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dc.contributor.advisorMichael M. J. Fischer.en_US
dc.contributor.authorÖzden-Schilling, Thomas Charlesen_US
dc.contributor.otherMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society.en_US
dc.coverage.spatialn-cn-bcen_US
dc.date.accessioned2016-09-30T19:35:33Z
dc.date.available2016-09-30T19:35:33Z
dc.date.copyright2016en_US
dc.date.issued2016en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/104558
dc.descriptionThesis: Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2016.en_US
dc.descriptionCataloged from PDF version of thesis.en_US
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical references (pages 361-394).en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation examines how the proliferation of digital mapping technologies and the contraction of government research institutions have reformatted contests over resources, sovereignty, and local belonging in the neoliberal era. The two groups at the heart of this multilocale ethnography, government forest ecologists and Indigenous Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists, share entangled histories throughout rural North America. This is particularly true on the Gitxsan and Gitanyow traditional territories in northwest British Columbia. As climate change and emergent forest diseases destabilize both Indigenous and settler communities' abilities to predict and plan for environmental shifts, disparate experts are learning to leverage marginalized maps and ecological succession models to reconstitute modes of professional succession rendered precarious by government reforms and internal tribal conflicts. The opening chapters of the dissertation examine two experimental institutions - an independent forest ecology research center in Smithers, B.C., and a defunct GIS analysis team based on a nearby Gitxsan reserve - to examine how rural scenes of collaboration complicate the modalities of influence and organizational coherency often attributed to professional scientific networks. Later chapters explore experimental forest and traditional territories where ecologists and Indigenous GIS specialists have sought to articulate risks and project landscape futures by producing technical knowledge. For both communities, transects, grids, and other techniques of marking space have forced them to negotiate tensions between the temporal decay of these spaces and the lifespans of individual researchers. The concluding chapter examine the agencies of archives and simulations produced by two separate long-term forestry modeling groups. By treating their discarded models as anchors of a kind of professional legitimacy no longer stably recognized by a changing provincial government, I argue that senior forestry modelers are struggling to frame their work within longer historical narratives which supersede the temporalities of the state. Twentieth century conservationism drew heavily on essentialized discourses of "nature" and "culture" to construct old-growth rainforests and other contested spaces as objects worthy of protection. This dissertation examines the destabilization of these classification systems, and the palimpsest of legal definitions and lived concepts of territory left behind as regulatory responsibilities devolve and dissolve.en_US
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityby Thomas Charles Özden-Schilling.en_US
dc.format.extent394 pagesen_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherMassachusetts Institute of Technologyen_US
dc.rightsM.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.en_US
dc.rights.urihttp://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582en_US
dc.subjectProgram in Science, Technology and Society.en_US
dc.titleSalvage cartographies : mapping, futures, and landscapes in northwest British Columbiaen_US
dc.title.alternativeMapping, futures, and landscapes in northwest British Columbiaen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.description.degreePh. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)en_US
dc.contributor.departmentMassachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Science, Technology and Society
dc.identifier.oclc958645617en_US


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