Books in the California Studies in Critical Human Geography series

Lofgren takes us on a tour of the Western holiday world and shows how two centuries of "e;learning to be a tourist"e; have shaped our own ways of vacationing. We see how fashions in destinations have changed through the years, with popular images (written, drawn, painted, and later photographed) teaching the tourist what to look for and how to experience it. Travelers present and future will never see their cruises, treks, ecotours, round-the-world journeys, or trips to the vacation cottage or condo in quite the same way again. All our land-, sea-, and mindscapes will be the richer for Lofgren's insights.

An American Empire, constructed over the last century, long ago overtook European colonialism, and it has been widely assumed that the new globalism it espoused took us "e;beyond geography."e; Neil Smith debunks that assumption, offering an incisive argument that American globalism had a distinct geography and was pieced together as part of a powerful geographical vision. The power of geography did not die with the twilight of European colonialism, but it did change fundamentally. That the inauguration of the American Century brought a loss of public geographical sensibility in the United States was itself a political symptom of the emerging empire. This book provides a vital geographical-historical context for understanding the power and limits of contemporary globalization, which can now be seen as representing the third of three distinct historical moments of U.S. global ambition.The story unfolds through a decisive account of the career of Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950), the most famous American geographer of the twentieth century. For nearly four decades Bowman operated around the vortex of state power, working to bring an American order to the global landscape. An explorer on the famous Machu Picchu expedition of 1911 who came to be known first as "e;Woodrow Wilson's geographer,"e; and later as Frankin D. Roosevelt's, Bowman was present at the creation of U.S. liberal foreign policy. A quarter-century later, Bowman was at the center of Roosevelt's State Department, concerned with the disposition of Germany and heightened U.S. access to European colonies; he was described by Dean Acheson as a key "e;architect of the United Nations."e; In that period he was a leader in American science, served as president of Johns Hopkins University, and became an early and vociferous cold warrior. A complicated, contradictory, and at times controversial figure who was very much in the public eye, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Bowman's career as a geographer in an era when the value of geography was deeply questioned provides a unique window into the contradictory uses of geographical knowledge in the construction of the American Empire. Smith's historical excavation reveals, in broad strokes yet with lively detail, that today's American-inspired globalization springs not from the 1980s but from two earlier moments in 1919 and 1945, both of which ended in failure. By recharting the geography of this history, Smith brings the politics-and the limits-of contemporary globalization sharply into focus.

This investigation into two of the world's most pressing needs (biodiversity conservation and agricultural development in the Third World) challenges current opinion by showing that the world-renowned diversity of crops in the Andes may not be as hopelessly endangered as was thought.

Includes essays that counter the mainstream narrative of rational, scientific development with alternative histories that reveal hitherto invisible planning practices and agendas. This book examines a broad range of histories relevant to the preservation and planning professions.

Shady Practices is a revealing analysis of the gendered political ecology brought about by conflicting local interests and changing developmental initiatives in a West African village. Between 1975 and 1985, while much of Africa suffered devastating drought conditions, Gambian women farmers succeeded in establishing hundreds of lucrative communal market gardens. In less than a decade, the women's incomes began outstripping their husbands' in many areas, until a shift in development policy away from gender equity and toward environmental concerns threatened to do away with the social and economic gains of the garden boom. Male landholders joined forestry personnel in attempts to displace the gardens and capture women's labor for the irrigation of male-controlled tree crops.This carefully documented microhistory draws on field experience spanning more than two decades and the insights of disciplines ranging from critical human geography to development studies. Schroeder combines the "e;success story"e; of the market gardens with a cautionary tale about the aggressive pursuit of natural resource management objectives, however well intentioned. He shows that questions of power and social justice at the community level need to enter the debates of policymakers and specialists in environment and development planning.

Arusha National Park in northern Tanzania, known for its scenic beauty, is also a battleground. This title shows how this park embodies the political-ecological dilemmas facing protected areas throughout Africa. It focuses on the symbolic importance of natural landscapes among various social groups in this setting.