Book ID: CBB515952827

American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science (2017)

unapi

Raby, Megan (Author)


University of North Carolina Press


Publication Date: 2017
Physical Details: 336 pages
Language: English

Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity.Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.

...More
Reviewed By

Review Julia E. Rodriguez (2019) Review of "American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science". American Historical Review (pp. 1120-1121). unapi

Review Timothy W. Lorek (October 2018) Review of "American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science". Environmental History (pp. 916-917). unapi

Review Michael J. Lannoo (2019) Review of "American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 850-851). unapi

Review Suman Seth (2019) Review of "American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science". Agricultural History (pp. 548-550). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB515952827/

Similar Citations

Book West, Paige; (2006)
Conservation is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea (/isis/citation/CBB000772104/)

Article David Bond; (2017)
Oil in the Caribbean: Refineries, Mangroves, and the Negative Ecologies of Crude Oil (/isis/citation/CBB570551812/)

Book Sarkar, Sahotra; (2005)
Biodiversity and Environmental Philosophy: An Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB000771275/)

Article Carruthers, Jane; (2008)
Conservation and Wildlife Management in South African National Parks, 1930s--1960s (/isis/citation/CBB000774602/)

Article Palomares, Maria Lourdes D.; Heymans, Johanna J.; Pauly, Daniel; (2007)
Historical Ecology of the Raja Ampat Archipelago, Papua Province, Indonesia (/isis/citation/CBB000831351/)

Book Rafi Youatt; (2015)
Counting Species: Biodiversity in Global Environmental Politics (/isis/citation/CBB911557825/)

Article Margaret H. Friedel; Stephen R. Morton; Gary N. Bastin; Jocelyn Davies; D. Mark Stafford Smith; (2022)
A history of CSIRO’s Central Australian Laboratory 2, 1980–2018: Interdisciplinary land research (/isis/citation/CBB854591588/)

Chapter Bilby, Kenneth; (2012)
An (Un)natural Mystic in the Air: Images of Obeah in Caribbean Song (/isis/citation/CBB001252982/)

Book Wilson, Edward O.; (2006)
Nature Revealed: Selected Writings, 1949--2006 (/isis/citation/CBB000741821/)

Article Michael D. Edge; Noah A. Rosenberg; (2015)
Implications of the apportionment of human genetic diversity for the apportionment of human phenotypic diversity (/isis/citation/CBB310359830/)

Article Courtney Fullilove; (2018)
Microbiology and the Imperatives of Capital in International Agro-Biodiversity Preservation (/isis/citation/CBB114385437/)

Article Tess Doezema; (2023)
The promise of ELSI: Coproducing the future of life on earth (/isis/citation/CBB770445117/)

Article Alexander Aisher; Thomas Widlok; Jean-Baptiste Pettier; Lorena Córdoba; Paul J. Lane; Lecain, Timothy James; Michael Bollig; Gänger, Stefanie; (October 2019)
Forum: Commodifying the “Wild”: Anxiety, Ecology and Authenticity in the Late Modern Era (/isis/citation/CBB319730977/)

Book Carl Death; (2016)
The Green State in Africa (/isis/citation/CBB850595474/)

Article Marte Qvenild; (2008)
Svalbard Global Seed Vault: A 'Noah's Ark' for the World's Seeds (/isis/citation/CBB511149333/)

Book Con Díaz Gerardo; (2019)
Software Rights: How Patent Law Transformed Software Development in America (/isis/citation/CBB992270814/)

Book Blake C. Scott; (2022)
Unpacked: A History of Caribbean Tourism (/isis/citation/CBB848404575/)

Book Lisa Blackmore; Gómez, Liliana; (2020)
Liquid ecologies in Latin American and Caribbean art (/isis/citation/CBB145773678/)

Authors & Contributors
Alexander Aisher
Gómez, Liliana
Lorena Córdoba
Margaret H. Friedel
Con Diaz, Gerardo
Death, Carl
Concepts
Biological diversity; biodiversity
Environmental sciences
Science and politics
Environmental history
Natural resource management
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
Places
Caribbean
New Guinea
Indonesia
Americas
United States
South Africa
Institutions
International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2004)
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Human Genome Project
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment