On the Interactive Nature of Place-Making: Modifying Growth Machine Theory to Capture the Spatial and Temporal Connections that Spawned the Asian Carp Invasion

ABSTRACT

Growth machine theory has provided an influential foundation for thinking about the political economy of place-making and related environmental transformations. It remains silent, however, on how such dynamics can connect through time and space to influence subsequent growth machine dynamics elsewhere. I address this gap by advancing a modified “incorporated comparison” of the Asian carp invasion, an invasive species event generating significant social turmoil in the American Midwest. Empirics draw from document analysis and 71 semi-structured interviews. Results illuminate how local place-making and landscape transformations can connect in contingent ways to render nature a powerful force in subsequent growth-machine battles.

KEYWORDS:

• Environment and technology
• animals and society
• community and urban sociology
• comparative and historical sociology
• theory

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jim Elliott and Richard York in particular for their helpful comments, but also John Bellamy Foster, Marsha Weisiger, Ryan Light, Jeanine Cunningham, Patrick Greiner, Matthew Norton, Kevin Smiley, Henry Fox Wischerath, and Joe Van Dyk.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While Zinda and He (Forthcoming) methodology for examining walnut cultivation in southwest China is “akin” (12) to McMichael’s incorporated comparison method, they do not elaborate upon how or why they scale the method down. To my knowledge, the present study is the first attempt to explicitly do so.

Additional information

Funding

This research was enabled in part by the support of the Wasby-Johnson Dissertation Award and the University of Oregon General University Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Jordan Fox Besek

Jordan Fox Besek is assistant professor of Sociology and faculty member at the RENEW (Research and Education in eNergy, Environment & Water) Institute at the State University of New York at Buffalo.