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Frontiers
Histories of Civil Society and Nature
Michael R. Redclift
 Table of Contents and Sample Chapters
In Frontiers, Michael Redclift examines the relationship between nature and society in frontier areas—contested zones in which rival versions of civil society vie with one another, often over the definition and management of nature itself. Drawing on his own fieldwork and extensive archival research, Redclift presents five cases in which civil societies emerged in frontier areas either to manage common property or to legitimize private holdings: common-pool resource management in the Spanish Pyrenees, European settlement on the forest frontier in nineteenth-century Canada, conflicts over land and water resources in coastal Ecuador, Mayan civil unrest in the Yucatán peninsula, and the encroachment of tourism on the Mexican Caribbean coast.
Redclift describes a dialectical process in frontier regions in which human societies and their environments influence and illuminate one another: the frontier can be seen as a crucible in which both nature and civil institutions develop and "co-evolve." In each of the five case studies, he argues, migration and land settlement gave rise to ideologies of nature that reflected not only the social and ethnic characteristics of the settlers but also the the effects of market forces on the natural environment. In most of these areas the natural environment was transformed by the pressure of the market, especially global markets. But resistance to market pressure in turn created new avenues for political activity and the representation of cultural identity. Frontiers deepens and broadens our understanding of the role of the frontier, which, Redclift argues, needs to be considered within a global context that is of continuing importance today.
About the Author
Michael R. Redclift is Professor of International Environmental Policy and Head of the Environment, Society, and Politics Research Group in the Department of Geography at King's College, London. He is the author of, most recently, Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste and Sustainbility: Critical Concepts in Social Theory.
| "This is an extraordinary book and a major intellectual and academic achievement ... erudite, well-researched and lucidly written, while addressing major conceptual and theoretical issues in an accessible and empirically substantiated manner ... A must read."
—Erik Swyngedouw, Progress in Human Geography |
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| "Redclift masterfully portrays frontiers as tumultuous places, wherever they occur. There we find revolving doors of capitalism accepting and ejecting participants, feel the rawest edges of globalizing forces, and find the boundaries between what is natural and what is social being continuously redefined by different interests claiming property and individual destiny on changing terrains."
—Richard B. Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley
"Drawing on his magisterial understanding of modern thought and empirical studies—not least his own—Michael Redclift offers a modern panoramic of how territory is conceived. At a time when nature is widely perceived as biting back, Frontiers is an eloquent, wonderful statement that we can listen and reflect on different ways of seeing and relating to the natural."
—Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy, City University, London
"From Yucatán to the Pyrenees, from chewing gum to sheep, Michael Redclift offers a thoughtful historical account of the complex changing relations between people and nature."
—Bill Adams, Professor of Conservation and Development, University of Cambridge
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