Knowing Nature through Markets: Trade, Populations, and the History of Ecology

摘要

Those concerned with issues of environmental sustainability typically harbor a deep ambivalence with respect to markets and related institutions of the capitalist system of production and distribution. Perhaps most troubling is the way that market practices-standardization, commodification, and monetization-tend to facilitate erasure of the complex ecological as well as social connections linking production and consumption. But despite this tendency, the global spread of markets-and methodologies for their analysis-has also permitted us to learn much about the status of natural resources and populations. Drawing on two examples from the history of ecology and environmental protection, this article explores what markets permit us to know about populations and how this is integrated with other kinds of environmental knowledge in the context of a 'civic epistemology', the set of methods and processes by which communities identify policy issues and make knowledge to address them. Seen in this light, markets are not simply causes of environmental problems: they simultaneously define these problems and shape the knowledge base upon which their solution depends.