“The long‐time requirements of the nation”: The US Cooperative Soil Survey and the Political Ecologies of Improvement

Abstract

AbstractSoil surveys are one of the most powerful tools of modern statecraft, yet they have received little critical scrutiny. This article examines the early history of the US cooperative soil survey, from its founding in 1899 through the New Deal, and argues that it functioned not only as a tool of agricultural modernisation but also as a technology for the development of white nationalist state power. The founding of the soil survey, for instance, was successful based on its claims to resolve post‐frontier racial anxieties about national vigour. Over the next several decades soil surveying grew increasingly central to the execution of state power and arguably formed the basemap for New Deal conservation and planning efforts in the 1930s. The New Deal's decentralised and democratising projects promoted a more inclusive liberal nationalism, yet still supported the reproduction of white supremacy. This analysis shows how taking racial politics more seriously adds depth to studies of environmental governance, and suggests a model for doing so that highlights the articulation of race, nature, and nation through logics of improvement. Soil surveys remain an important political‐ecological technology today and deserve more critical scrutiny. Political ecologists might also work with land reform and reparations movements to determine if and how soil surveys could be useful for liberatory projects.