Levi Van Sant

Soil surveys are one of the most powerful tools of modern statecraft, yet they have received little critical scrutiny. This article examines the early history of the US cooperative soil survey, from its founding in 1899 through the New Deal, and argues that it functioned not only as a tool of agricultural modernisation but also as a technology for the development of white nationalist state power. The founding of the soil survey , for instance, was successful based on its claims to resolve post-frontier racial anxieties about national vigour. Over the next several decades soil surveying grew increasingly central to the execution of state power and arguably formed the basemap for New Deal conservation and planning efforts in the 1930s. The New Deal's decen-tralised and democratising projects promoted a more inclusive liberal nationalism, yet still supported the reproduction of white supremacy. This analysis shows how taking racial politics more seriously adds depth to studies of environmental governance, and suggests a model for doing so that highlights the articulation of race, nature, and nation through logics of improvement. Soil surveys remain an important political-ecological technology today and deserve more critical scrutiny. Political ecologists might also work with land reform and reparations movements to determine if and how soil surveys could be useful for liberatory projects.

This article examines the post-emancipation contests over agricultural land in the South Carolina Lowcountry – the coastal region surrounding the port city of Charleston – in the context of recent theo-rizations of plantation geographies and the racial politics of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). In the aftermath of slavery, freedpeople in the Lowcountry were remarkably successful in securing control over their labor and access to land. The measure of relative autonomy that came with these gains spurred enormous anxiety for white elites, however, who realized that black control over land and labor threatened to upend the region's racial hierarchy. I argue that plantation geographies persist through the white monopolization of land, and suggest that successfully challenging this historical trajectory depends on challenging liberal modes of improvement.

The South Carolina Lowcountry—the coastal region centered on Charleston—has developed a vibrant local food system over the past several decades. This article examines the role of governance institutions in cultivating local-market farmers and the broader agricultural landscape. It argues that the region’s institutions of agricultural governance produce a farmer characterized by “entrepreneurial nostalgia”—put simply, the articulation of entrepreneurial and nostalgic subjects. This farmer subjectivity in many ways fits within what is generally deemed a neoliberal mode of being, yet this article also emphasizes, contrary to much of the work on neoliberalism, the racial politics of such a subject position. Entrepreneurial nostalgia not only emphasizes individualism and the marketing of the self but it does so in a way that aligns with both colorblind and liberal-multicultural forms of racism. The article closes by reflecting on potential openings for reworking this farmer subjectivity.

We applied an integrative framework to illuminate and discuss the complexities of exurbanization in Macon County, North Carolina. The case of Macon County, North Carolina, highlights the complexity involved in addressing issues of exurbanization in the Southern Appalachian region. Exurbanization, the process by which urban residents move into rural areas in search of unique natural amenities and idealized lifestyles, can often have a dramatic impact on the local economy, culture, and environment. Within Macon County, complex debates and tensions among multiple stakeholders struggle to address local residential development. How can better problem definition benefit rural communities in addressing exurbanization pressures and effects? We asserted that a key factor in the shortcomings of previous solutions was the shortsightedness inherent in policy that attempts to treat individual symptoms without being able to adequately characterize the underlying problem. The goal of the integrative framework is to initiate an iterative process of transparent negotiation, which recognizes a range of potential choices to be considered and to embrace the social complexities that can at times overwhelm scholars and practitioners, inviting simplification and polarization of the issues. This new and emerging framework offers a novel way of approaching conservation and development issues where other frameworks have failed. It helps acknowledge the difficult choices, i.e., trade-offs, that have to be made in a material process like exurbanization. Trade-offs will be necessary in any negotiation related to conservation. Therefore, conflict surrounding specific values, e.g., cultural, financial, or ecological, must be acknowledged upfront to move deeper into issues of plurality. Given the complexity, understanding how the process of exurbanization is being played out within Macon County provided not only an opportunity to demonstrate the functionality of an integrative approach, but also a call for further study of exurbanization dynamics.

Two sessions are being organized for AAG 2018 as part of the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI), which is focused on the social and political processes and practices, particularly in rural spaces, that are generating alternatives to regressive, authoritarian politics. More information about the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative and a link to the initiative framing paper published in The Journal of Peasant Studies is available at http://bit.ly/EmancipatoryRuralPolitics. Submissions based on papers, conceptual pieces, case studies, and works in progress are all welcome. If you would like to contribute to one of the sessions, please submit a brief abstract or description of your proposed contribution along with your name, affiliation and email address by 15 October 2017 to Amber Huff at a.huff@ids.ac.uk. Please include 'AAG 2018' and the number of the session you would like to contribute to in the subject line. If your abstract is accepted for one of the sessions, you will need to register for the meeting, upload your abstract to the AAG annual meeting and send your assigned pin to the organizers no later than 25 October, 2017. Emancipatory rural politics I: contextualizing authoritarian populism Discussant: Wendy Wolford (Cornell University) Preliminary session abstract: Deepening inequalities, socioeconomic marginalization and exclusion, persistent poverty, fractured identities and loss of esteem are all features of rural areas today. All have been associated to differing degrees with failure of 'progressive neoliberalisms' and the rise of regressive and often contradictory forms of populism. 'Authoritarian populism' describes a broad politics, resonant with appeals to 'common sense' and 'the people', and replete with imagery of imagined golden ages of prosperity and plenty. It is characterised by a number of often-­‐overlapping themes and phenomena. These include the rise in prominence of discourses of aggressive protectionism and nationalism; highly contested national elections; growing concern over the 'mobile poor', including refugees and migrants whose presence is posed as a threat to a shrinking resource base; increasing financialization, bureaucratization, securitisation and militarization across daily life, society and the environment; an intensification of extractive capitalism; and a radical undermining of the capacity of states to regulate private industry, while at the same time utilising state powers to privatise resources and services and increase surplus for a minority. Contributions to this session will explore the emergence of authoritarian populism in diverse forms and rural spaces and, in different ways, address the overarching question of how rural landscapes and experiences shape and are being shaped by these wider politics. Contributions will use

This thesis examines the life of Eugene Pleasants Odum (1913-2002), who is widely known as " The Father of Modern Ecology. " In addition to his role as founder of the discipline of ecosystem ecology, Odum was also a prominent figure in modern American environmentalism. This work uses Odum's dual role as both respected scientist and popular political leader as a window into the relationship between the science of ecology and the budding environmental movement in post-World War II America. In contrast to most of the scholarly literature, this thesis argues that ecosystem ecologists were as much products of the environmental movement as they were its leaders.

Course Description
We live in an era of increasing concern and contestation over environmental issues: from massive marine dead zones and global climate change to the accumulation of pharmaceuticals and toxins in individual bodies. In addition to these recently-acknowledged challenges, centuries old problems such as soil erosion remain or even accelerate. This suggests that many of the common approaches to the analysis of ecological issues are inadequate. Thus, this course will introduce you to the field of political ecology – a critical social science approach to human/environment relations that digs below the surface in an effort to reveal the structural roots of ecological problems.

Political ecology is an incredibly diverse field, however, so this course does not aim for comprehensive coverage. Instead, we will survey a wide range of topics, themes, and theories to provide you with a sense of the field's trajectory and some of the most prominent debates today. Throughout the course our goal is to not only understand and analyze the scholarly arguments, but also to reflect on their broader implications: essentially, do they enable a more just and sustainable world?