Understories: The Political Life of Forests in Northern New Mexico

by Jake Kosek

Through lively, engaging narrative, Understories demonstrates how volatile politics of race, class, and nation animate the notoriously violent struggles over forests in the southwestern United States. Rather than reproduce traditional understandings of nature and environment, Jake Kosek shifts the focus toward material and symbolic “natures,” seemingly unchangeable essences central to formations of race, class, and nation that are being remade not just through conflicts over resources but also through everyday practices by Chicano activists, white environmentalists, and state officials as well as nuclear scientists, heroin addicts, and health workers. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival research, he shows how these contentious natures are integral both to environmental politics and the formation of racialized citizens, politicized landscapes, and modern regimes of rule. Kosek traces the histories of forest extraction and labor exploitation in northern New Mexico, where Hispano residents have forged passionate attachments to place. He describes how their sentiments of dispossession emerged through land tenure systems and federal management programs that remade forest landscapes as exclusionary sites of national and racial purity. Fusing fine-grained ethnography with insights gleaned from cultural studies and science studies, Kosek shows how the nationally beloved Smokey the Bear became a symbol of white racist colonialism for many Hispanos in the region, while Los Alamos National Laboratory, at once revered and reviled, remade regional ecologies and economies. Understories offers an innovative vision of environmental politics, one that challenges scholars as well as activists to radically rework their understandings of relations between nature, justice, and identity.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Environment, Read For School, Geography, Science, American

408 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2006

Reviews

[Bri · Rating 3 out of 5]

How can you not like an ethnography with a chapter titled "Smokey Bear is a White Racist Pig"? That's right. You can't.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an artfully conceived work by a very talented historian. He well mixes personal and oral histories with a theoretical background that can do justice to the subject. Of course, I had a personal interest, having Anglo roots just north and west of Toas. For me, reading the tracery of the multiple conflicts that comprise New Mexican society was like having an older aunt finaly detail for you all the reasons why your father and uncle just don't get along. But I think it'd be a good read for anyone with an interest either in the region or in the ways in which power can affect marginalized communities.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My PhD advisor wrote this one. It's beautiful, and I'm not just saying that because he's my advisor. Really amazing book--I've read it twice in the last 2 years. It's really well written, not just an academic theory book. Highly recommended.

[Tomek · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kosek is at his strongest illuminating the quiet stories of everyday people who live in and depend upon the forests of northern New Mexico. These peoples' words are a powerful indictment of economic and racial inequalities in land access and management, of calcified institutions unable to respond quickly to social and environmental changes, of tragedy and resilience that is found in rooting oneself to and loving a place. The chapter on Los Alamos was particularly excellent. I found his materialist historical analysis lacking; he will put forth claims without much evidence. This issue is particularly acute in the chapter trying to directly link wilderness conservation with eugenics. For example, I know Muir's writing enough to realize the quotes are cherrypicked here, and that Muir's perspectives on indigenous peoples and Hispano shepherds are more nuanced than Kosek lets on, to the point of being incoherently paradoxical. I also know Leopold's work on ecosystem health certainly did not intend to suggest any sort of preference racial purity, even if that was their effect, which I also doubt (not least of all because Kosek presents limited evidence for this claim beyond aspersions). This isn't to say I find the concept of wilderness above critique. It's just that I think others, like Cronon (who Kosek references), do a much better job of it. All in all, I found this an excellent resource on the socioecological systems in northern New Mexico, particularly as an ethnographic work.

[(craig) · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's honestly a page turner. And it all actually happened.

if he hadn't had to include all the bullshit jargon and navel gazing about the nature of constructed natures and potentialities of entanglements or whatever the fuck it would have been perfect. But that tenure track doesn't come for free I guess.

Most of the cultural background you could get more enjoyably by reading the Milagro Beanfield War, which I very highly recommend and even has a character that is literally the author of this book (white boy do gooder researcher who gets shot at a few times).

But holy shit wait until the last few chapters...

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, pretty good ethnography for a non-anthropologist but sometimes he just gets far too repetitive in his chapters. It also appeared that what became his preface was originally his conclusion, and his conclusion was rewritten based on a visit some years later to the area - this was a really great choice and good conclusion of the ethnography.

[Laurel Schuster · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fantastic exploration! Eye-opening conversation around the contradictions of forest management, colonial land title, and tactics of resistance.

[Jordan · Rating 5 out of 5]

favorite ethnography i’ve read so far. really catered towards my niche interests

[Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Understories is one of my favorite pieces of non-fiction. In a masterful sleight of hand, Kosek speaks for several hundred pages on the importance of trees when the whole point has absolutely nothing to do with the trees. By focusing on the symbolic desires, rather than the unspoken ones, Kosek shares a truly heartbreaking matter of history with a power that could not be achieved by speaking frankly. The story in Understories lies in its unwritten understory.

[Kristin]

This book informs us that if you're an outsider to New Mexico in any way, you're not welcome to travel through that land-- because some heroin addicts who live there need to have it all to themselves, so they can fuck it up some more just like their own lives. Oh, and if you support any efforts to conserve and protect land there, then, let's face it-- you're a bigot. (Not necessarily the author's narrative, as it's presented objectively, but this is the information that is communicated.)

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although I am personally interested in the topic, the writing was dense and elements of the book were not as bias-free as I had hoped. Typically, ethnography and case studies of this sort are a little easier to read given their storytelling nature, but many of the stories were interrupted and the way common elements were woven through the book did not function to keep the overall book flowing.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

compelling subject matter but so far the fieldwork isn't adequately illustrating the theory, but I'm only two chapters in so I probably shouldn't speak so soon

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite books this year. He shows the complex ways in which race, class and nation are intertwined in New Mexico, and how it is all linked to the nuclear plant there.