By Karen Hébert, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
“No garden variety overachiever, Karen Hébert accepted our challenge to put together materials for a syllabus and decided to go all the way, producing an entire syllabus on “Environmental Relations” that consists of nothing but CSSH publications. Not only is it a fascinating course, it is proof of how rich and varied CSSH scholarship is in this field. Sample, borrow, savor, and, if you have the stamina, teach the class yourself! Karen gives you permission, and her blessing.”
—Andrew Shryock, CSSH Editor 2006–2016
I. Colonial Natures
1. Colonialism and the Production of Nature
Mintz, Sidney. 1959. Labor and Sugar in Puerto Rico and in Jamaica, 1800–1850. Comparative Studies in Society and History 1(3): 273-281.
McCann, James C. 2001. Maize and Grace: History, Corn, and Africa’s New Landscapes, 1500–1999. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(2): 246-272.
Kumar, Prakash. 2016. Plantation Indigo and Synthetic Indigo: European Planters and the Redefinition of a Colonial Commodity. Comparative Studies in Society and History 58(2): 407-431.
2. Nature, Knowledge, and Circulation
Mueggler, Erik. 2005. “The Lapponicum Sea”: Matter, Sense, and Affect in the Botanical Exploration of Southwest China and Tibet. Comparative Studies in Society and History 47(3): 442-479.
Jacobs, Nancy. 2006. The Intimate Politics of Ornithology in Colonial Africa. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48(3): 564-603.
Monnais, Laurence, and Noémi Tousignant. 2016. The Values of Versatility: Pharmacists, Plants, and Place in the French (Post)Colonial World. Comparative Studies in Society and History 58(2): 432-462.
II. Land and Its Transformations
3. Land, Property, and Agrarian Struggle
Berry, Sara. 2002. Debating the Land Question in Africa. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44(4): 638-668.
Scott, Rebecca J., and Michael Zeuske. 2002. Property in Writing, Property on the Ground: Pigs, Horses, Land, and Citizenship in the Aftermath of Slavery, Cuba, 1880–1909. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44(4): 669-699.
Daniel, E. Valentine. 1993. Tea Talk: Violent Measures in the Discursive Practices of Sri Lanka’s Estate Tamils. Comparative Studies in Society and History 35(3): 568-600.
4. Rethinking the Rural
Whittaker, Dick and Jack Goody. 2001. Rural Manufacturing in the Rouergue from Antiquity to the Present: The Examples of Pottery and Cheese. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(2): 225-245.
Donovan, Michael. 2001. The Intimate Geography of Family Farms. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(2): 273-297.
Holmes, Douglas R. and Jean H. Quataert, J. 1986. An Approach to Modern Labor: Worker Peasantries in Historic Saxony and the Friuli Region over Three Centuries. Comparative Studies in Society and History 28(2): 191-216.
5. Territory, Sovereignty, and Indigeneity
Nadasdy, Paul. 2012. Boundaries among Kin: Sovereignty, the Modern Treaty Process, and the Rise of Ethno-Territorial Nationalism among Yukon First Nations. Comparative Studies in Society and History 54(3): 499-532.
Gordillo, Gastón. 2011. Longing for Elsewhere: Guaraní Reterritorializations. Comparative Studies in Society and History 53(4): 855-881.
Bessire, Lucas. 2012. The Politics of Isolation: Refused Relation as an Emerging Regime of Indigenous Biolegitimacy. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 54(3), 467-498.
Cattelino, Jessica. 2006. Florida Seminole Housing and the Social Meanings of Sovereignty. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48(3): 699-726.
III. The Politics of Resource Extraction
6. Contesting Developmentalist Designs
Li, Tania Murray. 2000. Articulating Indigenous Identity in Indonesia: Resource Politics and the Tribal Slot. Comparative Studies in Society and History 42(1): 149-179.
Triantafillou, Peter. 2001. Governing Agricultural Progress: A Genealogy of the Politics of Pest Control in Malaysia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(1): 193-222.
Sunseri, Thaddeus. 2007. “Every African a Nationalist”: Scientific Forestry and Forest Nationalism in Colonial Tanzania. Comparative Studies in Society and History 49(4): 883-913.
7. Governing the Commons
Peluso, Nancy Lee. 1996. Fruit Trees and Family Trees in an Anthropogenic Forest: Ethics of Access, Property Zones, and Environmental Change in Indonesia. Comparative Studies in Society and History 38(3): 510-548.
van Ginkel, Rob. 1996. The Abundant Sea and Her Fates: Texelian Oystermen and the Marine Commons, 1700 to 1932. Comparative Studies in Society and History 38 (2): 218-242.
Jenkins, David. 2003. Atlantic Salmon, Endangered Species, and the Failure of Environmental Policies. Comparative Studies in Society and History 45(4): 843-872.
8. Extracting Ores and Remaking Social Relations
Slater, Candace. 1994. “All That Glitters”: Contemporary Amazonian Gold Miners’ Tales. Comparative Studies in Society and History 36(4): 720-730.
Ferry, Elizabeth Emma. 2011. Waste and Potency: Making Men with Minerals in Guanajuato and Tucson. Comparative Studies in Society and History 53(4): 914-944.
Manning, H. Paul. 2002. English Money and Welsh Rocks: Divisions of Language and Divisions of Labor in Nineteenth-Century Welsh Slate Quarries. Comparative Studies in Society and History 44(3): 481-510.
9. Industrial Nature in Circulation
Freidberg, Susanne. 2008. The Triumph of the Egg. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(2): 400-423.
Folch, Christine. 2010. Stimulating Consumption: Yerba Mate Myths, Markets, and Meanings from Conquest to Present. Comparative Studies in Society and History 52(1): 6-36.
Chari, Sharad. 2004. Provincializing Capital: The Work of an Agrarian Past in South Indian Industry. Comparative Studies in Society and History 46(4): 760-785.
IV. Post-Natural Natures
10. Environments of Nostalgia
Adler, Judith. 2006. Cultivating Wilderness: Environmentalism and Legacies of Early Christian Asceticism. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48(1): 4-37.
Kaufmann, Eric. 1988. “Naturalizing the Nation”: The Rise of Naturalistic Nationalism in the United States and Canada. Comparative Studies in Society and History 40(4): 666-695.
Muehlebach, Andrea. 2017. The Body of Solidarity: Heritage, Memory, and Materiality in Post-Industrial Italy. Comparative Studies in Society and History 59(1): 96-126.
11. Landscapes of Exposure
Hecht, Gabrielle. 2009. Africa and the Nuclear World: Labor, Occupational Health, and the Transnational Production of Uranium. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51(4): 896-926.
Parr, Joy A. 2006. A Working Knowledge of the Insensible? Radiation Protection in Nuclear Generating Stations, 1962–1992. Comparative Studies in Society and History 48(4): 820-851.
Briggs, Charles L. 2001. Modernity, Cultural Reasoning, and the Institutionalization of Social Inequality: Racializing Death in a Venezuelan Cholera Epidemic. Comparative Studies in Society and History 43(4): 665-700.
12. Remaking Nature and Culture
Morgan, Lynn M. 2008. The Embryography of Alice B. Toklas. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(1): 304-325.
Wolf-Meyer, Matthew. 2011. The Nature of Sleep. Comparative Studies in Society and History 53(4): 945-970.
Borneman, John. 1988. Race, Ethnicity, Species, Breed: Totemism and Horse-Breed Classification in America. Comparative Studies in Society and History 30(1): 25-51.
Pálsson, Gísli. 2009. Biosocial Relations of Production. Comparative Studies in Society and History 51(2): 288-313.
Karen Hébert is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Her research explores environmental politics and changing natural resource economies in the subarctic North, especially in coastal Alaska. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Michigan, where she served as an editorial assistant at CSSH in 2007-08.
