Nature - autonomous learning

156 de-naturalisationsocieties with an equal attention to the material characteristics of theresources and environments upon which those societies depend for food,shelter, warmth and much else besides. As Boyd et al. (2001: 557) put it:‘While the social constructivists are right to argue that [the environment]. . . should not (indeed cannot) be de-historicized (i.e. placed in a categoryoutside of human history . . . and social relations), we agree with thosewho argue that there is a material “other” to [social] . . . processes’.An example of this kind of ‘both/and’ research that sees the environmentas neither wholly autonomous nor wholly a product of social processes,is my own investigation into commercial sealing (Castree 1997: 1–12).Though an historical study (it focuses on the overexploitation of northPacific fur seals in the late nineteenth century), it should not be thoughtthat the intellectual framework deployed has no contemporary relevance.The studies of Gavin Bridge (2000) and Roberts and Emel (1992) indicateas much, since they examine present-day copper-mining and groundwaterextraction using a Marxist framework not a million miles from theone used in my 1997 essay. I shall discuss this framework momentarily,adding to my earlier discussion of Marxism in relation to the writings ofHarvey and Watts. But let me start with a summary account of the so-called‘war against the seals’ in the Bering Sea between 1870 and 1911.In less than forty years, four sealing fleets and two land-based sealingcompanies located in eastern Russia, Japan, western Canada and Californiavirtually exterminated the north Pacific fur-seal population.This populationwas prized because the pelts of fur seals could be made into warmand especially luxurious garments – like winter coats and capes.The marketfor these garments was very lucrative and involved fashion-consciousmiddle-class consumers in cities like London, New York, Paris and Moscow.The main players in the fur-seal trade were two companies based in thePribilof Islands (islands which belonged to the USA after 1867 as part ofthe Alaska purchase), and four sealing fleets (two on each side of the northPacific ocean).The reason so many players were involved is because furseals are naturally mobile (a so-called ‘fugitive resource’). Each year theymigrate through the territorial waters of eastern Russia, Japan, BritishColumbia and the western USA, pausing for two months on the PribilofIslands to give birth to offspring and to mate (see Map 3.3). When theUSA purchased Alaska, a group of San Franciscan financiers realised that agood deal of money could be made killing seals on the Pribilofs and weregranted a twenty-year licence to do so by the US government of the time.