information
about nature that expands the individual state’s knowledge of its natural
resources (Gascoigne 2004). It is consequently wrong to think of land-use
maps as purely maps of how land is being used. Land-use maps have always
provided chronicles of how land is being under-used, or even misused, and
5
For a more detailed exploration of the links between land, country, and landscape, see Olwig
(2002).
6
See here the collected works of Tim Cresswell (1996, 2004), on the relationship between
space and place.
7
For a critical review of the politics of maps and mapping, see Dorling and Fairbairn (1997),
Monmonier (1993, 1996), and Woods (1992).
indications of how it could be used more eVectively and eYciently in the

future. As devices that are essentially dedicated to particular, synoptic, and
often simpliWed visions of the world, maps provide an interesting example of
how knowledge of nature can be centralized by states and governments. As
with all acts surrounding the centralization of nature, it is important to
consider what eVects the surveying procedures, modes of projection, and
acts of symbolization associated with map-making have on the natures that
are represented and how they determine what type of nature is even able to be
represented (Pickles 2004: 93). Denis Woods (1992: 78–9) describes the
production of nature within the acts of mapping as the ‘culturalization of
the natural’ (we would prefer to describe it as the ‘politicization of the
natural’). But as centralized registers of nature, maps are obviously about
the simultaneous centralization and territorialization of nature. Conse-
quently, through their spatial coordinates, land-use maps not only record
information about the natural world, but they do so on the basis of a spatial
index—that is to say, on the basis of the spatial location of nature. In this
sense, land-use maps are clearly implicated within a process whereby spatial
order is sought within political landscapes. This order can be provided by the
maps themselves or by the actions taken by political authorities on the basis
of the maps they receive. It is in this context that Pickles (2004: 95) reminds us
that ‘maps precede territories’—in their capacity to shape both the mental
conception and physical transformation of space—‘not territory the map’.
Beyond their centralizing and territorializing qualities, however, an often
overlooked aspect of the political utility of maps is their mobility. As scaled
representations of territory, maps contain information about nature that can
be easily stored, copied, and transported between diVerent state departments
and diVerent regions of a nation. The mobility and related reproducibility of
maps (processes that are both now increasingly taking a digital form) mean
that they can be used in a variety of political contexts and serve an increas-
ingly diverse range of social needs.
Books of the land and privatizing national nature: the case of

cadastral mapping in Sweden8
[T]he history of property . . . has meant the inexorable incorporation of what were
once thought of as free gifts of nature: forests, game, wasteland prairie, subsurface
minerals, water and water courses, air rights . . . , breathable air, and even genetic
sequences, into property regimes. (Scott, 1998: 39)
8
We would like to acknowledge the support and guidance of Elizabeth Baigent in helping us to
write this section. We are particularly indebted to her because of the valuable insights she oVered
us on the relationship between early modern cadastral mapping in Sweden and the natural world.
Cadastral maps in the service of the state9

In his celebrated book (already discussed brieXy in Chapter 2) Seeing Like
a State, Scott (1998) begins his analysis of modern state projects with a
promisingly entitled chapter called ‘Nature and Space’. While, as you
would expect, this chapter does provide a fascinating account of the central-
ized ordering of both nature and space that has accompanied the emergence
of the high modern state, it fails to reXect upon the ways in which the
ordering of state space (or territory) has been intimately tied to the ordering
of states’ ecological resources (or national natures). What transpires in
Scott’s analysis is a consideration of the ways in which nature has been
ordered within space, and the ways in which space has been used to order
social practices. What is missing, however, is a direct account of the role of
territorial strategies in actually facilitating the state’s government of nature.
While Scott does not make an explicit connection between the formation of
early land-tax systems and the control and regulation of nature, in this
section we claim that the early construction and administration of propri-
etorial land was a crucial moment within the state’s expanding knowledge
over, and control of, national natures. In order for land to be taxed and
administered it Wrst had to be mapped and delimited. It was in this context
that early modern Europe witnessed the spread of a very particular type of
land-use map—the property or cadastral map. While many existing analyses
of cadastral maps have illustrated their role in the creation of standardized
social property relations, far less has been written on their role in facilitating
both the national and local framing of nature and social relationships with
the land. Our aim in this section is consequently to combine Scott’s analysis
of the early modern state’s administration of nature and space (through
largely simpliWed systems of calculation and vision), with a consideration
of how new spatial systems were actually used to order nature.
Cadastral maps are essentially property maps. Having established this, it is
important to realize that the mapping of property through cadastral tech-
niques did not begin as a state-sponsored process. Early cadastral carto-
graphers were initially employed by private landowners to survey their newly
enclosed estates and manors so that they could know precisely what it was
that they owned (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 1). Our interest in cadastral
maps, however, focuses on the seventeenth century, when cadastral tech-
niques were used to consolidate the spatial power and inXuence of emerging
state systems in Europe. According to Kain and Baigent (1992: 130), it was
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that cadastral maps became
an important part of the extension and consolidation of state power. Pickles
9
Our analysis of the role of the cadastral map in the government of early modern nature in
Sweden is inspired by Kain and Baigent’s (1992) wonderful book on the history of property
mapping.
(2004: 97) describes a newly emerging ‘map consciousness’ at this time, as the
map became implicated in the expansion and territorial logics of the early
state and capitalist systems. At this particular time the map was essentially
transformed from a device dedicated to the presentation of spatial data to
a marker of political boundaries and control (see Buisseret 1992). In many
emerging European states during this period, the process of cadastral map-
ping was transformed from a privatized ad hoc process to a standardized,
centrally administered exercise. State funds became available to support
national cadastral surveys, training institutions were created to instruct
cadastral cartographers, and state oYcials were designated to oversee the
mapping process. While the precise reasons for the emergence of cadastral
mapping in early modern Europe are far from clear, we claim that cadastral
maps were not only used to gather taxes. Drawing on Kain and Baigent’s
analysis of cadastral mapping in Sweden, we argue that cadastral maps
provided an important territorial strategy for regulating social relations
with nature, and for making nature more readily exploitable within pro-
grammes of national economic development.10
Our focus on the process of cadastral mapping in Sweden perhaps requires
a little explanation. First, it is important to realize that Sweden was one of the
Wrst countries in the world to instigate a systematic cadastral survey of its
territory (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 3). Indeed, it is believed that most of
Sweden’s unforested lands had been subjected to cadastral analysis by 1700
(Baigent 1990). Secondly, the Wrst systematic national cadaster in Sweden
was constructed at a crucial moment within the political and economic
modernization of the country. State-sponsored cadastral mapping began in
Sweden in 1628 under the reign of Gustav II Adolf (1594–1632) (Kain and
Baigent 1992: ch. 3). In many ways Gustav II Adolf’s twenty-one-year reign
as king of Sweden marked the emergence of Sweden as a powerful and
inherently modern European state (Ahnlund 1940; Roberts 1968, 1992).
While Gustav II Adolf is perhaps most remembered for his military cam-
paigns against Denmark, Norway, and Poland, and the expansion of the
Swedish state that accompanied these endeavours (Lindegren 1985; Roberts
1968), he was also instrumental in laying many of the socio-political foun-
dations of the modern state system in Sweden. During his reign, constitu-
tional reform saw a clear role emerging for the Swedish Riksdag
(Parliament), a revised tax system, the consolidation of the Swedish language
through the development of a new Swedish dictionary, and a reinvigorated
national education system (Ahnlund 1940). Gustav II Adolf’s educational
history meant that he valued science, logic, and political order highly, and
with the help of his state oYcials and aids he sought to create a highly
modern state system (Baigent 2003: 33). The era of state modernization
and expansion achieved under his reign became known as the ‘Age of
10
See also in this context Baigent (2003).
Greatness’ (Stormaktstid) in Sweden (Kain and Baigent 1992: ch. 3; Roberts

1992). As we shall see, this ethos of political and social modernization was
instrumental in framing the transformation of nature in seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century Sweden.
The standardization of cadastral mapping and the rise of the

Lantmätare
Understanding the emergence of state-sponsored cadastral mapping in
Sweden in relation to the so-called of ‘Age of Greatness’ associated with
Gustav II Adolf is important because it helps to partially explain why
Sweden took such a leading role in early forms of large-scale cadastral
surveying. At one level the relationship between the Age of Greatness and
cadastral mapping was a contingent one, based as it was on the maturing of a
new cartographic science (with new surveying, drawing, and printing tech-
niques) coinciding with new and ambitious views of what the Swedish state
could be. It appears, however, that the rise of cadastral mapping in Sweden
was a more speciWc product of both the desire to modernize the Swedish state
and the prevailing geopolitical situation in the Baltic and more widely in
Europe during the seventeenth century. At one and the same time, it is clear
that Gustav II Adolf wanted to modernize Sweden’s ‘scanty and primitive’
(Roberts 1992: 16) state apparatus and establish an expanded Swedish em-
pire in northern Europe. In relation to the establishment of an expanded
Swedish state, Elizabeth Baigent (2003: 50–1) argues that cadastral mapping
was both the product and facilitator of an emerging militaristic state men-
tality associated with Gustav II Adolf. State-sponsored cadastral mapping
began in Sweden in 1628, when Gustav II Adolf initiated the Lantmäteriet
(National Land Survey Board) and appointed Andreas Bureus as mapmaker
general (generalmatematiker) (Baigent 1990). The 1628 instruction to create a
Lantmäteriet provides us with an insight in to its purposes. According to
Baigent (2003: 51), the instruction emphasized ‘the Wrst aim of mapping to be
the defence of the realm [and] the rigorous recoding of the nation’s resources;
the hint of future glories, [and the] search for improvements’. The link
between mapping and the defence of the Swedish realm is signiWcant here,
given that this was a time when Sweden was particularly keen to secure its
borders with Russia and Denmark (Baigent 2003: 33).
As generalmatematiker Andreas Bureus was responsible for replacing the
map surveyors who worked for private landowners (revkarlar) with a new
breed of state-trained (usually in the Weld) cartographers known as Lantmä-
tare (Kain and Baigent 1992: 51–2). Bureus trained new surveyors with
appropriate scientiWc backgrounds (normally including mathematics, astron-
omy, and geometry), and rigorous testing was put in place to ensure that the
new apprentices were competent in the newly standardized art of cadastral
mapping (Kain and Baigent 1992: 50–1). Bureus’s prominent role in the early
mapping of the Swedish state led to him being known as ‘den svenska
kartograWens fader’ (the father of Swedish cartography) (Baigent 2003:
33).11 Once an eVective team of state land surveyors had been trained, an
assessment of Swedish property could begin. Utilizing their standardized
measures and cartographic techniques, the Lantmätare began to produce
two types of map: the Wrst type was called a Skifte, and involved producing
a very simple geometrical map of property boundaries; the second map type,
known as a Kanceptkorta, provided a much more detailed base map cata-
loguing the diVerent qualities of the land in question (Baigent 2003: 52). As
more and more cadastral maps of Swedish territory were produced during
the seventeenth century, groups of a hundred maps were normally bound
together to create map books called geometriska jordeböckerna (literally
meaning ‘geometric land books’) (Baigent 2003: 54). The utility of this new
breed of state map was based upon their standard form and scale. The
rigorous, scientiWc standardization of map surveying and drawing in Sweden
ensured that diVerent maps could be compared and then compiled into
registers of the land. Every eVort was made to ensure the scientiWc compar-
ability of cadastral maps by the Lantmäteriet—even to the extent of banning
the decoration of the maps with Swedish folk art (Baigent 2003: 54).
How and why cadastral surveys were used in Sweden during the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries is a matter of some dispute. Beyond national
security, their obvious function (as previously discussed in the context of
Scott’s work) was to provide a basis for systems of land taxation. However,
in the context of Sweden, it appears that the cadastral survey served other
governmental functions. The main indication of the broader role of Swedish
cadastral maps relates to the fact that cadastral surveys were carried out for
all lands in Sweden, not only those that were to be taxed (Baigent 1990, 2003:
56). Beyond taxation, then, it appears that, at least initially, cadastral surveys
were used to chart the availability of good and potentially productive land in
the kingdom. Many accounts of Sweden during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries recognized its shortage of good quality agricultural land and the
extensive forms of social poverty this had created (Roberts 1992). In his
celebrated account of seventeenth-century Sweden, Michael Roberts recog-
nizes that ‘[A] great part of the land was lake and forest; a wilderness of wood
and water, very diYcult to traverse except in winter; a country where land
was still dwarfed by nature’ (1992: 13). In the context of the scarcity of good
land, it became imperative that the Swedish state knew where its productive
land was and that that land was utilized eVectively.
It is clear that many Swedish cadastral maps were designed to be records of
nature just as much as of property boundaries. In good agricultural areas, for
example, Kain and Baigent (1992) describe how Lantmätare were required to
11
After Lönborg (1903: 235).
record whether the land was black earth, clay, sand, or heath. Later, in 1636,
a colour-coding system was introduced by the Lantmäteriet to detail if land
was cultivated (grey), forested (dark green), meadows (green), covered by
mosses (yellow), or stony slopes (white). This form of topographical detail
can be clearly seen on Swedish cadastral maps from the time. When this type
of land survey information was combined with the newly instigated standard
measurements employed by the Lantmätare,12 it became much easier for the
Swedish state to estimate national productive yields and to target new
regions for development. In addition to the cadastral surveying of agricul-
tural land, Baigent (2005) describes the particular emphasis that was placed
by land surveys at the time on woodland area. This was of course because of
the strategic importance of timber to the early modern states for both fuel
and shipbuilding. The Lantmäteriet did also, however, give signiWcant atten-
tion to the mapping of Sweden’s mineral assets. The Swedish economy
during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries relied heavily on mines
for the production of its economic wealth (Baigent 2003: 48–50). Baigent
reXects on the importance that was given to the mapping of mineral resources
within the Lantmäteriet. Indeed, in 1629 a new map was developed in Sweden
within which surface information regarding the location of mineral assets
was supplemented by cross-sections of the depth of the resource. In this
context, it is clear that the Lantmäteriet were devoted to the construction
of both a horizontal and vertical territorial representation of the natural
world (Braun 2000).
The desire for land-based environmental knowledge of the seventeenth-
century Swedish state was, however, not simply an administrative exercise.
Kain and Baigent (1992: 130) assert that in addition to information gather-
ing, cadastral surveys were designed to guide improvements to Swedish land
assets. Initially these state-sponsored land improvements focused on rivers,
lakes, forests, and mining areas, as well as agricultural land. During the
eighteenth century, however, cadastral surveys became increasingly tied to
issues of agricultural reform (Baigent 2003: 39–40). In this context, it became
increasingly common for Lantmätare to devise property divisions that would
not only resolve land disputes but would enhance the capacity of farmers to
maximize their agricultural yields and the productive potential of nature.
With the appointment of Jacob Faggot as director of the Lantmäteriet in
1747, cadastral surveys become increasingly tied to agricultural reform and
the creation of a new rural landscape of larger-scale farms and more isolated
settlement patterns (Baigent 2003: 60). It appears that the use of the map as
a basis for improvement was also applied to mining as well as agricultural
12
While measurements did change with diVerent directors of the Lantmätare, early cadastral
maps were draw using the tunnland as the standard cartographic measurement (the tunnland is
equivalent to 0.5934 m); see Kain and Baigent (1992: 52).
areas, with Bureus adopting some degree of inXuence on the operations and
techniques employed by individual miners (Baigent 2003: 49).
This brief account of cadastral mapping in early modern Sweden illustrates
the way in which early modern states utilized private property relations to
frame social relations with the natural world. At one level, the consolidation
of private property relations through various surveys, topographical maps,
and land-use books enabled the Swedish state to perceive for the Wrst time
a national nature. But beyond knowledge of national state nature, it is also
clear that the consolidation of private land in Sweden was also a territorial
strategy designed to change social (and in particular agricultural and mining)
relations with nature through the control and administration of space.
Cadastral mapping in Sweden is thus a clear example of the state utilizing
private property as a means of extending its own power and inXuence ever
more deeply into the natural world. It is clear in this sense, that as a very
speciWc form of land-use survey, cadastral maps were not only designed to
record proprietorial nature but also to shape and transform it. As Baigent
(2003: 34) persuasively argues: ‘the maps were as much geopolitical as
cartographic statements . . . they were intended to enhance the nation’s
greatness, not simply to record it’. The shaping and transforming of nature
associated with the Swedish cadastres operated at two levels. First, the
cadastral maps were designed to ascertain which natural resources could be
claimed by the Swedish state, thus depriving their geopolitical rivals and
neighbours of the strategic advantage of using certain borderland resources.
But secondly, cadastral mapping was also about depicting an increasingly
detailed and diverse sense of what Swedish nature was and where it was
located. The Swedish cadastral map thus transformed understandings of
land and nature in Sweden. This transformation saw both land and nature
become national objects with key geopolitical signiWcance within the process
of early modern state-building. Consequently it is clear that land-use map-
ping in Sweden was just as much about the forging of Swedish identity as it
was about recording property boundaries and mapping the location of
natural resources (Pickles 2004: 100–6). The role of cadastral mapping in
the ‘self-fashioning’ of the Swedish state of course serves to illustrate how the
spatial framing of nature—and the associated territorial and military security
it can aVord—is a crucial moment within the formative dynamics of state-
hood itself (Pickles 2004: 100–6).
Land-use surveys and re-nationalization of the land
In the Wnal section of this chapter we consider the relationships between

states, nature, and land-use maps that have become typical of modern states
in the twentieth and twenty-Wrst centuries. We are particularly going to
consider the land-use survey of Britain that was carried out in the 1930s. In
doing this we focus speciWcally on the eVorts of one man, Sir L. Dudley
Stamp, in shaping the land and nature of Britain in the periods immediately
before and after the Second World War. L. Dudley Stamp is a fascinating
character; a geographer by profession, he rose to prominence within the
British state as a member of the Scott Committee on land utilization in
rural areas, as the chief adviser on rural land use to the Ministry of Agricul-
ture, and as the oYcial land-use delegate of the British government to
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Buchanan
1968). His rise to become the British state’s expert on land-use issues and
mapping must be understood in relation to his role in coordinating the Wrst
national land-use survey of the UK during the 1930s. Through this survey,
he not only helped to instigate a new science of land-use surveying but
also alerted the British state to the value of accurate land-use mapping.
During our exploration of the procedures and political eVects of
L. Dudley Stamp’s land utilization survey of Britain, we will see that land-
use surveys have a very diVerent set of relations with private property than
those we observed with cadastral maps. In this context we will see how
surveys like that carried out in Britain were a response to the fragmentation
of space by private property relations noticed by Lefebvre (2003),
and the problems that this fragmentation process created for the eVective
management of national nature. But what is perhaps more signiWcant
about our analysis of the British Land Utilisation Survey is that it contrib-
uted, in the longer term, not to the reform of social relations with nature
on private land, but to the restructuring of the spatialities of nature at
a national level.
L. Dudley Stamp and the British land scare

Our story of L. Dudley Stamp and the British Land Utilisation Survey begins
in 1930. In that year Stamp founded a research institution he named the
‘Land Utilisation of Britain’. While coordinated through the London School
of Economics (LSE) (University of London), the Land Utilisation Survey
was actually staVed by unpaid volunteers from university departments and
educational institutions throughout Britain and by paid organizing secretar-
ies based at the LSE (Stamp 1946: 1). In his summary of the Wndings of the
survey, Stamp describes its objectives in the following terms: ‘to record on
detailed maps on the scale of six inches to one mile the use of every acre of
land in England, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man’ (a survey was also
completed in certain areas of Northern Ireland) (Stamp 1946: 37; emphasis
added). Ultimately, the land-use survey resulted in the production of an
estimated 22,000 Weld-sheets, which collectively embodied around 44,000
days of human work (Stamp 1946: 37). According to Stamp, a national
land-use survey was important because it would begin to address the prob-
lems created by the largely unregulated use of land promulgated under
private landownership systems in Britain since the seventeenth and eight-

eenth centuries. In this context he asserts:
Britain is a small country with a big population and the supreme need is to make the
utmost use of the land in order to satisfy the varied legitimate desires of all sections of
the community. In the past, land use was determined with little or no control by the
state. The fate of any given piece of land was almost entirely in the hands of its owner:
its future was determined in many cases by the largest purse. The activities of the
farmer were determined in the main by his estimates of personal gain under a system
of free trade. (Stamp 1946: 72)
It is also clear that Stamp believed that as a relatively small country with
a large population, the ineYcient use of land and the natures it contained
could adversely aVect Britain’s economic and political prospects.
Following the eVects of the parliamentary enclosure in Britain during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the proportion of British land given over
to agriculture reached its peak of approximately 87 per cent at the end of the
nineteenth century (Best 1968: 90). The commercialization of British agricul-
tural land following enclosure did, however, lead to a decline in the avail-
ability of agriculturally productive land in the twentieth century. The main
cause of this decline was the shift from a rural/agricultural economy to an
urban/industrial system. This economic shift had important territorial im-
pacts, as the expanding industrial cities of Britain gradually started to cover
‘good-quality’ agricultural land with concrete, houses, and roads—sealing
the land’s productive potential oV from further use. Between 1900 and 1950 it
has been estimated that there was a 7 per cent reduction in the amount of
land available for agricultural production (Best 1968: 92). Interestingly,
before detailed studies of the changes in agricultural land-use patterns
could be carried out, estimates of the loss of British agricultural land were
vastly exaggerated. Some, for example, estimated that Britain had lost up to
50 per cent of its agricultural surface area (Best 1968: 89). Such wild estimates
undoubtedly contributed to a growing sense of social and political hysteria in
Britain during the 1920s and 1930s concerning the erosion of the countryside,
which contributed to the related ‘land scare’. In this context, David Matless
(1998: ch. 1) has described emerging forms of protests and popular cam-
paigns instigated at this time, particularly in England, to protect the nation’s
countryside. These campaigns were coordinated through groups like the
Council for the Preservation of Rural England and the National Trust, and
were based upon a series of written articles, exhibitions, and even popular
postcards (Matless 1998: 25–6). While these campaigns were partly con-
cerned about the loss of agricultural resources, they were primarily interested
in the socio-cultural impacts of rural landscape erosion. In the context of this
book two things are particularly interesting about these rural protest move-
ments. First, as Matless (1998: 26–7) recognizes, a signiWcant portion of the
British rural conservation lobby in the 1920s and 1930s did not advocate an
anti-modernist nostalgia for some form of bucolic idyll in the British coun-
tryside. Instead, many in the rural conservation lobby (including Stamp)
believed that the preservation of the British (and in particular English)
countryside depended upon modern planning techniques and associated
forms of control and ordering. Secondly, there was a strong belief among
these rural preservationists that it was the British state that should provide
the legal and institutional support needed to protect the countryside (Matless
1998: 27–32).
It is clear that the emerging concern over the protection of the English
countryside informed Stamp’s desire to produce a detailed national survey
of land uses. In a sense, the growth of rural preservationism made the need
for a land-use survey even more pronounced. Suddenly the competition for
rural land was not simply between agriculture and urban industrialism, but
also involved those who wanted to see more of the countryside protected
from both the practices of commercial agriculture and urban expansion. In
this context, it is clear that Stamp was confronted with a situation within
which there was increasing competition for the use of a dwindling stock of
rural land. It appeared to Stamp that a crucial step in handling such land-
use disputes was to gain an accurate sense of precisely what national land
assets were being used for. Beyond these broad incentives for a national
survey, the role of Stamp’s Land Utilisation Survey (LUS) was given
further impetus by events that occurred during and directly after the survey
had been completed. The Great Depression that swept through Britain
during the early 1930s had a crippling eVect on British agriculture: with
a declining market for agricultural goods and a lack of investment in the
agricultural sector, increasingly large swathes of the British countryside
were left uncultivated and turned to rough brush (Best 1968: 91–8). Locat-
ing and monitoring these underutilized fragments of British countryside
would become an important part of land-use planning in the UK. Secondly,
with the onset of the Second World War and the loss of valuable agricul-
tural imports, the eVective and eYcient use of agricultural land became a
national priority (Short et al. 2000). In this context, Stamp’s recently
completed land-use survey was to prove an invaluable source of knowledge
to the British state during the war years.
It is clear that Stamp himself understood his LUS as a tool not only for
protecting and maximizing the use of agricultural land but also for managing
the multiple pressures that were brought to bear on Britain’s land resources
in the 1930s. In this context, when commenting upon the potential utility of
his survey for British planning authorities, he states: ‘essentially the problem
of national planning in the physical sphere becomes that of allocating the
right land for the right purposes to satisfy all the varied needs of the people’
(Stamp 1946: 74). As we shall see in the following section, the tensions in the
use of national land in pre- and post-war Britain increasingly related to how
best to use the natural assets of the nation and how best to manage these
facets of nature spatially.
Visualizing nature and the new science of land-use surveying

In the context of the broad set of social, economic, and spatial pressures
described above, Stamp set about trying to establish a new sense of order in
the British landscape. As we argue later (see pp.104–5), his LUS would
ultimately facilitate a new level of British state surveillance over its land
assets and a series of related planning and institutional structures designed
to order these assets. But at this point we are primarily concerned with how
Stamp actually carried out his survey and the eVects this survey had on
political understandings of the land and its associated natural qualities.
In his fascinating review of the LUS, Christopher Board (1968) describes
the situation facing L. Dudley Stamp in 1930. Board Wrst recognizes that
despite the unique nature of Stamp’s endeavours, various forms of geograph-
ical survey were already under way in Britain before the LUS began. For
example, Board (1968: 30–1) recounts Hugh Robert Mill’s call for a complete
regional survey of Britain in 1896 and the establishment of the Geographical
Association’s Committee for Regional Survey (signiWcantly, Stamp was to
become an honorary secretary of this committee). Stamp’s involvement with
the Geographical Association (GA) was no doubt an inspiration for his
vision for a land utilization survey.13 But his surveys were to be diVerent
from the detailed regional reports that were produced under the aegis of the
GA. Following in the venerable tradition of regional geography and idio-
graphic description, the regional reports produced by the GA were varied
and sought to reveal a range of social, geological, and landform features that
characterized diVerent British regions (Board 1968: 30–1). It is clear that
Stamp (1928) believed that in order to carry out an eVective geographical
survey of Britain surveying should be restricted to the observation of surface
uses. The emphasis that Stamp placed on the observation of surface utiliza-
tion was important for two main administrative reasons: Wrst, it ensured that
diVerent surveys would contain the same basic survey data and could thus be
more easily combined into a national inventory; and secondly, and perhaps
more importantly, the focus on land-use observations meant that such sur-
veys could be carried out much more quickly than more detailed regional
surveys. As we shall see, Stamp’s focus on the use of visual observation as a
key methodology within the practice of land-use surveying would have a
profound eVect on the descriptions of British nature contained within his
survey, and indeed on the types of nature that it was possible for his
surveyors to experience and describe.
13
Indeed, Board (1968: 31) observes that Stamp was commissioned to carry out a national set
of regional surveys for the GA before he began his own Land Use Survey.
At the outset of the LUS, Stamp appears to have been confronted with
a fundamental tension. While he wanted to carry out the Wrst systematic and
standardized survey of land use in Britain, it is clear that there was a shortage
of geographers, Weld surveyors, and cartographers available to carry out such
an enormous task to the required standards. Board (1968: 32) does, however,
observe that while the LUS did lack (in terms of quantity) the skilled
personnel that it perhaps needed, it was still able to exploit the abilities of
the expanding number of geographers who were emerging from British
university departments in the 1920s and 1930s. In this context, trained
geographers and cartographers were given the task of overseeing Weld sur-
veyors and compiling oYcial survey reports. The main work of the survey
was, however, to be carried out by often untrained volunteers recruited from
schools and other educational establishments (Stamp 1946: 37). Interest-
ingly, additional support was secured through Scout, Guide, and Rover
groups through a national Hike for a Purpose Campaign (Scouter 1932). In
all, it is estimated that some 10,000 schools and 250,000 schoolchildren
actually participated in the LUS (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994, 1995). In
order to create an army of young land-use surveyors the LUS had to gain
the active consent of numerous county education committees throughout
Britain. Indeed, much of the early work of the LUS organizing secretary
appears to have been spent corresponding and liaising with the chairs of
education committees.14 In order to achieve a truly national land-use survey
it was crucial for Stamp to obtain the acquiescence of all county education
committees. The problem was that many committee chairs (for example, in
Cambridge) were suspicious of the motives and utilities of the LUS. While
they had a number of reservations about the use of schoolchildren in the
LUS—particularly in relation to safety and its distracting inXuence on their
classroom studies—their main concern related to the suspicion that many
had that the LUS was part of a covert, state-sponsored land tax or valuation
procedure.15 Given these suspicions, it is interesting to note how Stamp and
his LUS were keen—despite their own real beliefs—to underestimate the
national value of the LUS to the British state when corresponding with
education oYcials. In one letter to an education committee chair, the secre-
tary of the LUS consequently states:
Its [the LUS] primary objective being educational and its secondary objective being
of national utility . . . its educational value is enormous, it teaches the school children
the geography of their own village, their own parish, their own borough, and their own
county. It teaches them how to read a map, and trains their powers of observation.16
14
See for example: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers, SxMs5 University of
Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1.
15
Letter from LUS Secretary (Leo J. Riordan) to the Chair of the Cambridgeshire County
Education Committee, 21 August 1931: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers, SxMs5
University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1.
16
Ibid.
Table 4.1. Land-use classiWcation scheme used by the British Land

Utilisation Survey
Land-use category Colour-coding system
Arable land Brown

Meadow or permanent grass Light green
Heathland and moorland Yellow
Forest and woodland Dark green
House with garden Purple
Market garden Light purple/Cross-hatch purple.
Land agriculturally unproductive Red
(built-up areas or derelict land)
It is interesting, then, that despite the great eventual value of the LUS to
the British state, it was initially promoted as a device for developing the
geographical skills of a new national citizenry. Through a series of reassuring
letters, and even visits from Stamp himself, the LUS was gradually able to
secure the support of enough education authorities to ensure that there were
no spatial gaps within their national land inventory.
The need to use schoolchildren to carry out large parts of the LUS was one
of the key factors in determining the relatively simple system of land clas-
siWcation that Stamp developed (Board 1968: 32). In his summary of the
Wndings of the LUS—The Land of Britain and How it is Used—Stamp (1946:
39) outlines the classiWcatory system used in the survey. It was based upon
seven basic descriptions of land use, which were to be marked on survey
sheets using a colour-coding scheme and a series of classiWcatory letters (see
Table 4.1). Many have commented on the symbolic signiWcance of the
colour-coding scheme deployed Stamp. The pale greens, browns, and yellows
used to represent rural land reXected the same colours that were being used
by British landscape artists at the time to reXect the beauty of the countryside
(Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 36). The use of red to depict built-up urban
areas was, however, clearly deployed by Stamp to convey the threat to the
British countryside posed by metropolitan expansion (Rycroft and Cosgrove
1994: 36). This colour-coded designation of land was supplemented by a more
detailed survey of the ecological properties of agricultural land by the LUS.
This sought to designate the agricultural quality of land and attempted
to represent soil types, elevations, and drainage properties (Rycroft and
Cosgrove 1994: 39–42). This survey led to a further system of land classiWca-
tion involving three main categories of land—good quality, medium quality
and poor quality—and ten further categorical subdivisions (see Table 4.2).
Collectively, the classiWcatory schema used and developed by Stamp and
the LUS embodied a new scientiWc system for land-use surveys in Britain. It
was scientiWc to the extent that it replaced the vernacular descriptions of
landscapes often found in regional surveys with a standardized discourse of
the land. The accuracy of this new scientiWc discourse is of course open to
Table 4.2. A scientiWc discourse of agricultural land: classiWcatory schemes

deployed by the Land Utilisation Survey
Major land quality category Sub-categories of land quality
I Good-quality land First-class land with deep soils

Good general-purpose farmland
First-class land (prone to Xooding)
Good but heavy land
II Medium-quality land Medium-quality light land
Medium-quality general-purpose farmland
III Poor-quality land Poor-quality heavy land
Poor-quality mountain land
Poor-quality light land
Poorest land
question, but what is not in doubt is that suddenly British land had a new
language. So what had previously been ‘ploughable’, ‘rich’, or ‘fertile’ was
now suddenly preWxed with standardized adjectives such as ‘good’, ‘med-
ium’, or ‘poor’ quality. Underpinning this new scientiWc discourse of land-use
classiWcation was the role of vision. What each of the classiWcatory categories
of the LUS had in common was the strong emphasis they placed on the visual
qualities of the land and natures encountered by the surveyors. The emphasis
on visual features was of course important because the LUS did not have an
adequate number of skilled surveyors to carry out more detailed and intru-
sive studies of the chemical and physical properties of land. In this context,
under the guidance of their teachers and experts from the LUS, the children
and volunteers who participated in the British Land Utilisation Survey had
to be trained how to see land.
The idea of vision has been discussed extensively within analyses of gov-
ernmental power and the activities of states. In his Seeing Like a State, Scott
(1998) uses the notion of sight as a metaphor for the diVerent ways in which
the state makes social and natural worlds legible. In his fascinating study of
the US census, Hannah (2000: 177–8) also utilizes the metaphors of the
state’s Weld of vision and the viewer to try and understand the diVerent
ways in which governments collect knowledge about their territories.
According to both Scott and Hannah, then, the visual power of states—
achieved through censuses, surveys, registers, and statistical tables—is a type
of vision that depends upon the abstraction and simpliWcation of knowledge.
In terms of nature, Scott (1998: 11–33) emphasizes the violence that this
visualization can have on the natural world, as it is stripped of its ecological
complexities in order that it may become politically governable. Of course,
we see this process of abstract visualization in the procedures and practices of
the British LUS. Indeed, in their review of the LUS, Rycroft and Cosgrove
(1994: 38) notice how the Survey transformed the ways the state saw nature
and land, from an oblique, on-the-ground perspective, to a vertical, abstract
view. Vision does, however, take a more literal form in the operations of the
LUS. As we have already established, the LUS was based upon the recording
of visual information about the natural landscape and associated resources.
The point we wish to make is that by emphasizing the visual codiWcation of
land and nature, the LUS was not simply providing an unambiguous and
unbiased picture of British land resources, it was actively shaping what it was
possible to know about British land and the natural qualities it possessed.
In their absorbing analysis of the links between vision, space and nature,
Macnaghten and Urry (1998: 109–25) emphasize a contradictory relationship
emerging between modernity, nature, and sight. They recognize that while
the sense of sight has long been synonymous with the Enlightenment project
of bringing all that is hidden and mysterious in to the light, the emerging
‘hegemony of vision’ (to use Levin’s term) in the West has also been central to
emerging forms of modern surveillance and suppression (see Levin 1993:
121–2). In order to understand the power relations between vision and
political suppression, however, it is necessary to distinguish between vision
in general and the particular brand of vision that has become a deWning
characteristic of modern science and government. Within modern science
and government vision has been constructed as the classical sense of dis-
tanced objectivity. As the ‘cognitive canon’ of modern science, Haraway
(1991: ch. 9 and p. 183) describes how visualization has enabled the con-
struction of a detached but totalizing way of looking at the natural world.
The association between vision and scientiWc objectivity can be traced
through the Cartesian discourses, which emphasized the purity of the eye,
to the Linnaean practices of optical classiWcation.17 In order to secure the
link between vision and objectivity of course, ‘homogenization of the visual
experience’ must be guaranteed (Macnaghten and Urry 1998: 17).
The standardization of vision in the LUS was secured by the instructions
the LUS members and teachers gave to volunteers and students. These
surveying instructions were contained in the special pamphlet sent to
all participating education committees which was used by teachers to
instruct their students. In addition to the explanatory pamphlet, however,
the LUS also regulated the standards of the survey through regular corres-
pondence with education oYcials, within which they talked through the
diYculties and common errors that arose within land surveying. In one
letter to a GA member involved in the Cheshire survey, the LUS secretary
reXects on the confusion that can often arise from the classiWcation of
natural land:
Swampy areas by streams, especially when marked by rough pasture, marsh and reed
symbols, are ‘H’ and if the Ordnance Survey have put these signs on, we do not
usually pay much attention to any letters of doubtful value added by schoolchildren
17
For a more detailed analysis of the links between vision and modernity, see Jenks (1995),
and Levin (1993).
who may not appreciate the symbols . . . Areas shown on the six inch maps as rough
pasture, etc. and marked with ‘W’: in these cases all we do is to decide whether they
(the surveyors) have really seen anything in the way of a factory sprouting on the spot,
or as is usually the case, taken a dislike to such areas and called them waste.18
In essence, this pamphlet and associated guidance trained the surveyors in
how to look at land. A central element within this training exercise was not
only to instruct surveyors on what they should see, but also what they should
not see and therefore ignore. In this context, the surveyor’s gaze was a way of
seeing land and nature that automatically simpliWed the Weld of vision being
observed. This simpliWcation operated on two levels. First, it suggested the
visual elements of land and nature that were not relevant to the surveyor
(perhaps a Weld’s diverse uses, wildlife inhabitation, or broader ecological
context). Secondly, the surveyor’s gaze automatically marginalized other
ways in which land could be experienced and perceived (whether it was
through smell, touch, or other ambient features).19 What both these simpliW-
cation processes seem to have ensured is that the production of a land-use
survey was achievable (despite a lack of resources and expertise) and that the
knowledge it produced could be used by the British state to make sense of,
and then govern, its land.
There were, however, problems associated with the visual practices of the
LUS. The limitations of its visual codiWcation methods were illustrated in the
problems associated with the codiWcation of housing land. The secretary of
the LUS reXected:
Housing estates marked in an unsatisfactory manner are annoying. All we really
worry about is whether they are as large as indicated. If, as often happens, that
a surveyor has been confronted from the road by a piece of ribbon development,
and has erroneously presumed that the whole of the Weld behind the houses is built
up. . . . we frequently have to leave these points to be checked.20
As this quote illustrates, visual surveillance is dependent upon gaining

a suitable vantage point. When this vantage point is not available, the
power of vision to code and record accurately is of course compromised.
We claim that those surveyors, teachers, lecturers, college students, and
schoolchildren who were enrolled in the LUS of Britain in the 1930s
become the ‘mobile eyes’ of the state.21 As mobile eyes, the volunteers
involved in the LUS were able to use their visual faculties as a kind of
technology of surveillance. As a mode of surveillance, of course, the sur-
18
Letter from LUS Secretary to Mr Warrington of the GA, 18 April 1935: Professor Sir
Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1.
19
For more on varied sensual engagements with nature and landscapes, see Tuan (1974).
20
Letter of LUS Secretary to Mr Warrington of the GA, 18 April 1935: Professor Sir Dudley
Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5, University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1.
21
For more on the idea of ‘mobile eyes’, or eyes that are simultaneously everywhere and
nowhere, see Haraway (1991: ch. 9).
veyors’ gaze was useful precisely because it enabled the LUS to penetrate
beyond the boundaries of private landowners in ways in which more direct
surveying techniques could not. Sight in this context enabled surveillance to
be carried out at a distance and in ways that could cross the boundaries
between public and private space (only two instances of landowners actually
preventing schoolchildren from surveying their properties were recorded in
the early years of the LUS22). As we shall see in the following section, it was
this training that enabled the surveys to produce a picture of British land and
nature that was in keeping with the synoptic vision of the British state over its
natural assets.
While the LUS contribution to national economic development and plan-
ning has been discussed at length, far less has been made of its contribution to
education and learning among the children who participated in the survey.
Much was made during the 1930s of the unique opportunities the LUS
oVered to schoolchildren. In one particularly nostalgic report of the time,
for example, in the Eastern Daily Express, J. E. Mosby claimed that:
The summer of 1931 is one that will be remembered by over a thousand young
surveyors who set out for the open country with six-inch maps explaining their own
neighbourhood and with renewed interest in even going into distant parishes and
correcting Weld boundaries, marking the position of new houses and adding mystic
letters according to the nature of the ground they were surveying . . . During the late
summer evenings, they sailed forth on bicycles after long hours exploring the coun-
tryside, and returning home at dusk with their precious reports, displaying that spirit
of adventure which is the heritage of every Norfolk boy. (Mosby 1932)
It appears that many involved in the LUS scheme saw the adventurous
exposition of young schoolchildren to the open countryside of Britain as
a virtue in itself. It is clear from many accounts of schoolteachers at the time
that they believed that the LUS could help to create a new ecologically
informed citizenry, whose understanding of their nation’s heritage could be
enhanced through more regular exposure to its natural landscapes.
Land in the service of the nation

The LUS completed its Herculean task in 1939, just before the start of the
Second World War (Stamp 1946: 37). The end of the survey was marked by
the conversion of the 22,000 Weld survey sheets (at a scale of six inches to one
mile) into a series of standard LUS maps (rescaled to one inch to one mile).
These were stored initially at the LUS headquarters at LSE, before being
reproduced and distributed to diVerent libraries and organizations through-
22
Letter from LUS Secretary (Leo J. Riordan) to the Chair of the Cambridgeshire County
Education Committee 21 August 1931: Professor Sir Dudley Stamp (1898–1966) Papers SxMs5,
University of Sussex Manuscript Collection, Box 19.1.
out Britain. The raw maps of the LUS were amalgamated and analysed by
the LUS in a collection of reports. The Wrst LUS report was composed
by L. Dudley Stamp and E. C. Willatts (the organizing secretary of the
LUS) in 1934. It provided a brief, interim summary of the Wrst twelve one-
inch maps produced by the Survey (Stamp and Willatts 1934). From 1937,
however, the LUS gradually began to present its Wndings through a series of
Regional Reports. In keeping with the regional geographical tradition—of
which Stamp was of course a prominent Wgure—these reports sought to
position their respective descriptions of land use within an explanatory
frame that incorporated an account of the social, economic, and geological
histories of the regions from which they were taken. It was prominent
geographers and geography teachers, who had led many of the survey
expeditions, who generally prepared these reports (Board 1968: 34). It
was partly on the basis of these surveys that in 1946 Stamp was able to
produce The Land of Britain and How it is Used, within which he highlighted
the strategic land-use implications of the LUS Wndings. The importance
of the LUS did, however, become apparent long before Stamp’s 1946
publication.
As one would expect, the outbreak of the Second World War in September
1939 had a profound aVect on how the LUS was perceived and used. The
advent of war fundamentally shifted how land assets were conceived of in the
UK. With the loss of food imports and trade from Europe and the threat to
Commonwealth trade posed by the German Navy, British land assets sud-
denly become re-nationalized. British land was re-nationalized in two ways.
First, agricultural land suddenly became a Wnite resource that had to be used
to feed the nation’s population. Secondly, it became evident that increasingly
large swathes of privately owned land would have to be used for the purpose
of national food production. Even in 1938, before the war, the UK was
dependent on overseas suppliers for 70 per cent (by value) of its food assets
(Short et al. 2000). Suddenly this 70 per cent food lifeline was under threat!
Essentially the Second World War meant that the British state had to
mobilize its land assets and maximize its use of its natural assets in new
and more extreme ways. Matless (1998) describes how British land was
mobilized through a series of emergency measures that mixed militaristic
metaphors with new ways of using land and nature. To the British govern-
ment, land became a ‘weapon of war’, and its eVective use during the war was
guaranteed by its own army (the Land Army) and associated ‘Dig for
Victory’ campaigns (Matless 1998: 174–9). Undergirding these eVorts
was a desire to ensure that as much land as was possible could be put to
productive use (Ministry of Information 1945). To achieve this goal of course
required knowledge of existing land-use patterns so that future developments
could be planned and mapped. It was in this context that Stamp’s LUS
records were to play such an important role in Britain’s early war eVort.
Stamp’s own account of the months following the outbreak of the Second
World War provides an insight into the emerging role of LUS records in the
British war eVort:
An unexpected result of the declaration of war was the receipt of several telegrams
asking to borrow sets of original [Land Utilisation Survey] Weld maps as a basis for
planning the ploughing up campaign . . . the next two or three months were occupied
in sending out thousands of our original six inch Weld sheets on loan to County War
Agricultural Committees . . . . our maps, of course, showed the areas actually
ploughed in the years before the war. (Quoted in Short et al. 2000: 29)
The scramble for LUS maps and inventories described by Stamp reXects
the growing desire of the British state to collate an accurate and up-to-date
picture of Britain’s organic resources. This political desire would eventually
lead to the instigation of the National Farm Survey, which ran from 1941 to
1943. This was coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture but carried out by
County War Agricultural Committees (Short et al. 2000: ch. 1). Using the
LUS as a guide, the teams working on the National Farm Survey collated
information on farmland use, which was then used to identify pastoral areas
that could be ploughed and used as arable land, or arable land that could be
utilized in more eYcient ways to support the war eVort and feed the nation.
One of the central ways in which the wartime state sought to maximize the
eYciency with which Britain exploited its natural organic resources was
though the promotion of a new era of mechanization within the agricultural
sector. While the National Farm Survey was not the Wrst survey of farms in
the UK (a farm management survey, for example, was completed during the
1930s), it was the Wrst to legally require the cooperation of private land-
owners and to achieve anywhere near a national picture of farmland use. In
their detailed analysis of the National Farm Survey, Short et al. (2000: ch. 1)
argue that with its bureaucratic support mechanism and statistical outputs, it
was a key moment in the incorporation of British agriculture into the modern
era. What is signiWcant, in the context of this book, is that along with the
LUS, the National Farm Survey cemented the increasing centralization of
state surveillance over a nationally framed nature.
One of the key consequences of data obtained from the LUS and the
National Farm Survey was the growing ability of the state to challenge the
use of private landowner in the UK. If land was deemed to be underused or
used in an inappropriate way, legislation enabled the state to demand
changes to how farms were being used and, in extreme situations, to seize
control of land assets (Matless 1998: 175). Through the use of Plough-Up
Orders and eviction actions, the British state slowly began to take control of
an increasingly wide range of land and associated natural resources. Accord-
ing to Short et al. (2000: 35), during the Second World War the British state
conWscated the relatively small, but nevertheless signiWcant, quantity of
440,000 acres of land. The interventions of the state in British agriculture
during the Second World War reveal the ambiguities that surround the
relationship between states and land. Although states have had an important
historical role in protecting the rights of private landowners, it is clear that
when this duty collides with prevailing national interests that land is quickly
re-nationalized. In their discussions of the British National Farm Survey,
Murdoch and Ward (1995) recognize the link between governmental power
and the Xuctuating territoriality of private land. Consequently, while the
territoriality of private land may appear to lie outside the Welds of power
associated with the state, it is clear that private ownership is only tolerated
under circumstances wherein the resulting land uses serve strategic state ends.
The territorial control of nature through land use and monitoring pro-
grammes may therefore Xuctuate between private (local) and common (na-
tional) modes of ownership, but it is never outside the framing inXuences of
the nation-state.
Reordering the spatial geometries of state nature—the state as

‘land’ lord
Following the end of the Second World War, the LUS and the centralized
store of land-use knowledge and expertise created by Stamp were utilized in
a new national programme of planning. Although this new system was
implemented after the war, it was conceived and developed through a series
of committees and commissions, which met and reported while conXict still
engulfed mainland Europe.23 These wartime eVorts have now entered the
pantheon of British planning history through their eponymous titles—the
Barlow Commission and the Scott and Uthwatt Committees.24 While these
commissions and committees, and the famous reports they produced, have
been widely analysed and discussed, we claim that they represent an import-
ant moment in the emerging historical relation between the British state, its
land, and its natural assets. In diVerent ways the Wnal reports produced by
each of these committees and commissions were designed to provide a
practical and highly rational system through which the contested social,
economic, and environmental demands that were being placed on Britain’s
scarce land resources could be eVectively managed.
The detailed reports produced by Barlow, Scott, and Uthwatt led to the
creation of Britain’s Wrst national system of land-use planning. This national
system was focused on the newly formed Ministry of Town and Country
Planning (created in 1943) and related acts of legislation. Peter Hall (1992:
23
The Barlow Commission was actually formed in 1934 but did not publish its Wnal report
until 1940 (see Hall 1992: ch. 4).
24
These commissions/committees were named after their respective presiding chairs: Sir
Andrew Montague-Barlow, Sir Leslie Scott, and Sir Augustus Andrewes Uthwatt (Lord Justice
Uthwatt).
ch. 4) has described this elaborate array of institutions and acts of legislation
as a post-war ‘planning machine’. The modernist undertones of Hall’s
phrase eVectively capture the nature of post-war planning in Britain. It was
machine-like to the extent that it sought to instigate an extensive and highly
rational framework within which land-use disputes could be resolved and
land-use resources could be quickly mobilized in the national interest. Mat-
less (1998: 190) claims that the emergent planning system of post-war Britain
was designed to enable the state to rise above the divisive politics that
surrounded land-use issues and through the science of planning create a
spatial order within British socio-environmental relations.
While each of the British state’s reports on land-use planning had an
important bearing on the emerging spatial relations between the British
state and nature in the post-war period, we want to focus our attention on
the work and recommendations of the Scott Commission in particular. In
part our concern here relates to the fact that Stamp was himself a key Wgure
on the Scott Commission and saw the initiative as a key opportunity to
further his calls for the protection of British agriculture and the countryside
(Matless 1998: 220).25 The signiWcance of all this to our deliberations also
derives from the fact that it laid the foundations of a national system through
which the utilization of nature and land would be set. The Scott Report
(1942) essentially proposed a nationalized land planning system through
which the high-quality agricultural land identiWed within Stamp’s LUS
could be eVectively protected and utilized (Hall 1992: 71–2). The result of
the Scott Commission’s Report was the formation of a national planning
system, which would embrace both town and country and which placed an
onus on land developers to illustrate the ways in which new constructions
were in the public interest (particularly where they threatened good-quality
agricultural land). Through subsequent planning legislation and various
procedures associated with planning reports, permissions, appeals, and con-
sultations, the Scott Commission led to a new era of national control over
nature, which was facilitated through the territorial control of land use.
Despite popular calls at the time, however, the Scott Report did not result
in the nationalization of British agricultural land. As Stamp emphasized in
an article for Foreign AVairs, private landowning farmers had historically
played a crucial role as custodians of the nation’s land assets and as the
‘nation’s unpaid gardeners’ (Rycroft and Cosgrove 1994: 38). The Scott
Report’s recommendations to the Ministry of Town and Country Planning
would eventually lead to a planning system that would deter farmers from
seeking short-term gains by selling their land for development—thus
25
Matless notes that Stamp’s prominence on the Scott Commission led The Economist to dub
its Wnal publication not the Scott Report but the Stamp Report.
protecting some of the nation’s most precious ecological assets (Rycroft and
Cosgrove 1994: 39).
The mixed reactions that the Scott Report received at the time are, how-
ever, indicative of its status as an inherently modern strategy for the protec-
tion of state nature. Members of the British business community were critical
of Scott and Stamp’s report because they argued it was too preservationist,
not allowing for necessary change and economic development in the coun-
tryside (Matless 1998: 220–1). At the same time, however, many rural con-
servationists argue that the scientiWc rationalities undergirding the report
were anathema to the organic ideals of the conservation movement (Matless
1998: 221–4). It was feared by certain rural conservationists that the close
bond forged between local communities, farmers, and nature was gradually
being replaced by the state, as a removed modernist landlord, with little sense
of the local ecological speciWcities that make up rural community life (Mat-
less 1998: 221–4).
Stamp’s LUS was instrumental in shifting the British state’s spatial cogni-
tion of national nature. While at one level this shifting cognition was based
upon a heightened spatial awareness of the location of natural resources, it
was also predicated on a growing realization of a broader spatial order within
British nature. The LUS and its subsequent regional reports and national
summaries (see Stamp 1946: 41) recognized a broad spatial division within
British land and nature. In Stamp’s own work this division was expressed in
terms of the harsh but spectacular upland areas of the UK and its more
agriculturally productive lowland regions. While the Scott report, with its
recommendations on town and country planning and rural land use, applied
to both upland and lowland Britain, it is clear, at least in terms of Stamp’s
intentions for the report, that it was primarily designed to protect and
conserve lowland Britain’s natural assets and ecologies. Heavily inXuenced
by both the Scott Commission and Stamp’s LUS survey, the treatment and
use of key upland areas in the UK would eventually be dealt with by the 1949
National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. Following the recom-
mendations of the Scott Report pertaining to issues of public access to the
countryside, the idea of establishing a system of national parks, as part of
a planned and ordered nation, became accepted government doctrine (Cul-
lingworth 1982: 197–8). Ultimately these reports, committees, and acts of
parliament led to the creation of the ten original national parks in England
and Wales, each with their own planning authority and system of land-use
regulation.
What most interests us about Britain’s much-discussed national park
system is not so much the technical legislative processes that informed their
inception and the planning procedures that regulate their activities to this
day, but rather their spatial location and their wider role in the spatial
ordering of nature in the UK. What was most striking about the Wrst ten
national parks in England and Wales was the types of natural landscapes
they incorporated. In her fascinating discussion of national parks policy in

the UK, Marion Shoard discerns a distinct set of landscape preferences
within the early national parks systems. According to Shoard (1980: 66),
the early national parks in the UK all tended to be located in landscapes
dominated by ‘mountain, moor and sea cliV’. These more rugged, wild
landscapes were preferred to the gentle environments associated with chalk
or fen landscapes (1980: 67). The reasons for this preference for certain types
of nature within the early national parks system are far from clear (Shoard
1980: 66).26 What seems most likely (as Shoard herself recognizes) is that the
desire to use national park authorities to protect largely upland nature was
the product of the residual concern the British state had over ensuring that
lowland agricultural areas were able to maintain their productive capacity
and feed the nation. In this context, when put together, it is possible to
understand the Scott Report and the National Parks Commission as
a national framing strategy through which the British state sought to give
order and purpose to nature.
If we consider the broader role of the Scott Report and the National
Parks Commission together, it is possible to discern a distinct territorial
strategy emerging in the UK in the immediate post-war years. Cosgrove
et al. (1996) argue that the emerging system of post-war rural planning in
the UK represented an attempt to provide a modern framework within
which to preserve a pre-existing natural order in British land and land-
scapes. According to Cosgrove et al., post-war British planning facilitated
an important, spatially diVerentiated way of regulating nature and land.
Drawing inspiration from the broad-scale land-use observation developed
by the LUS and Stamp’s identiWcation of distinct upland and lowland land-
use areas in the UK, the British planning system sought to protect two
forms of nature: the picturesque, agriculturally active landscapes of low-
land Britain; and the wild, untouched natures associated with upland areas.
In the Wrst instance, town and country planning procedures sought to
ensure the protection of lowland Britain as the productive garden of the
nation (see Figure 4.1). At the same time, the National Parks Commission
sought to preserve upland areas as the ecological kernels of Britain’s Wrst
nature. In this context, while lowland areas were celebrated as a kind of
‘middle nature’ (Cosgorve 1993), where (agri)culture and nature met and
were mutually transformed, the wild spaces of upland Britain were seen
as the underlying ecological bedrock of the nation, which should be
26
As Shoard notes, the preference shown for upland, wild nature in the Dower Report (1945)
was a concern for the National Parks Commission. The Commission did look at the case for
including the Norfolk Broads and the South Downs in the original list of national park sites
devised by Dower (see Shoard 1980: 67).
Fig. 4.1. The spatial ordering of British nature.

Source: Drawn by Anthony Simth, adapted with the permission of Blackwell Publishers from
Cosgrove, D., Rosecoe, B., and Rycroft, S. ‘Landscape and identity at Ladybower Resservoir
and Rutland Water’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 21 (1996), 534–51.
remembered and continually incorporated within emerging modes of

national identity.27 As Neumann (2004) argues, the creation of national
parks and reserves for nature is always about more than simply the spatial
control of nature. The formation of national parks is a key moment within
the overall management of the national territory.
What the story of the LUS illustrates is how states have used land as
territorial frames in and through which to shape and control nature. In this
27
For an interesting discussion of (admittedly much earlier) historical debates surrounding
the relationship between landscape, identity, and the state in Britain, see Olwig (2002).
case, while representing an altogether more advanced bureaucratic process,

the LUS of Britain is not so dissimilar from the early cadastral maps of
Sweden discussed earlier in the chapter. What both case studies have in
common is the clear desire on behalf of the respective states to create
a centralized set of knowledges about nature that are calibrated and ordered
on a territorial basis. What interests us most about the LUS are the eVects it
had on how British nature was understood and utilized. At one level it is clear
that the careful local studies of the LUS provided a much more detailed
register of land resources and how they were being used at a local level. This
local knowledge was of course immediately transformed by the colour-cod-
ing systems and nationalized mapping exercises of the LUS into a more
abstract and legible nature. As the LUS started to inform and guide post-
war planning in the UK, we see how large-scale descriptions of land uses in
upland and lowland Britain were transformed by the state into a broader
‘land’-scape debate. The transformation of (local) land into (national) land-
scape seems to have been vital in resolving the British state’s own relationship
with private land assets. While neither the Town and Country Planning Act
nor the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act actually nation-
alized land, they did set the broad basis upon which the state could legitim-
ately intervene within land-use issues. The conversion of land (property) into
landscape (wild or picturesque aggregates of lands) marked the point at
which private land interests gave way to broader, nationally scaled concerns.
The British state’s concern with landscape was of course both ideological and
practical, as it attempted to preserve both the natural fabric of the country
and its economic needs. In this sense, the category of ‘natural landscape’ is an
interesting example of the types of state nature with which this book is
concerned. It is clearly a category that reXects both the territorial and
institutional framing of nature to achieve a broad set cultural, political,
and economic goals on behalf of the state.
Conclusions
In this chapter we have explored the spatial implication of states and nature.
Focusing speciWcally on the historical emergence of land-use maps, we have
considered how space is used as a strategy for simultaneously centralizing
and territorializing nature. The land-use map has provided us with some
particularly pertinent insights into the spatial form of state–nature relations.
Within the deployment of land-use maps on behalf of states, we have seen
their valuable role in the collection of an increasingly centralized roster of
ecological knowledge. In relation to the emergence of modern state systems,
it is important to notice how such rosters were produced on the basis of
increasingly standardized and institutionalized (in the case of the Lantmäter-
iet) systems of cartography and mapping. The case of the land-use map has
also illustrated the diVerent ways in which states attempt to develop forms of
territorial control over nature. Land-use surveys and cadastral mapping are
never simply about the recording of pre-existing boundaries but are always
about imagining new ways of spatializing nature. Land-use maps have
consequently produced new boundaries both at the external reaches of states
and in the internal proprietorial regimes of national systems. These new
cartographic boundaries are always part of emerging state strategies to
control, transform, or co-opt nature in diVerent ways. Sometimes, as in the
case of Swedish cadastral maps, such surveys can be used to shape the uses of
nature that are adopted within diVerent estates. The example of the LUS,
however, serves to illustrate that even when surveys begin outside the state
apparatus, they can be co-opted within broader national schemes for the
spatial re-ordering of socio-natural relations.
Finally, our analysis of land-use maps has also illustrated their role not
only in mapping a pre-existing nation but in actually forging a sense of
national political identity. Consequently, in the case of early modern Sweden,
we saw how cadastral maps were used by the state administration to forge
a sense of an expanded Swedish political community. In the context of the
British LUS, it is possible to discern the use of land surveying as a device for
educating a new ecologically aware national citizenry. If, as we argued at the
outset of this chapter, states are inherently spatial political actors/institu-
tions, then it appears that the spatial framing of nature is a crucial moment
within the consolidation of the political and cultural power of states.
5
Nature and the State Apparatus
Thinking about the state apparatus
The previous two chapters have examined key moments and sites of nature–
state interaction and have argued for the need to explore the manifold
contexts within which these linkages develop. This discussion proved useful
as a way of highlighting the diVerent ways in which modern states have
sought to frame national natures through ideological and material processes,
and began to illustrate the ideological and concrete impacts of national
natures on state organizations. This chapter focuses on the ways in which
nature has been incorporated into the state apparatus, as well as showing
how the state apparatus has helped to frame national natures. When refer-
ring to the state apparatus, we mean the ‘set of institutions and organizations
through which state power is exercised’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 45). The state
apparatus is distinct from the state form, which refers to the relationship
between a given state structure and a particular social formation, and the
state function, which alludes to the ‘activities which are undertaken in
the name of the state’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 37, 41).1 Despite the reference
to a state apparatus in the preceding sentences, it is clear that it does not
represent a singular entity. If, as Neil Brenner (2004: 4) maintains, a reference
to the state in the singular misleadingly ascribes to it a unity and uniformity
that it does not possess, then by the same token, we need to think about the
state apparatus as something that is not singular in character. Gordon Clark
and Michael Dear (1984) have emphasized the multi-faceted and plural
nature of the state apparatus (see Table 5.1).
The state apparatus, in this sense, comprises an agglomeration of diVerent
sub-apparatuses, which are the ‘collection of agencies, organizations and
institutions which together constitute the means by which state functions
are attained’, and para-apparatuses, namely those ‘auxiliary agencies’ that
1
Many neo-Marxist state theorists would tend, however, to use the term ‘state form’ when
referring to what Clark and Dear refer to as the ‘state apparatus’; see, for example, Brenner
(2003) and Jessop (1990). Our use of the term ‘state apparatus’ equates to Weberian understand-
ings of the state bureaucracy (see Giddens 1985; Weber 1991).
118 Nature and the State Apparatus
Table 5.1. The manifold apparatuses of the modern state

Aspects of the state
Functions apparatus
Consenus Political: parties, elections, Legal: mechanisms for Repressive: the

government, and mediating between mechanisms for
constitutions various groups and enforcing state power
actants
Production Public production: state- Public provision: the Treasury: Fiscal and
manufactured public contracting of other monetary policies that
goods agencies to provide public regulate economic
goods relations
Integration Health, education and Information: mechanisms Communications and
welfare: mechanisms for for disseminating or media: various players
reproducing labour suppressing information within the
power telecommunications
industry
Executive Administration: Regulation: regulatory
administrators involved agencies involved in the
in the reproduction of the regulation of non-state
whole state apparatus activities
Source: Adapted with the permission of Taylor & Francis from Table 3.1 in Clark, G. L. and Dear, M. J., The
State Apparatus: Structures of Language and Legitimacy (London, Allen and Unwin, 1984), p. 50.
possess ‘some degree of operational autonomy’ (Brenner 2004: 49). The state
apparatus ranges, therefore, from those bureaucracies charged with conduct-
ing the state’s executive functions to a plethora of agencies involved in its
more mundane aspects of governance. For Antonio Gramsci, the state
apparatus is even broader in scope, drawing in important aspects of civil
society. If ‘state ¼ political society þ civil society’, then we need to think of
the state apparatus as something that is inclusive and broad-ranging in
character (Gramsci 1973: 263). This is especially the case in the contemporary
period, when lines of separation between the roles of state and private
agencies are increasingly diYcult to demarcate.
For many authors, the modern state betrays—in its form and function as
well as its apparatus—a singular undergirding inXuence, namely its associ-
ation with the capitalist mode of production. Perry Anderson, for instance,
has noted how the shift from feudalism to capitalism led to the creation of
a capitalist state apparatus, which included ‘standing armies, a permanent
bureaucracy, national taxation, a codiWed law, and the beginning of a uniWed
market’ (1974: 17). The impact of the capitalist mode of production on the
modern state is clearly important, but we would hope that the Wrst four
chapters of this book have also begun to hint at the inXuence of diVerent
forms of nature, too, on the apparatus of the modern state. The discussion in
Chapter 3, for instance, showed how eVorts to both frame (and frame out)
water in the sixteenth-century Dutch Netherlands possessed far-reaching
implications for the tentative process of state consolidation that was taking
Nature and the State Apparatus 119
place then. The various guises of the state apparatus, we maintain, should be
viewed as both a producer and a product of national natures. Claus OVe
begins to draw our attention to such sentiments when he argues that the state
organizes certain activities and measures directed towards the environment and it
adopts for itself a certain organizational procedure from which the production and
implementation of policies emerge. Every time a state deals with a problem in its
environment, it deals with a problem of itself, its internal mode of operation. (OVe
1975: 135; emphasis in original)
OVe’s reference to the environment is diVerent from the one employed in

this book, alluding as it does to the embeddedness of the state in a particular
socio-economic environment. His terminology is useful in the present con-
text, nonetheless, since it inadvertently illustrates the mutual embeddedness
of states and national natures. National natures are framed by the state
apparatus—through the formation of particular organizations, through the
implementation of certain policies and strategies, and through various pro-
cesses of representation—but, at the same time, the existence of national
natures leads to the state apparatus itself being inXuenced and framed in
important ways.
Some work has begun to examine the relationships between the state
apparatus or, alternatively, its various sub- and para-apparatuses, and
national natures. We showed in Chapter 2 how Weberian state theorists in
particular have stressed the role of the administrative or bureaucratic state as
a collective and institutional manager of nature. Many have argued, in this
respect, that the state is the only organization that possesses the collective
capability to regulate the unsustainable exploitation of nature by individuals,
as well as oVering a suYciently integrated and comprehensive understanding
of the workings of the environment (Johnston 1996). In other words, the high
levels of ‘infrastructural power’ aVorded to the modern state through its
apparatus means that it alone is able to frame national natures in eVective
ways. Others have examined how nature has become increasingly embedded
in the state apparatus. Matthew Gandy (1999), for instance, has explored the
relationship between state natures and the state apparatus and has drawn
particular attention to the changing focus of the state with regard to the
management of nature over time, as well as to the varying impacts of nature
on state forms. For much of the nineteenth century, the main ecological
concern of the European state was to protect public health, especially with
regard to the rapid processes of urbanization taking place throughout much
of Europe (e.g. see Fraser 2003: 65–84). Importantly, the prevalence of
various ecological and health risks within the towns and cities of nine-
teenth-century Europe led to far-reaching reforms of the state apparatus at
the local and national scales. Eric Evans (2001: 295), for instance, has argued
that the public health threat facing much of urban Britain during this period
led to far-reaching re-evaluations of the appropriate role and form of the
central and local state apparatus with regard to the formation of new laws
and policies, new organizations, and new ideologies of government (see also
Driver 1988). New developments with respect to the management of nature
have taken place over the twentieth century, according to Gandy, and the
‘earlier emphasis on public health has been extended to a range of newer
concerns with biodiversity, climate change and the pollution of the global
commons’ (1999: 60; see also O’Connor 1994). As we show in the empirical
sections of this chapter, it is these newer environmental concerns of the
twentieth century that have signalled a more sustained embeddedness of
nature into the state apparatus, through the development of new depart-
ments and agencies concerned with national ecological issues and the imple-
mentation of new strategies and policies that seek to ameliorate national
environmental risk. Finally, the development of more neoliberal state forms,
as well as the related emergence of less predictable forms of environmental
risk, have led to fundamental challenges to the state apparatus’s ability to
manage national and international natures eVectively. The emergence of new
forms of ecological risk, in particular, has led to a ‘diminution in the power
and legitimacy of liberal conceptions of the state as arbiter of the public
interest’ and as manager of national natures (Gandy 1999: 63; see also Beck
1992). Indeed, some even argue that the persistence of the centralized and
centralizing state apparatus actually serves to exacerbate environmental
problems, both within and beyond its boundaries (Torgerson 1990). The
political, ecological, and geographical implications of such developments
are discussed at length in Chapter 6.
We focus in particular in this chapter on the relationship between national
natures and the state apparatus in three separate contexts. First, we consider
the relationship between the state apparatus and national natures by exam-
ining the development of regulatory agencies that have sought to respond to
natural risk and hazard. As Johnston (1996: 131–2) has argued, the admin-
istrative or bureaucratic state is the only organization that possesses the
wherewithal to manage competitive and unsustainable uses of nature within
national contexts. The compartmentalization of such responsibilities within
particular state sub-apparatuses—with the sole aim of managing the various
risks associated with national natures—has been a feature of state rule in the
majority of states since the 1970s. But as well as being a guarantor of certain
environmental rights within particular national contexts, the other signiW-
cance of these agencies has been their eVort to understand the complex and
manifold interdependencies of diVerent kinds of nature within one ecological
and national whole (Johnston 1996: 131–2). The modern state’s ‘infrastruc-
tural power’ and its status as a centralized hub for the collection of informa-
tion, therefore, means that it is the only organization with the ability to
monitor and manage national natures in eVective ways. As a way of illus-
trating the state’s role as both a manager of environmental risk and
a centralized hub for the collection of ecological information—speciWcally
in the context of its environmental ministries, departments, or agencies—we

examine the US Environmental Protection Agency, established in 1970.
The relationship between national natures and the state apparatus, how-
ever, is never a simple or uncontested one. Particular kinds of nature or ways
of understanding nature are granted far greater access into the state appar-
atus than others. By the same token, certain kinds of nature are deemed to be
more important for states to manage and protect. The state, in this sense,
always arbitrates between diVerent and possibly competing social and eco-
logical interests within its territory (Clark and Dear 1984: 21–3). We want to
argue that the role of the state in arbitrating between diVerent ecological
interests demonstrates a peculiar tension between political and technocratic
aspects of the state apparatus. At one level, the arbitrating role of the state
draws our attention to the political processes of decision-making that take
place with regard to national natures. Who makes decisions concerning the
appropriate ways of managing national natures? Which ideological and
material priorities are used in order to justify such decisions? In another
context, many have argued that the modern state has increasingly used
a technocentric language and ideology in order to justify and frame its
decision-making concerning national natures. It has been contended, for
instance, that ‘environmental management has been dominated by concep-
tions of state activity as a realm of technical and managerial expertise
separate from the political arena’ (Gandy 1999: 63). Nature is thus redeWned
as a technical issue, coming within the purview of professional bureaucrats
and specialists, most notably scientists and planners. As a way of examining
this tension between political and technical framings of national natures by
the state apparatus, we focus on the planning profession in New Zealand,
speciWcally through reference to its 1991 Resource Management Act. In
addition to showing the role of planners, as technocratic state arbiters, in
making important decisions concerning the management of national natures
in New Zealand, we also demonstrate how the Act was infused with a highly
politicized understanding of the appropriate role to be played by the state
apparatus in managing the environment.
Our third case study focuses more explicitly on the political sub-apparatus
of the state. Many authors have sought to challenge the technical neutrality
of the state, in broad terms, but also with speciWc regard to ecological issues.
Recent work, for instance, has demonstrated how political issues inXect the
incorporation of nature into the state apparatus. As an example, Gail
Hollander (2005) has shown how presidential, state, and local politics have
been closely intertwined with the state regulation of the Florida Everglades
from the 1920s onwards. Indeed, she argues that it is impossible to understand
fully the recent eVorts to grant environmental support and protection to the
Florida Everglades without addressing Florida’s role as a key swing state
within US presidential politics. Conversely, the changing governmental pro-
tection aVorded to the Florida Everglades has been dependent, in large part,
on the Xuctuating fortunes of Democrats and Republicans, both in Florida

and at the federal scale. Hollander’s work illustrates the need to examine the
way in which nature is represented in the political sub-apparatus of the state.
In talking about representation, we refer both to the individuals and political
parties that have sought to represent nature within their policies, strategies,
and other documents, and also to the way in which nature is represented
within that literature. As Bruno Latour (1998, 2004) has shown, nature has,
on the whole, struggled to be heard and seen within the representational
apparatus of the state. As a way of elaborating on these themes, we examine
the tentative greening of formal parliamentary politics in the UK that took
place during the 1980s and 1990s.
The apparatus of the risk aversion state: the US

Environmental Protection Agency
On 9 July 1970, President Richard Nixon communicated a special message

from the White House to the US Congress, entitled the ‘Reorganization Plan
No. 3 of 1970’. Despite the uninspiring title of the document, its message
signalled a wholesale and highly signiWcant re-evaluation by the US govern-
ment of the way in which it should manage environmental risk within the
national boundaries of the US federal state. The proposed product of the
reorganization plan would be a new Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), whose aim would be to ‘identify pollutants, trace them through the
entire ecological chain, observing and recording changes in form as they
occur’, as well as ‘determin[ing] the total exposure of man and his [sic]
environment, examin[ing] interactions among forms of pollution’ and ‘iden-
tify[ing] where in the ecological chain interdiction would be most appropri-
ate’.2 During the 1970s, the EPA evolved into a highly signiWcant
organization in developing new laws, in implementing old ones, and in
determining the tenor of environmental values and concerns within the US.
Today, it still represents the key sub-apparatus of the US federal state for
managing and ameliorating environment risk within the boundaries of the
US (EPA 2003). The formation of the EPA as a regulatory agency demon-
strates clearly how the environmental risks posed by national natures within
the US led to the creation of a new sub-apparatus of the federal state. At the
same time, it also illustrates the attempts being made by the US state during
this time to frame the national natures of the US in more eVective ways. Our
aim in this section is to focus on how a regulatory agency of the US federal
state and US national nature were both deWned in relation to one another.
2
R. Nixon, ‘Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970’ (Washington 1970), at <http://www.epa.gov/
history/org/origins/reorg.htm> accessed 16 May 2005.
To begin with, we examine the inXuence of national natures on the forma-

tion of the EPA. It is evident that its establishment was brought about in
large measure by a growth in the awareness of ecological risk in the US and
further aWeld. Many have stressed that the driving force behind its formation
was the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1963). Although the
central focus of the book was on the indiscriminate use of pesticides within
agriculture, it achieved an iconic status as a broader commentary on the
environmental destruction that was increasingly being wreaked by human-
kind and, as such, can be viewed as something that led to a key moment in
nature–state relations in the US and, indeed, further aWeld. Lewis (1985: 1)
has argued, in this respect, that the ‘EPA today may be said without exag-
geration to be the extended shadow of Rachel Carson’. More broadly, it can
be argued that Carson’s book contributed to the late 1960s and the early
1970s achieving the status of a ‘unique period in terms of the strength of the
environmental coalition spanning both organized labour and the newly
formed environmental pressure groups’ (Gandy 1999: 72; see also O’Connor
1994). Changing public opinion in the US, in particular, contributed to
broad demands for a more coherent and far-reaching intervention by the
state in order to reduce the environmental degradation caused by population
and industrial growth, and the concomitant rampant use of resources and
emission of pollutants. It is signiWcant that one of the EPA’s Wrst success
stories was its implementation of a ban on the use of the pesticide DDT.
Developed during the Second World War, DDT had been used extensively in
US agriculture since the late 1940s. After three years of governmental en-
quiry into the use of the pesticide and its deleterious side-eVects, it was
concluded that the ‘use of DDT posed unacceptable risks to the environment
and potential harm to human health’.3 The pesticide that had inspired
Carson’s publication of Silent Spring, and which had indirectly led to the
formation of the EPA in the Wrst place, was one of the Wrst ecological risks to
be managed and subsequently nulliWed by the new sub-apparatus of the
federal state.
In addition to this increased focus on environmental risk, it is clear that the
1960s and 1970s also witnessed a re-evaluation of the character of the
environment. Nixon, in his address to Congress in 1970, made repeated
reference to the need to study and understand the workings of the ‘total
environment’ or, in other words, the interactions that took place between
land, air, and water. It was the promotion of this holistic interpretation of the
environment that necessitated a wholesale reorganization of the US state
apparatus. As the title of President Nixon’s 1970 communication suggests,
the EPA would come about as the product of the reorganization of the
responsibilities and staV of a number of other pre-existing organizations
3
EPA, ‘DDT ban takes eVect’, EPA Press Release, 31 December 1972, at <http://www.epa.-
gov/history/topics/ddt/01.htm> accessed 14 July 2005.
within the federal state apparatus. In monitoring water and air quality within
the US, as well as researching the environmental problems caused by radiation,
pesticides, and other solid wastes, the EPA assumed certain governmental
responsibilities that had previously resided within the purview of the Depart-
ment of the Interior, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the
Atomic Energy Commission, the Federal Radiation Council, and the Agricul-
tural Research Service.4 Rather than pursuing the fragmented and disjointed
approach that had characterized the federal state’s management of ecological
risk prior to 1970, it was deemed necessary to create one united regulatory
agency that could frame the national nature of the US—and, more import-
antly, transgressions against it—in an eVective and holistic manner (Lewis
1985). The increasingly predominant view of the need to study the ‘total
environment’ thus entailed the formation of a sub-apparatus of the federal
state that was equally all-encompassing in its framing of US national natures.
But as well as evincing a sectoral reorganization of the US federal state
apparatus, it is also clear that the EPA emphasized a mechanism for regu-
lating nature at the national scale. The overarching emphasis on the federal
level within the EPA represented a reiWcation of the national scale and
a related downplaying of the regional and global scales. William D. Ruck-
elshaus, in an oral history account of his period in charge of the EPA,
outlined the signiWcance of this realignment:
Up to that point—up to the formation of the EPA—it was largely a question of the
states enforcing the environmental laws . . . it was left to the states, and they competed
with one another so Wercely for the location of industry that they weren’t very good
regulators of those industries. Particularly in the whole social regulatory area—
health, safety, and the environment—they just weren’t very good.5
Clearly there was a need to ensure that environmental laws could be

applied and sanctioned by a federal state agency in order to circumvent the
possibility of an environmental ‘race to the bottom’, in which diVerent states
within the US competed with each other to attract industries by relaxing
environmental regulations. The EPA, in this respect, was to be viewed as
a guarantor of environmental standards throughout the whole of the US,
acting as a so-called ‘gorilla in the closet’. There is no clearer example of this
shift in scalar mindset than in the formulation and implementation of the
Clean Air Act of 1970. Although only an amendment to the earlier Air
Quality Act of 1967, the Act represented a signiWcant shift in the implemen-
tation of environmental law within the US. The 1967 Act had been based on
individual states within the US developing and enforcing pollution control
standards within their regions. Not surprisingly, given the comments made
4
EPA, ‘DDT ban takes eVect’, EPA Press Release, 31 December 1972, at <http://www.epa.-
gov/history/topics/ddt/01.htm> accessed 14 July 2005.
5
W. D. Ruckelshaus, ‘Environment before the EPA’, at <http://www.epa.gov/history/publi-
cations/ruck/05.htm> accessed 16 May 2005.
above, it suVered from a lack of purposeful implementation as individual

states sought to downplay its impact on the industries located within their
own boundaries. The 1970 amendment enabled the US federal state to
become involved in air regulation for the Wrst time, thus leading to a situation
in which air pollution control was made a national responsibility.6 Viewing
air pollution as a national environmental risk, therefore, led to a concomitant
reorganization of the US state apparatus at a national and federal scale.
As well as the process of upscaling from individual states to the national
scale, the formation of the EPA as a federal agency also signalled an attempt
to downplay the signiWcance of environmental processes and challenges that
existed at the international or global scale. The EPA’s responsibilities during
this early period were concerned with responding to the environmental risks
that were associated with US national territory. Far less attention was
directed, in this respect, towards global environmental issues. The ban on
DDT, discussed above, for instance, was notable for the exemption that it
granted to the export of DDT to other countries.7 The threat posed by DDT
to human health was, obviously, only an ecological risk when it aVected US
citizens. There is no better illustration of this overarching emphasis on
national natures in conditioning the US federal state apparatus than the
relationship between the EPA and the Council on Environmental Quality
(CEQ), formed in 1969. After the formation of the EPA, an eVort was made
to diVerentiate the international and global reach of the CEQ from the
domestic concerns of the EPA. The most signiWcant discrepancy, as Ruck-
elshaus discusses, was the relative levels of staYng of the two organizations.
During the early 1970s, the CEQ was staVed by between thirty-Wve and forty
people, while the EPA contained some 15,000 staV!8 This disjuncture in
terms of size illustrates the overwhelming signiWcance of national nature, as
opposed to global nature, in shaping the apparatus of the US federal state
during this period.
But, of course, the relationship between national natures and the US state
apparatus is highly recursive in character. Some of the issues discussed above
have begun to illustrate how the regulatory agency of the EPA sought to
promote a framing of nature at the national scale within the US. The ban on
the use of DDT within the US, as well as its promotion of the Clean Air Act
of 1970, represented an organizational reaction to the perceived importance
of national natures within the US. And yet, at the same time, the EPA’s
coordination of these eVorts to ameliorate environmental risk within the US
helped to further reify the notion that these were national environmental
6
D. P. Rogers, ‘The Clean Air Act of 1970’, at <http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/caa70/
11.htm> accessed 16 May 2005.
7
EPA, ‘DDT ban takes eVect’, op cit.
8
W.P. Ruckelshaus, ‘Russell Train and Robert Fri’, at <http://www.epa.gov/history/publi-
cations/ruck/05.htm> accessed 16 May 2005.
Fig. 5.1. Map of the EPA’s boundaries.
risks. The EPA, in other words, through its organizations, policies, and
strategies, has helped to increasingly frame the national natures of the US.
The key signiWcance of the EPA is its role as a centralized hub for collecting,
interrogating, and disseminating information.9 It has, admittedly, utilized a
regional structure as a means of facilitating the process of collecting and
disseminating information about various environmental risks (see Figure
5.1). At present, its national headquarters in Washington coordinates the
activities of its regional oYces in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta,
Chicago, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle.10 But
despite this devolved structure, the central hub in Washington retains a prime
signiWcance. The OYce of the Administrator, the coordinating centre of the
EPA, for instance, contains an OYce of Policy, Economics, and Innovation,
whose duties include managing the whole of the EPA’s regulatory agenda.
These oYces, located in Washington, represent the centre point out of which
the framing of the national natures of the US emanates.
One way of further exploring this centralized framing of national natures
in the US is to focus on the people that staV the EPA as an organization. The
key Wgure throughout the history of the EPA has been the head of the
Agency, the so-called Administrator. The Administrator has acted as
the central lynchpin for the EPA, around which monitoring and enforcement
duties have coalesced. Especially during its formative years, there was an
onus on the Administrator to instil a sense of purpose within the organiza-
tion, something that could contribute to its emerging role as the collector of
information concerning environmental risk in the US. Ruckelshaus, the Wrst
Administrator, for instance, emphasized that one of the key early challenges
for the EPA was to make it work as an organization, especially given its
organizational legacy as a union of responsibilities drawn from many separ-
ate predecessor organizations.11 The oYcial title of Ruckelshaus’s post—the
Administrator—was highly signiWcant, in this respect, since it signalled
a belief in the ability of the state to frame all aspects of US national nature:
to collect information concerning its diVerent forms and locations and to
centralize it within the state sub-apparatus; to manage nature in eVective
ways; to monitor instances in which nature is being transgressed in some way;
and to develop ways of ameliorating the impact of environmental risks. In
short, the use of the term ‘Administrator’ to designate the head of the EPA is
redolent of a state mentality in which nature is viewed as an object of
government, which can be subsumed within a centralized and internally
diVerentiated state bureaucracy. Equally signiWcant, we would argue, were
the informal appellations given to Ruckelshaus, as the Wrst Administrator,
9
More broadly, see Dandekar (1999) and Giddens (1985).
10
See the EPA organizational chart at <http://www.epa.gov/epahome/organization.htm>
accessed 16 May 2005.
11
W. P. Ruckelshaus, ‘Important issues’, at <http://www.epa.gov/history/publications/ruck/
10.htm>accessed 16 May 2005. In a diVerent context, see Jones et al. (2005).
during his early years in oYce. These included ‘Mr Clean’ and, in reference to
the newly released Clint Eastwood motion picture of the time, ‘The Enforcer’
(Lewis 1985). Both of these more popular descriptions of Ruckelshaus’s role
also illustrate, we maintain, the attitudes towards the responsibilities of the
EPA: namely, to clean up the US environment by forcing recalcitrant private
or city corporations to adhere to the various environmental laws that were
already present on the statute books (Williams 1993).
The role of the EPA in framing national natures—through a process of
collecting and centralizing information—is illustrated further when one con-
siders its remit in more detail. Throughout its period of existence it has
sought to outline the levels of environmental degradation that would be
tolerated within the national natures of the US. Technical and scientiWc
eVorts have been made to deWne the parameters of environmental risk that
would enable the EPA to achieve subsequent environmental gains. Table 5.2
shows the danger levels of air pollution that were deWned by the EPA in 1971.
The precision of the EPA in both monitoring and deWning the environmental
dangers displayed in this table speaks of a state sub-apparatus whose role is
highly dependent upon the precise collection, collation, and dissemination of
information concerning US national natures. As a result of its existence as
a systematized and centralized branch of the US federal state apparatus, the
EPA was becoming highly cognizant of the ecological risks that were present
in the US during the 1970s. Moreover, the EPA used this unparalleled depth
of knowledge to deWne the acceptable and unacceptable characteristics of
various aspects of the US national nature at this time. But as we have been at
pains to emphasize, this was not a one-way process. At the same time, the
precise deWnition of various types of environmental risk that were present in
the US at the time contributed in a fundamental way to the bureaucratic
diVerentiation of the EPA as an organization. At present, for instance, the
OYce of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances, headed by Acting
Table 5.2. Danger levels for air pollution deWned by the EPA in 1971
Environmental risk Pollution levels that could harm public health
Sulphur dioxide 2620 micrograms per cubic metre, 24-hour average

Particulate matter 1000 micrograms per cubic metre, 24-hour average
Carbon monoxide 57.5 milligrams per cubic metre, 8-hour average
86.3 milligrams per cubic metre, 4-hour average
144 milligrams per cubic metre, 1-hour average
Photochemical oxidants 800 micrograms per cubic metre, 4-hour average
1200 micrograms per cubic metre, 2-hour average
Nitrogen dioxide 3750 micrograms per cubic metter, 1-hour average
Source: Data from ‘EPA deWnes air pollution danger levels’, press release (19 October 1971) at <http://
www.epa.gov/history/topics/caa70/90.htm> accessed 15 July 2005.
Assistant Administrator Susan B. Hazen, is subdivided into three other

oYces: the OYce of Pesticide Programs, the OYce of Pollution Prevention
and Toxics, and the OYce of Science Coordination and Policy. Interestingly,
the OYce of Pesticide Programs is further subdivided into nine diVerent
divisions, some of which are deWned by particular environmental risks,
such as the Antimicrobial Division and the Biopesticides and Pollution
Prevention Division.12 There exists, seemingly, a circuitous network in
which the EPA deWnes national ecological risks before being, in turn, intern-
ally deWned in and through them. National natures in the US, and especially
the ecological risks that are associated with them, have, therefore, both
framed and been framed by the US federal state apparatus since the 1970s.
Nature and the arbiter state: New Zealand’s planning system
Our second case study examines the role of the state apparatus in arbitrating
between diVerent social and ecological interests, speciWcally in the context of
the planning system of New Zealand. With the inception of the Resource
Management Act (RMA) in 1991, New Zealand experienced a sea change in
its planning laws. A focus on the RMA, we maintain, enables us to examine
the means through which the state apparatus seeks to frame nature as
a technical issue that should be administered by professional bureaucrats
and specialists, most notably ‘rational’ planners. Scratching beneath the
surface, however, allows us to demonstrate how politics actually infuses the
relationship between the apparatus of the arbiter state and New Zealand
national nature in all aspects of the RMA.
The Act was promulgated in 1991 as a means of promoting the sustainable
management of natural and physical resources within the boundaries of the
New Zealand state and, as such, provides the legal framework within which
the management and development of New Zealand’s natural resources takes
place. The promulgation of the Act represented a radical overhaul of the
planning system, as New Zealand sought to replace its British-derived town
and country planning legislation with a far greener and more sustainable
understanding of the need to manage the biophysical environment. In this
regard, the RMA has been viewed as something that has signalled a funda-
mental change in the way that the state understands the environment within
New Zealand, in both normative and practical terms (Memon and Gleeson
1995; Perkins and Thorns 2001: 639; Robertson 1993).
The inception of the RMA brought about a detailed re-evaluation of the
means through which the state apparatus should adjudicate over competing
ecological interests. There is a concerted eVort within the RMA, for instance,
12
See EPA, ‘Pesticides section’, at <http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/contacts/opp_contacts.htm>
accessed 14 September 2005.
Table 5.3. The scales and territories of the RMA
National scale (central government)

. Overview role
. Developing policies for managing resources
. Performance and quality standards
. Aspects of coastal management
. Management of toxic wastes, explosives, and other hazardous
substances
Regional scale (regional councils)
. Overview and coordination role: regional resource policy statements;
regional plans (optional)
. Water and soil management
. Management of geothermal resources
. Natural hazards mitigation and planning
. Regional aspects of hazardous substances
. Pollution management and air pollution control
. Aspects of coastal management
Local scale (territorial councils)
. District plans
. Control of land use and subdivision
. Noise control
. Control for natural hazards avoidance and mitigation
. Local control of hazardous substances use
to distinguish between the competencies and responsibilities of diVerent

levels of the state apparatus involved in administering the Act (see Table
5.3). In the context of the RMA, scale and territory assume the status of
essential elements of the practice of government. While there is a strong sense
within the RMA of the need for subsidiarity (devolving responsibilities
downwards to the smallest possible or appropriate scale), there is still a
countervailing nationalizing tendency within the territorial and scalar struc-
ture outlined in the Act (Memon and Gleeson 1995: 117). A sub-apparatus of
the central state, for instance, plays a key role in overseeing and monitoring
the RMA, through the auspices of the Ministry for the Environment and
a new Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, who reports dir-
ectly to Parliament (Robertson 1991: 308). It also sets the broad parameters
within which regional and local governments make decisions concerning
potential environmental eVects. In addition, national policy statements
guide the preparation of regional and local plans.
But at a more mundane level, it is clear that the day-to-day implementation
of the RMA takes place within regional and local councils, and it is in this
context that the technocratic aspects of the relationship between New Zea-
land national natures and the apparatus of the state become more apparent.
As SchoWeld (1993) has shown, planners have had to make practical
decisions concerning the technical, practical, and legal problems associated
with a new governmental technology such as the RMA. As a way of illus-
trating this point, we examine the role of the planning system in arbitrating
between competing uses of soil in New Zealand. As well as showing the

technical incorporation of nature into the state apparatus, it also begins to
illustrate how politics has infused the relationship between nature and the
state within the RMA.
The New Zealand state has sought to protect its high-quality soils for
many years (Grundy and Gleeson 1996: 204–8). Given the country’s historic
dependence upon exporting agricultural goods, high-quality soils have trad-
itionally beneWted from a high level of protection. In addition to this agri-
cultural pressure, New Zealand’s best soils have also been prone to another
threat, namely processes of urbanization and suburbanization. Many urban
areas are located near to the most productive agricultural land. The con-
tinued processes of urbanization and suburbanization that have occurred
over the past few tens of years have led to the conversion of prime agricul-
tural land into residential and industrial use. As a result of these environ-
mental and economic concerns, the Town and Country Planning Act of 1977
emphasized the need to protect the soils of the highest quality. For instance,
section 3 of the 1977 Act stated that ‘the avoidance of encroachment of urban
development on, and the protection of, land having a high actual or potential
value for the production of food’ should be viewed as a matter of national
importance (quoted in Grundy and Gleeson 1996: 204; see also Leamy 1993).
Protection was achieved through a process of zoning, which separated out
conXicting types of land use. Zoning enabled planners to designate agricul-
tural lands that were of high quality as areas that were deserving of special
protection, through the designation of speciWc rules and regulations.
At face value, the RMA reaYrms the commitment to protecting and
enhancing soils as key facets of the New Zealand environment. Soil manage-
ment is viewed as an important feature of the role played by regional councils
within the RMA; section 30 of the Act states that all regional councils should
control the use of land, for the purpose of soil conservation (New Zealand
Government 1991: s.30). An examination of soils, for instance, forms an
important part of Waikato Regional Council’s discussion of signiWcant
resource management issues within its region (see Figure 5.2). It draws
attention to: the accelerated erosion of soil resources that can be brought
about by activities such as farming, burning, forestry, road construction, and
urban development; the contamination of soils caused by many land-based
activities, in discrete and diVuse forms; the need to protect soil health in
terms of its physical and chemical composition; and the need to manage the
moisture content of soil suVering as a result of inadequate drainage (Envir-
onment Waikato 1996: 44–7). As well as monitoring the various soil issues
that are pertinent to the region, the Regional Statement also outlines a variety
of mechanisms for improving the management of soils within the region
(see Table 5.4). In reviewing the threats posed to soil, and planning ways
of mitigating them, the RMA acts as a mechanism through which the
state apparatus can arbitrate between diVerent land uses in New Zealand.
Fig. 5.2. Map of Waikato Region within New Zealand.
Table 5.4 also demonstrates the overwhelmingly technical means of framing

nature within the RMA. This is a technocratic language of ‘mitigating
accelerated erosion’, of ‘maintaining the integrity of existing soil conserva-
tion programmes’, and of ‘liaising with organizations that seek to lessen
adverse environmental eVects’. The role of the New Zealand state apparatus
in arbitrating between diVerent soil uses, at face value, becomes de-politi-
cized. It represents an issue that should be determined by the technical and
scientiWc language and practices of the planning professional.
But if the RMA illustrates how the modern state within New Zealand has
been able to frame nature in technical and scientiWc terms, it is also signiWcant
since it shows how the state has sought to take heed of a series of non-
scientiWc, non-technical, seemingly ‘irrational’ and ‘pre-modern’ discourses.
The RMA emphasizes Maori interpretations of the environment and appro-
priate forms of land use, seeking to incorporate these alternative priorities
Table 5.4. Soil issues and management in the Waikato Region, New Zealand
Environmental issue Policy
Accelerated soil erosion (loss of soil productivity, Avoid, remedy, or mitigate accelerated
degradation of water supply through erosion through:
sedimentation and adverse eVects on the . environmental education programme
values associated with land) . preparing regional plans that may contain
rules for the management of land and soils
. developing a regional monitoring
programme
. advocating the control of pest populations
. maintaining the integrity of existing soil
conservation programmes
. liaising with organizations that seek to
lessen adverse environmental eVects
. liaising with territorial authorities and other
agencies to promote soil conservation.
Soil contamination (the discharge of Reduce the impact of contaminants on the soil
contaminants onto or into land aVecting the resource through:
condition of the soil) . encouraging the development of sustainable
land management practices
. advocating sustainable land management
practices through the environmental
education programme
. establishing rules in the Regional Plan to
avoid, remedy or mitigate the discharge of
contaminants
. developing, through the Regional Plan and
environmental education programmes,
means of discouraging illegal dumping
Maintenance of soil health (to maintain the Land uses should avoid the degradation of soil
versatility and productive capacity of the versatility and productive capacity through:
Region’s soil resources—with a focus on the . the development of a regional land
use of fertilizers, the biological activity and monitoring programme
organic carbon levels within soils, and the . the development of an environmental
physical condition of the soil) education programme
. encouraging research into development of
sustainable land management practices
. preparing rules to avoid, remedy, or
mitigate the degradation of soils
. liaising with other bodies that seek to reduce
soil degradation
Moisture management (ensuring no net loss of Moisture to be managed to maximize the
productive soils as a result of poor moisture sustainable productive capacity of soils
management) through:
. preparing regional rules for moisture
management in Regional Plans
. monitoring the eVects of land drainage
within the Region
. developing asset management plans to
deliver drainage services in former drainage
board areas
into its decisions concerning the use and conservation of nature. Section 6 of
the Act requires that Maori are consulted, for instance, in order to ensure
that any resource development does not impinge on their sacred sites and
other ‘treasures’. This alternative discourse, speaking of Maori perceptions
of the intrinsic value of nature and the environment, acts as a powerful
counter-melody to the dominant technocratic theme contained within the
RMA. The tensions between these two discourses are evident in the Waikato
Region. At a general level, the Waikato Regional Council considers the close
link between Maori and the land and soil of Waikato as an important
contextualizing factor within its discussion of the various environmental
issues facing the region:
Tangata whenua by deWnition means people of the land. Maori believe that they have
a unqiue spiritual aYnity with the land. Maori view themselves as an integral part of
the natural world. Their relationship to land provides a link with both ancestors and
future generations. It conWrms tribal and kinship ties, and in doing so, establishes
a sense of tribal identity and continuity. In managing the land resources of the
Waikato, it is acknowledged that Maori are able to use land in their ownership in
accordance with their culture and traditions, and on ancestral land, to protect sites
and resources which are of particular cultural value to iwi [tribe] consistent with
statutory requirements. (Environment Waikato 1996: 41)
More speciWcally, the Regional Policy Statement elaborates on the key
Maori concepts that are central to the RMA’s operation within the region,
including its methods for arbitrating the use of soil. Table 5.5 illustrates some
of the key terms and concepts that help to articulate this alternative concep-
tion of appropriate forms of land and resource use.
The promotion of Maori values within the RMA bears welcome testimony
to the increased consideration given to the material and spiritual needs of
Maori in New Zealand after years of neglect (Laitouri 1996: 332; Walker
Table 5.5. Maori conceptions of nature and resource use

Maori term Meaning
Aki kaa The rights to occupy land and use resources are sustained through
occupation and resource use
Hapu Band or sub-tribe
Io The Supreme Being for Maori
Iwi A tribe or people
Kaitiaki A guardian or steward
Kaitiakitanga To exercise stewardship over land, resources, and nature
Kawanatanga Governorship or government
Mana Whenua The customary authority exercised by an iwi or hapu
Rohe A territory within which a tangata whenua group claims an association
Tangata whenua The iwi or hapu that holds mana whenua over an area
Taonga Treasures or properties that are prized as the sacred possessions of a tribe
Tino rangatiratanga ChieXy authority
Waahi tapu Sacred site
1990). But at the same time, it is dubious how seriously these Maori concerns
are taken. It is signiWcant that the references to Maori concepts and ideas
tend to appear in isolated sections of Waikato’s Regional Policy Statement,
rather than being mainstreamed within the whole of the document. We
would argue, ironically, that the persistence of such a non-technical and
non-scientiWc language in certain sections of the policy statement actually
serves to highlight its otherwise highly technocratic and scientiWc character.
Even though the modern state apparatus in this case has seen Wt to admit
another set of discourses in order to enable it to arbitrate between diVerent
forms of land and resource use, it is clear that it is the technical, scientiWc, and
neutral language of the established planning system that dominates the
RMA’s framing of national natures in New Zealand.
At one level, therefore, the RMA can be considered as something that
represents a technical and scientiWc means in and through which the New
Zealand state may arbitrate between diVerent forms of land and resource use.
Many have argued, nonetheless, that it also betrays a highly politicized under-
standing both of the broader role of the state apparatus and of New Zealand’s
national natures. Memon and Gleeson, in this regard, give a Xavour of the
broader context for the development of the RMA, as well as indicating some of
the ideological tensions that have aVected its operation. They have argued that
New Zealand’s new planning legislation is the product of two quite distinct, and
contradictory, sociopolitical forces, notably the New Right and the environmental
movement. The new legislative context in New Zealand signals a paradigmatic shift in
planning ideology and perhaps practice. The movement is from a town and country
mode, which was embedded in the wider political economy of the welfare state, to a new
biophysical and technocentric planning paradigm. (Memon and Gleeson 1995: 109)
Up until the 1970s, the New Zealand state had followed a political and
governmental programme that had emphasized broadly welfarist principles,
in line with the similar emphases being made in other Anglophone countries
in the post-war period. Under the leadership of a Labour government during
the 1980s, however, it embarked on a sustained programme of governmental
and socio-economic reform, which emphasized the need to increase the
competitiveness of New Zealand industries within an increasingly globalized
world economy. The recurring theme within this period of reform was to
deregulate and minimize the impact of government on all socio-economic
processes (Grundy and Gleeson 1996: 198–201; Franklin 1991; Memon and
Gleeson 1995: 114; see also Bray and Haworth 1993). At the same time, New
Zealand—like other states—began to engage with an environmentalist dis-
course from approximately the 1970s onwards: the Labour, National, and
Social Credit parties (the three main political parties in New Zealand)
adopted certain policies that were supportive of environmental issues.
A productive relationship between these two diVering ideologies has been
diYcult to maintain. Nowhere is the forced marriage between the two
contrasting ideologies of neoliberalism and environmentalism more evident

than in the context of planning in New Zealand. It has been argued, for
instance, that the protection aVorded to the natural and biophysical envir-
onment within the RMA is relatively weak. According to Memon and
Gleeson (1995: 121), the RMA’s protection of the environment is lacking
since it fails to give ‘precedence to environmental protection objectives over
other objectives’. Embracing such an ideology would have undermined New
Zealand’s economic competitiveness during the 1980s and was, accordingly,
resisted by the New Right. The omission of mining activities from the orbit of
the sustainable management of resources is a good example of how the RMA
represents a relatively half-hearted take on sustainability. The New Right’s
inXuence on the Act is witnessed, too, in relation to the RMA’s emphasis on
the need to address the eVects of actions and practices, rather than on the
actions and practices themselves. Whereas the previous Town and Country
Planning Act had sought to regulate human practices, the RMA merely seeks
to regulate the impact of those practices on the environment. At one level,
this can be described as a shift from a prescriptive form of planning to a more
empowering and Xexible system (Robertson 1993: 308). Others have argued,
however, that it represents a potentially dangerous deregulation of planning
controls in which, ‘within very wide boundaries, people can do what they
like, so long as they do not harm the environment’ (Memon and Gleeson
(1995: 119). There is, therefore, a danger that the RMA may lead in the
future to unrestrained and, ironically, unsustainable transformations of the
natural environment within the country.
Whatever the impact of the RMA on New Zealand’s soil resources and
the broader environment, its various clauses begin to illustrate how the state
apparatus’s attempts to arbitrate concerning national natures may become
mired in political and ideological concerns. We turn to consider the rep-
resentation of nature within the political sub-apparatus of the state in
more detail in the Wnal empirical section of this chapter.
Nature and the political sub-apparatus of the state: the

case of the UK
In the previous two sections, we have concentrated on the incorporation of

nature into the state apparatus in largely bureaucratic terms. By contrast,
this section explores how nature is represented within the political sub-
apparatus of the state. We conceive of this process of representation as
something that can take place in two separate contexts. At one level, we
need to think about the extent to which environmental or broader green ideas
become incorporated into the plans, policies, and strategies of political
parties and government. In the introduction to this chapter, for instance, we
discussed Hollander’s (2005) work on the Florida Everglades. Her research
demonstrated the extent to which concerns regarding the nature of the Ever-
glades became implicated within the policies of Republicans and Democrats
at both a state and federal scale. But in addition to thinking about the extent to
which nature is represented within the political sub-apparatus of the state, we
also need to examine in greater depth how nature becomes represented within
the political arena. Latour, for instance, has elaborated on the potential
mechanisms in and through which an ecological form of politics enters the
political sub-apparatus of the state. At one extreme lies an ecological politics
that can impinge in a limited fashion on the broader repertoire of policies and
strategies adopted by political parties and governments, being added as a new
‘layer of behaviour and regulations to the[ir] . . . everyday concerns’ (Latour
1998: 222). Alternatively, a more all-compassing and holistic version of eco-
logical politics can enter the political sub-apparatus of the state. In this rarer
‘ ‘‘globalisation’’ of environmentalism’, we witness an eVort by political par-
ties and governments to demonstrate how nature and society must be man-
aged as a whole ‘in order to avoid a moral, economic and ecological disaster’
(Latour 1998: 222). Focusing on these two alternatives makes us think of how
political ecology can be incorporated into the political sub-apparatus of the
state through either the development of a ‘new form of politics or a particular
branch of politics’ (Latour 1998: 221; see also Whitehead 2004). In other
words, Latour suggests that we need to examine how political ecology can
be engaged with ‘surreptitiously, by distinguishing between questions of nature
and questions of politics, or explicitly, by treating those two sets of questions
as a single issue that arises for all collectives’ (Latour 2004: 1). The empirical
discussion in this section illustrates these twin mechanisms as they were played
out in the environmental politics of the UK during the 1980s and 1990s. We
focus on the growing environmental awareness of established political parties
as a way of discussing the piecemeal and limited greening of formal politics,
while an exploration of the UK Green Party enables us to elaborate on the
explicit ‘globalization’ of ecological concerns.
Porritt and Winner (1998), writing towards the end of the period, describe
the signiWcance of the 1980s as a time during which ecological issues began to
assume greater signiWcance within British politics.
The 1980s have witnessed a spectacular greening of mainstream British politics, at
least in the narrow environmental sense of the word. Until the beginning of this
decade, few major politicians were prepared to speak up on green issues. From the
1983 General Election onwards, national politicians have been catching up with the
popular perception that the environment in an increasingly important issue. Now,
according to their manifestos at least, Conservative, Labour and Alliance13 parties all
care deeply about the environment. (Porritt and Winner 1998: 85)
13
The ‘Alliance’ refers to the pact made between the Social Democratic Party and Liberal
Party during the 1980s. This formed the basis for the creation of the Liberal Democrats, who
currently assume the status of the third party within British parliamentary politics.
The established political parties were, therefore, contributors to the

growing importance of environmental politics in the UK during the 1980s.
Although the main opposition parties in the UK had begun to incorporate
some environmental concerns into their policy discourses from the mid-1980s
onwards, it is clear that our main focus of attention must lie with the
Conservative Party.14
Under the forceful leadership of Margaret Thatcher, since 1979 the Con-
servatives had embarked on a prolonged period of social and economic
reform in order to eradicate the so-called ‘British disease’. But despite its
radical qualities, it is clear that the Conservative Party did not view environ-
mental issues as being important concerns for much of the 1980s. Indeed,
during the Falklands War of 1982, Thatcher had famously referred to the
environment as a ‘humdrum issue’ (Young 1989: 273). More problematically,
McCormick (1991: 59) has noted that ‘the basic principles of environmental
regulation and protection are built on values that are inherently antipathetic
to the values of Thatcherism’; environmental regulation required a strong
state to monitor and manage the environment, something that was anathema
to Thatcher’s lauding of the free market and the related enterprise culture.
Given the political proclivities of the Conservative Party throughout much of
the 1980s, Thatcher’s two pro-environmental speeches of 1988 were, indeed,
remarkable. The Wrst speech, delivered to the Royal Society in September,
detailed the Conservative Party’s support for the ideals of sustainable devel-
opment as a speciWc means of answering the challenges posed by such issues
as population growth, global warming, the decay of the ozone layer, and acid
rain. Thatcher built on this statement in her keynote speech to the party’s
annual conference in October, in which she argued that
we Conservatives . . . are not merely friends of the Earth—we are its guardians and
trustees for generations to come. The core of Tory philosophy and the case for
protecting the environment are the same. No generation has a freehold on this
Earth. All we have is a life tenancy—with a full repairing lease. And this Government
intends to meet the terms of that lease in full. (Thatcher 1989: 274)
These two speeches were crucial to the emerging environmental debate of
the 1980s for they signalled that it should now take place at the centre-stage
of British parliamentary politics rather than at its margins. One commenta-
tor argued, for instance, that the Royal Society speech, in particular, had
ensured that the environment had now moved
from political marginality to political mainstream . . . The environmental movement
has been an outsider, an intruder. If little else happens, her speech will have the
immediate eVect of legitimizing the latter, and of making concern about the environ-
ment oYcial. (Jacques 1988)
14
For an account of the greening of the opposition parties during the 1980s, see Garner (1996:
139–47) and Porritt and Winner (1988: 63–76).
To prove that these speeches contained some substance, the Conservative

Party followed them up with a number of concrete developments. The Wrst
was its convening of a global conference on ozone depletion, held in London
in February 1989, and paid for in full by the British government. New
legislation was also passed, which led to increased monitoring and regulation
of rivers and acid rain. The Conservative Party had succeeded in placing
environmental issues Wrmly on the political agenda within the UK. More-
over, its position as the party of government ensured that these new envir-
onmental priorities could be taken forward in concrete ways.
But despite these developments, it is clear that the ecological politics
advocated during this period by the Conservative Party were highly emascu-
lated in character. McCormick, for instance, has argued that much of the
new environmental legislation of the late 1980s came about largely as a result
of changing public attitudes towards the environment and/or European
Community law, which demanded that the UK legislated on certain key
issues, most notably acid rain (McCormick 1991: 62). In addition, the way
in which nature was represented within the policies and strategies of the
Conservative Party speaks of an ecological politics that was highly circum-
scribed and compartmentalized in character. Certain policies may have been
developed in order to counter particular ecological risks—for instance, those
associated with acid rain—but these were not reXective of a broader shift in
the policy mindset of the Conservative Party. In this respect, the Conserva-
tive manifestos of 1987 and 1992 were still positioned with regard to the need
to reduce taxes and governmental interference of all kinds, and had a related
emphasis on the need to promote economic growth. The limited representa-
tion aVorded to ecological issues within the political rhetoric and action of
the Conservative Party, and other established political parties during the
1980s, therefore, is redolent of a tentative greening of merely a ‘particular
branch’ of the political sub-apparatus of the UK state.
If established political parties were advocating the need for a tentative and
‘surreptitious’ link to be drawn between ecology and politics during the
1980s, it is clear that other organizations were seeking to promote a more
radical and holistic form of ecological politics. We refer here, in particular, to
the increasing inXuence of Green parties on the political sub-apparatus of the
state. McCormick eVectively captures the broad sweep of Green politics:
Green politics is not simply about the environment. It is ultimately about
a fundamental reordering of conventional political and economic systems, advocating
grass-roots democracy, local community government, human-scale technology and
institutions, social equality, sustainable development self-reliance and a holistic
worldview that encourages individuals to understand their place in the world.
(McCormick 1991: 123)
This is certainly the case with regard to the UK Green Party. Its current
policies range from a need to re-evaluate the meaning of work through
a greening of the economy to a broad set of demands concerning the need to

democratize and ecologize government and politics at a variety of diVerent
spatial scales.15
If this holistic approach to ecological politics is clear for all to see within
the policies and strategies of the UK Green Party, it is equally evident that its
eVorts to incorporate such ideals into the political sub-apparatus of the UK
state have fallen on barren ground. The remainder of this section highlights
the diYculties associated with promoting this holistic and all-encompassing
ecological vision within the political sub-apparatus of the UK state. Jona-
thon Porritt has argued that ecological concerns have been aVorded little
space within the political sub-apparatus of the UK:
If you are a Green Party activist . . . it’s a pretty bloody depressing thing, election day.
You don’t expect to be getting a lot of joy out of the results as they come in . . . you
know, two per cent; three per cent, four per cent, whatever it might be. I’ve been
a candidate myself many times, so I know how bloody miserable it is to be honest.
And you can put a brave face on, you can say ‘well we’re building support for the
future’ and all the rest of it but there’s no turning away from the sense of disappoint-
ment, if not despair, on occasions, looking at how limited a purchase these ideas still
have on modern electorates.16
In this respect, despite years of political campaigning since the mid-1970s,

the UK Green Party had struggled to promote an ecological agenda within
the UK. Its ultimate success in gaining political representation in 1992, in the
form of the election of Cynog DaWs as a joint Plaid Cymru and Green Party
MP, did not indicate a fundamental re-evaluation of the place of nature
within the representational politics of the UK. Indeed, Cynog DaWs’s election
is highly signiWcant, we would argue, since it illustrates that a peculiarly
propitious set of contingent circumstances were necessary in order to elect
just one Green Party MP—and for a limited period of time only—to the UK
Parliament.
We can begin by focusing on the temporal contingencies that led to the
Green Party’s election success in 1992. In parliamentary terms, the Green
Party had undergone somewhat of an upturn in its fortunes during the late
1980s. Riding a wave of public opinion that was focused for the Wrst time on
environmental issues, it managed to poll 89,354 votes during the 1987 general
election, a Wgure that was 65 per cent higher than the 1983 total of 54,077.
Because of the UK’s Wrst-past-the-post voting system, however, the party did
not gain any political representation. Such relative success, nonetheless, led
to statements by the Green Party that it was on the verge of an electoral
breakthrough, based on its acquisition of disaVected votes from both the
Labour and Alliance parties (Porritt and Winner 1988: 76). The most notable
15
See <http://www.greenparty.org.uk/issues> accessed 9 November 2005.
16
Interview with Jonathan Porritt conducted and transcribed by a research assistant under
the direction of Rhys Jones.
‘success’, nonetheless, came in the European elections of 1989, where it

polled 2.29 million votes, or 15 per cent of the total (see Carter 1992; Curtice
1989).17 Jonathon Porritt explained the signiWcance of this vote for green
issues within the UK in the following way:
it came as a huge surprise to people that that percentage of the vote was actually
secured . . . The truth of it is, and I know the Green Party hates me for saying this . . . is
it wasn’t really a vote for the Green Party per se. In many instances it was a vote for
a voice that said ‘we’ve got to think about our relationship more carefully with the
living world; we are out of balance in that relationship at the moment; these issues are
going to get much more serious and painful; the mainstream parties . . . are playing
fast and loose with people’s concern about this, and we’ve got to get more focus
on this’.18
The ‘whole area of sustainability and climate change’, according to Porritt,

had gained widespread acceptance within popular and political debate, and,
in many ways, the Green Party became the beneWciary of this shift in public
opinion. The party’s ‘success’ within the European elections was, however,
relative. Once again, it did not gain any seats within the European Parliament
as a result of the Wrst-past-the-post system used for European elections in the
UK at that time.
But the electoral advantages aVorded by this upsurge of interest in envir-
onmental issues could not alone explain the Green Party’s political success in
1992. Two other contingent factors also contributed to it. The Wrst revolved
around the geographical peculiarities of the parliamentary constituency of
Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire North in West Wales (see Figure 5.3). Mid
and West Wales had, since the 1960s, proved popular for those interested in
green and alternative lifestyles and, therefore, had garnered some political
support for the Green Party since the 1970s. The constituency, moreover, had
always been somewhat of a political outlier within British politics, having
returned Liberal (and latterly Alliance/Social and Liberal Democrat) MPs for
much of the twentieth century. Through a combination of factors, however, it
had become a four-way marginal by the 1980s, represented by the Alliance
Party (latterly Social and Liberal Democrat Party) and contested by the
Conservatives, Labour, and Plaid Cymru (Welsh Nationlists). The European
elections of 1989, and their speciWc manifestation in the European constitu-
ency of Mid and West Wales (including Ceredigion), provided a decisive
impetus for the re-evaluation of political relationships within the constitu-
ency. They acted as a warning bell for Plaid Cymru, since the Greens (with
13.2 per cent of the vote) had edged into third place ahead of Plaid Cymru
(11.6 per cent). The immediate consequence of this result was the instigation
17
For a cautionary note on the credibility of the Green Party’s success within the European
elections, see McCormick (1991: 122).
18
Interview with Jonathan Porritt conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part
of a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones.
Fig. 5.3. Map of the Ceredigion constituency within the UK.
of talks about forming an electoral pact between the Green Party and Plaid
Cymru within Ceredigion. A leading green activist at the time saw the 1989
result as a key catalyst for political accommodation between Plaid Cymru and
the Green Party: ‘It had a big inXuence I think from Plaid’s perspective . . . in
that we did ever so well . . . I was at the count and Cynog [DaWs] said to me
‘‘Look, you’ve really hammered us. We have to get together’’.’19
19
Interview conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of a research project
under the direction of Rhys Jones.
A series of both formal and informal meetings occurred between Plaid

Cymru and the Greens at the Welsh national scale during 1989–90. By the
time of their annual conference in 1990, Plaid Cymru had passed a green
economic policy, and a motion was also passed enabling the party to engage
in dialogue with the Green Party at constituency level about the possibility of
local electoral pacts. In Ceredigion, the local Plaid Cymru and Green parties
signed what they termed the ‘Llandysul Accord’ on 10 April 1991—a formal
agreement of coalition between the two parties in the Ceredigion and Pembroke
North constituency. A joint press release exclaimed: ‘Plaid Cymru—Green
agreement ‘‘creates winning combination’’ ’.20 The political and cultural
particularities of the Ceredigion and Pembroke North constituency—being as
it was a melting pot of both nationalist and environmental politics—were key
factors, therefore, in explaining the local desire for an electoral pact.
But it also took a certain level of individual contingency in order to
facilitate the development of formal and productive links between Plaid
Cymru and the Green Party.21 Cynog DaWs, the joint Plaid Cymru–Green
Party candidate, was the key Wgure in this regard. He was an established
candidate, having previously contested the constituency for Plaid Cymru in
the general elections of 1983 and 1987. However, Cynog DaWs was unusual
within Welsh nationalist circles in that ecological ideas had played a central
role in his political philosophy for many years. This was crucial to the
emergence of a Plaid/Green dialogue prior to 1992. During an interview, he
explained:
I had held, for twenty years, a great interest in the development of the green move-
ment, the Ecology Party in the Wrst instance, and then the Green Party, I had been
watching all of that, I had been reading magazines such as The Ecologist so I knew
that scene very well.22
Cynog DaWs, therefore, provided a much-needed personal credibility to
the pact between Plaid Cymru and the Green Party. The fortuitous associ-
ation of these three sets of contingent factors, we would argue, explain the
remarkable result of the Ceredigion and Pembroke North constituency,
which was declared in the early hours of 10 April 1992 (see Table 5.6).
The result was signiWcant for it signalled the election of the Wrst Green
Party MP to the UK Parliament for Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire North
or, what we may term, ‘nature’s constituency’. Jonathon Porritt, for one,
20
‘Plaid Cymru–Green agreement ‘‘creates winning combination’’ ’, Plaid Cymru/Ceredigion
and Pembroke North Green Party press release, 10 April 1991: Cynog DaWs papers (National
Library of Wales PCD, 10).
21
It is signiWcant that Simon Hughes, MP, following the heavy defeat suVered by the Alliance
in the 1987 general election, contemplated becoming a joint Liberal and Green Party candidate
(see Porritt and Winner 1988: 75).
22
Interview with Cynog DaWs conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of
a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones.
Table 5.6. General election result for the Ceredigion

and Pembrokeshire North constituency, 1992
Candidate Votes
Cynog DaWs (Plaid Cymru/Green) 16,020 (31.3%)

Geraint Howells (Liberal Democrat) 12,827 (25.1%)
O. J. Williams (Conservative) 12,718 (24.8%)
John Davies (Labour) 9,637 (18.8%)
recalled how he felt ‘just uncomplicated joy at the result’. More locally, Alun
Williams, a Green Party activist stated during an interview that
There was a tremendous sort of jubilation, right across Ceredigion in lots of ways. I
remember . . . we had a huge great party after Cynog won and someone saying to me ‘do
you know I’ve lived here 20 years and this is the kind of thing I’ve always dreamt of’, that
sort of coming together of these ostensibly very diVerent cultures but diVerent cultures
which actually had quite a lot in common that wasn’t previously recognised, really.23
Cynog DaWs subsequently took up his position as the Wrst Plaid Cymru/
Green Party MP. On arriving at the House of Commons, he took every
opportunity to announce the fact that the Wrst Green Party candidate had
been elected to the UK Parliament.24 He also contributed in more concrete
terms to the development of green legislation. On 20 January 1995, he
co-sponsored the Home Energy Conservation Bill, which became law on 8
June 1995 (Friends of the Earth 1995a,b). On 20 March 1996, after the
dissolution of the Plaid/Green pact, Cynog DaWs introduced a Road TraYc
Reduction Bill to the House of Commons (Friends of the Earth 1996b).
Although the Bill stood no chance of becoming law, it provided a Wrm
parliamentary precedent for the subsequent Liberal Democrat Bill of 13
November 1996, which became law on 21 March 1997 (Friends of the
Earth 1996a, 1997). Not surprisingly, perhaps, in June 1993 Cynog DaWs
won the Green Magazine award for best newcomer to Parliament.
At one level, Cynog DaWs’s election to Parliament signalled a radical
re-evaluation of the place of nature within the political sub-apparatus of
the state. His policies ranged widely in terms of their scope and demonstrated
an engagement with a holistic vision of ecological politics. A substantial
document entitled Together: Building a Future, underlined the policy em-
phasis of the Plaid/Green partnership. The document’s themes included the
Rio summit, equal opportunities for women, global consumption, the NHS,
housing, devolution, agriculture, regional economic development, education,
the Welsh language, and transport. Many of these policies were combined
23
Interview with Alun Williams conducted and transcribed by a research assistant as part of
a research project under the direction of Rhys Jones.
24
Draft of Cynog DaWs’s maiden speech to the House of Commons, 11 May 1992: Cynog
DaWs papers (National Library of Wales PCD, 11–12).
after the 1992 general election into a more coherent single publication
entitled Towards a Green Welsh Future (Plaid Cymru and Green Party
Ceredigion and Pembroke North 1993). Within these various themes, we
witness an eVort to stay true to the ideals of a broad and all-encompassing
ecological politics. But at the same time, it is possible to maintain that Cynog
DaWs’ election as a joint Green Party and Plaid Cymru candidate actually
illustrates the precariousness of nature’s representation within the politics of
the UK state at this time. This point is made clearly by the fact that the
election of the Wrst Green Party MP was dependent upon the concatenation
of a range of contingent factors. The representation of ecological issues
within the political sub-apparatus of the British state also suVered as a result
of the Green Party’s status as a partner within a broader pact, whose other
member was a party that emphasized the territorial politics associated with
nationalism. Furthermore, there was a belief in some quarters that the Green
Party was being asked to compromise its ecological vision in order to sustain
its membership within the pact. Richard Bramhall, an opponent of the
Ceredigion coalition, for instance, argued that Plaid Cymru policy ran
contrary to Green Party policy, in that Plaid was committed to a traditional
growth economy, road-building, the Maastricht Treaty, nuclear energy,
blood sports, transport of live farm animals, and the Criminal Justice Act,
and that it was opposed to a land value tax. In addition, Bramhall (1994)
drew attention to the way in which Plaid Cymru’s linguistic and nationalist
parochialness ran contrary to the Green Party’s more international and
global ecological vision. Tellingly, the distrust of nationalist politics amongst
certain sections of the Green Party, along with a belief that their ecological
politics were being compromised as a result of their association with Plaid
Cymru, led to the break-up of the pact between the two parties.25 By the time
of the 1997 general election, Cynog DaWs stood—and was subsequently
elected with an enlarged majority—as a Plaid Cymru candidate. No Green
Party MPs have been elected to the UK Parliament since that short yet
signiWcant period at the beginning of the 1990s.
In this sense, the particular contingencies that were required in order to
elect one MP to the UK Parliament, the turbulent relationship between the
two parties within the pact, and their subsequent acrimonious split, we would
argue, illustrate the inherent diYculties associated with representing nature
within the political sub-apparatus of the UK state. Nature’s access to, and
representation within, the political sub-apparatus of the UK state, it seems, is
highly regulated and restricted. Established political parties, although keen to
promote their environmental credentials, have been, at best, only half-hearted
supporters of ecological concerns. Similarly, the UK Green Party has strug-
gled to make much of an imprint on political debate within the UK’s various
formal spaces of democracy. This does not mean that nature experiences the
25
For a discussion of the reasons behind this collapse, see Fowler and Jones (2005: 541–5).
same diYculties in accessing the representational sub-apparatus of all states.

The experience of Germany as the ‘green hare of Europe’, for instance, has
demonstrated that certain states, particularly those with a form of propor-
tional representation within their political sub-apparatus, are able to repre-
sent nature in a more meaningful and comprehensive manner.26 But for the
foreseeable future, at least, it is likely that nature will be hard pressed to make
its voice heard within the UK’s formal political arena and will have to make
do with its place in the marginal spaces of ecological activism (Carter 2001).
Concluding comments
This chapter has focused on the relationship between national natures and
the modern state apparatus. From the 1970s onwards, there has been an
attempt to incorporate nature into various sub-apparatuses of the state: with
regard to the formation of regulatory agencies concerned with minimizing
ecological risk; in the context of those aspects of the state apparatus involved
in arbitrating between diVerent uses of nature; and with respect to the
representation of national natures within the political sub-apparatus of the
state. But while this process speaks of the growing extent of the association
between nature and the state apparatus, it does not necessarily reXect a
meaningful or far-reaching incorporation of ecological ideals into state
bureaucracies. We have already seen, both in the case of the New Zealand
RMA and in the Green Party’s limited electoral success in the UK, how
ecological politics was muted—almost had to be muted—in order gain access
to the state apparatus. Nature, conceived of in terms of a holistic ecological
politics, has struggled to be represented within the apparatus of the state. In
more philosophical terms, too, Latour has maintained that it is extremely
diYcult for nature to be fully represented within state bureaucracies and
politics. He has argued, for instance, that political ecology, while claiming
that it seeks to give voice to nature, has based its practices and ideologies on
a thoroughly humanized account of the natural world (Latour 1998: 228).
While such a misconception of its own stated aim is political ecology’s main
weakness, Latour maintains that its discussion of the mutual associations of
nature and political forms can also be its overarching strength. Political
ecology, thus re-conceived, can help to dissolve boundaries between the
political and the ecological and, we would argue, bring forth a more pro-
ductive imbrication of states and natures. This may well be a long-term aim
of political ecology but, for the present, nature’s incorporation into the state
apparatus takes place on highly uneven terms, being determined by the
latter’s political priorities and limited ecological vision.
26
See the discussion in <http://www.europeangreens.org/peopleandparties/members/germany.html>
accessed 20 May 2005.
6
Between Laboratory and Leviathan:

Technological Development and the
Cyborg State
Technology is not something humankind can control. It is an event that has

befallen the world. (Gray 2002: 14)
A technological society is one which takes technological change to be the
model for political invention. (Barry 2001: 2)
To talk about technology when exploring the relationship between states and
nature may seem paradoxical. The paradoxical nature of this assignment is
twofold. First, many argue that to speak of the technological is to speak of
the anti-political—here technology is understood not as something of the
state, but as an external arena that can simultaneously be used by the
government to verify its policies, or, if unchecked, undermine the governing
capacities of politicians (Barry 2001: ch. 1). Others claim that technology is
the antithesis of nature—if nature is the un-produced eternal substratum of
existence, technology is a socio-cultural artefact, a fragment of produced
nature and a mechanism for ecological transformation (Luke 1996). Despite
this apparent conundrum, this chapter argues that technology provides a
crucial basis upon which many of the interplays between the state and nature
continue to be expressed. Within his recent book on the links between states,
government, and technologies—Political Machines—Andrew Barry (2001: 9)
suggests that we need to think of technologies in two related but distinct
ways. He argues that our Wrst recourse when considering technologies is often
to technological devices—or those labour-saving and labour-enhancing
gadgets, tools, instruments, and gizmos that make new socio-economic
practices possible and speed-up existing exercises (see also Harvey 2002).
Secondly, Barry discerns a broader understanding of technology, which
incorporates a wider set of procedures, rules, and calculations in and through
which a technological device is animated and put to use.
In this chapter we explore the technological devices and supporting tech-
nological infrastructures through which the contemporary politics of state–
nature relations are being played out. We interpret the role of technology
within state–nature relations in two main ways. First, we explore the ways in
148 Technological Development and the Cyborg State
which various technologies have been synthesized with and within the state
apparatuses in order to enhance governments’ capacities to manage nature.
The role of technology in facilitating the governance of nature can be
conceived of at a number of levels. It can, for example, be related to a
Marxist reading of technologies as tools/machines deployed in the physical
transformation of the natural world (Harvey 2002: 534). At another level, it
could also be interpreted in relation to the role of technologies in providing
the monitoring apparatuses and digital archives through which an increasing
amount of knowledge about the natural world can be channelled, or ‘brought
together’ within new ‘centres of calculation’ (Latour 1990; see also Law
1991). Technologies, however—particularly in relation to the ever-improving
capacity of micro-processing devices—can also enable the increasingly elab-
orate replication and simulation of nature and an associated capacity to
predict its regular transformation (see Kitchin and Dodge 2001). Secondly,
we recognize how certain ‘technological zones’—including laboratories,
cyberspaces, and trans-national technological ensembles—have threatened
the capacities of the modern state to regulate the transformation of the
natural world and to manage associated forms of ecological risk. In this
sense, we recognize the capacity of new, and in particular experimental,
technologies to both challenge the authority of states and to enable social
interventions in nature to slip beyond the Welds of power associated with
national governments. It is in this context that John Gray’s quote (2004: 14)
with which we began this chapter seems most prescient, as we are forced to
reconsider our instrumentalist assumptions about the human exploitation of
nature and embrace the uncomfortable idea that technology may well be
beyond political control.
This chapter presents an analysis of the opportunities for, and diYculties
of, governing nature within an inherently technological society. Techno-
logical innovations have enabled new forms of territorial power to be realized
and heightened degrees of centralization to be achieved over the natural
world on behalf of the state. At one and the same time, however, techno-
logical innovations have enabled the proliferation of a series of centres of
ecological calculation to be produced and new territorial zones to be con-
solidated which lie at a distance from state apparatus and routinely transect
the territorial borders of nations. In order to develop this particular perspec-
tive on state–nature relations, this chapter initially focuses on one site and
one moment of state–nature imbroglios—the Warren Spring Laboratory in
the UK.
Established to act as the UK state’s centre for monitoring atmospheric
environmental change, we explore how the Warren Spring Laboratory
became increasingly plugged into real-time environmental changes in the
UK through the elaboration of a complex national network of environmen-
tal monitoring technologies and procedures. Moreover, through an analysis
of the historical emergence of the Warren Spring Laboratory, this chapter
Technological Development and the Cyborg State 149
considers how the ecological data produced and marshalled through the use
of this centralized scientiWc institution has facilitated increasingly complex
territorial simulations of nature by the British state. These have, in turn,
enabled new forms of state intervention within the ecologies of the UK. This
particular moment of state–nature imbroglios is then contrasted with a
detailed consideration of the Weldon–Stupak Bill in the US, an act of
legislation that has been speciWcally designed to ban all forms of reproductive
and therapeutic human cloning in the US. It represents an attempt by the US
state to govern social interventions within microbiological natures, which
could potentially be practised in a range of biotechnology laboratories
throughout the US.
Given our concern with the operations of scientiWc laboratories, analysis
draws heavily on the insights of those writing on the politics of ‘tech-
noscience’ (Hables-Gray 1996; Haraway 1989, 1991, 1997, 2004a; Martin
1998). Drawing on the Wgure of the cyborg—a cybernetic organism which
fuses together the organic and technological, the body and the computer,
nature and technology—we claim that signiWcant analytical purchase can be
gained from understanding the state as a cyborg. Understood as a cyborg, we
argue that the state can be analysed as a political body that is technologically
fused with nature. In this context, it is possible to understand state–nature
relations not simply as a process by which the state acts on nature, but as the
contingent outcome of the technological networks that simultaneously make
state power over nature possible, while persistently undermining the ability
of the state to manage nature because of the complex ecological mutants (or
monsters) produced by these technological networks.
Monitoring national nature and the Warren Spring Laboratory1

In 1974 the UK Department of the Environment (DoE) proclaimed that ‘the
United Kingdom is probably one of the most intensively monitored indus-
trial countries’ (DoE 1974: 4). This proud boast was actually made in the
publication Monitoring of the Environment in the UK and came with a sign-
iWcant caveat. It appeared that despite being the most heavily monitored
state in the industrialized world (with regard to the environment), much of
this eVort was going to waste:
although there are many monitoring programmes in existence, these have been
designed with little regard for how, taken together they can be used to provide a
coherent picture of national trends. We are therefore proposing to strengthen the
machinery for co-ordinating the programmes in diVerent sectors—to ensure that the
data collected is in a compatible form. (DoE 1974: iii; emphasis added)
1
This section is based upon material gathered from the Royal Society’s Library (London) and
the London Metropolitan Archives. We would like to thank these institutions for allowing us to
access their records.
The Monitoring of the Environment report was actually a response to three

interrelated pressures. First, there was a growing concern in the UK with the
precise consequences of industrial development on the quality of air, water,
and land throughout the country. Secondly, there were mounting inter-
national pressures (especially following the UN Conference on the Human
Environment, which was held in Stockholm in 1972) on individual countries
to accurately monitor national environmental change, so that progress
towards the abatement of environmental pollution could be more eVectively
assessed. Finally, there was concern within British government at the time
over the ability of the state’s environmental monitoring infrastructure to
deliver accurate and internationally comparable data on ecological change.
What interests us most about the Monitoring of the Environment report is
how it embodied a crucial moment in the UK state’s emerging relationship
with both nature and technology. The unusual level of environmental surveil-
lance achieved up to 1974 was the product of a complex web of private
laboratories, research councils, local authorities, water authorities, meteoro-
logical oYces, university departments, and factories, all dutifully providing
information on environmental pollution to the state. The tension raised by the
DoE’s report was that, despite this collective monitoring eVort, a lack of
coordination between the diVerent branches of Britain’s environmental mon-
itoring network meant that it was still impossible for the state to gather a
centralized picture of environmental conditions for its territory. This section
seeks to consider environmental monitoring in the UK both before and after
1974. In doing so we hope to reveal how the development of new technologies
made nature and the environment more open to surveillance, but also how
initial vagaries in the use and application of these technologies ultimately
inhibited their utility by the state. In response to these problems, we then
uncover the diVerent strategies which the British state deployed in order to
ensure that environmental technologies better served the state administration.
Collecting environmental information in the UK

It should perhaps come as little surprise, given its rapid and extensive
industrialization during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, that
the UK should have a long historical concern with pollution and with the
transformation of its natural environment. The Public Health and Alkali
Acts, passed in 1848 and 1863, respectively, are amongst the Wrst forms of
environmental legislation pertaining to pollution anywhere in the world. If
these pieces of legislation represented a desire by the British state to combat
the social eVects of environmental pollution, they were also key stimuli to
the emergence of environmental monitoring systems in the UK, systems
that were devoted to assessing the eYcacy of these Acts at improving envir-
onmental quality. Consequently, following London’s International
Exhibition and Conference on Smoke Abatement—which was held in the
Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington, in 1912 (London County Council

1925–6)—the Wrst systematic survey of air pollution in the UK began in
1914. This purportedly national survey was coordinated by the Committee
for the Investigation of Atmospheric Pollution and carried out with the help
of local authorities, the Coal Smoke Abatement Society, and the British
Meteorological OYce (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972). While initially
inhibited by the onset of the First World War, this Wrst attempt at a national
programme of air pollution was followed gradually by a broader system of
environmental monitoring programmes, which incorporated inland water,
marine, and land-based pollution throughout the UK, and which all relied on
a number of local bodies, factories, and charities supplying information to
the Minister for Health.
We would argue that environmental pollution monitoring is essentially an
exercise devoted to surveying nature. This surveying of nature can be under-
stood in two ways. First, the monitoring of environmental pollution involves
detecting fragments of (changed) nature such as sulphur dioxide, carbon
dioxide, or alkalis that occur in the environment. Secondly, environmental
monitoring is premised on the principle that pollution denotes the unwanted
or excessive concentration of certain chemicals or physical compounds
within nature. In this context, the idea of pollution presupposes an unpol-
luted environment, which can sometimes be conceived of as a form of
unchanged Wrst nature, or more likely, as a scientiWcally calibrated ‘natural
state condition’. In the context of this broad understanding of environmental
pollution monitoring, it is clear that early attempts to explore pollution levels
in the UK were devoted to understanding the local levels of pollution that
speciWc communities were experiencing (see also the discussion of the US
Environmental Protection Agency in Chapter 5). The governmental use of
municipal authorities (in particular local government and water boards)
reXected a particular political logic or ‘mentality’ of government, which
appears typical of the types of bio-political power that Foucault (1990)
observed emerging in nineteenth-century Europe, to the extent that it sought
to extend the control the state had over the totality of conditions required for
the reproduction of human life.2 According to Foucault, the exercise of bio-
political power (or the power over life) was premised upon the collation of
knowledge that could be used as the basis through which disciplinary net-
works could be mobilized to control social behaviour and ensure that the
appropriate conditions for social reproduction were secured. While many
strategies for bio-political power focused upon health care, policing, sexual
morality, and housing reform, it is clear that by the end of the nineteenth
century industrial capitalism in the UK necessitated a political concern
with a new object of governmentality—the environment. The extension of
2
See also here Driver (1988), Flick (1980), and Osborne (1996) for more speciWc analyses of
the politics of environmental health reform in nineteenth-century Britain.
governmental concerns to include environmental pollution essentially reXects

an expansion of the role of governmental technologies from a focus on a
national population to the broader ecologies upon which that population
depends—an ‘environmental governmentality’.3 In this sense, the emerging
concern of the British state with environmental problems in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries is a logical step for a state concerned
with the totality of conditions and practices upon which human life de-
pends—what Foucault referred to as the ‘whole space of existence’ (see
Luke 1999: 144).
What is interesting about the emergence of pollution monitoring in early-
twentieth-century Britain is the way in which it exploited a technological
apparatus of municipal service delivery, which had been established in the
nineteenth century. In this context, pollution monitoring in the UK emerged
out of a rhizome-like network of local centres, which used various forms of
monitoring equipment, sampling sites, and scientiWc techniques to assess
environmental pollution. The technologies used to monitor local pollution
included factory-based dry-deposit Wlters, lead peroxide cylinders, volumetric
sulphur dioxide apparatuses, and water chemical testing equipment used by
sanitation authorities and water pumping stations (London County Council
1925–6). Written records of these samples were taken at and stored in a variety
of local sites, inventories, and public records oYces. By the time of the Clean
Air Act of 1956, the reach of local networks of technological monitoring for
air pollution alone had become extensive. There were 193 sites testing daily
smoke concentrations, 140 sites sampling daily sulphur dioxide concentra-
tions, 993 sites devoted to gathering monthly observations of grit and dust-
fall, and a staggering 1,115 sites testing monthly rates of the reactions between
atmospheric sulphur with lead dioxide (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972).
While initially instigated through voluntary associations and committees,
the extensive exercise of environmental data collection, which was facilitated
through local monitoring centres, was gradually supported during the twen-
tieth century by a series of statutory interventions by the state. Successive
rounds of legislation included the Alkali Works Regulation Act 1906, the
Clean Air Acts 1956 and 1968, the Public Health Acts 1926 and 1961, the
Public Health (Recurring Nuisance) Act 1969, the Control of Pollution Act
1974, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, and the Road TraYc Acts
1972 and 1974; all served to both extend the reach of environmental mon-
itoring and to provide a legal context within which the knowledge about
environmental pollution could be converted into a power to act on its
perpetrators (Warren Spring Laboratory 1972). Early environmental legisla-
tion was also supported by some limited central coordination of monitoring
activities carried out by the Department of ScientiWc and Industrial Research
3
For more on the notion of ‘environmental governmentality’ see Darier (1996) and Luke
(1999).
(London County Council 1925–6). The expanding Welds of surveillance

provided by these Acts is illustrated best by the Control of Pollution Act
and the Road TraYc Acts, which respectively enabled local authorities to
demand emission inventories for all premises apart from private dwellings
and empowered local police authorities to run roadside checks on vehicle
emissions. In diVerent ways these acts of legislation generated the ‘power to
act’ on environmental pollution data by establishing certain environmental
standards as a legal requirement. What is most striking, given our previous
discussions of bio-power, is that many of the environmental standards
established by this legislation continued to be deWned in human terms. The
anthropocentric nature of these environmental standards is captured well in
the 1936 Public Health Act, which deWned environmental pollution as ‘any
dust or eZuvia caused by any trade, business, manufacture or process and
being prejudicial to the health of or a nuisance to the inhabitants of
the district’ (DoE 1976: 1). The power to control pollution through local
networks of pollution monitoring and enforcement in the UK remained
fundamentally an issue of the ability to control the conditions of human life.
From local monitoring to national environmental surveying: the Warren

Spring Laboratory and the politics of scientiWc praxis
The concerns over the state of environmental monitoring in the UK raised in
1974 must, at least in part, be understood as a response to the changing sense
of what the goals of ecological surveillance actually were. In the late 1960s
and early 1970s there was clearly a changing governmental rationality
towards environmental pollution. With growing international concern over
the trans-boundary eVects of air and water pollution on global ecological
systems, new political pressures emerged, which meant that states could no
longer limit their monitoring of pollution to its localized human impacts but
had to demonstrate national action towards global environmental protec-
tion. A DoE statement at the time expressed the concern that existing
environmental technologies had been located and mobilized in such a way
as to only really monitor the human environment:
But the direct eVects of pollutants on human health, although important, are not the
only things with which we must be concerned. Man [sic] is sustained by other species in
his environment—by crop plants, domestic animals and Wsh, and by a myriad of species
often small and inconspicuous, that renew the oxygen in the air and water, break down
dead matter, recycle essential elements and are the base of ‘food chains’ leading to
ourselves and our livestock. If there is signiWcant enough scale of pollution, man [sic]
himself cannot escape hazard. We need to organise our monitoring system to detect and
forestall threats to these other organisms also on which we depend. (DoE 1976: 4)
The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was one of the Wrst state
bodies to raise concerns about the ability of the UK pollution monitoring
network to deal with new threats to nature. The Royal Commission was an
independent standing body established to advise the Queen, the British

government, and Parliament on all issues pertaining to environmental pol-
lution.4 In its Wrst report, which was published in 1971, the Royal Commis-
sion made two critical observations: Wrst, it recognized that the most serious
consequences of late industrial air pollution were global in scale; and sec-
ondly, and in a related context, it was highly critical of the fragmented and
localized system of environmental pollution monitoring then in operation. It
was particularly critical of the local network for air pollution monitoring,
because while it was relatively eVective at controlling the municipal conse-
quences of pollution, it was unable to provide a clear insight into Britain’s
broader contribution towards global environmental issues. The pressure for
a more integrated system of pollution monitoring was further increased
following the UN Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stock-
holm in 1972. As part of the Action Plan for the Human Environment and the
related Earthwatch programme, the United Nations stressed the role of
individual states in contributing to global power/knowledge concerning
environmental pollution threats.5 In this context, it is clear that the up-
scaling of political concern from the eVects of pollution on human health
to the broader health of environmental systems, required an up-scaling in the
modes of state-based monitoring systems and technological apparatus.
As we have already mentioned, the Wrst major government statement on
the restructuring of Britain’s environmental monitoring apparatus was the
DoE’s 1974 report, Monitoring of the Environment in the UK. GeoVrey RiYn,
of the DoE, begins the publication by clearly establishing the links between
eVective environmental monitoring and governmental power:
Before we can plan an eVective programme to control or reduce pollution, we need to
know what harmful substances are being put in to the environment where, in what
quantities, and by whom. Environmental monitoring is therefore fundamental; it
enables us to measure the extent to which pollution is actually occurring; it provides
us with a guide to how eVective our controls are proving; it also indicates where
greater eVort is needed. (DoE 1974: iii; emphasis in original)
The problem that DoE oYcials realized at the time, however, was that the
where, what and whom of environmental pollution had shifted from being
a question of which individual polluter was causing a local nuisance where, to
a question of which countries were accelerating global environmental
change, and to what extent. It is in this context that the DoE started to
present environmental monitoring within a distinctly national context. From
the early 1970s onwards, we consequently see a shift in the focus at the
4
For an eVective critical overview of the work of the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution, consult the work of Susan Owens (1994, 1999, 2003).
5
These initiatives would eventually lead to the creation of a UN-based Global Environmental
Monitoring System (GEMS). This initiative was further supplemented in Europe by the forma-
tion of a European Chemical Data Information Network.
technological apparatus of environmental monitoring from the local to the

national. Now technologies and monitoring stations were to be choreographed
to provide a new frame for national nature.
The main barrier to the technological construction of a national picture of
environmental pollution was the highly fragmented technological infrastruc-
ture that was in place. By technological infrastructure, we refer here to both
the technological devices, Wlters, and stations that physically detect pollution
and also to the procedures and practices of the diVerent monitoring stations
and laboratories running these apparatuses. The disjointed nature of the
monitoring infrastructure was revealed in a government statement at the
time:
It is evident that the monitoring activities now going on in the United Kingdom are
fragmented, and have been designed for many diVerent purposes, the methods used
even to monitor the same things, diVer from area to area and from laboratory to
laboratory . . . There is no single, central point in the country with the duty of drawing
all the information together and evaluating the national situation. As a result, we have
less coherent idea of what is happening than the total scale of the eVort might suggest.
(DoE 1974: 4)
The variations that existed in the UK regarding the techniques used to
monitor pollution are symptomatic of what anthropologists of science know
as the ‘laboratory eVect’,6 which simply acknowledges that despite the
apparent objectivity of scientiWc results, the practices and procedures used
by scientists vary greatly between laboratories (Latour and Woolgar 1979). In
response to the Wndings of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollu-
tion, the British government consequently set out a vision of a centrally
orchestrated network of monitoring sites utilizing standardized equipment
and comparable techniques. The basis for this centrally administered and
managed monitoring system would be a series of specialist ‘lead laboratories’,
which would provide guidance on sampling techniques and ensure that
standard monitoring technologies were used in local sampling sites.
The paradigm for this integrated system of environmental monitoring
laboratories was the National Survey of Air Pollution, 1961–1971 (Warren
Spring Laboratory 1972). This survey was established in order to assess the
impact of the 1956 Clean Air Act. Following the establishment of a Clean Air
Working Group in 1959, it was decided by the government that a systematic
body of national air pollution data was required so that the eYcacy of the
Clean Air Act could be eVectively assessed.7 The National Survey of Air
Pollution would be managed and coordinated by the government’s own
Warren Spring Laboratory, the research centre for the Department of
6
See Barry (2001: 75–8) and his discussion of the politics surrounding the European Union’s
attempts to monitor the quality of bathing water.
7
For further information and an analysis of the National Survey of Air Pollution, see Hall
et al. (1975).
Trade and Industry, which specialized in monitoring industrial air pollution.

With its collection of air pollution experts and laboratory technicians, it was
decided that the Warren Spring Laboratory would provide an ideal locus in
and through which local data collection methods could be harmonized and
recorded environmental data made compatible and comparable.
Through the use of careful guidelines and on-site training, the Warren
Spring Laboratory imposed national standards of practice and measurement
on existing air monitoring stations. Previously there had been no strict
guidelines either on the best techniques to use for monitoring air pollution,
or on the amount of air monitoring that would constitute a signiWcant
sample.8 In order to monitor national air, therefore, the Warren Spring
Laboratory oVered theoretical and practical advice to local laboratories
and monitoring stations. Central to this advice was the creation of a standard
method of air monitoring, which could be replicated accurately throughout
the country. In this context, the Warren Spring Laboratory (1972: 4–5) stated
that in order to be nationally recognized ‘a sample of air [must be] drawn
over a twenty-four hour period through a Wlter paper and the staining
measured on a reXectometer’. This standard technique, supported by nation-
ally supplied technological apparatus, was used to determine what become
known as the ‘British Standard Measure of Air Pollution’ (measured in an
equivalent amount of pollution in a cubic metre of air). In essence, the
Warren Spring Laboratory had created a new chemistry for the study of
British air quality. With this national standard in place, the Warren Spring
Laboratory was able to abstract environmental data from local centres to
produce the Wrst air-based environmental survey of the British atmosphere.
This survey was based upon 552 sampling sites and stations located through-
out the UK, with 352 in towns and conurbations and 200 in rural areas. The
data collected from these sites were collated on the basis of a regional register
(corresponding to the Registrar General’s Statistical Regions) and were
stored on a computer tape at the Warren Spring Laboratory. While the
partiality of the spatial sampling associated with the survey obviously
meant that it did not represent an exact replication of the British atmosphere,
it did instigate a system whereby the state could abstract environmental data
on a territorial basis. The territorial basis of this abstraction process enabled
the state to identify problem regions in terms of persistent forms of air
pollution and, at a collective level, to present an overview of the UK’s own
performance in reducing air pollution to other world states. For the Wrst
time, a centrally harmonized network, or grid of technology, was providing
a frame through which the state could understand its atmosphere.
8
See the by-law made under the 1926 Public Health (Smoke Abatement) Act by Bradford
City Council (London County Council 1925–6). This by-law was a local attempt to try and
produce a quantitative measure of air pollution based partly on the duration of the pollution
event. It was enacted because of the lack of national guidance on air pollution measurement.
Following the purported success of the Warren Spring Laboratory’s sur-

vey of national air quality, the government wanted to develop an integrated
network of environmental monitoring, which could cover all aspects of
national nature. Utilizing the Warren Spring model, in 1974 the government
began to develop a national environmental monitoring network, coordinated
through a series of lead laboratories, which could give expert advice on
equipment and methods and act as collection points for environmental
data storage. In this context, it was decided that the Warren Spring Labora-
tory would retain control over air pollution monitoring; that the govern-
ment’s Water Pollution Research Laboratory should be responsible for
freshwater pollution; the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries
would manage the monitoring of the marine environment; and land pollution
would be overseen by the DoE’s Waste Disposal Division (DoE 1974: 15). In
relation to the monitoring of water pollution, scientiWc practices were har-
monized around the analytical methods that had already been prescribed by
the Committee of the Director General of Water Engineering. It was further
decided that this complex architecture of lead laboratories would be overseen
by designated government management groups—one each for air, fresh-
water, marine, and land-based pollution—which would all feed their respect-
ive streams of environmental data to a National Focal Point, the Central
Unit on Environmental Pollution at the DoE (see Figure 6.1).
The complex hierarchy of monitoring stations, lead laboratories, and
pollution management groups, which emerged in the UK during the
mid-1970s, collectively represented a desire on behalf of the state to have
continuous surveillance over all facets of the nation’s biosphere. This govern-
mental strategy is reminiscent of what Andrew Barry (2001) has described as
the creation of a ‘technological zone’, within which technological practice is
made to correspond to political boundaries. The idea of a technological
zone serves to remind us that the political utility of technology to the state is
often dependent on the ability of technological devices and practices to be
eVectively territorialized. Consequently, while it was, and continues to be,
important for the UK to produce data on environmental change that is
transferable to other, supranational monitoring programmes, it is the
nation-state that continues to provide the technological and territorial
frame within which nature is conceived of and delimited. In this instance,
national nature is the product of a form of ‘smooth technological zone’,
within which divergences in measurement techniques are reduced, and a
more calculable set of sub-national (both local and regional) spaces emerge
(Barry 2001: 43). The consequences of this technologically harmonized and
nationally monitored system for the ways in which nature is understood and
acted on by the state are profound. The territorial harmonization of technol-
ogy is a prerequisite for the centralization of comparable social and ecological
data. Fundamentally, the centralization of a national nature from a series of
local ecological circumstances tends to produce a nature that is inherently
Fig. 6.1. Integrated environmental monitoring in the UK.
simpliWed (Scott 1998: 30–3). This simpliWed nature is stripped of its eco-
logical frame of reference to produce a Wgure, or datum, which can be entered
into a spreadsheet cell or a statistical equation. The simpliWcation of nature,
which national monitoring systems tends to produce, is captured well in the
distinction that the DoE makes between environmental monitoring and
environmental research:
The term ‘monitoring’ is used both in a wide and a narrow sense. In the wider usage it
means the repeated measurement of pollutant concentrations so that we can follow
changes over a period of time. In its more restricted sense the term is applied to the
regular measurement of pollutant levels, in relation to some standard, or in order to
judge the eVectiveness of a system of regulation and control. In neither case does it
encompass short-term studies which aim to identify relationships or causal factors:
such studies are a kind of research. (DoE 1974: 3)
The distinction established here, between monitoring as the repeated
measurement of one form of environmental output and research as an exercise
in placing an environmental output within a broader ecological frame of
reference, is critical. It serves to remind us that to talk of a nationally monitored

nature should not be confused with comprehending the national environment
as a complex and relational ecological system. Instead, national nature is
better thought of as a series of ecological silos (concerned with air, freshwater,
marine environments, and land), which are monitored in isolation from each
other. Of course, this simpliWcation of nature into discrete silos is supported by
the strong institutional barriers created by the British government’s lead
laboratories and management groups. Such institutional barriers maximize
the attention and specialist analysis that can be brought to bear on the
environmental data produced, but tend to inhibit any analysis of the relational
ecologies between diVerent environmental systems. The point is that while
technologies provide humanity with the capacity to know nature in a range of
new and dynamic ways, the state’s co-option of territorialized technologies as a
means for the centralization of ecological knowledge fundamentally alters the
ways in which technology can represent the natural world.
Atmospheric simulations: sampling national nature in real time

During the late 1980s and early 1990s a series of environmental events and
technological innovations occurred that were to have a signiWcant bearing on
the form and function of Britain’s newly centralized environmental monitor-
ing network. While these events aVected all aspects of the monitoring net-
work, in this section we examine in greater detail the monitoring of the
British atmosphere. During the late 1980s, prominent environmental cam-
paign groups such as Friends of the Earth started to question both the extent
and eVectiveness of the current environmental monitoring network (Barry
2001: 157). Friends of the Earth were concerned by the fact that Britain’s
environmental monitoring capacity was much smaller than that of other
European countries, like France and West Germany, and that where it did
exist it was proving ineVective. By the early 1990s, further pressure had been
placed on the network. Following severe smog pollution in London during
the winter of 1991, the government’s own Chief Scientist to the DoE, D. J
Fisk, questioned whether the estimated £5 million, which was being spent
annually on environmental monitoring in the UK, was producing results that
justiWed such a substantial investment.9
9
See the Independent on Sunday (17 October 1993) and Barry (2001: 157). In addition to
questions being asked about the value of environmental monitoring in the UK, by 1992 the
British government had agreed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This
agreement, which has subsequently been reWned by the Kyoto Protocol, commits the British
government not only to reducing the UK’s production of greenhouse gases (and in particular
carbon dioxide), but also requires that the UK demonstrates this action through internationally
validated environmental monitoring systems. Although the Kyoto agreement has not been
ratiWed by all signatories, the UK government is committed to reducing its level of greenhouse
gas emissions by 12.5% below 1990 levels by 2008. In addition, the UK has voluntarily commit-
ted itself to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide by 20% by 2010 (see DEFRA 2000).
In response to these concerns, the 1990s witnessed the proliferation of

new series of smart atmospheric technologies, which could provide regular,
real-time readings of air quality. These new automated technologies were
used to support and supersede the passive monitoring devices, which had
been used as part of the Warren Spring Laboratory’s surveillance network.
While these new automated technologies had been developed and implemen-
ted as early as 1972, it was the 1990s that really saw the spatial proliferation
of automated atmospheric surveillance. The Warren Spring Laboratory’s
network was consequently supplemented by the establishment of 116 auto-
matic monitoring systems (collectively these are referred to as the Automatic
Urban and Rural Network—or AURN) (see Figure 6.2). These automatic
monitoring stations are usually located in self-contained and air-conditioned
units, and are Wtted with standardized monitoring equipment that can detect
a range of diVerent air-based chemicals. While administered locally, these
monitoring stations have been established using central government stand-
ards to ensure that comparable data are produced on an hourly basis.10
Apart from maintenance, these stations are essentially people-free laborator-
ies, sampling and analysing environmental data in real time and feeding
results straight back to central government computers. Through such tech-
nological apparatuses, the state is now no longer dependent on local mon-
itoring practices or laboratory techniques—each station is eVectively a mini-
Warren Spring!11
Despite the changing emphasis on pollution monitoring types and the use
of newly automated sampling sites, what is most striking about the British
government’s current air monitoring system are the ways in which environ-
mental data are gathered, analysed, and used. There are now two main
destinations for information on British air pollution–the national Air Quality
Archive and the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory. The Air Qual-
ity Archive receives digitized data in real time, directly from the automated
air-monitoring stations located throughout the UK. These data are then
assembled to produce an electronic archive of regional air quality, which
can be accessed via a website.12 Government oYcials or concerned citizens
can use this website to look at current air quality conditions or historical
patterns of air quality in a given area. If the Air Quality Archive provides
governments with tables of temporally arranged raw data collected from
10
All the government’s automated, non-automated, and carbon dioxide monitoring networks
have either been designed, operated, or quality assured by NETCEN (the National Environment
Technology Centre).
11
Supporting the automated data collection facilities are 1500 non-automatic centres, which
collect air quality data on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. With regard to carbon dioxide, there
are a staggering 723 sites—ranging from factories to government-run laboratories dedicated to
collecting data on carbon dioxide emissions.
12
See <http://www.airquality.co.uk/archive/index.php> accessed 12 September 2005.
Fig. 6.2 Automated air quality monitoring sites in the UK, March 2004.
Source: Reproduced with the permission of the Ordnance Survey. ! Crown Copyright.
All rights reserved. Licence number 100008429.
monitoring stations, the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory

(NAEI) provides statistical analyses of where pollution is coming from and
how it is subsequently being distributed throughout the country. So while
the Air Quality Archive centralizes atmospheric data, the NAEI territorial-
izes these data. The use of archives and inventories for collecting and
storing environmental data in Britain is an interesting governmental tech-
nology. It is interesting because it not only serves to provide an order
to environmental history, but also facilitates the creation of an absolute,

authoritative knowledge base upon which political action regarding the
atmosphere can be justiWed.13
The production of environmental data in a digital form within automated
monitoring sites has further implications for how those data can be used. At
one level, the transformation of environmental data from stained Wlter papers
to digital bits serves to remove the act of environmental assessment from
human eyes and visual veriWcation. The digitization of environmental mon-
itoring also serves to make data far more mobile and able to be rapidly moved
between compatible computer-based devices and software. Suddenly it is not
simply the technologies of environmental monitoring that are vital for how
nature is (re)constructed, but the proliferated technologies of communication
and electronic connection. As Baudrillard (1994) realized, by relocating the
construction of nature from the laboratory to the miniaturized networks of
globally compatible silicon chips and circuit boards, the potential for the
continual simulation of the natural world, in isolation from its direct eco-
logical settings, is greatly enhanced. It is in this context that the Air Quality
Archive and the NAEI have facilitated the accelerated production of an
increasingly complex pattern of ecological simulation in the UK.
This process of simulation is particularly evident in the operational remit of
the NAEI. Using the digitized environmental data produced within Britain’s
extensive environmental monitoring network, NAEI statisticians can estimate
the likely sources of air pollution and plot spatial maps of its likely territorial
distribution, based upon complex modelling procedures (DEFRA 2001).
The complex synthesis of digitized emissions data, with a cross-section of
other data on population and industrial fuel consumption, have enabled the
NAEI to produce ever more elaborate simulations of the British atmosphere.
What is interesting, on spatial terms at least, is that while the data and
statistical programs that are used to generate new representations of envir-
onmental pollution in the UK are cyberspatial in form, they continue to be
presented in a distinctly territorial format (DEFRA 2001). Consequently, the
NAEI converts nodal data into a territorial grid that provides national
gradients of air pollution. It routinely produces maps of the distribution of
benzene, carbon dioxide, ammonia, arsenic, lead, and sulphur dioxide, which
are framed by a national grid. The point here is that despite the a-territorial
nature of the digitized and synthesized natures produced by the NAEI and
the Air Quality Archive, both institutions continue to simulate nature
around national space. This process is akin to what Luke (1995) has
described as the construction of ‘cybernations’—or nation-states which,
while freed from their territorial moorings in Wrst and second nature,
continue to express their (telemetric) territorial imaginary through various
13
See here in particular Foucault (2003: 143). Here Foucault reXects upon the birth and
proliferation of catalogues, libraries, and archives at the end of the ‘classical age’ and the violence
that these technologies cause towards alternative ways of telling history.
expressions of ‘third natures’. Here we understand third natures (in contrast

to Wrst and second natures) as those forms of nature that have become
dislocated from the direct ecologies and human actions that produce them,
and reside within the total simulations of cyberspace. The NAEI can now
produce multiple versions and copies of a national (third) nature which,
while having no original form, can be used to guide state policies or relayed
to other international political authorities who continue to audit Britain’s
environmental performance. The ‘automatic production of space’ instigated
by the NAEI is seeing human beings (whether in the form of atmospheric
scientists or laboratory technicians) being removed from the process by
which nature is monitored.14 This of course has two implications: Wrst, it
represents the ultimate standardization of state-based environmental data—
within which the capacity for human error and interpretation is greatly
diminished; secondly, however, it represents a new degree of abstraction of
nature from human experience, as social understandings of nature are in-
creasingly bounded up with and mediated through a series of mysterious
computer codes and software packages.
As we have witnessed in other chapters, the story of environmental mon-
itoring in the UK is essentially a story of the struggles to frame a particularly
national vision of nature. This struggle, through the heterogeneous relations
of state laboratories, scientiWc techniques, computer programs, and statis-
tical procedures, illustrates again that the production of state nature is not
simply a deliberative act of sovereign power on behalf of the state, but a
constant struggle within which the ability to construct and reconstruct nature
is constantly changing. From the British state’s early use of a fragmented
network of local monitoring equipment in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries to its advanced statistical emulations of national nature
in the twenty-Wrst century, its ability to construct and intervene in nature has
been critically inXuenced by the technologies it has had at its disposal. The
shifting political rationale, from the government of the socio-environmental
conditions of the nineteenth-century city to the internationalist environmen-
tal governmentalities of the contemporary era, should not simply be inter-
preted as a product of changing political ideology, but of changing political
technology. This is what Andrew Barry (2001: 2) means when he recognizes
that ‘a technological society is a society which takes technical change to be
the model for political intervention’.
In defence of human nature: ‘dark trends’ in the US

Biotechnology Industry Organization
If the case of environmental monitoring in the UK illustrates the diVerent
ways in which the state can co-opt laboratory spaces and practices, the
14
We take the idea of the automatic production of space from Thrift and French (2003).
second set of state–laboratory relations we want to consider in this chapter

reveals how scientiWc procedures can often challenge the political and moral
authority of the state over nature. Our story begins on the 22 July 2003 with a
seemingly innocuous Appropriations Bill (HR 2799) being considered by the
US Congress.15 The Appropriations Bill was concerned with the Xow of
federal funding to key state agencies and was passing relatively smoothly
until Congressman Dave Weldon, from Florida, took the Xoor. Congress-
man Weldon’s intervention set in motion a complex maelstrom of political
antagonisms involving key agencies of the US government, the laboratory
practices of bio-scientists, the White House, moral debates concerning
human nature, and the powerful biotechnology industry. We argue that
these debates—focusing as they do on complex legal and ethical debates
concerning artiWcial interventions within human nature—reXect an increas-
ingly prominent Wn de siècle entanglement of states and natures.
State, property, and microbiology: human cloning

and the US Patent and Trademark OYce
In order to understand the signiWcance of Dave Weldon’s intervention within
this Commerce and State Appropriations Bill, it is important to reXect upon
his long history of political opposition to the sciences and laboratory prac-
tices associated with human cloning. Dr David Weldon is a trained physician
who, along with other prominent Republicans, has fought a long political
battle against scientiWc developments in the Weld of human cloning
research.16 This struggle culminated in 2001 in the Weldon–Stupak Bill
(HR 534) to ban all forms of human cloning in the US.17 As the Executive
OYce of the President (2003) stated, the fundamental aim of this bill was to
‘protect human life as the frontiers of science expanded’. While the bill has
passed through the House of Representatives twice (in both 2001 and 2003),
it has so far failed to gain the necessary support to pass through Senate and
become law. It was in the context of the failed Weldon–Stupak Bill that
Congressman Weldon used the Commerce and State Appropriations Bill of
22 July 2003 to pursue his concerns regarding human cloning.
When Congressman Weldon took the Xoor on 22 July 2003, he did so to
propose what is known as a limitation amendment.18 Weldon’s limitation
amendment was addressed speciWcally at the US Patent and Trademark
OYce, just one of the many state agencies whose funding was encompassed
15
HR 2799, the Commerce and State Appropriations Bill, FY 2004.
16
For an intriguing analysis of the socio-cultural and political origins of the anti-abortion and
anti-cloning movement in middle America, see Franks (2004).
17
HR 534, the Human Cloning Prohibition Bill 2001 and 2003.
18
See National Right to Life ‘Congress Bans Patents on Human Embryos—NRLC-backed
Weldon Amendment survives BIO Attacks’, at <http://www.nrlc.org/killing_emryos/index.html>
accessed 22 November 2004.
in the Commerce and State Appropriations Bills. The proposed amendment

read: ‘none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this act
may be used to issue patents on claims directed to or encompassing a human
organism’.19 Essentially this amendment sought to restrict the viability of
human cloning by the back door. By denying the biotechnology industry the
ability to patent tissues and organisms developed during the process of
human cloning, Weldon and his supporters hoped to remove the Wnancial
incentives associated with human cloning. This initial attempt to create what
would have eVectively been a de facto ban on human cloning—or at least a
severe restriction on companies’ ability to carry out human cloning—
appeared to catch the US biotechnology industry by surprise. The biotech-
nology sector did, however, eventually respond to the proposed amendment
through the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO).20 The ensuing
debate between BIO and the anti-human-cloning lobby raised a series of
crucial questions regarding the role of the state as the establisher and pro-
tector of property rights, the regulator of technological development, and the
moral arbiter within discussions of human rights and natural law.
As we saw in Chapter 4, the state’s role within the management of property
relations has ensured that throughout recent history it has played a crucial
role in regulating the spatial interactions between society and nature. The
debates over human cloning instigated by the Weldon amendment caused the
relationship between property, nature, and the state to be reconsidered; this
time not in the spatial context of land, but in the context of the spaces and
products of laboratories. The link between human cloning, the Weldon
amendment, and proprietary relations stems from the fact that the US Patent
and Trademark OYce—whose funding and activities were covered by the
Commerce and State Appropriations Bill—is the government agency with
responsibility for granting patent rights to individuals and companies
throughout the US. Of course the essential function of a patent is to establish
a system of ownership and concomitant property rights over a process,
device, or object. The establishment of such a system of ownership, then,
ensures that whenever a process, device, or object is reproduced the patent
owner is legally entitled to some form of remuneration for the use of what is
essentially their property. As we shall see, however, recent advancements in
the science of human cloning have made the nature of this patented property
relation legally and morally problematic.
Before exploring the precise implications of the Weldon limitation amend-
ment on state–nature relations in the US and the broader human cloning
debate, it is important to establish a clear understanding of cloning science
19
HR 2799, op. cit.; see also National Right to Life, op cit.
20
Letter dated 11 September 2003 from BIO President Carl. B Feldbaum to C. W. Young,
Chairman, Committee on Appropriations, at <http://www.nrlc.org/Killing_Embryos/
Human_Patenting/index.html> accessed 21 June 2006.
and its history. The term ‘clone’ was Wrst coined in 1963 by J.B.S. Haldane21
to refer to any form of direct biological/genetic copy of a plant, animal, or
organism. Following signiWcant advances in genetic science and biotechno-
logical techniques during the 1970s and 1980s, a range of diVerent organisms
and animals have now been cloned. Perhaps the most celebrated events were
the cloning of cattle in the mid-1980s by Danish scientist Steen Willadsen and
the cloning of Dolly the sheep at the Roslyn Institute in Scotland in 1996.
While the ethics of animal cloning were a matter of concern for many
governments, it was only when the prospect of human cloning became a
realistic scientiWc goal that state intervention within the cloning debate
became prominent on the political agenda. Concerns over the moral impli-
cations of human cloning have been evident ever since the earliest develop-
ments in gene science made the prospect of cloning a human a distant, but
nevertheless plausible, possibility.22 It was not, however, until the mid-to-late
1990s, as species similar in their genetic make-up to humans (like rhesus
monkeys) were cloned, that states Wrst took oYcial measures to regulate and
control human cloning within their borders. The gradual response of states
to the perceived ethical threat of human cloning reXects a broader historical
struggle between governments and experimental science described by Bruno
Latour (1993: 15–32). According to Latour, the establishment of the modern
laboratory in the seventeenth century represented the creation of new centres
of truth and power lying beyond the formal apparatus of the state (see also
Shapin and SchaVer 1985). As arenas of scientiWc, not political, consensus,
laboratories have consistently challenged the power of the state and facili-
tated the production of a range of ‘fabricated objects’ over which states have
had to struggle to establish ordered rule (Latour 1993: 21). It is now clear that
with advances in the technologies and procedures of bioscience laboratories,
cloned material is rapidly becoming the most diYcult fabricated object to
govern in the contemporary world. In the context of the emerging possibility
of human cloning, it remains unclear what sort of ethical position and
political stance states should take on these issues. Consequently, following
the advice of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, President Bill
Clinton ordered a Wve-year moratorium in 1997, stopping the supply of
federal funding to any form of human cloning research. The British govern-
ment has, however, adopted a more moderate position, allowing, for
example, the Wrst patent to be granted to the Geron Corporation for a cloned
‘early-stage’ human embryo in 2000.
In many ways the dilemmas facing modern states concerning the complex
morality of human cloning reXect a new front that has been emerging more
21
In a speech given in 1963, entitled ‘Biological possibilities for the human species of the next
ten-thousand years’.
22
See in particular here David Rorvik’s book, In His Image: The Cloning of a Man (1978).
This book sparked a widespread international debate about the rights and wrongs of human
cloning.
generally between society and nature. The political signiWcance of this new
front has been expressed most poignantly in the publication of Bill McKib-
ben’s book Enough: Genetic Engineering and the End of Human Nature
(2004). The importance of this book lies not so much in what it says but
more in what it represents. Fifteen years before its publication McKibben
wrote a highly inXuential book entitled The End of Nature (1989). At the
beginning of his contemporary critical analysis of genetic science, McKibben
compares the two books:
Fifteen years ago I wrote a book called The End of Nature. It dealt with the ways that
one set of technologies—those that burn fossil fuels—were leading us into a new
dangerous, and impoverished relationship with the planet we’d been born into. In
a sense, this book follows from that one. It too posits that we stand at a threshold: if
we aggressively pursue any or all of several new technologies now before us, we may alter
our relationship not with the rest of nature but with ourselves. (McKibben 2004: ix)
McKibben’s two books reXect a shift from politico-ethical concerns with

transformations of nature in the form of the physical environment to the
transformation of nature in the form of the human self and body. The human
body occupies a peculiar position within discussions of the politics of socio-
natural relations (Martin 1998). At one and the same time the body, from the
beating of the heart to its broader metabolic systems, is all nature—that is,
bodily functions are not things that we consciously control. Simultaneously,
the body is the epicenter of the social, the Xeshy boundaries that mark human
beings oV from the external realms of nature.23 It is, we argue, the fact that
the human body is both a constant reminder of our inherent connection with
nature, and our most immediate point of reference for deWning our human-
ness and diVerence from other facets of nature, that lies at the very heart of
states’ contemporary moral uncertainties concerning the science of human
cloning.
The state has, of course, been instrumental in developing and implement-
ing large-scale and systematic forms of medical intervention within human
bodies. The medical intervention of states within bodies started on a large
scale with national programmes of immunization delivered through schools
and health clinics, and continues today through the state provision of
numerous prescription drugs to assist with human fertility or to regulate a
range of diVerent illnesses. At one level, state-sponsored medical prorgammes
of immunization can be interpreted as a territorial strategy—focusing on the
body—that seeks to mark out the realms of nature and humanity. The state-
sponsored technological intervention of medical sciences in the human body
(through drugs or more overt technological apparatuses like pacemakers
and cochlea implants) is not, however, necessarily a sinister, politically
23
For more on the cultural and scientiWc constructions of bodies as social entities, see the
excellent work of Emily Martin (1991, 1992).
orchestrated invasion of human biological space. Instead, it can be argued

that the state-sponsored technologies of the body provide an ever-expanding
set of technological contexts for the proliferation of cyborg forms. As Har-
away (2004a) illustrates in her extensive writings, the Wgure of the cyborg—as
a hybrid of cybernetic technology and living organism—reasserts the insol-
uble points of connection that make conceptualization of society and nature,
or human and non-human, as separate entities increasingly implausible. To
others, however, human cloning and related forms of genetic science involve
an intervention within human nature that is of an altogether diVerent moral
magnitude from that found in the socio-technological accoutrement of the
cyborg. According to Habermas (2003: 17), then, contemporary debates
concerning human cloning are, by deWnition, debates concerning the ability
of humans not only to regulate their health and enhance their own bodily
functions, but also to make a conscious intervention in the evolution of the
human species.
Drawing on the case of Germany, Habermas explains the ways in which
the conscious control of human evolution oVered within cloning science
presents certain foundational challenges to the operations of the state. He
describes the struggles that have been waged by the German Science Foun-
dation to repeal current legislation that prevents the scientiWc manipulation
of embryos. The German Science Foundation argues that such legislation is
in contravention of the state’s duty to foster and encourage scientiWc research
that could greatly enhance human health and development (Haberms 2003:
17). Habermas points out, however, that to allow human intervention within
embryonic development (and even inception) could compromise the state’s
duty to secure freedom and equality among its subjects. In this context, then,
it appears that selective human cloning and gene engineering could have two
critical consequences for political communities: Wrst, knowledge of their
hereditary conditioning could restrict the types of social choices and ways
of life people decide to lead; and secondly, it seems likely that genetic
enhancement (at least initially) will be limited to certain aZuent social
groups, leading to the continued reproduction of social disadvantage—this
time not through Wnancial inheritance but through enhanced mental capaci-
ties and bodily abilities. Now at one level, at least, such consequences
illustrate the importance of some form of state intervention within the Weld
of human cloning and human genetic engineering. But at another level, were
the state to support cloning, it also brings into the question the historical
function of the state as a collective institution at least notionally devoted to
securing the freedom and equality of all its citizens. In this context, it appears
that state intervention in cloning could be necessary in order to protect
human freedoms, but in a way that Rousseau could never have imagined to
have been necessary.
Returning to Weldon’s controversial amendment, it is important to
emphasize that this Bill was not a response to the potential emergence of
genetically synthesized super-humans but to other developments within what

is commonly referred to as the Weld of ‘therapeutic cloning’. The notion
of therapeutic cloning is perhaps best understood in relationship to its
counterpart, ‘reproductive cloning’. If reproductive cloning involves the
production of a fully Xedged human being, therapeutic cloning involves
the production of cloned organic eggs/embryos so that valuable stem cells
can be removed and used for medical research and treatment. Stem cells are
essentially very-early-stage cells, which have the capacity to be converted into
other more specialist cell types. Because genetically compatible stem cells can
be converted into a host of other cell types, they oVer a great potential for
medical advances in the treatment of conditions as wide ranging as diabetes,
brain diseases, and even cancer. The distinction that is routinely made by
bio-scientists between reproductive cloning (as bad), and therapeutic cloning
(as good), is for many deeply problematic. Writing for USA Today, Kenneth
L. Connor, president of the Family Research Council, explains the problem:
The distinction between ‘reproductive’ and ‘therapeutic’ cloning is utterly meaning-
less and intended to confuse American people. Cloning results in the creation of an
embryo, a new human being. This is a scientiWc, biological fact. The only distinction
here regards the intent of the researcher. The intention of therapeutic cloning is to
create human embryos for the purpose of medical experimentation and, ultimately, to
kill them. (Connor 2002)
In this context, although the Weldon amendment can be (and perhaps should
be) interpreted as part of a broad attack on the morality of cloning, as a
political act, it was designed at least in the short term to prevent the prolif-
eration of therapeutic forms of cloning.
It is in relation to discussions of therapeutic modes of cloning that the
contemporary cloning debate in the US has become embroiled in the longer-
established and divisive debates surrounding abortion (Franks 2004: ch. 9).
The links between therapeutic cloning and the abortion debate in the US can
be clearly discerned in Kenneth L. Connor’s comments. The anti-abortion
lobby in the US (as elsewhere in the world) is opposed to abortion because it
argues that human life begins after conception and not after birth. In this
context, the protection of the unborn pursued by the anti-abortion move-
ment has clear implications within the Weld of therapeutic cloning. Just as the
anti-abortion movement has protested against the termination of ‘unwanted’
foetuses, it is now becoming actively engaged in preventing what it describes
as the ‘killing’ of early-stage foetuses for medical research. At the centre of
this debate is the distinction between a cloned ‘egg’ and a cloned ‘embryo’.
According to many working within the biotechnology industry, a cloned egg
is a legitimate object for scientiWc research and its legitimacy stems from the
fact that it is not yet human. For many in the now heavily intertwined anti-
cloning and anti-abortion lobby, any egg or tissue with the capacity to
produce human life is an embryo, and as such is not an object for any form
of scientiWc exploitation. The debate surrounding therapeutic cloning is con-

sequently important because it not only addresses the rights and wrongs of
terminating a pregnancy (as in the abortion debate—and the distinction
between an embryo and a baby), but it also delves more deeply into the nature
of human existence. The question of when an egg stops being an egg (and
presumably part of nature), and becomes an embryonic human (arguably part
of humanity), represents a critical biological and ideological moment—a
moment upon which much of our modern world is structured, a moment
when the division between nature and humanity takes eVect.
The precise role that the state should play in arbitrating this contested
time-line, between nature (egg) and humanity (embryo), is a highly divisive
area of contemporary socio-technological debate. At one level, many on the
political right in the US argue that the state should establish a clear sense of
moral leadership on the issue—defending the rights of embryonic humanity
and by deWnition guarding the socio-ecological boundary between civic
society and nature, or the citizen subject and the non-human world.24 Others,
largely within the strong biotechnology lobby, have argued that the state’s
role in cloning should be to protect the freedoms associated with science and
economic activity and to support cloning research in order to bolster the
American economy. As with the issue of abortion,25 it is clear that while
those who hold executive power (particularly in the White House)26 may be
opposed to therapeutic cloning, the biotechnology industry has been able to
gain support from other parts of the state administration (particularly the
Senate). While it still remains unclear precisely what, or how much, the US
state can regulate cloning science, one thing that is clear is that the politics of
microbiological nature invoked by cloning is a politics that cannot help but
be about the state.
Patenting (almost) anything under the sun

The main opposition to the Welden amendment was, as we have already
mentioned, coordinated through the powerful BIO. When we look more
closely at the concerns and arguments developed by the BIO, it becomes
clear why the debate over therapeutic cloning is one that reaches to the heart
of the modern state. The BIO was established in 1993 in order to provide
24
See here Whatmore’s (2002: ch. 7) analysis of the construction of human ethical commu-
nities (often within the state) and the associated exclusion of nature from designation as an
‘ethical subject’.
25
See here President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Personhood Proclamation’ (made on 14 January
1988) in which he opposed abortion and discussed the rights of all humans to life. This
proclamation reXected the President’s own inability to alter the legislation governing abortion,
but his desire nevertheless to provide moral leadership on the issue.
26
See here the Executive OYce of the President’s ‘Statement of Administration Policy’ (26
February 2003) in which President Bush oVers his support for the Weldon–Stupak Bill (HR 534).
a political voice for both small and large biotechnology outlets. It now
represents some 503 biotechnology Wrms and has brought the activities of
the Industrial Biotechnology Association and the Association of Biotechnol-
ogy Companies together within one organizational framework.27 Its stated
role is to work with/lobby Congress and the Food and Drug Administration
on issues relating to the pricing of new drugs and the regulation of biotech
research, and to help to shape public opinion on key bio-ethical issues.28 In
the context of this stated mandate, on 11 September 2003, Carl B. Feldbaum,
President of the BIO, wrote to the Chairman of the Committee on Appro-
priations to challenge Weldon’s proposed amendment to House Resolution
2799. In this letter, Feldbaum talked about the importance of preserving the
economic dynamism of America’s biotechnology industry and complained
about the wording of the Welden amendment. According to Feldbaum, the
failure of the Weldon amendment to deWne what it meant by the term ‘human
organism’ (a deWnitional conundrum that we have already seen lies at the
heart of the modern division of society and nature) could unnecessarily
jeopardize future medical research and development.29
To understand the concerns of BIO with the Weldon amendment more
fully, it is important to reXect upon the role and functions of patents.
According to Whatmore (2002: 60–1), patents are interesting ‘property
devices’, which are becoming increasingly implicated in the problematic
regulation of the boundary between the social and natural worlds. The
BIO actually provides a useful deWnition of precisely what a patent is:
A patent is an agreement between the government and an inventor whereby, in
exchange for the inventor’s complete disclosure of the invention, the government
gives the inventor the right to exclude others from using the invention in certain ways.
Note that the property right provided in a patent is quite diVerent from what we
typically think of when we own property. What is granted is not the right to make,
use, oVer for sale, sell or import, but the right to stop others from making, using,
oVering for sale, selling or importing the invention.30
As this deWnition reveals, patents are a form of proprietorial contract be-
tween innovators and the state. Unlike the other proprietorial functions of
the state, however, patents are not concerned with the territorial defence of
spatial forms, but with the protection of intellectual rights. The patent as a
property device or technology is important because it embodies a form of
state intervention that enables economic, technological, and scientiWc innov-
ations to Xourish. The point is that according to classical economic theory, in
order for the creative energies of a free-market economic system to be
realized, the freedom of the market has to be curtailed. The curtailing of
27
See BIO’s website at <http://www.bio.org/index.asp?stay¼yes> accessed 2 December 2005.
28
Ibid.
29
Letter dated 11 September 2003 from BIO President Carl B. Feldbaum, op. cit.
30
BIO at <http://www.bio.org/ip/primer/patent.asp> accessed 14 December 2004.
economic freedoms is perhaps most clearly expressed in the formation of

property, understood as a spatial entity or body of knowledge over which an
individual can claim some form of ownership and expect to receive economic
remuneration for its use. This is precisely why patents are so important to the
US biotechnology industry. Without a legal device for protecting the know-
ledge rights surrounding a particular scientiWc product or development, the
economic incentive for innovation is removed (this is often referred to as
‘the incentive to discover’). While protecting the economic rights of patent-
holders, however, the patent system also allows for the free Xow of informa-
tion concerning the patent in order to assist in the process of continued
scientiWc and technological advancement and research. It is in this context
that patents lie at the heart of the free-market liberal ideals of American
society. Given the centrality of patents to America’s economic way of life, it
should perhaps come as little surprise to Wnd the principles of patenting
ingrained within the state’s constitutional structure.31 Before the establish-
ment of a federal constitution, patent procedures existed in the laws of many
individual States. The federalized patent system is today predicated upon the
American constitution.32
The centrality of the patent system to the American way of life was
aYrmed in 1952 when the US Supreme Court declared that it was possible
to patent ‘anything under the sun made by man [sic]’.33 This regularly cited
mantra is important because it succinctly expresses what American law
designates a patentable object to be. While the notion of ‘everything under
the sun’ seems all-embracing, the caveat that patents should be ‘man-made’
provides an altogether more restrictive deWnition of what a patent is. To
clarify what is meant by the term ‘man-made’, the Supreme Court stipulated
that ‘any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of
matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent
therefore, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title’.34 By
establishing that only new or signiWcantly improved compositions of matter
can be legally patented, it becomes clear that under US law the products of
nature are beyond the realms of the patent, but it allows patents to be granted
on matter that has somehow been removed from nature and re-constituted
into a socially useful form. Since this critical legal statement of 1952, the
question of what is and what is not a product of nature has been at the centre
of the legal struggles over the patent system. In 1979, for example, the Court
31
BIO at <http://www.bio.org/ip/primer/patent.asp> accessed 14 December 2004.
32
Article 1, section 8, clause 8. This clause of the Constitution reads: ‘To promote the
progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the
exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries’ (quoted on the BIO wesbite at <http://
www.bio.org/ip/primer/patent.asp> accessed 14 December 2004).
33
This often-used quote is actually taken from the Committee Papers associated with the 1952
Patent Act.
34
Title 35 USC [United States Code] 101.
of Custom and Patent established that a biologically pure bacterial culture

was patentable because it was not naturally occurring.35 Then in 1980, the
landmark Diamond v. Chakrabarty case resulted in the US Supreme Court
pronouncing that genetically engineered bacteria could be legally patented.36
The Diamond v. Chakrabarty case was particularly signiWcant in the context
of contemporary biotechnological developments because it established for
the Wrst time that living things (albeit in this instance bacteria) could be
patented providing they had been modiWed from their natural form. Before
this case living entities were considered to be un-patentable because they were
direct products of nature.
While problematic and often contested, it is clear that in the US patents
were able to regulate the various legal, economic, and moral disputes sur-
rounding scientiWc discoveries from the 1950s onwards. The power of patents
to act as ordering devices for socio-economic and socio-ecological relations is
now becoming increasingly undermined by the hybrid ‘boundary objects’
being produced within modern biotechnology laboratories. In many ways
cloned stem cells embody classical boundary objects, marking as they do a
legitimate biotechnology invention for some, or the very beginning of human
life for others. The contemporary scientiWc capacity to produce (therapeut-
ically) cloned stem sells is challenging the conventional governing mechanism
that the US state has used to regulate its political economy and political
ecology. Historically, human cloning would have been negated by the fact
that as living beings humans are a part of nature. The relaxing of patenting
legislation during the 1970s and 1980s, to allow for plant and animal material
to be claimed as property, now means that the defence of the human as a
potential object of patenting is predicated on the fact that humans are not of
nature, but of society. The duplicitous use of ‘nature’ within patent law as
both the home of humankind and the antithesis of social forms is not
uncommon within legal discourse and practice.37
As Whatmore (2002: 97) points out, patents are essentially legal devices
devoted to conWguring relationships between inventors (subjects/people) and
objects (inventions). In this context, of course, patents are explicitly con-
cerned with the separating out of society (understood as the intellectual force
of inventiveness) and nature (designated as the inert surfaces upon which
inventions take place) (see also Strathern 1998). When the boundaries
between the intellectual subject and the object of property become blurred,
as they do in the case of cloned stem cells, the ordering capacity of patents
(and the state) is called into question. How, for instance, can a subject have
rights of use over an invented object if that invented object is actually
35
BIO website at <http://www.bio.org/ip/primer/patent.asp> accessed 14 December 2004.
36
Ibid.
37
For more on the changing use of discourses of nature within legal dispute see Delaney
(2002).
designated to be an embryonic subject, with the same inventive and emo-

tional capacities as the inventor? It is in the light of this question that we
begin to see that the problems of governing boundary objects like cloned
stem cells are not merely a product of the liminal qualities of the object itself,
but are also the result of the contradictions that such objects expose in the
bureaucratic heritage of states. The division of power within the US state
system between the executive (the White House), law-making (in Congress),
and law-enforcement (the Supreme Court) has made the regulation of stem
cell research diYcult. Consequently, while the White House and the House of
Representatives have consistently opposed therapeutic cloning (as in HR
534), the Senate has so far failed to validate related House Resolutions.
Other contradictions can be discerned in the constitution itself. Conse-
quently, while the constitution and its various interpretations within case
law support the patenting of living organic matter, some are already arguing
that any form of human cloning would be in contravention of the 13th
Amendment—prohibiting slavery (Weiss 2003: 4)!
The case of therapeutic cloning and patenting legislation in the US illus-
trates the challenges that often confront state systems when faced by new
laboratory-based interventions within the natural world. The control of
microbiological interventions within nature is not something that can simply
be achieved within liberal democracies by the arbitrary intervention of the
executive state. Instead, the regulation of bioscience is dependent upon the
precarious framing of micro-nature through a range of legal processes, moral
proclamations, and funding restrictions. The framing of micro-nature
through this heterogeneous ensemble of political devices, legal practices,
and institutional forms emphasizes the contingencies of state–nature rela-
tions and the constant strategic calculations that constitute and constantly
reconstitute this relationship. In relation to our story, the Weldon amend-
ment was eventually attached to the Appropriations Bill and took eVect on
24 January 2004. It eVectively prevents the US Patent and Trademark OYce
oVering patents on cloned stem cells. While oVering a temporary resolution
to this ongoing battle over microbiological nature in the US, limitation
amendments only apply to a single Wscal year, meaning that the BIO can
once again begin its campaign for stem cell cloning. This is sure to mean that
the political battle over human nature will continue in the US.38 What is also
clear is that this is a battle that will continue to be fought within the
bureaucracies and legal domains of the state. It is an inescapable moment
of state-nature!
38
George W. Bush has threatened to use his veto powers if Congress decides to support
embryonic stem cell research: see BBC News, ‘Bush would veto stem cell bill’, 20 May 2005 at
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4567253.stm> accessed 12 June 2006.
Conclusion
In this chapter we have considered the impacts that technology has had on
emerging forms of state–nature relations in the twentieth and twenty-Wrst
centuries. Within these explorations we have seen how, when territorially
marshalled, technological devices can greatly enhance a state’s ability to
monitor and control the natural world. In the case of environmental mon-
itoring in the UK, for example, we saw how the formation of new techno-
logical infrastructures has enabled government departments to become
increasingly plugged into their territorial natures. The use of technology as
an instrumental tool for state intervention in nature has created a new
capacity to produce knowledge about changes in the natural world. As part
of this process, however, the increasing use of digitized computer technolo-
gies and complex software codes within British environmental monitoring
appears to be heightening the potential for humans to become increasingly
isolated from the machinic processes by which ecological knowledge is now
created. In the second case study, we observed how technological develop-
ments—especially those associated with experimental science and private
laboratories—can challenge the authority of the state. In our discussions of
the emergence of therapeutic cloning in the US, it was possible to discern how
new technologies can produce hybrid objects—like a cloned human egg/
embryo—which destabilize the systems of socio-natural order through
which states govern. What perhaps interests us most about the case of
therapeutic cloning in the US is that the related focus on the relationship
between a fertilized egg and a human embryo arguably represents the most
important moment of all when it comes to socio-natural relations. The point
at which a fertilized egg stops being an egg and becomes an embryo is to some
the precise moment when humans cease to be a patentable part of nature
and become part of political society. What is signiWcant about this crucial
moment of socio-natural relations, in the context of this book, is that again it
appears to be the state that is called upon to arbitrate on the socio-economic
and ethical complexities of this situation.
While we have not explicitly developed the idea of a cyborg state—which
we mentioned at the opening of this chapter—within our discussions and
case studies, to us the idea of the cyborg state is an intriguing one. It is
intriguing at one level because of the ways it immediately draws attention to
the imbrications of technology and nature within the acts of governing. But
beyond this obvious association, the notion of the cyborg state also suggests
a series of fascinating real and metaphorical ways in which we can think
about the relationships between states, technology, and nature. For example,
can the idea contained within Haraway’s idea of a cyborg or cybernetic
command and control of biological processes be extended to include an
analysis of how states program nature within their laws, plans, and proclama-
tions? It is also important to consider whether the idea of a cyborg state could
be taken more literally. With emerging technological infrastructures dedi-

cated to monitoring and simulating the environment, are states not them-
selves becoming hard-wired into the natural world? The Wnal implication of
the idea of the cyborg state is an awareness of the hybrids and boundary
objects that state-sponsored technological interventions within nature are
promoting. As we saw in the case of therapeutic cloning in the US, there is a
real danger that the proliferation of new techno-natures could seriously
undermine the governing capacity of states and create a new series of regu-
latory conundrums.
7
Exploring Post-National Natures:

Nature in the Shadow of the State
From the beginning of this book we have consistently emphasized that

our multi-faceted understanding of states cannot be simplistically equated
with a nationally scaled and territorially bound institution. Despite this stated
aim, in many of the preceding chapters we have described a series of ways in
which state natures have been produced at a national level. Whether it has
been through water supply networks, national mapping and land-use surveys,
nationalized pollution monitoring networks, or nationwide judicial frame-
works, we have described how nature has been framed at a distinctly national
scale. While exploring the national framing of nature we have seen how the
national centralization of ecological knowledge and the territorial framing of
the natural world have transformed the social experience, understanding, and
ability to transform nature. A closer inspection of our descriptions of the
nationalization of nature within the modern state, however, revels that the
process of nationalization is never quite as national as it may seem. Attempts
to produce a national picture or vision of nature are always based upon more
localized practices and conventions than may be immediately apparent.
It is our contention that attempts to manage and regulate nature through
the multifarious processes of nationalization are best conceived of as the
unfulWlled desire of numerous state regimes. This statement has two impli-
cations. First, it indicates that nationally based strategies for the control and
regulation of nature are only one among a series of scales in and through
which states can potentially manage nature. Secondly, it suggests that states
could develop other (non-national) territorial strategies in their evolving
historical relationships with the natural world. This Wnal chapter is devoted
to exploring these alterative sites and moments of contemporary state–nature
relations. We begin by considering the rise of sustainable cities as alterative
(‘post-national’) territorial strategies in and through which states are
attempting to manage contemporary social relations with nature. As sub-
national, decentralized territorial units, sustainable cities provide an inter-
esting spatial and institutional perspective on contemporary manifestations
of state nature. Drawing on the example of Australia’s Sustainable Cities
Inquiry, we consider how states attempt to regulate nature through the
control and administration of urban space. In the Wnal part of the chapter
178 Exploring Post-National Natures
we move on to consider the emergence of global strategies of ecological

management. Exploring the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change and the associated Kyoto Protocol, we consider the role of
supra-national institutions like the United Nations and the Intergovernmen-
tal Panel on Climate Change in mediating humanity’s relationship with
planetary nature. Through our analysis of these diVerent forms of sub-
national, international, and global expressions of socio-environmental man-
agement, we claim that despite initial appearances, these strategies are
still deeply inXuenced and structured by (national) state power. We argue
that not only do such contemporary frames of socio-ecological interaction
reXect the continuing historical production of state nature, but they
are also characterized by an underlying and recalcitrant sense of nature as
a national entity.
Engineering nature through the city: Australia’s

Sustainable Cities Inquiry
Cities, natures, and states
In his book New State Spaces, Neil Brenner (2004) provides an intriguing
analysis of the spatial constitution of the modern state. He explores the
evolving geographies of state power in the contemporary era of globaliza-
tion. Echoing arguments that have already been rehearsed in this book (see
Chapters 2 and 6), Brenner discusses how the trans-national Xows associated
with globalization have been used as a basis upon which to question—and in
many cases to critically undermine—the purported spatial integrity and
power of the state. Interestingly, however, while Brenner does argue that
the state continues to play a crucial role in shaping modern political and
economic life, he does not base his argument wholly on an attack of theories
of globalization, but also on conceptualizations of the state itself. According
to Brenner, the globalization debate has only been able to bring in to
question the spatial prominence of the state because of prevailing under-
standings of the spatial parameters of the state, which are predicated upon a
‘static understanding of state territoriality as a Wxed, unchanging grid of
national borders’ (Brenner 2004: 70). It is in response to such antiquated
accounts of state territoriality and power that Brenner has sought to expose
the geography of the modern state within a variety of new (integral) state
spaces (see Chapter 4). According to Brenner, West European states have
rescaled their territorial strategies from national programmes to policies that
strategically favour the development of key city-regions. As key sub-units
within global capitalism, Brenner argues that state intervention within sub-
national urban space has been vital for mobilizing the current social and
economic goals of states. Although Brenner’s analysis focuses upon issues of
Exploring Post-National Natures 179
social and economic development, in this section we want to argue that urban
policies are becoming an increasingly important context within which states
are intervening, and governing, the natural world.
Our focus on the relationship between cities and nature may appear peculiar,
given the historical form that urban–nature relations have taken. We believe
that the apparent peculiarity of our focus stems from two factors: Wrst, the
modern dichotomy that has been constructed between cities and nature; and
secondly, the role of modern industrial cities in the exploitative transformation
of the natural world. In the Wrst instance cities have long been constructed as the
puriWed social spaces of modern civilization, which have been sealed oV from
the violent corruptions of nature.1 Cities have in some senses become synonym-
ous with progress, enlightenment, and civility, while the exurban spaces of
nature have been characterized as backward, feral, and immoral. This ideo-
logical distinction between cities and nature has been supported by modern
states in a variety of ways, ranging from laws governing the presence of animals
on city streets (Philo 1995, 1998; Philo and Wilbert 2000), to Wnancial support
for projects devoted to the urbanization of spaces of nature (Binde 1999). At a
second level, however, a parallel set of ideological constructions and material
relations have depicted urban–nature relations in a very diVerent way. Despite
modern attempts to construct an ideological gulf between cities and nature,
cities remain crucial industrial epicentres through which nature has been used,
exploited, and transformed (see Keil and Graham 1999; Whitehead 2005). As
key spatial hubs within the industrial transformation of the natural world, cities
have been reviled within the environmental movement as dystopic centres of
pollution, vice, and environmental greed.2 Modern states have played an
important role in supporting these ideologies of urban nature. Through teams
of medical experts, planners, and nascent sociologists, states have sought to
address the socio-environmental problems of cities by reconnecting them to the
healing powers of nature (Gandy 2002: ch. 2; Gottleib 1993: 55–9; Harvey
2003b; Swyngedouw and Kaika 2000). From the eighteenth century onwards,
we consequently see the rapid proliferation of urban parkland, environmental
reform programmes, and back-to-nature initiatives, all designed to improve the
quality of urban life and the health and well-being of metropolitan residents.
It is on the basis of these historical reXections that we claim that cities have
provided crucial spatial contexts in and through which the state has sought to
control and regulate socio-natural relations. In many ways the proclivity of
states to use cities to govern nature has been given extra signiWcance in the
contemporary world. The latest United Nations statistics suggest that
although cities now provide a home for approximately half of our planet’s
population, within one generation current urban populations will have
1
See here Binde (1999) for a particular historical and geographical example of this ideological
process; see also Kaika (2005: ch. 2).
2
See Gottleib (1993: ch. 2) on the relationship between the environmental movement in the
US and urban industrialism.
doubled (United Nations Centre for Human Settlements 2001; see also
Whitehead 2003). It is on the basis of Wgures such as these that states and
international bodies like the UN are now focusing on cities as key hubs of
post-millennial socio-economic relations with the natural world. It is after all
cities that are consuming the majority of the world’s energy needs, cities that
are the largest sources of atmospheric pollution, and cities that are the
dominant consumers of water. Much has already been written on the role
of cities as economic and Wnancial centres in and through which a new
geography of globalization is being forged (see Brenner 2004). The use of
the city as a spatial focus for contemporary state nature is perhaps expressed
most clearly in the concept and practices of the sustainable city. The idea of
the sustainable city Wnds its origins in the international discourses of sustain-
able development, which Wrst started to emerge in the 1970s. In essence, the
idea of sustainable urban development takes the principle of a balance being
established between social justice, economic growth, and environmental
conservation, which is emphasized within the discourses of sustainable
development, and applies it to urban space. While much has already been
written on the emergence of sustainable urban development and its associ-
ated planning and policy regimes,3 little attention has been given to the role
of the sustainable city as a governmental link between the state and nature. In
order to explore the role of sustainable cities in the constitution of contem-
porary state–nature relations, the remainder of this section focuses on the
development of a sustainable cities inquiry in Australia. As this section
shows, attempts to govern nature through cities raises signiWcant questions
concerning which natures should be framed by the state and the most
appropriate tools to use in this political process.
Nature, metropolis, and state formation in Australia

As an event, the launch of Australia’s Sustainable Cities Inquiry was nothing
out of the ordinary. As the press release statement read:
Melbourne—8 August 2003—The Federal Minister for the Environment, the Hon.
Dr. David Kemp today released details of an Inquiry into the sustainability of Austra-
lian cities at the Sandhurst Club, Victoria’s only major integrated water recycling
project, located at Skye . . . The Sustainable Cities 2025 Inquiry will examine how cities
of the future can meet the social, environmental and economic needs of Australia.4
Despite its relatively innocuous beginning, two things interest us about Aus-
tralia’s Sustainable Cities Inquiry (SCI). First, we are interested in the ways in
which cities are being used to frame and construct a distinctively Australian
3
For an extensive overview of diVerent practical and philosophical interpretations of the
sustainable city, see Girard et al. (2003).
4
Medialaunch, 2003 Sustainable Cities Inquiry Launched at Sandhurst Club Wednesday
August 24, 105.
socio-environmental future. Secondly, we are intrigued by how the SCI is

being used to explore ways in which cities can be used as governmental tools
to enable the federal government to order and regulate socio-natural inter-
actions. Responsibility for the SCI was bequeathed to the Standing Commit-
tee on Environment and Heritage of Australia’s Commonwealth government.
This committee is part of the Parliament of Australia’s House of Represen-
tatives and is responsible for carrying out nationwide inquiries concerning
matters of environment and heritage which are referred to it by the House of
Representatives or a Minister of Government. Before moving on to consider
the work of the Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage, it is
important to position the SCI within the broader context of the emerging
historical relationship between Australian cities, nature, and the federal state.
Australia has a particularly high concentration of people in a relatively small
number of cities. In part this situation is a product of its urban colonial past,5 but
it is also because of a complex range of issues relating to the speciWc timing of
Australia’s urban-industrial revolution.6 The unusual concentration of people
and resources in a relatively small number of Australian cities can be detected in a
number of ways. By 1947, for example, 50.7 per cent of Australia’s total national
population was located within state capitals alone (Burnley 1974: 3). If we move
forward to 1971 we Wnd that 60.1 per cent of Australians were living in state
capitals, while 85.6 per cent of the total population were living in metropolitan
districts (Burnley 1974: 3). While recent surveys have revealed a steadying, and at
times declining, concentration of Australians living in key metropolitan centres
(Forster 2004: ch. 1), Australia continues to have one of the most urbanized
populations in the world. As an usually metropolitan nation-state, cities have
provided important points of contact for the emerging historical relations be-
tween colonial and post-colonial Australian society and Australian nature.
Perhaps the Wrst point to make when discussing the history of urban–nature
relations in Australia is the role of nature in guiding the location of Australian
metropolitan settlements. While we do not wish to imply that nature deter-
mined the unusual locational geography of Australian cities, it is clear that
particular climatic, hydrological, and geomorphological factors conspired to
give Australia its distinctive coastal metropolitan belt (see Figure 7.1). In his
famous analysis of Australian urbanization—Urban Development in Austra-
lia—Max Neutze (1977: 7–12) describes the role of geology, soils, topog-
raphy, and natural vegetation in inhibiting the development of large inland
5
Australia’s urban heritage is intimately tied to its colonial history. Many of Australia’s
major cities started their lives as either convict settlements under British colonial rule (Hobart,
Brisbane, Sydney), or as centres of administration for the diVerent colonial states. The fact that
early colonial centres in Australia held a monopoly on custodial and political services meant that
they rapidly became hubs for socio-economic growth and expansion (see Statham 1989).
6
For a sophisticated review of the complex processes informing Australia’s own brand of
urbanization and a detailed discussion of the historical development of speciWc Australian cities,
see Neutze (1977) and Statham (1989). Among the key factors aVecting urbanization in Australia
were patterns of immigration and the emergence of mechanized transport technologies.
Fig. 7.1. Cities and territories in Australia.
cities in the nation. If nature played an important role in shaping the early
geography of Australian urbanism, it was not long before these newly emer-
ging cities started to shape their surrounding natural environments. The early
expansion of many Australian cities was based upon the supply of agricultural
goods from their pastoral hinterlands (Forster 2004: 1–10).7 The ready supply
of pastoral products such as wool, livestock, and wheat saw Australian cities
develop into centres of expertise within the processing and transformation of
the produce of nature. According to Cronon (1991), agricultural cities (like
Australia’s early colonial settlements) provide markets and a relative concen-
tration of the expert skills and technology needed to transform agricultural
products. Through large-scale investments in grain mills, slaughterhouses,
and even lumberyards, agricultural cities become crucial spatial interfaces, or
7
Due to the relatively late timing of industrialization in Australia, the country has never really
had a signiWcant subsistence agricultural sector. With no major peasant agricultural systems,
Australian agriculture has always been geared towards commercial framing. It was in the socio-
economic context of the almost immediate emergence of commercial agriculture that Australia’s
towns and cities developed as market places and spaces of exchange for agricultural goods
(see here Neutze 1977: ch. 1).
sites, within the social transformation of the natural world.8 Consequently,

while apparently devoid of nature, Australian cities have since their inception
been deeply embedded in the natural world. Much of Australia’s early met-
ropolitan wealth was based upon the agricultural exploitation of its non-
metropolitan interior for large-scale pastoral activities. Furthermore, it is
also clear that much of Australia’s early colonial wealth was based upon the
urban transformation of nature.
Beyond the role of cities as centres for the transformation and trade of
agricultural produce, the work of Anderson (2003) reveals how urban dis-
tricts were used to co-ordinate and harmonize agricultural practices. In her
analysis of the Agricultural Society of New South Wales, Anderson (2003:
431–6) describes the role that urban-based agricultural societies had in
promoting and coordinating agriculture in the Australian colonies. Agricul-
tural societies provided an important link between state governments and
local farmers as they oVered agricultural training and animal registration
facilities. They also promoted agricultural shows and displays in metropol-
itan areas. The fundamental purpose of such urban exhibitions, according to
Anderson, was ‘improvement through competition’—or a belief that by
comparing agricultural produce and parading prize livestock colonial farm-
ers would be inspired to follow the practices of the most successful agricul-
turalists. Beyond such practical goals, however, Anderson notices how the
symbolic collection and exhibition of agricultural products and various acts
of prize-giving tended to produce a celebratory and triumphal narrative of
colonial agricultural success. In all of this, urban centres like Sydney played a
crucial role, providing key centres within which diVuse agricultural commu-
nities could be brought together with scientists, planners, and politicians.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century a new set of relationships with
nature started to emerge in Australian cities. Consequently, following the
gold rushes of the 1870s and 1890s, and large-scale manufacturing expansion
around coalWeld areas in the 1920s, new urban centres started emerging,
which focused on, or related to, extractive industries (Forster 2004: 5). Just
as Sydney had emerged as a key agricultural centre, now other towns and
cities, like Wollongong and Newcastle, were growing on the basis of a new
industrial relationship with the natural world (Forster 2004: 5). These new
cities, replete with their coal mines and iron and steel works, would provide
the industrial building blocks for the emerging Australian state in the twen-
tieth century, and set in motion a new set of socio-ecological relations based
upon the expansionist economic logics of capitalism.
Federal interventions within urban nature

Given the close historical associations between natures and cities in Austra-
lia, it is perhaps unsurprising that emerging federal state intervention within
8
See in particular Part II ‘Nature to Market’ (pp. 97–259), where Cronon describes the
emerging historical relationship between Chicago and lumber, grain, and livestock.
Australian cities has often been connected to a related desire to manage

nature. With a few notable exceptions,9 the Wrst major planning interventions
within Australian cities began in the interwar years.10 According to Forster
(2004: 12), it was during this time that a new breed of town planners,
architects, and designers started to become involved in the management of
Australian urban space. SigniWcantly, these new planners and designers
(including prominent Wgures like John Sluman and Charles Reade) were
heavily inspired by the principles and ideals of the Garden City Movement,
which had sprung to prominence in early-twentieth-century Britain (Free-
stone 1982).11 The basic Garden City principles adopted by urban planners
and designers in Australia were that future metropolitan expansion should be
more carefully integrated with the natural world. In this context, it was felt
that rather than allowing unregulated urban expansion in key strategic cities,
new urban settlements should be designed in greater harmony with nature,
allowing for more green spaces in cities themselves, but also facilitating
greater opportunities for metropolitan populations to visit their surrounding
natural landscapes (Garnaut 2000).
Following the end of the Second World War, the lofty ideals of a nation of
Garden Cities operating in careful accord with the natural world would be
shattered by the ensuing period of rapid industrial expansion and urbaniza-
tion (see Alexander 2000). Following, and in part informing, Australia’s long
economic boom during the 1950s and 1960s, its cities saw an historically
unprecedented increase in their populations. From a collective urban popu-
lation of four million people in 1947, Australian cities had nearly eight
million inhabitants in 1961 (Forster 2004: 13). This growth in their popula-
tion size was paralleled by the expanding spatial scope of the metropolitan
areas in the post-war era. Following the classical pattern of Fordist urban
development, Australian cities rapidly became sprawling, car-dependent
metropolises (Forster 2004: 13). Morrison (2000) captures the spatial form
of Australia’s Fordist cities best when he described them as ‘corridor cities’.
The expansive spatial trajectory of Australia’s corridor cities meant that they
had a radically diVerent relationship with the natural world from that envis-
aged in the interwar Garden Cities Movement. Suddenly, the expansion of
cities was leading to the erosion of valuable natural assets at the urban fringe,
while the pollution created by increased car dependence had a more diVuse
impact upon environmental quality.
9
We are thinking particularly here of William Light’s famous plan for Adelaide in 1836.
10
For an excellent overview of Australian urban planning history, see Hamnett and Freestone
(2000).
11
The Garden City Movement was really galvanized by the writings and philosophies of
Ebenezer Howard. Interestingly, Peter Hall (1996: 89) is quick to point out that Howard’s idea of
a Garden City was far from unique or wholly original. It appears, for instance, that Howard
himself had been heavily inXuences by Light’s vision for Adelaide in the nineteenth century.
One of the most consistent and inXuential critics of post-war urban devel-
opment in Australia was Max Neutze. As head of the Urban Research Unit
at the Australian National University, Neutze was highly critical of the
wastefulness and pollution-ridden conditions associated with many Austra-
lian cities.12 Crucially, in his critique of Australian urbanism, Neutze (1977:
ch. 8) called for greater federal state involvement in urban planning and
management.13 In many ways the writings and ideas of Neutze underpin
many of the goals and desires of the contemporary SCI. Up until the
Whitlam Labour government (of 1973–5), urban policies had been largely
coordinated through state and local governments (see Forster 2004: 22).14
Given the emerging scale of the urban-environmental crisis facing Australia,
however, it was felt by writers such as Neutze that urban issues had reached
far beyond the remit of any one state or local government jurisdiction. It was
because of this that the Whitlam administration created the federal Depart-
ment of Urban and Regional Development and placed the governance of
cities Wrmly back on the political agenda of the nation-state. In partnership
with state and local government, this new department started to shape urban
development through Wnancial inducements and the enforcement of existing
town planning legislation. While representing a landmark moment within
Australian federal involvement in urban spaces, the Department of Urban
and Regional Development deployed a fairly conventional approach to the
governance of cities. Utilizing land purchases, development orders, and
Wnancial inducement mechanisms the department (in partnership with state
authorities) sought to control urban–nature relations by manipulating met-
ropolitan spatial expansion. While relatively successful in the short term,
such forms of federal interventions were to prove ineVective at governing the
types of urban–nature relations that became synonymous with Australian
cities at the end of the twentieth century.
Governing cities of the future: Sustainable Cities 2025

It is important to position Australia’s contemporary SCI within the context
of this longer history of urban–nature relations because it serves to illustrate
12
See Otago University, ‘Max Neutze 1934–2000 Urban Researcher and University
Professor’ at <http://www.library.otago.ac.nz/exhibitions/rhodes_scholars/max_neutze.html>
accessed 11 November 2005.
13
Neutze envisaged a decentralized pattern of urban development, which would reduce car
dependency in Australia and improve the general living conditions associated with urban areas.
While he was primarily concerned with improving the social conditions of urban life (see Otago
University, op cit.), his ideas would have a profound impact on the role of the federal govern-
ment in managing urban–nature relations in Australia.
14
The main form of federal intervention in urban space before the early 1970s came through
the Department of Post-war Reconstruction. Before the Whitlam government, federal interven-
tion in urban policy was restricted to telephonic and postal services provisions and airport
policies (Neutze 1977: 224).
how and why contemporary forms of state intervention within urban–nature

relations are so diVerent from their historical predecessors. As an assessment
and investigation into how Australian cities can be made more (ecologically)
sustainable, the SCI reXects two important moments within the history of
state–nature relations in the country. First, the Inquiry recognizes a new
set of relations between Australian cities and the natural world. While
still appreciating the links between cities and their productive, agricultural
hinterlands, the Inquiry reXects a growing realization that cities have a much
broader set of relations with larger-scale natural systems, including the
global atmosphere, the hydrosphere, and even the cryosphere. This moment
of urban–nature relations is a product both of the expanding ‘ecological
footprints’ of modern cities and an increasing social and scientiWc awareness
of the links between urban development and global environmental change
(see Girard et al. 2003: ch. 1). The second process reXected in the Inquiry is
a growing awareness of the diVerent ways in which state intervention within
urban space can shape both the global and local natural relations of Austra-
lian cities. Given the limited nature and impact of federal intervention within
urban nature in the post-war era, the period leading up to and incorporating
the SCI has seen an intensiWed regime of national state engagement within
urban issues. In part this process began in 1993 when the Commonwealth
government initiated the Australian Urban and Regional Policy Review and
an associated Task Force on Urban Design (see Troy 1995). The Australian
Urban and Regional Policy Review considered how a more coherent pro-
gramme of federal intervention could be developed. The Task Force on
Urban Design, meanwhile, considered the diVerent grounds upon which
governmental intervention within urban relations could be realized. In
many ways the SCI can be seen as a descendent of these initiatives.
The Australian SCI ran during 2003–5. Having discussed the historical
imbroglios of urban–nature relations and state relations in Australia, it is
instructive to consider the objectives and remit of the Inquiry. The Standing
Committee on Environment and Heritage describes its general purpose in the
following terms:
To identify current and future patterns of settlement, the sustainability issues associ-
ated with these settlement patterns, and how government policy might ensure that
developed areas retain an Australian lifestyle without diminishing the future value of
Australian eco-systems. (House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environ-
ment and Heritage 2003: 2)
These sentiments illustrate how the Sustainable Cities Inquiry reXects the
latest expression within the long historical struggle between Australian cities
and Australian nature. At the heart of this struggle is a desire to conserve
Australian ecological heritage while not undermining the ‘Australian’s way
of life’. As with any reference to national lifestyles, it is diYcult to ascertain
within the literature and plans surrounding the Inquiry precisely what an
Australian way of life is. Looking more closely through the various submis-
sions to the Inquiry, however, it is possible to discern what this lifestyle might
entail. Despite passing references to Aboriginal cultures and needs, it is clear
that the Australian way of life prioritized within the Inquiry is distinctively
white and metropolitan in its style and substance. It is a lifestyle that is tied
into a range of Australian national myths regarding the openness and free-
doms of Australian society (which is mirrored of course in the open, spatial
expansiveness of the nation), which are associated with an entrepreneurial
and industrious post-colonial culture. The conundrum the Inquiry conse-
quently sought to address is how to preserve this supposedly distinctive set of
cultural traditions, while also conserving a series of natural assets which,
while often threatened by the expansionist logics of metropolitan life, are also
an intrinsic part of Australia’s heritage.
The SCI was established primarily to gather intelligence on behalf of the
Commonwealth government as to how urban development in Australia
could be made to be more socially and ecologically sustainable. In order to
gather this intelligence the Standing Committee on Environment and Heri-
tage (2003) initially produced a discussion paper outlining the key issues
facing Australian cities and setting out a series of questions regarding the
future direction which urban development in the country should take. This
paper was circulated to a range of diVerent interested parties—including
urban planners, architects, engineers, conservationists, transport policy-
makers, and energy supply oYcers—who provided written submissions
responding to its ideas and recommendations.15 This process was followed
by a series of public hearings, which were held throughout Australia.16 These
public hearings were chaired and led by members of the Standing Committee
on Environment and Heritage and provided a context within which a range
of experts could be consulted and questioned on what they perceived to be
the best strategies for achieving sustainable development in Australian cities.
By locating these hearings within a range of diVerent Australian cities, the
Standing Committee hoped to be able to exploit good practices within
particular cities and thus promote them at a national level. In all 192 written
submissions were received by the Inquiry and Wfteen public hearings con-
vened. These hearings were supported by inspection visits on behalf of the
Committee to diVerent urban projects in Australia and a series of ‘roundtable
events’ in and though which discussions over the most appropriate strategies
for sustainable urban development could be held (Parliament of the Com-
monwealth of Australia 2005: 24).
15
Electronic versions of the submissions are available online at: <http://www.aph.gov.au/
house/committee/environ/cities/subs.htm> accessed 21 November 2005.
16
Full transcripts of these public hearings are available at: <http://www.aph.gov.au/house/
committee/environ/cities/hearings.htm> accessed 21 November 2005.
The initial discussion paper outlined the speciWc objectives of the Inquiry.
These were to consider:
1 the environmental and social impacts of sprawling urban development;
2 the major determinants of urban settlement patterns and desirable pat-
terns of development for the growth of Australian cities;
3 a ‘blueprint’ for ecologically sustainable patterns of settlement, with par-
ticular reference to eco-eYciency and equity in the provision of services
and infrastructure;
4 measures to reduce the environmental, social, and economic costs of
continuing urban expansion; and
5 mechanisms for the Commonwealth to bring about urban development
reform and promote ecologically sustainable patterns of settlement.
(House of Representatives Standing Committee on Environment and
Heritage 2003: 3)
This broad set of objectives reveals the growing governmental ambitions of
the Australian national state to order urban space. In contrast to the rela-
tively limited forms of federal intervention within urban areas evident since
the end of the Second World War, the federal state now appears to want to
plan urban development in a much more holistic and integrated way. In light
of these ambitions we argue that the SCI reXects a kind of mobile ‘centre of
calculation’ through which the federal state is attempting to absorb a range
of strategies, tools, and technologies that could be used to govern its metro-
politan districts.
Cities in the Bush—re-planning biodiversity in the metropolis

One of the main concerns of the SCI was the relationship between Australian
cities and their surrounding environmental hinterlands. In relation to the
coastal location of many of Australia’s major urban settlements, urban
centres were understood in the Inquiry as key environmental interfaces
between marine and coastal ecologies and bushland environments. While
the particular role of coastal cities in contributing to sustainable develop-
ment is described at length in the Wnal report of the Inquiry—Sustainable
Cities (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia 2005), in this section
we are primarily interested in discussions concerning cities and terrestrial/
bushland environments. Our focus on bushland issues stems from two fac-
tors: Wrst, that urban encroachment onto bushland is seen as one of the most
pressing environmental issues within Australia; and secondly, the links
between the Bush and a particular sense of Australian national (and natural)
identity. In Australia, the Bush is synonymous with Australia’s unique
natural heritage (Short 1991: 197–222), but as a term it can often be used
in a very broad set of contexts. In this sense the Bush is often understood as
remote wilderness spaces that occur at great distances from cities and civil-
ization. However, within Australian state and federal policies bushland has
a very speciWc meaning. In New South Wales, for example, the State Envir-
onmental Planning Policy deWnes Bush as ‘land on which there is vegetation
which is either a remainder of the natural vegetation of the land or, if altered,
is still representative of the structure and Xoristics of the natural vegeta-
tion’.17 In some instances bushland can be deWned beyond associated vege-
tation to include soils, rocks, and stones.18 When understood in these more
speciWc terms, the Bush is perhaps best thought of as a remnant of Australia’s
Wrst nature—or nature that exists in a state that has not been signiWcantly
altered by human intervention.
There are two important implications of understanding bushland as eco-
logical remnants of Wrst nature. First, it alerts us to the role of the Bush
within Australian national foundation legends and myths. At one level, it is
important within the Australian imagination because of its association
with a primordial ecological past. As the work of Kay SchaVer (1990),
however, illustrates, the Bush is also an important part of the story of the
Australian nation’s struggle against a harsh and often treacherous environ-
ment, and the victories of the bushman and the colonizer.19 The preservation
of bushland on both counts appears important to the conservation of a
very particular sense of Australian heritage. Secondly, this ‘residual’ deWni-
tion means that bushland is not something that is necessarily located at
a distance from large metropolitan centres. The large number of urban
bushland preservation councils currently operating in Australia, for example,
attests to the fact that these facets of residual, Wrst nature can exist
either within or on the fringes of urban centres. It is precisely because of
this often-close spatial association between bushlands and cities that the SCI
explored how urban policy could be used as a means to protect, regulate, and
conserve the particular cultural and ecological values associated with bush-
land areas.
The nature of urban bushland relations in Australia was expressed most
clearly by the Chief Executive of Engineers Australia at a public hearing in
Canberra:
Increasing population, the movement of people from the Bush to the coast and the
recent property boom in Australia have all had impacts upon urban expansion.
17
Nature Conservancy Council New South Wales 2005 at: <http://www.nccnsw.org.au/
bushland/topics/deWnition/> accessed 23 November 2005.
18
Ibid.
19
In this volume, SchaVer describes the construction of an Australia national identity that is
deWned in relation to the ability to survive the adversities of nature. SigniWcantly, as SchaVer
recognizes, this national identity is typically associated with the masculine stereotypes of the
bushman—this, of course, tends to have a marginalizing inXuence on the role that women are
ascribed in Australian cultural history.
Australian cities are experiencing signiWcant new urban development and redevelop-
ment in existing suburbs.20
The often unregulated suburban expansion of Australian cities is of course
not an unusual feature of contemporary urbanization. In Australia, however,
such forms of spatial expansion have been linked to the increasing erosion of
peripheral bushlands, leaving fragments of Bush surviving within urban
districts. The pernicious eVects of urban expansion on bushlands tend to be
experienced in four main ways (see Nature Conservancy Council of New
South Wales 1997: ch. 2):
1 Urban expansion can lead directly to Bush clearances, whereby remnant
ecologies are deliberately removed to make way for new urban development.
2 Incremental urban expansion within limited belts can, while not leading to
the complete destruction of Bush, undermine the ecological balance of a
bushland system and weaken the integrity of the environment as a whole.
3 The consolidation, or inbuilding, of existing urban districts can remove
fragments of Bush that have previously survived urban expansion.
4 A much overlooked dimension of the urban erosion of bushland is that of
‘Bush degradation’, which essentially results from the spillover eVects of
urban development. These range from the impacts of stormwater drainage
on bushland soil to the damage that urban-based chemical pollution can
cause to the Xora and wildlife of the Bush.
In addition to the value of bushland to the Australian national conscious-
ness, the contemporary loss of Bush as part of the quartet of processes
described above has been opposed for a variety of diVerent reasons. The
primary argument made for the preservation of bushland tends to pertain to
its role in preserving biodiversity. Accordingly, the aforementioned State
Environmental Planning Policy (Bushland in Urban Areas)21 for New South
Wales states:
Remnant bushland areas can play an important part in the conservation of plant and
animal species, particularly in maintaining representative samples of plant communi-
ties over their whole range. They provide permanent or temporary habitat for wildlife,
particularly for birds. While their habitat value depends on the area’s size, location
and general condition, numbers of small bushland areas linked together can act as
wildlife corridors, allowing for the movement of many species, particularly non-Xying
mammals. (Quoted in Nature Conservancy Council of New South Wales 1997:
foreword)
In this sense, it is clear that in addition to embodying an important fragment
of primordial nature, bushland also provides a crucial ecological context
20
Commonwealth Government of Australia, House of Representatives Standing Committee
on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005,
Canberra (OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 1.
21
SEPP 19.
within which a range of natural objects and systems depend. In relation to the
intrinsic biological value of the Bush, it is also argued that bushland can
provide an important context for scientiWc research and education:
Natural areas may be used as living laboratories for the study of subjects such as
biology, zoology, ecology and biogeography. Some contain important geological
formations. The existence of these areas within cities and towns is valuable for
educational purposes since they are readily accessible to schools, universities and
adult education centers. (Quoted in Nature Conservancy Council of New South
Wales 1997: foreword)
As living laboratories, it is also clear that the in the long term bushlands
could have signiWcant economic value within the development of Australian
bioscience and genetic research.
Given the value attributed to bushland in Australia, it should perhaps
come as little surprise that a number of prominent Bush preservation groups
(including Bush Forever and Save the Bush) now operate in the country.
These groups and campaigns have been calling for more concerted state
intervention in Bush conservation programmes. At present Australian bush-
land is regulated and controlled through a series of diVerent policies and acts
of legislation. These policies include the National Strategy for the Conserva-
tion of Biological Diversity, the Environmental Planning and Assessment
Act 1979, and the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974. Given the link
between bushland and urban areas, many campaign groups have been calling
for national policies targeted more speciWcally at urban bushland. Where
urban bushland policies do currently exist in Australia, they tend to be
addressed at a state rather than a federal level. Prominent examples of
state-led urban bushland initiatives include Perth’s Bush Forever Strategy
and New South Wales’ Urban Bushland Committee. Many of these state-
based Bush initiatives want greater federal involvement and guidance on
urban bushland management. There are two main reasons for this. First,
and at a practical level, federal state involvement in urban bushland policy is
seen as important because of the federal ownership issues that surround
many Bush areas. Secondly, the involvement of the federal state is believed
to be particularly advantageous when urban bushland relations cross over
and intersect state boundaries. It was in the light of these issues that the SCI
sought to explore the diVerent ways in which the federal state could marshal
urban bushland preservation policy at an all-Australian level.
At a public hearing in Perth (Western Australia) on 31 March 2005, the SCI
sought to explore the potential for urban-based bushland management through
consultation with members of the Urban Bushland Council for Western Aus-
tralia.22 The Inquiry’s focus on Western Australia stems from two factors: Wrst,
22
on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 31 March 2005, Perth
(OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005).
Perth’s status as a biodiversity ‘hotspot’; and secondly, the prominent role of the
Bush Forever campaign in the state. While the Inquiry was keen to learn
the practices of bushland conservation in Perth, what most interests us about
the discussion at the public hearing are the concerns that were raised between the
issues of national heritage, biodiversity, and nature conservation. One represen-
tative of the Urban Bushland Council of Western Australia explained the
importance of bushland in and around Perth in the following terms:
We know that this region is biodiverse and rich because most of the species here—75
to 80 per cent of the plants that occur in this south-west region—do not occur
anywhere else on the face of the earth. That means they are endemic to the region.
There are some species endemic to the metropolitan region.23
Urban expansion in Perth and associated forms of Bush clearance are obvi-
ously a major threat to the area’s biological diversity and in extreme events
could lead to species extinction events. It was in the context of the threat to the
area’s unique biodiversity that the Urban Bushland Council for Western
Australia, and the associated Bush Forever campaign, rose to national prom-
inence in the Australia. In the Inquiry’s hearings into urban bushland manage-
ment, however, the meaning and nature of biodiversity came under question.
Following the presentation of the Urban Bushland Council for Western
Australia’s submission to the Inquiry, a member of the Standing Committee
on Environment and Heritage, who had travelled to Perth, questioned the
notion of biodiversity:
I want to test two propositions. My observation is that on the eastern seaboard—
Sydney, Melbourne and my home town of Geelong—there is an increase in vegetation
in the urban area with the introduction of urban population and the introduction of
trees . . . given that generally speaking there is more vegetation in an urban situation
with the urban dweller, how do you respond to that situation.24
The point being made was that with the introduction of an increasingly
diverse array of urban gardens, parkland areas, and woodlands, urban
expansion was a cause of an increase in, not an erosion of, biodiversity. The
underlying sentiment within this observation was the question of why the
federal government should become involved in the management of urban
biodiversity when all urban areas have intrinsic forms of biodiversity associ-
ated with them. In response, the Urban Bushland Council for Western Aus-
tralia representatives reasserted that urban expansion had caused a loss of
vegetation cover. Unperturbed, the federal government representative asked:
What evidence have you got for that? If you look at the total urban situation, if you
just Xy over it and have a look at the amount of vegetation there is there in terms of
trees in backyards et cetera, and compare it with the former.25
23
(OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005). EH 44.
24 25
Ibid, EH 44. Ibid, EH 45.
In these sentiments we see the relationship between urban space, the Bush,
and biodiversity starting to be reconWgured. The issue is whether the aggre-
gate increase in biological assets associated with the artiWcially generated
ecological spaces of cities can act as a counter-balance to the loss of
biodiversity associated with the metropolitan despoliation of bushland. In
riposte, the Urban Bushland Council for Western Australia defended its
interpretation of biodiversity:
A lot of that [artiWcial urban biodiversity] is not original; a lot of that is introduced
species, which require looking after. The original species looked after themselves here
for millions and millions of years . . . in technical terms biodiversity has a very speciWc
meaning . . . if people plant jarrah trees and tuarts, which grow naturally in this part of
the world and are good to have in your garden, that is a good thing to do. But we are
talking about the remnants of the original vegetation.26
The crucial thing to notice within these debates is that despite the argument
that was made for the preservation of bushland because of its associated
biodiversity, it is not biodiversity but the preservation of remnant ecologies
that continues to inform Bush conservation in ecology. For example, it is
possible to imagine the construction of a city—replete with zoological gar-
dens and parks—that was far more biologically diverse than any piece of
bushland. This city could, however, be built potentially anywhere in the
world. But the preservation of bushland in Australia continues to be pre-
Wgured by a desire to preserve what is ecologically unique about in situ
national nature.
The desire to preserve original facets of nature in Australia involved the
reclassiWcation of other natures in the Inquiry as unwanted weeds:
When you bring new things into that a lot of them actually become environmental
weeds. We now have 1,700 environmental weed species in Western Australia alone.
They are becoming rampant; they are just exploding . . . So what started out as garden
species and plant species that were brought in here in good faith have now become
major problems in their own right.27
What interests us most about the debates that surround urban bushland
preservation and biodiversity is their relationship to state intervention.
Through the SCI, various urban bushland councils are invoking the Austra-
lian state as the key institution with responsibility for regulating the bound-
ary between biodiversity and remnant ecologies, between precious facets of
nature and weed species. In an urban context, of course, the boundary
between original and second natures is particularly diYcult to recognize
and police. But once again it is the institutional capacity and power of the
state that marks it out as the body that can delimit and frame nature.
This example, however, also serves to illustrate the inherent artiWciality of
state natures. Ironically, it is the remnant ecologies of the Bush—with their
26 27
Ibid, EH 45. Ibid, EH 46.
self-sustaining capacities—that appear to require state protection and polit-

ical intervention to sustain them.
Trying to catch the wind: re-engineering the Australian metropolis

Although Australia’s SCI devoted signiWcant amounts of time and energy to
considering the local ecological impacts of urban development (particularly
in relation to bushland), there was a clear desire throughout the prolonged
proceedings to understand the connection between Australian cities and
broader regional and global environmental issues. At one meeting with
Engineers Australia in Canberra, during the summer of 2004, the SCI articu-
lated this broader concern with the ecologies of urban development in
relation to the ‘ecological footprint’ of urban areas.28 The idea of the eco-
logical footprint is instructive, suggesting as it does a desire on behalf of the
Inquiry to trace the ways in which Australian cities aVect other environmen-
tal systems, often located at great distances from the urban areas them-
selves.29 According to the Inquiry, then, the ecological footprints of
Australian metropolitan centres were now being felt throughout the
whole of Australia—in relationship to their demands for precious water
resources—and increasingly throughout the whole world—as the energy
demands of Australian cities contributed to the processes of global warming.
In relation to these concerns, the Inquiry looked at ways in which Australian
cities could become more eYcient in their use of energy and natural
resources. In keeping with the philosophies of sustainable urban develop-
ment, it was clear that the Inquiry wanted to look into the most eVective ways
of restructuring the whole urban space economy of cities. In many ways the
holistic approach to the creation of a more eYcient city pursued by the
Inquiry is a contemporary manifestation of the visions of non-wasteful cities
promoted by Max Neutze in 1960s and 1970s Australia. There were, how-
ever, two crucial consequences of this desire for the holistic transformation of
urban space: Wrst, the need to consult with the specialist engineers, designers,
and architects who must rebuild such cities; and secondly, the need for
federal state intervention in urban space in order to coordinate the broad
range of policy areas that are entailed by a holistic approach to city planning.
It was in the context of the perceived need for the radical restructuring of
urban spaces that the Inquiry consulted Engineers Australia, a not-for-proWt
organization responsible for the professional development of 79,000 engin-
eers in Australia and the promotion of engineering excellence in the country.
It was in consultation with representatives from Engineers Australia that we
28
on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 17 June 2004,
29
For more on the idea of an ecological footprint, see Wackernagel and Rees (1996).
see the vision of the holistically re-engineered city Wrst emerging. Drawing on
the case of Melbourne’s 2030 Programme,30 Malcolm Palmer of Engineers
Australia envisioned the sustainable city in the following way:
I guess the reason we focused on Melbourne 2030 was that it was a good package in
that it addressed a range of issues to do with sustainable urban development. For
example the urban growth boundary—that is throwing a ring around Melbourne. It
also talked about liveable communities, having various buildings in local communi-
ties that have all of the facilities, childcare, schools and housing . . . It also talked
about local transport and the number of trips people make . . . Also sustainable
building design and other ways people who are living in urban areas can contribute
to sustainable development. In essence the package represented a holistic approach to
sustainable development.31
The invocation of Melbourne’s radical 2030 urban development plan by
Engineers Australia is instructive with regard to how we understand the re-
engineering of cities. The Wrst thing to notice within these comments is the
clear link between urban re-engineering and spatial planning. At one level,
the role of spatial planning in sustainable urban development pertains to the
control of unregulated urban sprawl at the peripheries of cities. It is, of
course, the spatial spread of cities that has been associated with the new
energy-intensive city—with its dependence on automobiles for transporting
people over ever longer distances to work and leisure (Hall 1998). But beyond
the territorial control of urban expansion, spatial planning is also perceived
to have a crucial role in the rational ordering of urban land use and functions.
The tighter integration of urban life within medium-density developments is
thought to be crucial to the achievement of more sustainable cities and the
reduced ecological footprints of large conurbations. Stopping urban expan-
sion, however, will not necessarily reduce urban energy consumption. Only,
it is claimed, will the careful spatial integration of home, work, leisure, and
service needs reduce the need for personal mobility within the city and
prevent wasteful energy use. Of course, the holistic restructuring of urban
space in this way requires signiWcant interventions on behalf of planning
authorities, house-builders, and engineers. While perceived to be good for the
environment, the SCI did recognize that this new planned intensiWcation of
urban space would lead to signiWcant social resistance. Mr Kerr of the
Standing Committee on Environment and Heritage consequently noted:
One of the issues that interests me is community resistance to intensiWcation. The
phenomenon has occurred in many cities notwithstanding that, from an overall
30
Melbourne 2030 is an innovative planning vision developed to guide urban and regional
growth in and around Melbourne using the principles of sustainable urban development.
31
on Environment and Heritage—Reference: Sustainable Cities, Thursday, 17 June 2004,
perspective, it is a highly desirable feature. People in local situations often are

antagonistic to intensiWcation in their own near neighbourhood.32
These comments, of course, serve to remind us that within the construction
of more sustainable cities a certain amount of ‘creative destruction’ must
occur, which undermines the existing social and economic fabric of cities. It is
in this context that the power of the state to negotiate metropolitan resist-
ances to urban re-engineering becomes most apparent.
What is also evident in the original quote from Engineers Australia is
the importance not only of spatially re-ordering the city but also of redesign-
ing the fabric of the city. The importance of urban design has been a
prominent theme within Australian urban policy debates since the 1990s.
In 1994, for example, the federal government commissioned an Urban
Design Task Force to look into ways Australian cities could be designed
in more eYcient but distinctively Australian ways. Following this Task
Force, the federal government pronounced 2004 to be the ‘Year of the
Built Environment’ and made A$168.5 million available to support projects
that protected the built environment and contributed towards sustainable
development.33 The association between good urban design and transforming
social relations with nature is evident in the 1994 Report of the Urban Design
Task Force:
The quality of urban design matters . . . functionally for the eYcient and eVective
working of the city; environmentally for the way it can minimise waste, energy and
pollution. Ecologically sustainable design is about amplifying and sustaining the
quality of life for people. To do so environmental design needs to cushion the
environmental eVects of urban development. It can help to reduce heat islands,
improve micro climates, prevent contamination of land, [and] protect water supplies.
(Urban Design Task Force 1994: 1)
It is on these broad terms that the Sustainable Cities Inquiry explored urban
design as a way of regulating urban–nature relations.
Through consultation with engineers, designers, and architects, the
Inquiry established that urban design could contribute to sustainability in
two main ways. First, through the more eVective design and construction of
new buildings it was hoped that energy demands could be minimized. In
many hot Australian cities such design strategies focused on the best ways to
ensure natural cooling. In this context, a representative from the Conserva-
tion Council of Western Australia suggested to the Inquiry that:
32
(OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 15.
33
Commonwealth Government of Australia, $168.5 million for Built Environment in 2004.
Media Release on behalf of Hon Dr David Kemp, MP (Federal Minister for Environment and
Heritage) (Canberra, 13 May 2003).
We could have an urban environment where people are trying to do the right thing
and not use air-conditioners unnecessarily—and that is often a comfort factor as well;
I think it needs to be recognized that it is sometimes more comfortable to live in
a home where there is satisfactory natural cooling rather than excessive use of air-
conditioners—but if neighbouring properties have their air-conditioning blasting
away the noise would come into the home that was trying to capture the breezes.34
We Wnd the idea of designing cities and houses that eVectively ‘catch
the breeze’ or harness natural sunlight fascinating. In the Wnal report of
the Inquiry, entitled Sustainable Cities, the House of Representatives Stand-
ing Committee on Environment and Heritage set out how it intended to
regulate the design of new urban buildings. Consequently, through a series
of new energy ratings, building codes of practice, construction material
guidelines, and mortgage incentives, the Australian state is quite literally
trying to re-orientate its cities within nature (Parliament of the Common-
wealth of Australia 2005: ch. 7). Secondly, the Inquiry also explored
ways in which eYcient design could be incorporated into Australia’s
existing urban fabric. The retroWtting of new energy eYciency devices and
insulation materials onto buildings, in addition to new policies on energy
prices, has seen the Australian government delve ever more deeply into the
domestic sphere in its attempts to structure social relations with local and
international environments (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia
2005: ch. 8).
Our reXections on the unfolding history of urban–nature relations in
Australia have been designed with two intentions in mind. First, they illus-
trate the ways in which the state can use a variety of sub-national territor-
ies—like sustainable cities—to frame and manage socio-natural relations.
Secondly, they also show the often banal and highly subtle ways in which
states can attempt to assert their inXuence over socio-natural relations. In the
case of the sustainable city, then, we see how planning regulations, energy
eYciency ratings, and building codes of practice can all be used to structure
socio-natural relations. To us, the contemporary emergence of sustainable
cities reXects a new territorial strategy in and through which states are
attempting to regulate and frame nature through urban centres. In the case
of Australia, the fact that sustainable cities continue to be constructed in the
shadow of the state can be seen both in the desire to create cities that are
‘distinctively Australian’ and in the enduring recognition that is evident
throughout the SCI that only the federal state, with its unique institutional
capacity and spatial reach, can coordinate an eVective programme of sus-
tainable urban development.
34
(OYcial Committee Hansard, Canberra, 2005), EH 31.
Globalizing nature and risk management in the modern

state: the case of climate change
In mid-November 2005 a group of UK Greenpeace activists unceremoniously

dumped a truckload of coal outside Downing Street, the home of the British
Prime Minister (The Economist 2005a). This classic act of detournement was
actually an act of environmental protest against the British state’s policies on
climate change. The Greenpeace protesters were essentially concerned that
despite promises to reduce its contribution to global greenhouses gas emis-
sions by 20 per cent (on its 1990 levels) by 2010, the government was not doing
enough to avert the threats of global warming on behalf of its people (The
Economist 2005a: 27). We are particularly interested in the form this Green-
peace action took because of the way it weaves together the complex scales
and spaces within which contemporary state–nature relations are being
negotiated. At one level, this was a very local act, involving the delivery of
coal—with its highly symbolic link to both British industrial history and the
production of carbon dioxide—to a street in London. The choice of Downing
Street, however, as an arena for this action was highly symbolic, placing—in
this case quite literally—the problem of climate change on the doorstep of the
state. Finally, as a protest concerning climate change, Greenpeace was essen-
tially raising awareness of the ways in which nature is increasingly being
transformed at a global level, far beyond the jurisdiction of any one state.
Focusing on the speciWc example of climate change, this Wnal case study
considers the emerging role of states within the management of supra-
national/global natures. In doing so it seeks to address a paradox—that
despite global warming being apparently beyond the framing capacities of
nation-states, state regimes remain the key agents charged with tackling the
threat of global warming.
Climate change and the globalization of nature

Climate change is arguably the most talked about environmental process in
the world today. What interests us most about climate change, and more
speciWcally global warming, are the ambiguous relations that it exposes
between states and natures. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC 2001: 21) estimates that as a result of elevated (human-
induced) levels of greenhouses gases in the earth’s atmosphere, by the year
2100 global temperatures will have increased on average by between 1.2 and
5.8 degrees Celsius (depending on the relative stabilization of greenhouse gas
emissions over this time period). In their recent ‘synthesis’ report the IPCC
summarized the situation in the following terms:
The Earth’s climate system has demonstrably changed on both global and regional
scales since the pre-industrial era, with some of these changes attributable to human
activities. Human activities have increased the atmospheric concentrations of green-

house gases and aerosols since the pre-industrial era. The atmospheric concentrations
of key anthropogenic greenhouse gases (i.e., carbon dioxide (CO2 ), methane (CH4 ),
nitrous oxide (N2 O), and ozone (O3 ) ) reached their highest recorded levels in the
1990s, primarily due to the combustion of fossil fuels, agriculture, and land-use
changes. (IPCC 2001: 4)
While the IPCC’s estimates and the precise link between global warming and
anthropogenic pollution are hotly contested (Lomborg 2004: 264), if they are
true, these observations reXect what McKibben (2003: 99) famously
described as an atmosphere that was no longer a facet of nature but a
‘human creation’. It is possible to trace a direct link between the ‘end of
atmospheric nature’ described by McKibben and the state framing of nature
within modern forms of industrial capitalism. Our concern, however, is with
the emerging role of the state within the socio-political responses to the
threats associated with climate change.
One of the most poignant insights of Bill McKibben’s analysis of climate
change is the scale of human intervention within nature that he describes. In
his account of a ‘new atmosphere’ produced by humanity, McKibben inad-
vertently reveals one of the key consequences of climate change for state
politics. The point is that climate change is not simply about the pollution of
nature; it is about a systemic shift in how environmental systems operate at a
global level. By deWnition these systemic operations of nature tend to operate
and be controlled at spatial scales far beyond the remit of the narrow
territoriality of states (Yearley 1996; Young 1994). It is because of the
systemic, trans-national scale of climate change that global warming is
routinely depicted as a phenomenon that is beyond the power of nation-
states to manage and regulate. According to Held et al., then:
It is only in the twentieth century, and the late twentieth century at that, that the
environmental consequences of industrial production, combined with capitalist or
state socialist economic organization have been widely and actively registered as
environmental degradation and extended their spatial reach beyond the local or the
national. The clearest examples of the decisive shift in the extensity and intensity
of contemporary environmental problems are those of global warming and ozone
depletion. (Held et al. 1999: 385)
But it is not just that the scales at which climate change operates have seen it
apparently transcend the management capacities of states. The atmosphere is
not a closed environmental system but provides a complex interface between
the hydrosphere, biosphere, and cryosphere. Consequently, any change in
atmospheric heat transfer (like that classically associated with climate
change) is likely to have far-reaching implications for natural systems and
objects, throughout the world. One of the most signiWcant shifts in the ways
in which global nature operates, associated with climate change, relates to the
earth’s hydrological cycle. The IPCC (2001: 6) have euphemistically referred
to this process as the production of a ‘more active hydrological cycle’, but

its consequences could be severe. One of the most immediate manifestations
of this heightened hydrological activity is the melting of land and polar ice.
In addition to disrupting fragile ecosystems and associated biodiversity,
glacial melting could also increase the occurrence of local Xooding events
and contribute to rising sea levels. While the precise links between global
warming and sea level change are diYcult to gauge, the IPCC claim that in
addition to glacial melt, the likely thermal expansion of the oceans could see
sea levels rise between 9 and 88 cm between 1990 and 2100 (depending on
greenhouse gas emissions) (IPCC 2001: 9). A Wnal aspect of the more active
hydrological cycle associated with climate change is the likely increase in
heavy precipitation events and extreme weather conditions, which will again
contribute to the threat of Xooding (IPCC 2001: 6). Beyond the hydrosphere,
many fear that climate change could have a signiWcant long-term impact on
the earth’s biosphere resources. The WWF–Worldwide Fund for Nature
(2000) claim that in regions that are particularly vulnerable to global warm-
ing, such as northern Russia and Canada, 70 per cent of the available habitat
could be lost. When such habitat loss in arctic regions is combined with the
increased incidence of coral bleaching in tropical latitudes, the WWF fear
that climate change could lead to the extinction of a series of vulnerable
species throughout the world. A Wnal area of public concern pertaining to
climate change is the likely impacts that global warming could have on
human health. While at one level the onset of milder winters in northern
latitudes could be good for human health, there is a growing concern among
health experts that climate change could have deleterious consequences for
human well-being. The World Health Organization (2005), for example, has
recently explored how climatic systems aVect the geographical spread of
diseases such as malaria, Rift Valley fever, yellow fever, and cholera. Con-
sequently, in addition to its global scale of operation, it is also the complex of
socio-biological and ecological problems associated with climate change that
have led many to believe that it is beyond the power of nation-states to avert
and control.
Planetary government and the return of Hobbes

Given the global complexities associated with global warming, there has been
a concerted eVort to explore how climate change can be governed at a global
scale. Following the incremental increases in global carbon dioxide levels and
worldwide temperatures detected by scientists during the 1970s and 1980s,
the Wrst signiWcant international action on climate change was taken at
a meeting in 1985 held in Villach, Austria (O’Riordan and Jäger 1996: 17).
The Villach Conference was convened by the UN Environment Programme,
the World Meteorological Organisation, and the International Council for
Science in order to discuss the threat posed by climate change (World
Meteorological Organisation 1986). Drawing together some of the leading

atmospheric and environmental scientists from around the world, this con-
ference ultimately led to the establishment of the IPCC in 1988. The goals of
the IPCC are signiWcant in the context of our discussions in this chapter. As
an independent collection of leading scientists, the IPCC was designed to
monitor the nature and extent of climate change from a position beyond the
narrow territorial interests of individual nation-states.35 It was also designed
to try and forge a degree of international consensus and to prevent the
climate change agenda being portrayed as a schema for global political
action that only reXected the political interests of inXuential states. In
essence, the IPCC embodied an attempt to create a global ‘epistemic commu-
nity’, which could both monitor and interpret global warming (Haas 1992).
The construction of the IPCC as an independent and international body
reveals one of the ways in which responsibility for climate change has been
ostensibly removed from the remit of individual nation-states—the trad-
itional loci of environmental research and monitoring (see Chapter 6).
The extensive research conducted by the IPCC has helped to clarify the
threats posed by climate change and to attribute the process to anthropogenic
sources of greenhouse gas. But despite the fact that the IPCC provided a post-
national institutional context for the construction of environmental know-
ledge, it did not oVer a context within which international action on climate
change could actually be instigated. The lack of apparent governing capacity
at global level led to a growing concern within key environmental groups that a
chaotic system of ecological exploitation could prevail within international
space. This geo-environmental concern had really been emerging since the late
1960s and was expressed perhaps most famously (if in a slightly diVerent
ecological context) in William Ophuls’s call for an ‘international state of
nature’, which could eVectively manage the use and exploitation of global
commons (1977: ch. 7). Ophuls’s call for a new system of planetary or world
government to deal with global environmental threats reXects a peculiar up-
scaling of Hobbes’s justiWcation for state governments (see Chapter 2). But by
the late 1980s, it was clear that no international state of nature was in existence.
Attempts to govern climate change at a global level really began as part of
the UN programme of research into sustainable development. Consequently,
at one of the hearings instigated by the World Commission on Environment
and Development (the organization that would eventually produce the
Brundtland Report), political and scientiWc leaders came together to discus-
sion climate change (and more broadly the ‘changing atmosphere’) (O’Rior-
dan and Jäger 1996: 18). This meeting was convened in the Canadian city of
Toronto in 1988 and is synonymous with the ‘Toronto goal’—a call for
developed world nations to reduce their levels of carbon dioxide emissions
by 20 per cent (of 1987 levels by 2005) (O’Riordan and Jäger 1996: 18). The
35
For a detailed discussion of the role and operation of the IPCC, see Skodvin (2000).
struggle to achieve international action on global warming continued at the

Second World Climate Conference, which was convened in 1990 (O’Riordan
and Jäger 1996: 19). Ultimately the research conducted by the IPCC, and the
various international conferences held on climate change, led to the estab-
lishment of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee.
This was given express responsibility for forging a Framework Convention
on Climate Change, which would be signed at the culminating event of the
UN’s sustainable development programme, the Rio Earth Summit (the UN
Conference on Environment and Development) held in 1992 (O’Riordan and
Jäger 1996: 19). What interests us about the Framework Convention and
the subsequent agreements on climate change is that while they represent
attempts to tackle climate change at a global level, they have all been forged
and indelibly framed by the politics and sovereignties of nation-states.
If we consider the Framework Convention on Climate Change, for
example, it is clear that its Wnal form and content were heavily shaped by
the sovereign interests of key states. Consequently, given US suspicion over
the Framework Convention’s likely impacts on the US economy, the con-
vention eventually only proposed non-binding requirements on signatory
states to reduce their production of certain greenhouse gases to 1990 levels
(O’Riordan and Jäger 1996: 19). Following the rather weak agreements on
climate change agreed at Rio, the interests and concerns of diVerent nation-
states have continued to shape and preWgure the international government of
the atmosphere. Through the various meetings of the Conference of the
Parties (a group established as part of the Framework Convention process
to monitor international progress on climate change policy), the climate
change debate has become synonymous with recalcitrant states. The Kyoto
Protocol for example—which was established in order to create much stricter
guidelines to the Framework Convention—is now synonymous with the
initial unwillingness of large greenhouse-gas producers like Australia, Rus-
sia, and the US to commit to the agreement. The Delhi Declaration (forged at
the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties) is now most remembered
for the reluctance of large greenhouse-gas producers in the developing world
(like China and India) to sacriWce their economic development in order to
make speciWc commitments to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. These
state-based tussles and tensions have continued to frame the construction of
an international governing mechanism to ameliorate climate change. Even as
we were writing this chapter, for instance, tensions were erupting at the
eleventh Conference of the Parties (this time convened in Montreal) between
so-called Annex 1 countries (who have ratiWed the Kyoto Protocol) and
states that remain opposed to aspects of the Framework Convention process.
These tensions culminated in Paul Martin (the Prime Minister of Canada)
accusing so-called ‘reticent nations’ (that is, states that oppose the Kyoto
Protocol, and in particular the US) of displaying a lack of global conscience.
Our point is that all the tensions, intrigues, and accusations surrounding
global climate change negotiations reveal that far from putting an end to the
state framing of nature, attempts to generate international action on global
warming have actually created an intensiWed arena of state inXuence within
environmental policy-making.
The state and the management of contemporary ecological risk

In many ways the story of international action on climate change reached its
zenith in October 2004. It was at this time that the Russia Duma (Parliament)
eventually ratiWed the Kyoto Protocol, enabling the agreement to come into
force. The Russian government had stalled on the Kyoto Protocol because of
its uncertainty over the eVects that signing up to such an agreement would
have on its post-socialist economy. While the role of Russia in enabling the
Kyoto Protocol to proceed again reveals the connections that exist between
national politics and global natures, in this section we are concerned with the
role of states within the delivery and administration of a ratiWed climate
change convention. The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to
reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide by speciWc amounts (based upon a
1990 baseline) by the period 2008–12. In establishing this requirement,
however, it is clear that contemporary global action on climate change is
not being administered by an international leviathan but by nation-states. It
is individual nation-states that are consequently responsible for implement-
ing the policies and campaigns through which greenhouse gas emissions are
actually reduced. These policies have ranged from advertising campaigns
designed to persuade people and industrialists to reduce their greenhouse
gas emissions to more stringent systems of taxes and levies.
In addition to the development of policies for climate change abatement,
however, nation-states are also being used as the basic units of assessment in
and through which the eYcacy of the Kyoto Protocol is being assessed. As
part of the Kyoto process, individual states are expected to compile annual
inventory reports of their greenhouse gas emissions (see Table 7.1). These
Wgures are partly produced through the complex technological and statistical
processes that we described in Chapter 6, but they are in many ways diVerent
from conventional forms of national environmental surveys. They are diVer-
ent precisely because they tend to focus on gases like carbon dioxide, which
are not pollutants at a local and national level. Carbon dioxide is a pollutant
at a global aggregate level, a level at which it impacts upon the process of
climate change and global warming. In this context, these national inventor-
ies of greenhouse gas emissions do not serve to frame a national state nature,
but rather to frame the substances that overXow and partially escape the
territorial control of states. The framing of overXows is recognized by Callon
(1998; see also Chapter 1) as an important part of the process of political and
economic framing, revealing as they do an increasing desire to understand
and control the whole space of socio-ecological eVect generated within
Table 7.1. Summary of changing levels of greenhouse gas emissions for Italy, 1990–2002 (tonnes)
Greenhouse
gases 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
CO2 430,636 430,496 429,475 424,251 417,251 446,660 438,858 443,122 452,984 460,272 467,548 472,005 471,402
CH4 38,320 38,971 37,824 38,030 38,038 38,284 38,212 38,471 38,328 38,466 38,051 37,145 35,853
N2 0 39,924 41,164 40,614 40,871 39,828 41,025 40,775 42,010 41,838 42,877 42,995 43,000 43,005
HFCs 351 355 359 355 482 671 450 755 1,181 1,452 2,005 2,759 3,561
PFCs 1,808 1,423 799 631 355 337 243 252 270 258 346 452 414
SF6 333 356 358 370 416 601 683 729 605 405 493 795 738
Total 511,371 512,766 509,428 504,670 496,369 527,588 519,221 525,340 535,205 543,729 551,438 556,157 554,972
Note: CO2 levels estimated without allowance for land use, land-use change or forestry.
Source: Based on United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (2005); see http://www.unfccc.int.
politico-economic decision-making. This state-based process of emissions

framing produces a peculiar situation whereby an a territorial substance (in
this case carbon dioxide or any greenhouse gas), which contributes to a
change in the operation of natural systems at a post-territoriality scale, is
conceived of, classiWed, and managed through its association with the per-
sistent territorialities of nation-states. The calibration of greenhouse gases
with nation-states has, of course, been reaYrmed by provisions within the
Kyoto agreement, which allow for the possibility of trade or transfer of one
state’s emissions with those of another territory.
While the decision of certain states to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is a
preliminary act of risk aversion, in many instances it is clear that some
states are beginning to plan what to do if the Kyoto process fails to prevent
the worst consequences of climate change. In many states, government
departments and ministries are beginning to produce ‘risk management
frameworks’. These seek to make the largely unknowable long-term conse-
quences of climate change calculable. In doing so, they also suggest ways in
which the state can insulate its citizens from some of the worst socio-eco-
logical consequences of global warming. A brief look through the pages of
one state’s risk management framework provides a fascinating insight into
how the global threat of climate change is being framed and governmenta-
lized by states. The British government’s The Impacts of Climate Change
(DEFRA 2003) provides a detailed analysis of how Britain’s climate will
itself change in the future (largely, it would seem, becoming warmer
and wetter). Supplementing this report, the government’s UK Climate
Change Impacts Programme provides a detailed regional analysis of the
consequences of climate change. In the West Midlands region the report
predicts:
Increased demand for irrigation because of drier soils—possibly up by 23 per cent by
the 2020s. Higher winter temperatures easing cold-weather problems for livestock.
Power cables may suVer increased sagging because of hot summers. Some land could
become unstable because of Xooding as rainfall patterns change. Warmer, drier
summers could encourage more walking and cycling, for both leisure and work
travel.36
In addition to these regional estimates, the Department of Health also
predicts that heat-related deaths in the UK could rise by 2800 every year
(cold-related deaths are likely to fall by 20,000 per annum, however), while
malaria could return to the UK by 2050.37 In the context of these calculated
risks, the government’s risk management framework describes the need for
36
DEFRA ‘How will climate change aVect your region?’ at: <http://www.ukcip.org.uk./
climate_impacts/location.asp> accessed 15 December 2005.
37
DEFRA ‘How will climate change aVect your organization?’ at: <http://www.ukcip.
org.uk./resources/sector/ci_sec.asp> accessed 15 December 2005.
new coastal and river Xood defence systems, greater investment in wildlife
conservation, and the need for new health-care strategies.
What interests us most about risk management frameworks for climate
change is the way they once again emphasize the role of the state in being able
to forecast and manage ecological risk. This management is, of course, not
simply a question of actually taking action on averting climate change, but
also depends on displaying competence in planning and thinking through the
consequences of global warming. In this context, the juxtaposition of malaria
infection with sagging electricity cables in the UK’s risk management frame-
work serves not only to raise public awareness about the terrifying dangers of
climate change (i.e. the arrival of malaria) but to illustrate the state’s insti-
tutional capacity to think of—and by deWnition control—some of the most
mundane side-eVects of global warming (i.e. sagging electricity cables). The
juxtaposition of the most dramatic and the most mundane aspects of climate
change reXect what Ulrich Beck (1992b) has described as the ‘discursive
management of risk’, which is routinely practised by large hazard bureau-
cracies like states and multinational corporations. The discursive manage-
ment of risk is not so much about averting risk but of managing it politically.
It is the use of such discursive strategies that is enabling states to take greater
and greater responsibility for ecological risks that are more and more beyond
their control.
The various relationships that we have outlined between states and climate
change reXect what Held et al. (1999: 396–9) have described as the ‘enmesh-
ing’ of nation-states in global nature. The enmeshing of states within global
environmental issues emphasizes how states are both used to implement and
monitor globally sanctioned policies and agreements, but also how states can
use international political forums to further their own environmental inter-
ests and values. The idea of national enmeshment also appears to imply that
even within global environmental threats like global warming, it is nations
who will ultimately experience its consequence, through losses of territory,
agricultural productivity, or population (Held et al. 1999: 397). It appears
that in this increasingly global era of ecological risk nation-states are utilizing
a whole series of territorial and non-territorial strategies to try and frame and
manage nature.
Conclusion: natures in the shadow of the state
In a recent article on environmental governance, Harriet Bulkeley (2005)

describes a new and bewildering array of scales that are now associated with
the political management of nature. According to Bulkeley, while scales such
as the city, the region, and the planet are becoming increasingly important
contexts for environmental policy delivery, it is crucial not to think of these as
isolated scalar platforms, but as networked sites involved in the multi-scalar
governance of nature. Bulkeley’s point is that when studying contemporary

environmental policy regimes we should neither privilege the national scale
as the dominant site for ecological management, nor understand environ-
mental governance as something that is practised exclusively by territorially
bound institutions. In this chapter we have seen that an analysis of state
nature need not be restricted to a consideration of the national territorial
production of nature. Despite an historical tendency towards the national-
ization of nature, states have always to a greater or lesser extend invoked a
whole series of variously scaled territorial strategies and sites of centraliza-
tion within the governance of nature. With an increasing awareness of the
globalization of nature within the contemporary era, however, it appears that
states have undertaken an intensiWed process of government rescaling in
order to improve the eYcacy of political intervention within environmental
relations.
The emergence of sustainable cities and the UN Framework Convention
on Climate Change provide insights into the new scales associated with state–
nature relations in the twenty-Wrst century. What is important to note about
both these examples of state–nature relations is that while operating at
spatial scales other than the national, they still incorporate aspects of the
processes of centralization and territorialization that we have been describing
throughout this volume. In the context of the SCI in Australia, for example,
the Australian government is using cities as centralizing sites through which
it can calculate and understand the socio-economic impact of the nation on
nature. At the same time, the federal government is using the idea of a more
compact and carefully planned sustainable city to territorially restructure
socio-economic relations with the natural world. In relation to the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change (and the associated Kyoto
Protocol) it is clear that certain nation-states are using the UN as a context
in and through which to achieve an expanded (post-national) territorial
consensus on climate change. Despite this goal, however, it is apparent that
the international climate change process still relies heavily on the use of
national frameworks of centralization and data gathering when it comes to
monitoring and assessing progress.
In addition to illustrating the diVerent scales in and through which state–
nature relations are realized, the two case studies described in this chapter
also reveal the importance of understanding the relationships between the
diVerent local and global contexts of state–nature enmeshment and the
national scale. In Australia, for example, it is clear that while operating at
a metropolitan level, the SCI continues to be heavily inXuenced by national
agendas. Consequently, whether it is in relation to discussions of the unique
role of the federal government in delivering a national sustainable cities
agenda, or the framing of this agenda by a desire to create cities that are
‘distinctively Australian’ and protect uniquely Australian natures (like the
Bush), the nation-state is clearly present at the metropolitan scale. At the
same time, it is diYcult to imagine any meaningful account of international

action on climate change that could be delivered without a description of the
competing sovereignties of national governments, which continue to shape
this process. In this context, while we broadly agree with Bulkeley’s call for a
more diverse scalar reading of governmental relations with the natural world,
we also assert that this diversity of scales must continue to incorporate the
national within its descriptions of contemporary environmental politics. It
appears that even within our intensely rescaled global era nature continues to
exist in the shadow of the state.
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!"#$%&'()%#*+)*+#,*'--.%-)/+%0-'*1%
Index
Abercrombie, Patrick 74 Australia 177, 185–97, 202, 207

Aborigines 187 autonomy 35, 40, 42, 48, 65–6
abortion 169–70
acid rain 15, 139 Baginski, Max 29
administration 3–4, 36–8, 67–8, 118, Bahro, Rudolf 39
119, see also bureaucracy Baigent, Elizabeth 92, 94, 96, 97
Afghanistan 6 Bakunin, Mikhail 28
Africa 46, 47, 83 Barlow Commission (1940) 110
Agassiz, Louis 78 Barry, Andrew 147, 157, 163
Agnew, John 88 Basque region, Spain 10
agriculture 4, 99 Baudrillard, Jean 59, 76, 77–8, 84, 162
Australia 182–3 Beck, Ulrich 3, 38–9, 206
cash-croppers 5 Belgium 86
industrialized 29 Berkman, Alexander 29
land-use maps 96, 114–15, 116 Berman, Marshall 20
legislation 15, 111–12 Bickmore, Albert 78–9
National Farm Survey 109–10 BIO (Biotechnology Industry
pesticides 123, 125 Organization) 165, 170–1, 174
pristine states 57 biodiversity 120, 190–2, 200
soil management 131–3 biopolitical power 48–9, 83, 151
state system 38 biosphere engineering 39
air quality 124–5, 128, 150–1, 152, 153, Blaikie, Piers 46
155–7, 158, 159, 160 Board, Christopher 101
Air Quality Archive 160–1, 162 Bookchin, Murray 32–3
Akeley, Carl 82–3 bourgeoisie 41, 43
Alba, Duke of 67 Bramhall, Richard 145
Amazonia 4–5 Brazil, IBAMA 4–5
American Museum of Natural Brenner, Neil 88, 117, 178
History, New York 17, 59, 75–6, Bretons 10
77–84, 85 Brown, Michael 4
Anarchism 28–33, 59 Bulkeley, Harriet 206–7, 208
Anderson, Benedict 59 bureaucracy 4–5, 35, 118, 122–36
Anderson, K. 183 Bureus, Andreas 94–5
Anderson, Perry 118 Burma 6
Andrews, Roy Chapman 75 bushland 188–97
Angola 6
ANT (Actor Network Theory) 51–3 cadastral mapping 91–7, 114–15, 116
anti-abortion lobby 169 Callon, Michel 14, 54, 203
arbitration 121, 130–6 Cambodia 6
Arctic 200 capitalism 21, 54, 118
Aristotle 27 Australian 183
AURN (Automatic Urban and Rural Marxist theory of 41, 43, 44, 45
Network) 160–1 socialization and 50–1
228 Index
car dependency 184 landscape and 9, 69, 72–3

carbon dioxide emissions 200, 201, 202, 204 Maori 132, 134–5
Carneiro, Robert 57 nature and 12
Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring 123 signs/symbolism 10
Castree, Noel 44–5 cyborg states 53–4, 162, 175–6
Celts 10 cyborgs 149, 168
centralization 7, 15, 20, 21, 36, 53, 207
administration 67–8 DaWs, Cynog 140, 142, 143–4, 145
ecological data 157–9 Daniels, S. 11
framing 55 Darier, Éric 49
land-use maps 91–116 data-gathering 36, 155–63, 207
state apparatus 117–46 Davies, John 73
state surveillance 109 DDT pesticide 123, 125
technology and 148–74 decentralization 29
CEQ (Council on Environmental Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari,
Quality) 125 Félix 49–50, 54
Chadwick, Edwin 70–1 Delhi Declaration (2002) 202
Charles V, King of Spain 65, 67 Democratic Party 122, 137
cities 178–97, see also urbanization desertiWcation 46
civil society 26, 44, 79, 118 digitization 162
Clark, Gordon and Dear, Michael 117 dioramas 75–6, 82–3
Clean Air Act (1956) (UK) 155 disciplinary society 48
Clean Air Act (1970) (US) 124–5 DoE (Department of the
climate change 120, 141, 198–208 Environment) 149, 150, 153, 154,
Clinton, President Bill 166 157, 158
cloning 39, 149, 164–74 Driver, F. 41
coal 198 droughts 46
Colombia 6 DTI (Department of Trade and
Communist Manifesto 41 Industry) 156
conXict commodities 5 dyke system 66, 67
Connor, Kenneth L. 169
conservation 83, 89, 111–12 Eastern Europe 68–9
Australian ecological heritage 186–97 Eco, Umberto 59, 76–7, 77, 78
lobby groups 73–4, 99–100, 159, 198 ecological patriotism 8–9
Conservative Party (UK) 138–9 economic:
corruption 5 assets 5, 96
Cosgrove, D. et al 113 contracts 14
Cosgrove, Denis 12 shift 99
CPRE (Council for the Preservation of wealth production 8
Rural England) 99 Ecuador 46
CPRW (Council for the Preservation of Egypt 6, 7–8
Rural Wales) 73–4 elections 141, 143–5
Cronon, William M. 88, 182 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 30, 31
Crosby, Alfred 61 energy management 7, 38, 194–5, 197
culture: Engels, Friedrich 41
cities and 187 England 11, 69–70, see also United
Dutch 63–4 Kingdom
Index 229
environment/environmentalism GA (Geographical Association) 101

32, 34 Gandy, Matthew 119, 120
globalization 198–208 Garden City Movement 184
governmentality 49, 151–2 gardens 12
history 60 genetic modiWcation 15, 39
monitoring 149–63 geopolitics 6–7
nationalism and 68 Germany 43, 86, 168
protection 4–5, 122–9 Giddens, Anthony 35–7, 48
research 158–9 GIS (geographical information
risk 38–40, 120, 139, 148 systems) 16
state apparatus and 119, 136 global warming 138, 194, 198–208
statistics 15 globalization 24, 50, 84, 135, 137, 178,
EPA (Environmental Protection 198–200
Agency) 122–9, 151 Godwin, William 28, 29
eugenics 82 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang, Faust 64
European elections 141 GoVman, E. 14
Evans, Eric 119 Goldman, Emma 28, 29
Evans, Gwynfor 72 Gramsci, Antonio 44, 79, 118
Evans, Vincent 74 Grant, Ulysses S. 78
Gray, John 148
Faggot, Jacob 96 Green Party 139–46
famine 38, 46 Green politics 137–9
Feldbaum, Carl B. 171 greenhouse gas emissions 198–9, 200,
FEMA (Federal Emergency 201, 202, 203, 204
Management Agency) 3–4 Greenpeace 198
feudalism 60 GruVudd, Pyrs 69
Finland 86 Gustav II Adolf, King of Sweden 93
Fisk, D. J. 159
Xoods 3, 63, 205 Habermas, J. 168
food shortages 46 Habsburg empire 65–6, 67–8
food supply 38, 108 Haldane, J. B. S. 166
Fordism 184 Hall, Peter 110–11
forestry management 29, 38, 131 Hannah, M. G. 104
Forster, C. 184 Haraway, Donna 53, 77
Foucault, Michel 13, 18, 50, 152 cybernetic technology 168, 175
biopolitical power 47–9, 151 natural history museums 79, 81–2
natural history museums 80–1 visualization 105
Framework Convention on Climate Harvey, David 44
Change (UN) 202, 207 Hayes, Rutherford B. 78
framing: Hazen, Susan B. 129
national nature 117–46 Hearst, William Randolph 77
nature 15, 54–5, 69–75, 80–1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 41
overXows 203, 205 Held, D. et al 199, 206
by the state 61–8 Hobbes, Thomas 25–7, 32, 34, 40, 201
France 42, 86 Hollander, Gail 121, 136–7
Friends of the Earth 159 households 48
frontier thesis 11, 88 human bodies 167–8
230 Index
hunting 61, 83 Lantmätare 94–7

Hurricane Katrina (2005) 2–4 Latour, Bruno 53
hydrological cycle 199–200 on modern laboratories 166
modern state/modern nature 19, 122,
IBAMA (Brazilian environmental 146
protection agency) 4–5 political ecology 137
immunization 167 puriWcation/translation 51
individual freedom 30–1 Lefebvre, Henri 89, 98
Indonesia 6 legislation 43
industrialization 199 environmental 124–5, 139, 150,
competition 135 152–3, 191
ecological damage and 34 green 144
pollution monitoring 150–2 immigration 82
risk society and 38–9 land use 109
state infrastructures for 43 patent 173–4
water supply and 8, 70 planning 110–11
IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on pollution 152
Climate Change) 198–200, 201, 202 public health 119–20, 150, 152, 153
Israel 7 resource management 121, 129–36
Italy, greenhouse gas emissions for 204 technology 149
Lewis, J. 123
JeVerson, Thomas 30 Liberia 6
Jessop, Bob 44 Liverpool 72–5
Jessup, Morris K. 79 Luke, Timothy 77, 81, 83, 162
Johnston, Ron 37, 120 LUS (Land Utilisation Survey) 98,
100–16
Kain, J. P. and Baigent, E. 92, 95–6
Kemp, Dr David 180 McCormick, J. 138, 139
Klare, M. 6 McKibben, Bill 167, 199
Koenigsberger, Helmut 66 Macnaghten, P. and Urry, J. 105
Kropotkin, Peter 28, 29 MacNeill, J. R. 60
Kunz, George 80 Mann, Michael 35–6, 57
Kyoto Protocol 202, 203, 205 Maoris 132, 134–5
mapping 77, 86, 89–110
labour 41, 42 marine pollution 157, 158, 159
Labour Party 140 Martin, Paul 202
land classiWcation categories 103–4 Marxism 35, 40–3, 46, 148
land pollution management 157, 158, Matless, David 99, 111
159 Melbourne, Australia 195
land use: Memon, P. A., and Gleeson, B. J. 135,
intensiWed human 61 136
mapping 86, 89–115 Middle East 7
landscape 8–9, 89–90 militarism 94
nation-building and 11–12 Mill, Hugh Robert 101
national parks 113 mining 96–7, 136, 183
nationalism and 69 Mitchell, Timothy 59, 77
survey 100–16 modernity 19, 20, 39–40, 51, 57–8, 93–4
Index 231
morality 27–8, 164, 169 framing 15, 54–5, 61–8, 69–75, 80–1,
Morgan, Elystan 73 117–46
Morgan, J. Pierpont 80 globalization of 198–200
Morgan, Reverend Dyfnallt 69 Hobbes on 25–7
Morocco 6 land and 86
Morris, Jan 8 Marxist view of 43
Mosby, J. E. 107 myths and 10–11, 18–19
Mother Earth journal 29–30 neo-Marxist theories of 45
Murdoch, J. 52 people’s estrangement from 29
myths 10–11, 18–19, 26 simpliWcation of 157–8
society and 34–5, 166–8, 175
NAEI (National Atmospheric Emissions surveys 101, 104–7, 151
Inventory) 160–1, 162, 163 territorialization of 47
nanotechnology 39 third 163
nation-states 1, 10–11, 13 urbanism and 12, 178–88, 180–97,
climate change policies 203 188–94
conservation 83 uses of term 13, see also conservation;
contestation and 68 environmentalism
cybernations 53–4, 162, 175–6 nature reserves 47
land use 86 nature-state relations see state-nature
natural history museums and 81 relations
spatiality of 88–116 neo-Malthusians 46
Westphalian model 50, see also states neo-Marxism 44–5
National Farm Survey 109–10 neo-Weberians 35–6, 37, 48
national natures 117–46 Netherlands 58, 61–8, 86, 118
national parks 16, 83, 89, 112–15, 191 Neumann, Roderick 47, 114
national security 7, 94, 95 Neutze, Max 185, 194
National Trust (UK) 99 New Zealand 16, 121, 129–36
nationalism 10, 17, 59, 63–4, 68, 69–75 Nietzsche, Friedrich 30
nationalization 6, 111, 177 Nigeria 6, 46
natural disasters 2–4, 46, 63, 205 Nixon, President Richard 122, 123
natural history museums 17, 59, 75–6, nuclear power 39
77–84, 85
natural resources 6, 30 O’Brien, Jay 46
conXict over 5–6 OVe, Claus 119
contestation 70–5 oil 7, 46
exploitation of 4–5, 39, 83 Olwig, Kenneth 11–12
legislation 43 ontology 51, 53, 77
management of 34, 37–8, 121, Ophuls, William 201
129–36 Osborn, H. F. 82
Maoris and 134 overXows 15, 203, 205
mapping 90, 96 ozone depletion 198, 199
search for scarce 61
urban consumption of 180 Paine, Thomas 30
nature: Palmer, Malcolm 195
administration 34–8, 119 Papua New Guinea 6
centralized knowledge 15–16 Paris Commune (1870) 42
232 Index
Paris World Exhibition (1889) 77, 80 race 81–2

patents 164, 165, 171–3 radical feminism 46
Peet, Richard 46 rainfall rates 70, 205
Perth, Western Australia 191–2 rainforests 4–5
pesticides 123, 125, 128 Reade, Charles 184
Philip II, King of Spain 65 Reclus, Elisée 28
Pickles, J. 91, 92–3 regulation 118, 138, 191
Plaid Cymru 69, 72 religion 21
and Green Party 140, 142–5 Republican Party 122, 137, 164
planning: Richards, John 60–1
Garden City Movement 184 RiYn, GeoVrey 154
New Zealand 121, 129–36 risk management 3–4, 38–40, 139,
regional 88 205–6
town and country 110–15, 129, 131, RMA (Resource Management Act)
136 (1991) (NZ) 121, 129–36
urban 194–7 road construction 131
zones 16 Robbins, Paul 46
polders 17 Roberts, Michael 95
political ecology 46–7, 121–2, 135–46 Roberts, O. 74
political freedom 29–30 Roosevelt, President Theodore 81–2
political identity 61–8, 93, 97, 116, 118 Roosevelt Sr., Theodore 80
political suppression 105 Rose, N. and Miller, P. 23
politics 118, 121–2, 135–46, 170, 174 Roslyn Institute, Scotland 166
pollution 122, 124–5, 128, 139 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 27–8, 30, 32,
anthropogenic 199 41, 168
control 35 Royal Commission on Environmental
monitoring 150–63 Pollution 153–4
urban 179, 180 Ruckelshaus, William D. 127–8
Porritt, Jonathon 140, 141, 143–4 Russia, Kyoto Protocol 202, 203
and Winner, D. 137 Rwanda 6
post-colonialism 46 Ryecroft, S. and Cosgrove, D. 104
Poulantzas, Nicos 44
power 26, 43, 44, 47–9, 50–1, 57, 83, SchaVer, Kay 189
92–3, 151, see also states Schama, Simon 61, 62–3, 64
Preston, Douglas 79 SchoWeld, R. 130
private property 50, 89, 98, 99, 109–10 schoolchildren volunteers (LUS) 102,
privatization 43 103, 104, 106, 107
property rights 15, 42, 89, 165 Scott, J. C. 15, 37–8, 92, 104
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 28 Scott Committee 110, 111
public health 8, 118, 119, 120, 150, 152, Scouting movement 102
167 sea level rise 200
climate change and 205 Second World War 108–10, 123
global warming 200 Shoard, Marion 113
monitoring human environment 153 Short, et al 109
pesticides 123 Short, John Rennie 10
urban 179 Sierra Leone 6
water supplies and 70–1 simulations/simulacra 75–84
Index 233
Sluman, John 184 governmental 48

Smith, Neil 44, 45 guardian of nature 34–8, 138
smog 159 integral spaces 88–9
social contracts 28 interacting with nature 12–17
socialization 49–50 laboratory metaphor 20–1
socio-natural relations 34–5, 166–8, 175 legitimate violence 43, 44
soil management 131–3, 136 modern 18–19
Soja, E. 19 pristine 57
Spain 10, 65–6 property relations 89, 165
Stamp, Sir L. Dudley 87, 98, 100, 101–7, risk society and 39
108, 111, 112 and science 147–76
state-nature relations 2, 12 surveillance by 36, 101, 105, see also
Actor Network Theory 51–3 nation–states
Anarchism 28–32 stem cell research 169, 173, 174
cities 180–97 suburbanization 131, 190
consolidation 32, 58, 60–8, 84–5, 118, Sudan 6, 46
148 surveillance 36, 101, 105, 149–63
contestation 58–9, 68–75, 84–5 sustainability 16, 51, 136, 138, 141, 177,
cyborgs 53–4 194–7, 201
early philosophical accounts of 24–8 Sweden 17, 93–7, 116
Foucault’s theory of 47–51 Swyngedouw, Erik 45
Marxism 42–3 Symonds, Reverend H. H. 74
neo-Marxism 44–5
overXows 15 technology:
political ecologies of 46–7 agricultural 57
pristine states 57 environmental monitoring 155–63
remembering 59–60 state-nature relations 147–76
risk bureaucracies 38–40 water supply 71–2
simulacrum 59, 75–85 zones of 157
spatialities of 86–116, 178–9 territorialization 6, 7–8, 15, 16, 20, 21,
technology and 147–74 32, 88, 207
state of nature 25–8, 30, 32, 34 city-regions 178
state theory: framing 55
critiques of 23–4 mapping 91
Marxist 40–3 of nature 47, 91
neo-Marxism 44–5 overXows 203, 205
strategic relational 44 politics 69–75
Weberian 35, 39–40, 119 reconWgured 50–1
states 9–12, 12–13, 29 state-nature relations 32, 58, 60–8,
administrative 35–6, 48 84–5, 118, 148
and agriculture 109–10 state power and 53
apparatus of 117–46 technology 157–9
arbitration role of 121, 130–6 Thatcher, Margaret 138
cyborg 54, 162, 175–6 therapeutic cloning 169–70, 173, 174,
data collection 104 175, 176
educational function of 79–80 Thoreau, Henry David 28, 31
framing nature 54–5 TiVany, Charles 80
234 Index
Tilly, Charles 58 Wales 8–9, 141–5

timber 5, 29, 38, 96, 131 nationalism 17, 59, 69–75
Tolstoy, Leo 30 Wallace, Joseph 75
town and country planning 110–15, 129, Warren Spring Laboratory, UK
131, 136 155–63
traYc reduction legislation 144, 152 Washington, George 30
Tryweryn Valley project 17, 72–5 water cycle 199–200
Turner, Frederick Jackson 11 water resources 46, 205
Australia 194
Uganda 6 contestation 70–5
United Kingdom 9, 86 framing political identity 61–8, 118
centralized environmental management 38
monitoring 148–63 Nile Basin 7–8
climate change governmental quality monitoring 124, 150, 153, 157,
reports 205 158, 159
environmental protest 198 Watts, Michael 46
Green politics 137–8, 141–5 Weber, Max 41, 42
human cloning 166 Weberians 35, 37, 39–40, 119
land-use maps 97–115 Weldon, Congressman Dave 17, 164
national parks 16, 83, 89, 112–15 Weldon–Stupak Bill (2001) 149, 164–5,
parliamentary politics 16 168–70, 174
United Nations: Western Australia 191–3, 196–7
Environment Programme 154, 200–1, Westphalia, Treaty of (1648) 25, 50
202, 207 Whatmore, S. 173
human settlement statistics 180 Whitehead, Alfred North 14
sustainable development WHO (World Health Organization) 200
research 201, 202 Wilde, Oscar 30
United States: wilderness 11, 30, 47, 113–14
cloning debate 149, 164–5, 168–74 wildlife reserves 89
energy supply priority areas 7 Willadsen, Steen 166
EPA (Environmental Protection Willatts, E. C. 108
Agency) 122–9, 151 William of Orange 65
Everglades management 121–2, Williams, Alun 144
136–7 Williams, Colin and Smith, Anthony 69
frontier urbanization 11 Williams, D. J. 72
Hurricane Katrina 2–4 Williams, Gwyn Alf 72
Kyoto Protocol 202 Williams, Raymond 13
regulation of national nature 122–9 Wittfogel, Karl 57
urbanization 29, 88, 131, 182–7 Woods, Denis 91
Uthwatt Report 110 World Commission on Environment and
Development 201, 202
Vierlingh, Andries 66 Worldwatch Institute 5–6
Villach Conference (1985) 200–1 WWF (Worldwide Fund for
visualization 101, 104–6 Nature) 200

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OXFORD GEOGRAPHICAL AND

Editors: Gordon Clark, Andrew Goudie, and Ceri Peach

THE NATURE OF THE STATE

Editorial Advisory Board

ConXict, Consensus, and Rationality in Environmental Planning

Social Power and the Urbanization of Water

Thailand at the Margins

Industrial Transformation in the Developing World

Decolonizing the Colonial City

Putting Voters in their Place

Mark Whitehead, Rhys Jones,

List of Figures xii

1. States and Natures: An Introduction 1

2. Seeing Double: Thinking about Natures and States 23

3. The Moments of Nature–State Relations 56

4. Mapping the Land: Spatializing State Nature 86

5. Nature and the State Apparatus 117

6. Between Laboratory and Leviathan: Technological

7. Exploring Post-National Natures: Nature in the

1.1 The framing of state nature 16

1.1 Major resource conXicts since 1945 6

ANT Actor Network Theory

States and Natures: An Introduction

defence of the Brazilian state’s sovereign right to utilize natural resources

Preliminary explorations in state nature

Hurricanes, ecological Leviathans and the administration of nature

As we were Wnalizing this volume for publication, Hurricane Katrina hit

Initial criticism of the US government largely related to its slow response

rainforest and associated timber and ecological resources, Amazonia is

Nature wars and the geopolitics of states and natures

Table 1.1. Major resource conXicts since 1945

Afghanistan Heroin, opium, lapis lazuli, emeralds

Institute 2002). It is of course diYcult to validate such shocking Wgures.

Nations, nature, and ecological patriotism9

landscapes have been utilized as part of nation-building in Wales in a variety

While characterized by a rather naive environmental determinism, the

of administration, rules of law and sovereign powers. States, if you like,

describes the organic synthesis of nations in terms of the intimate mixing of

Studying state–nature relations: sites, moments, and the

referring to parliaments, governments, executives, legislatures, bureaucra-

Consequently, whether it is in terms of the construction of nature within art

249). A frame of interaction involves a degree of focus, a focus on the things

metaphorical sense)—so it can be gathered in both a simpliWed form (as in

Fig. 1.1. The framing of state nature

State, nature, and modernity’s laboratory

While it is possible to chart the relationship between political authorities and

modern period. We explain what we understand by the modern period in

enabled the deepening of ever more complex state–nature relations. In this

Structure of this book

the changing constitution of state nature in diVerent post-national contexts.

Seeing Double: Thinking about

Without their countless objects that ensure their durability as well as

The disintegration of the atlas: mythical abstractions and

broadly be deWned as a Foucauldian school (Hobbes 1996: 82) of political

Rethinking states and natures I: first nature and the early

States of nature: Hobbes and Rousseau

and good government must prevail if a morally virtuous society is to be

Anarchists, states, and natures

realized through a re-engagement of people with the substratum upon which

ongoing philosophical tradition, and as such our brief, historically limited

Rethinking states and natures II: second nature,

Weber and the ecological leviathan

state’s institutional capacities and territorial coverage enable it to assume an