Imagining resource management institutions—new creeks and old paddles: comments from the opening session of the 8th international symposium on society and resource management

摘要

This essay uses vignettes of six resource management organizations to explore institutional change in land conservation organizations. The emergence of the Progressive Era model of rational, centralized government is portrayed here both as reflective of the imperialist urgings of the early 1900s, and as less hegemonic than typically presented. Federal organizations such as the National Park Service and the Bureau of Land Management are clearly responsive to durable emphases on local control. More recently evolved, avowedly private, local organizations are, moreover, less clearly local and private than they first appear. The presently evolving institutional frame seems more complex than the one now eroding, and will require no less vigilance. And,even as we fail to note adequately the imperialism inherent in the Progressive-Era institutions we have taken for granted for so long, we ought to consider the underwriting assumptions and implications for equity in emerging institutional arrangements.