Knock on Wood : Nature As Commodity in Douglas-Fir Country

Annotation Scott Prudham investigates a region that has in recent years seen more environmental conflict than perhaps anywhere else in the country--the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Prudham employs a political economic approach to explain the social and economic conflicts arising from the timber industry's presence in the region. As well, he provides a thorough accounting of the timber industry itself, tracing its motivations, practices, and labor relations Knock on Wood explores a region that has in recent years seen more environmental conflict than perhaps anywhere else in the country--the old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest. Home to some of the highest quality timber in the world, states like Oregon are hotbeds of environmental activism, some of it very radical. The region became famous nationally in the early 1990s during the spotted owl controversy, but that was only the tip of the iceberg. In the past decade and a half, the logging industry and environmentalists have faced off in a number of intense and even violent disputes. Scott Prudham looks at the social and economic conflicts rising from the timber industry's practices, tracing its motivations, practices, and labor relations. He is equally interested, though, in the troubled relationship between nature and society. As forestry becomes ever more industrialized, the relationship between nature and the social has become increasingly complicated. Partly as a consequence, the politics surrounding industrialized nature have become sharper, culminating in the dramatic social movements and conflicts seen in recent years. Knock on Wood vividly brings to light how nature's depletion has generated intense battles between a timber industry facing an increasingly competitive international market and environmentalists trying to protect an old-growth forest The Political Economy Of An Ecological Crisis -- Working The Land : Production Relations In Logging And Reforestation -- Industrial Ecologies And Regional Geographies -- Geographies Of Scale And Scope In Lumbering -- Toward Organic Machines : The Historical Political Economy Of Douglas-fir Tree Improvement -- Timber And Down : The Rise And Fall Of Sustained Yield Regulation In Oregon's Illinois Valley -- Epilogue : Owls, Ecosystems, And The New Forestry. W. Scott Prudham. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 237-253) And Index. Running west from Bend to Eugene, Oregon State Highway 20 crosses the crest of the Cascade Mountains at perhaps the most magnificent point in the range.