The Nature Study Movement: The Forgotten Popularizer of America's Conservation Ethic

摘要

This study of the Progressive era nature study movement argues for a wider view of conservation, one that includes popular movements and spiritual yearnings as well as experts preaching efficiency. It does so to present nature study as a challenge to, and not simply an embrace of, scientific modernity, and from that perspective we can appreciate "counter-modern anxieties that nourished Progressive conservation and continue to nurture contemporary environmentalism" (p. 11) and the "dialectic between science and sentiment that is an inescapable part of modern life" (p. 12).