The twin categories of the state and nature collectively embody some of the most fundamental reference points around which our lives and thinking are organized. Despite their combined significance, however, the complex relationships that exist between modern states and nature remain under-theorized and are relatively unexplored.
Through a detailed study of different sites, moments, and framing strategies The Nature of the State challenges the ways in which geographers and social scientists approach the study of state-nature relations. The authors analyse different instances of state-nature interaction from all over the world, considering the geo-politics of resource conflicts, the operation of natural history museums, the organizational practices of environmental departments and ministries, the regulation of genetic science, and contemporary forms of state intervention within issues of climate change. Introducing original research into the different institutional, spatial, and temporal strategies used by states to frame the natural world The Nature of the State provides a critical overview of the latest political and ecological theories and addresses a wide range of pressing socio-environmental debates.
1.: States and Natures - An Introduction
2.: Seeing Double - Thinking about Natures and States
3.: The Moments of Nature State Relations
4.: Mapping the Land: Spatializing State Nature
5.: Nature and the State Apparatus
6.: Between Laboratory and Leviathan: Technological Development and the Cyborg State
7. Exploring Post-National Natures - Or, Nature in the Shadow of the State
Bibliography
Index
"a theoretically sophisticated, empirically grounded monograph [...] thoroughly engaging"
– Environment and Planning A