American Tropics: The Caribbean Roots of Biodiversity Science Contributor(s): Raby, Megan (Author) |
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ISBN: 1469635593 ISBN-13: 9781469635590 Publisher: University of North Carolina Press OUR PRICE: $98.01 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2017 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Nature | Ecology - History | Caribbean & West Indies - General - Science | Life Sciences - Biological Diversity |
Dewey: 333.95 |
LCCN: 2017009456 |
Series: Flows, Migrations, and Exchanges |
Physical Information: 0.88" H x 6.14" W x 9.21" (1.53 lbs) 336 pages |
Themes: - Cultural Region - Caribbean & West Indies |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Raby, Megan: - Megan Raby is assistant professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. |