Branding nature: From slaves to transgenic organisms (California, Mexico).

摘要

Brand names saturate the environment, marking property and signifying power. They appear on our bodies, on our foods, in the media, and throughout our culture. Branding has historically objectified that which is branded, translating historical subjects into natural objects, a process I term, "branding nature." My dissertation investigates the historical process of branding nature in the North American West with a focus on California and Mexico. I trace the route by which branding moved from Mexico to California during the colonial period; became fully articulated in industrial California; and then moved back to Mexico in the era of modern science.; Utilizing the interdisciplinary field of environmental history, I investigate both the methods of branding and the targets of branding (the 'raw material' being branded) during three critical transformative periods. I identify a historical link, both material and semiotic, between the original branding irons and the modern concept of brand names. Slaves and cattle in Colonial Mexico, SunkistRTM oranges in industrial California, and genetically engineered corn spreading from the United States into Mexico all serve as case studies to demonstrate this link and illustrate the most current transformation of branding technology: the branding of DNA. I then document resistance to branding in the above cases, and elucidate how contestations over power challenge people's material and ideological relationships to 'nature.'; As a whole, my study illuminates how labor and nature itself can be ordered and controlled through the branding process. The branding of nature has emerged as a primary method of increasing both production and consumption, and reproducing social hierarchies. Branding technologies reveal the social construction of race as a process of objectification and exploitation, and normalize notions of the proper citizen: their identity and behavior, consumption habits, and relationship to nature. Additionally, branding indelibly alters nature itself. Not only on its surface, but in its deepest recesses. Branding has become an indispensable tool for gleaning power, and has vast social and environmental implications.