Environmental Expertise in the Age of Research: Institutional Process and Environmental Science in the American Far West, 1950-2014
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City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2015 Environmental Expertise In The Age of Research: Institutional Process And Environmental Science In the American Far West, 1950-2014. Nathan D. Woods Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1191 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Environmental Expertise In The Age of Research: Institutional Process And Environmental Science In the American Far West, 1950-2014. By Nathan D. Woods A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Anthropology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015. i © 2015 NATHAN D. WOODS All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Anthroplogy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _________________ ________________________________________________ Date Michael Blim, PhD. Chair of Examining Committee _________________ ________________________________________________ Date Gerald Creed, PhD. Executive Officer David Harvey, PhD Avram Bornstein, PhD Donald Breneiss, PhD Outside Reader THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract Environmental Expertise In The Age of Research: Institutional Process And Environmental Science In the American Far West, 1950-2014. By Nathan D. Woods Advisor: Professor Michael Blim This dissertation focuses on how academic experts have gone about creating university- based programs in Environmental Science (ES). Since the 1940’s, with the emergence of the postwar research economy, the U.S higher education system has increasingly become a vector of institutional change, innovation, and economic growth. This has had a dramatic impact on the social role of knowledge and collective expectations for faculty and expert work. In this context, academic experts in the mid 1960’s championed a movement to develop university-based programs integrating interdisciplinary environmental research with the expert use of science in decision-making. I pay particular attention to the role of science-based policy in the work of academic institution building. I argue that an evolving emphasis on the ‘use of knowledge’ rather than its production, or application, shaped how ES has been institutionalized, tying the authority of environmental experts to the creation of novel institutional arrangements to coordinate the production of knowledge with its ongoing use in integrated efforts to manage or solve environmental problems. The research compares case studies of university based ES programming in California, Oregon and Washington State from the period 1950-2014. These cases elucidate how iv programs originated and were institutionalized over time, documenting a dynamic centered on institutional work, struggles over the definition of utility, and the articulation of institutional strategy and capture, shaping both commonalities and variation across cases. I identify three key trajectories in the institutionalization of ES: a cooperative model of the environmental sciences, environmental expertise as a type of scientific reform movement, and ES as an administrative strategy linking environmental research programs. In this process, environmental experts reshaped the institutional ecology of the university in two significant ways. First we see an institutional reorganization of the relationship between experts and citizens, and second, the gradual emergence of a tiered administrative structure within the university, institutionalizing a ‘trading zone’ between experts and environmental constituencies. I conclude that the institutionalization of ES trading zones, in effect, creates an engine for institutionalization projects; a claim that holds broader implications for understanding the neoliberal university under conditions of epistemic modernization. v Acknowledgements Many people have contributed to this dissertation project in ways too numerous to count. First, I dedicate this work to the great love of my life Ryan Ando Lennon, a great avatar of joy, spiritual companion over many life times, and an everyday source of inspiration. Your great heart, steadfast encouragement and no-nonsense support were instrumental in seeing me through. I would like to thank the faculty and my colleagues in the Anthropology department for the great formal and informal education I received over the years, as I trained my mind and heart. In particular I thank my dissertation advisor Michael Blim for this generosity, patience, encouragement and enthusiasm. This project would not have been completed without his support. Likewise I thank my dissertation committee, David Harvey and Avram Bornstein, for their criticism, engagement and guidance. From the faculty I thank Louis Lennihan for all of her help and support over the years; Shirley Lindenbaum for her friendship and enthusiasm; Talal Asad for encouragement and the gift of conversation; and Kirk Dombrowski for guidance and importantly his pithy encouragement. Additionally, I thank a number of graduate colleagues who were crucial to the completion of this project. Thanks to Joshua Milton Moses for our enduring friendship, weekly check-ins while writing, and unwavering support; Mary Taylor for the gift of intellectual conviviality and friendship; Julian Brash for the gift of intellectual mutuality vi and dialogue over the years; Melissa Zavella for all of her help and enthusiasm, along with Akissi Britton and Christine A. Pinnock for the gift of solidarity. Most importantly I thank all of the interview participants who collaborated with me on this project, sharing your gift of time, and experience. I wish to thank my sangha and family for their support. Thank you to Roshi Seisen Saunders for your council and unwielding encouragement, and the sangha at Sweetwater Zen Center for encouragement, and spiritual friendship. I thank my sister Anne McGroarty, her husband Sean O’Tyson, and Jane and Jim McGroarty for the gift of family, and for their hospitality, and the joy of our friendship over the years. I thank Saneta Devuono-Powell, for the gift of sisterhood and intellectual commitment. Thank you to my two nieces, Lulu and Freya O’Tyson, and my goddaughter, Alma for reminding me everyday that we do work for those to come after us. Finally, I thank my mother, Cindy Minks, and stepfather, Ron Minks, and my grandfather, Dean Pope. This project would not have happened without their love, generosity and unwavering support. Finally, this research and dissertation would not be possible without the generous funding of the National Science Foundation, The American Philosophical Society, and the CUNY Graduate Center. Thank you all for your faith in me. I endeavor to carry this training forward, and to realize all of this support, enthusiasm and generosity as the ground of service. vii Table of Contents Introduction: Cognitive Accumulation in the Environmental Sciences 1 Chapter 1: Research and the Regulatory Ideal in the Field of American Higher Education 43 Chapter 2: Rethinking Opportunism: Institutional Work as Opportunity Structure 108 Chapter 3: How Institutions Forget: Change and the Cultivation of Institutional Publics. 155 Section Two: The Dynamics of Cognitive Accumulation in the Environmental Sciences 210 Chapter 4: Washington State: Creating a Science of the Environment, 1967-2010 211 Chapter 5: Oregon State University: Creating a Cooperative Architecture for Environmental Research, 1994-2010 262 Chapter 6: The University of California at Santa Barbara: From Environmental Generalist to Environmental Scientist, 1969-2010 303 Conclusion: Cognitive Accumulation and the Engine of Innovation 341 Appendices: A: Research Design and Methodological Appendix 361 References 371 viii Introduction: Cognitive Accumulation in the Environmental Sciences Who has the moral authority to speak on behalf of nature? This is a perennial question that, for thousands of years, has been used to think about the organization of the good, the beautiful, the just, or the valuable (Glacken, 1967, Daston and Vidal, 2007). Since the 17th century, scientific knowledge has become increasingly significant relative to the many other ways in which claims to speak for nature have been articulated (Shapin and Schaffer, 1989), and, since the 19th century, the question of who speaks for nature has been increasingly tied to the figure of the scientific expert (Shapin, 2008, Steen, 1999). When translated into institutional terms this question becomes who has the authority to act in relation to the institutional arrangements that stand for the natural order (Barnes, 1979). It is these debates over the authority of environmental expertise—over who has the moral authority to speak from knowing nature— that constitute debates over the institutional agency of experts. The mid1960’s witnessed the gradual emergence of a concerted effort to create a distinct body of expertise charged with the systematization of environmental knowledge, and the introduction of a distinct figure, the ‘Environmental Scientist,’ whose professional authority lay with the integration and use of an expanding body of knowledge to solve a multiplying number of