Abstract
By combining digital humanities text-mining tools and a qualitative approach, we examine changing concepts in forestry journals in Sweden and the United States (US) in the early twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Our first hypothesis is that foresters at the beginning of the twentieth century were more concerned with production and less concerned with ecology than foresters at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Our second hypothesis is that US foresters in the early twentieth century were less concerned with local site conditions than Swedish foresters. We find that early foresters in both countries had broader—and often ecologically focused—concerns than hypothesized. Ecological concerns in the forestry literature have increased, but in the Nordic countries, production concerns have increased as well. In both regions and both time periods, timber management is closely connected to concerns about governance and state power, but the forms that governance takes have changed.
Highlights
This study compares the forestry literature of Sweden and the United States (US) during the first decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century to better understand changing concepts and priorities within the profession
Hypothesis 2 Differences over place: We hypothesize that the forestry literature in the United States during the early twentieth century was less concerned with local site conditions than the forestry literature in Sweden at the time
We predicted that the forestry literature between 1902 and 1912 would reveal relatively more concern with production factors and less concern with ecological factors, compared to the forestry literature between 2002 and 2012
Summary
This study compares the forestry literature of Sweden and the United States (US) during the first decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century to better understand changing concepts and priorities within the profession. Unlike the situation in Germany and France, where professional forestry had been developing for some time, early twentieth century foresters in both Sweden and the United States conceived of themselves as scientific pioneers, facing great challenges in unfamiliar landscapes. Progressive-era foresters took their tasks quite seriously, deeply concerned about timber famine and its possible effects on society They turned to the young Journal of Forestry to discuss technical management challenges and larger social issues, and to create an esprit de corps—a sense of their identity as forestry professionals. Critiques of silviculture and forest management have become common, with scholars arguing that early foresters were concerned primarily with timber production, profit, and state power rather than with ecological functioning and diversity (Alverson et al 1994; Scott 1998; Puettmann et al 2009). Hypothesis 2 Differences over place: We hypothesize that the forestry literature in the United States during the early twentieth century was less concerned with local site conditions than the forestry literature in Sweden at the time
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