Vetter, Jeremy (Author)
This dissertation examines the production of knowledge in a geographical region. The U.S. Central West--including present-day Colorado, Wyoming, eastern Utah, western Nebraska, western Kansas, and southwestern South Dakota--was opened up by the building of the Union Pacific half of the transcontinental railroad in the late 1860s. A region of high, arid plains that also includes the towering mountain ranges of the southern Rockies and the canyonlands of the northern Colorado Plateau, its American Indian inhabitants were displaced in the nineteenth century by American settlers, including field scientists who studied the region's physical, biological, and human diversity. Just as the Central West saw its mineral wealth become the object of resource extraction by the industrializing metropolitan centers of the East, so too did it become a lucrative periphery for the production of knowledge. The economy of knowledge was closely interrelated with yet distinct from the capitalist economy. Knowledge circulation was an emerging commodity flow in the transformation of the region. By looking at a single region, which is bounded and coherent yet displays some internal environmental diversity, this dissertation probes the relationship between place and knowledge. Framing these questions in environmental history and historical geography, it explores how the environment influenced the making of knowledge in the field. It also examines the role of work organization in the production of knowledge, analyzing how field scientists turned natural resources into knowledge through various modes of field production, including networks, surveys, stations, and quarries. By making field work more systematic, these modes responded to the epistemological challenge offered by the rise of laboratories. While researchers and institutions from outside the region dominated early knowledge production efforts, regional actors became more important, especially after the 1890s. Gradually the region developed secondary outposts of knowledge processing, most notably the Colorado Piedmont region around Denver, which also formed the emerging economic center of the region. By 1920, the Central West had become a significant knowledge production region not only for the older metropolitan centers of the East but also its own younger core cities.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 66/06 (2005): 2363. UMI pub. no. 3179825.
Thesis
Ilerbaig, Juan Francisco;
(2002)
Pride in Place: Fieldwork, Geography, and American Field Zoology, 1850--1920
(/isis/citation/CBB001562443/)
Chapter
Vetter, Jeremy;
(2012)
Field Life in the American West: Surveys, Networks, Stations, and Quarries
(/isis/citation/CBB001210267/)
Book
Shapiro, Aaron;
(2013)
The Lure of the North Woods: Cultivating Tourism in the Upper Midwest
(/isis/citation/CBB001553588/)
Book
Benjamin Heber Johnson;
(2017)
Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation
(/isis/citation/CBB507273842/)
Book
Teisch, Jessica B.;
(2011)
Engineering Nature: Water, Development and the Global Spread of American Environmental Expertise
(/isis/citation/CBB001230810/)
Book
Cumbler, John T.;
(2001)
Reasonable Use: The People, the Environment, and the State, New England 1790--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB000650490/)
Book
Bogue, Margaret Beattie;
(2000)
Fishing the Great Lakes: An Environmental History, 1783-1933
(/isis/citation/CBB000111077/)
Chapter
Simona Boscani Leoni;
Sarah Baumgartner;
Meike Knittel;
(2021)
Introduction: From Switzerland to the Indies
(/isis/citation/CBB610089546/)
Chapter
Jon Mathieu;
(2021)
Divergent Perception: Deserts and Mountains in Transition to Modernity, Seen through Alexander von Humboldt’s Views of Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB984242932/)
Book
Simona Boscani Leoni;
Sarah Baumgartner;
Meike Knittel;
(2021)
Connecting Territories: Exploring People and Nature, 1700–1850
(/isis/citation/CBB246418898/)
Chapter
Chetan Singh;
(2021)
Creation of “Scientific” Knowledge: The Asiatick Society and Exploration of the Himalaya, 1784–1850
(/isis/citation/CBB662212988/)
Article
Vetter, Jeremy;
(2012)
Labs in the Field? Rocky Mountain Biological Stations in the Early Twentieth Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001320031/)
Article
Alagona, Peter S.;
(2012)
A Sanctuary for Science: The Hastings Natural History Reservation and the Origins of the University of California's Natural Reserve System
(/isis/citation/CBB001320033/)
Chapter
Barrow, Mark V., Jr.;
(2010)
On the Trail of the Ivory-Bill: Field Science, Local Knowledge, and the Struggle to Save Endangered Species
(/isis/citation/CBB001000296/)
Thesis
Laubacher, Matthew;
(2011)
Cultures of Collection in Late Nineteenth Century American Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001562722/)
Article
Lázaro Guevara;
(2021)
The legacy of the fieldwork of E. W. Nelson and E. A. Goldman in Mexico (1892–1906) for research on poorly known mammals
(/isis/citation/CBB899871320/)
Article
Vetter, Jeremy;
(2008)
Field Science in the Railroad Era: The Tools of Knowledge Empire in the American West, 1869--1916
(/isis/citation/CBB000932889/)
Book
Diane Smith;
(2017)
Yellowstone and the Smithsonian: Centers of Wildlife Conservation
(/isis/citation/CBB981445776/)
Article
Bennett, Tony;
(2014)
Liberal Government and the Practical History of Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB001201582/)
Book
Bont, Raf de;
(2015)
Stations in the Field: A History of Place-Based Animal Research, 1870--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001551940/)
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