Envirotech Travel Grant – ASEH 2014

The Envirotech Special Interest Group is pleased to announce a $400 travel grant for the upcoming 2014 ASEH conference. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the upcoming ASEH meeting in San Francisco, CA, March 12-16, 2014. The grant is available to current graduate students, recent Ph.D.s (earned within three years) and independent scholars. The application is due by Monday, December 16, 2013. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting during the conference.

Applicants should complete this form, and email it along with a one or two page C.V. to TravelGrant@envirotechhistory.org. Any questions should be addressed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant, and submitted by email to TravelGrant@envirotechhistory.org.

2013 Joel A. Tarr Article Prize awarded Ashley Carse

The members of Envirotech are pleased to announce that Ashley Carse has been selected as the winner of the 2013 Joel A. Tarr Prize for his article “Nature as Infrastructure: Making and Managing the Panama Canal Watershed,” Social Studies of Science 42 (2012): 539-563. The Tarr prize recognizes the best article published in a journal or edited collection on the relationship between technology and environment in history during the previous 18 months. Envirotech would also like to thank our prize committee members–Erik Rau, Heike Weber, and Steve Cutliffe–for their service.

In describing the Panama Canal watershed as an environmental artifact that provides infrastructural services—namely, supplying the 52 million gallons of water that flush out to sea with each of the 35-45 ships that transit the isthmus each day—Carse’s work invokes envirotech approaches expressed in the work of Joel Tarr and others—a fusion of the history of technology and STS with environmental history—while incorporating this tradition with theories and practices from postcolonial studies, political ecology, geography, anthropology, and ethnography. The result is an approach that enriches all of these fields while providing a new perspective on the human-environment relationship.

Infrastructure studies have animated the history of technology and STS for decades, but only recently has the term “infrastructure” been applied to landforms, and then, as in the work of Mark Benedict and Edward McMahon, to realize the economic contribution of ecosystems to human productivity. As Carse is aware, this shift in nomenclature, with its managerial logic, follows “a broader interdisciplinary effort since the 1980s to assign the environment value as natural capital: a stock that provides ecosystem services that benefit humans at multiple scales” (542).

In his analysis of efforts by American and Panamanian state institutions to manage the watershed and refresh the waters drained away by the canal, the interests of canal managers and engineers collide with the horticultural interests of campesinos, whose presence and farming practices are themselves an outcome of efforts to administer the watershed’s environment for different purposes. In enacting populist land redistribution policies in the 1950s and 1960s, the Panamanian government encouraged the development of agriculture by smallholders whose swidden agricultural practices (often pejoratively referred to as “slash-and-burn”) reduced watershed forests by fifty percent between the 1950s and late 1970s. By the latter date, American scientists, like Frank Wadsworth of the US Forest Service, sounded the alarm that deforestation threatened canal operations by reducing the watershed’s capacity to “produce” and store water. Although the reduction of water had several causes—drought and increased ship traffic among them—scientists, canal administrators, and other institutional actors focused on managing the interests of the horticulturalists to avoid conflict with those of the state and corporate shipping interests. Ironically, the coercive nature of these practices, especially after the canal treaty between the United State and Panama was signed in 1977, led campesinos to rotate fallow land back into use more rapidly, leading to lower fertility and the perpetuation of deforestation.

Carse’s ethnographic work reveals a complex web of relationships that elude easy characterization of motives and actions as simply good or evil. The coercive tactics of the Noriega regime in the 1980s, for instance, have been replaced by well meaning international NGOs, Peace Corps volunteers, and social and natural scientists all wanting to assist reforestation, but unwittingly abetting the growing marginalization of the campesinos. Experts may see the campesinos’ presence in the watershed as a problem, but rarely do they recognize the farmers’ swidden agricultural practices are also an artifact of a competing techno-political system. As Carse shows, rural marginalization is embodied in and experienced through technological infrastructure, particularly historical processes of connection and disconnection. One village in which Carse undertook his fieldwork, despite being situated near the canal and Panama’s largest two cities, was first electrified in 2009. By itself, this observation of competing technological visions underscores the rich possibilities that Carse’s work holds for envirotech approaches in the future.

The prize was awarded during the 2013 ASEH meeting in Toronto in April 2013. Envirotech will next offer the Joel A. Tarr Article Prize at the 2014 SHOT Conference. Papers published between November 1, 2012 and May 1, 2014 will be eligible. A call for applications will be released after May, 2014.

Envirotech Travel Grant Application – SHOT 2013

The Envirotech Interest Group is pleased to announce a $400 travel grant for the upcoming SHOT conference in Portland, ME. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the 2013 SHOT meeting in Portland (10-13 October 2013). Those who have completed their Ph.D. more than three years prior and are fully employed are not eligible. Independent scholars are eligible regardless of the date the Ph.D. was received. This application must be received by Monday, September 2nd, 2013. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech meeting during the conference.

Applicants should complete this form, and email it along with their C.V. to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org. Any questions should be addressed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant, and submitted by email to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org.

Envirotech Travel Grant – ASEH 2013

Envirotech is pleased to announce a travel grant award for the 2013 ASEH conference to support scholars presenting on topics that combine the history of the environment with the history of technology.

Envirotech will offer one $250 travel grant to the 2013 ASEH meeting in Toronto (3-6 April 2013). Eligibility is restricted to those presenting a paper at the conference that addresses environmental and technological history. Those who have completed their degrees more than three years prior and are fully employed are not eligible. Preference will be given to graduate students, first-time presenters, and independent scholars. International perspectives are especially welcome. The winner will be presented with a $250 check at the conference and will be invited to attend the group’s breakfast meeting free of charge.

To apply, applicants should download and fill in the brief application form. Completed applications, including a C.V., should be emailed to TravelGrant@envirotechhistory.org and must be received by January 3, 2013.

Any questions should be emailed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant Committee at TravelGrant@envirotechhistory.org.

Call for nominations: 2013 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize

Envirotech, a dynamic interest group within the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, invites nominations for the 2013 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize. The Tarr Prize recognizes the best article published in either a journal or article collection on the relationship between technology and the environment in history. The prize committee is particularly seeking innovative publications that explore new ways of thinking about the interplay between technological systems and the natural environment. Articles originally published in any language are welcome, but applicants must provide a translation of non-English articles. To be eligible for the 2013 prize, the article must be published between June 15, 2011, and October 31, 2012.

The Tarr Prize carries a cash award of $250 and will be conferred at the American Society for Environmental History conference in Toronto, Ontario, April 3-6, 2013.

Send one copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae (one page Word or PDF files only please) to prize@envirotechhistory.org to be considered. The deadline for submissions is November 15, 2012.

Envirotech Travel Grant Application – SHOT 2012

The Envirotech Interest Group is pleased to announce a $400 travel grant for the upcoming SHOT conference in Copenhagen. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the 2012 SHOT meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark (October 4–7, 2012). Those who have completed their Ph.D. more than three years prior and are fully employed are not eligible. Independent scholars are eligible regardless of the date the Ph.D. was received. This application must be received by June 30, 2012. The winner will receive a check for $400 at the Envirotech meeting during the conference.

Applicants should complete this form (EnvirotechTravelGrantAppplication_SHOT2012), and email it along with their C.V. to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org. Any questions should be addressed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant, and submitted by email to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org.

Envirotech Travel Grant for ASEH 2012

Envirotech is pleased to announce a $250 travel grant for the upcoming American Society for Environmental History conference in Madison. Eligibility for the award is limited to those presenting a paper addressing the interrelated histories of environment and technology at the 2012 ASEH meeting in Madison, WI (March 28-31, 2012). Those who have completed their Ph.D. more than three years prior and are fully employed are not eligible. Independent scholars are eligible regardless of the date the Ph.D. was received. This application must be received by January 15, 2012. The winner will receive a check for $250 at the Envirotech breakfast meeting during the conference.

Applicants should complete this form, and email it along with their C.V. to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org. Any questions should be addressed to Chair, Envirotech Travel Grant, and submitted by email to TravelGrant@envirotechweb.org.

Winner of the Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize for 2011

We are pleased to announce that Christopher F. Jones is the winner of the 2011 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Prize for his article, “A Landscape of Energy Abundance: Anthracite Coal Canals and the Roots of American Fossil Fuel Dependence, 1820-1860,” Environmental History 15 (July 2010): 449-484. In his article, Jones uses the concept of an “energy landscape” as an effective new tool for visualizing the causes and consequences of society’s energy choices, as well as the contingencies that inform the process of energy change. Drawing upon but also extending the seminal work of William Cronon and James Scott, Jones demonstrates that entrepreneurs, boosters, and other modernists built a new transportation-based energy regime in advance of market demand. By transforming the built environment and aggressively encouraging consumers to adopt anthracite coal, Jones argues, this regime helped to foster the subsequent and ultimately unsustainable American shift to fossil fuel sources that has continued to this day. Prize committee members applauded Jones for his skillful fusing of a detailed empirical analysis of the American Mid-Atlantic region with the broader theoretical concept of “energy landscapes.” Jones also breaks new ground in incorporating the spatial issue of transportation networks into our understanding of energy systems. By offering a fresh approach to dealing with the complex interactions between cultural, economic, technological, and ecological factors, Jones makes an important contribution to the field of envirotechnical history and theory.

On the behalf of the prize committee:

Timothy LeCain
Erik Rau
Heike Weber

Call for nominations: 2011 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize

Envirotech, a dynamic interest group within the Society for the History of Technology and the American Society for Environmental History, invites nominations for the 2011 Joel A. Tarr Envirotech Article Prize. The Tarr Prize recognizes the best article published in either a journal or article collection on the relationship between technology and the environment in history. The prize committee is particularly seeking innovative publications that explore new ways of thinking about the interplay between technological systems and the natural environment. Articles originally published in any language are welcome, but applicants must provide a translation of non-English articles. To be eligible for the 2011 prize, the article must be published between November 1, 2009, and June 15, 2011.

The Tarr Prize carries a cash award of $250 and will be conferred at the Society for the History of Technology conference in Cleveland, Ohio, November 3-6, 2011.

Send one copy of your article and a brief curriculum vitae (one page Word or PDF files only please) to prize@envirotechhistory.org to be considered. The deadline for submissions is June 15, 2011.