YALE AGRARIAN STUDIES SERIES JAMES C. SCOTT, SERIES EDITOR The Agrarian Studies Series at Yale University Press seeks to publish outstanding and original interdisciplinary work on agriculture and rural society—for any period, in any location. Works of daring that question existing paradigms and fill abstract categories with the lived experience of rural people are especially encouraged. —James C. Scott, Series Editor James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed Steve Striffler, Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia Edwin C. Hagenstein, Sara M. Gregg, and Brian Donahue, eds., American Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land Timothy Pachirat, Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and Gopa Samanta, Dancing with the River: People and Life on the Chars of South Asia Alon Tal, All the Trees of the Forest: Israel’s Woodlands from the Bible to the Present Felix Wemheuer, Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union Jenny Leigh Smith, Works in Progress: Plans and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930–1963 Graeme Auld, Constructing Private Governance: The Rise and Evolution of Forest, Coffee, and Fisheries Certification Jess Gilbert, Planning Democracy: Agrarian Intellectuals and the Intended New Deal Jessica Barnes and Michael R. Dove, eds., Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change Shafqat Hussain, Remoteness and Modernity: Transformation and Continuity in Northern Pakistan Edward Dallam Melillo, Strangers on Familiar Soil: Rediscovering the Chile-California Connection Devra I. Jarvis, Toby Hodgkin, Anthony H. D. Brown, John Tuxill, Isabel López Noriega, Melinda Smale, and Bhuwon Sthapit, Crop Genetic Diversity in the Field and on the Farm: Principles and Applications in Research Practices Nancy J. Jacobs, Birders of Africa: History of a Network Catherine A. Corson, Corridors of Power: The Politics of U.S. Environmental Aid to Madagascar Kathryn M. de Luna, Collecting Food, Cultivating People: Subsistence and Society in Central Africa through the Seventeenth Century Carl Death, The Green State in Africa James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the First Civilizations Loka Ashwood, For-Profit Democracy: Why the Government Is Losing the Trust of Rural America Jonah Steinberg, A Garland of Bones: Child Runaways in India Hannah Holleman, Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism For a complete list of titles in the Yale Agrarian Studies Series, visit yalebooks.com/agrarian. Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund. Copyright © 2018 by Hannah Holleman. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected] (U.K. office). Set in Janson type by IDS Infotech Ltd., Chandigarh, India. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Control Number: 2018938166 ISBN 978–0–300–23020–8 (hardcover : alk. paper) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Lou Ella and Betty Joe At the end of the Civil War the US Army hardly missed a beat before the war “to win the West” began in full force. As a far more advanced killing machine and with seasoned troops, the army began the slaughter of people, buffalo, and the land itself, destroying natural tall grasses of the Plains and planting short grasses for cattle, eventually leading to the loss of topsoil four decades later. —Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, 2014 The attitude of capitalism—industrial and pre-industrial— toward the earth was imperial and commercial; none of its ruling values taught environmental humility, reverence, or restraint. This was the cultural impetus that drove Americans into the grassland and determined the way they would use it. —Donald Worster, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s, 1979 Man-induced soil erosion is taking place today in almost every country inhabited by civilized man, except northwestern Europe. It is a disease to which any civilization founded on the European model seems liable when it attempts to grow outside Europe. . . . The white man’s burden in the future will be to come to terms with the soil and plant world, and for many reasons it promises to be a heavier burden than coming to terms with the natives. —G. V. Jacks and R. O. Whyte, The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion, 1939 CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction one Dust to Dust: An Age Beyond Extremes two The First Global Environmental Problem three Imperialism, White Settler Colonialism, and the Ecological Rift four The White Man’s Burden, Soil Erosion, and the Origins of Green Capitalism five Ecological Rifts and Shifts: The Accumulation of Catastrophe six “We’re Not Stakeholders”: Beyond the Langue de Coton of Capitalist Environmental Management seven No Empires, No Dust Bowls: Toward a Deeper Ecological Solidarity Notes Index ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank Jean Thomson Black, my superb editor at Yale University Press, for all her work and insight that helped improve my manuscript. Working with Jean made me feel confident at every step of the way that YUP was the exact right choice of press for me and this book. Also at the press, I thank Michael Deneen, Mary Pasti, Harry Haskell, Jeffrey Schier, and the very helpful reviewers, whose comments in response to my original proposal guided me in important ways as I completed the project. Finally, I thank James C. Scott, faculty editor of the Yale Agrarian Studies Series, for inviting me to include my work in this important scholarly series. Many, many thanks go to the wonderful members of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Amherst College for feedback on earlier versions of this work, as well as encouragement, advice, and friendship throughout the research and writing process. Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington deserve special thanks for their friendship, example, and support of my project. They read my work and offered critical feedback, came to my events and talks based on the research presented in this book, invited me into their warm home, introduced me to other scholars, and shared with me their work on a closely related subject. This exchange over the past few years has meant the world to me and contributed to my experiencing a vibrant intellectual life in western Massachusetts. Likewise, my friendship and conversations with Ron Lembo regarding the broader theoretical contours of our work, as well as the major political and social developments in society the past few years and what these mean for us in sociology, have sustained me since my arrival in Massachusetts in ways too numerous to recount. Ron’s remarkable capacity for maintaining a deep humanity and care for the work we do in the face of the social distancing that occurs in academic institutions encouraged me in those moments the academy felt perhaps too sterile and removed from the