the cultivated landscape: an exploration of art and agriculture by craig pearson and judith nasby

Reviews / Comptes rendus

Ethnoburb: the New Ethnic Community inUrban Americaby Wei LiIAN LINDSAY 507

Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park,1909–1939by Jennifer BrowerJOHN MARSH 509

The Cultivated Landscape: An Exploration ofArt and Agricultureby Craig Pearson and Judith NasbyCHARLOTTE McCALLUM 510

Does North America Exist? Governing theContinent after NAFTA and 9/11by Stephen ClarksonTOD RUTHERFORD 511

Ethnoburb: the New Ethnic Community inUrban America

by Wei Li, University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu,2009, xvii + 214 pp., cloth US$56.00 (ISBN 978-0-8248-3065-6)

Ethnoburb continues Wei Li’s well-regarded nar-rative of the spatial pattern and racializationof Chinese ethnicity in Greater Los Angeles (Li2006). Her new book draws together and ex-pands her thesis that recent immigration dif-fers from previous waves, not only in terms ofimmigrant characteristics and their location, butalso more significantly in the economic functionof these neighborhoods and the part they playin assimilation and integration in urban Amer-ica. To this end, she draws upon an impressivearray of primary and secondary sources, essen-tially from Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Val-ley, but with asides to other ethnoburbs in NorthAmerica.

Her fundamental argument is that emergingsuburban ethnic concentrations should not beseen as a simple duplication of older inner-cityenclaves, let alone ghettos. Nor is the differ-ence one of lower densities and a greater degreeof multiethnicity. Her argument rests on threepremises—globalization and economic restructur-ing, geopolitics and immigration policy, and lo-cal conditions that accentuate the process. Theargument is sustained through an introductionand eight chapters, divided into three parts. Thefirst part conceptualizes the model Li advances

The Canadian Geographer / Le Geographe canadien 53, no 4 (2009) 507–512

DOI: 10.1111/j.1541-0064.2009.00287.xC© / Canadian Association of Geographers / L’Association canadienne des geographes

508 Reviews / Comptes rendus

and leads into the contextual analysis of the sec-ond in which she adroitly dissects the histori-cal pattern of Chinese immigration that led fromtraditional Chinatowns to the formation of newethnoburbs. There is a particularly good discus-sion of shifts in the US immigration policy andthe different phasing of immigrant waves gener-ated. This analysis is informed not only by de-tailed census statistics but also through in-depthinterviews of residents in the Chinese neigh-borhoods of Greater Los Angeles. Though lan-guage and employment skill levels have risensubstantially, Li is concerned to show the di-versity of Chinese immigration, important, sincenot all ethnoburb residents are wealthy or welleducated. The single chapter in Part Three dis-cusses opportunities and challenges and of-fers an all too brief analysis of ethnoburbselsewhere, including those of Toronto andVancouver.

Li’s model is intuitively attractive, though asMurray (2006) suggests, some ‘sceptics’ mightinsist that the world was effectively a globalone during earlier periods of immigration in thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thewaves of European immigration and, indeed thatof early Chinese migrants, to North America rep-resented a new international division of labor. Liwould defend her model on two major grounds.First, many of the more recent residents of Chi-nese ethnoburbs are engaged in the internationaleconomy, especially the FIRE (finance, insuranceand real estate) sectors connected to interna-tional capital flows, where highly skilled, profes-sionally trained, multilingual expertise is desir-able. To her, the ethnoburb is not just a residen-tial area but a business centre that has evolvedfrom providing services to an ethnic populationinto what she terms a ‘global economic outpost’.Second, she argues (p. 159) that the waves ofChinese immigration into ethnoburbs differ fromearlier, more unidirectional, European ones. Effec-tively, this is the argument of the transnationalcommunity, a trend encouraged by the growth ofdual citizenship (though illegal for mainland Chi-nese). Li’s assertion here may understate the ear-lier substantial remission of wages back to Eu-ropean countries, such as Italy and Ireland, butthe phenomena of the transient Chinese ‘astro-nauts’, and ‘parachute kids’, where families havea foot in more than one country, suggest a de-

gree of international socialization never beforeexperienced.

The ethnoburb clearly gives lie to the ‘meltingpot’ theory of acculturation-assimilation, wherebyimmigrants are poured into the inner city, filteroutwards through residential rings into the sub-urbs, and emerge ‘Americanized’. But Li is care-ful to avoid the alternative ‘ethnicity-pluralism’hypothesis (p. 14), the ‘mosaic’ which manyCanadians uncritically accept. Nor is she pre-pared to fall back upon ‘panethnicity’ terms,such as Asian–Americans. The dynamic of ‘racial-ization’ has shifted but not disappeared. Indeed,the ethnoburb may engender more intolerancebecause, unlike the older enclave/ghetto thatsought distinctive employment niches, its resi-dents compete more effectively in the new in-ternational economy. One wonders if the recentmelt down of global financial institutions will seegrowing ‘nativism’ and intolerance by nonimmi-grant populations. Further, Li (p. 172) suggeststhat previous ethnoburb growth has benefitedfrom its mixture of higher and lower employ-ment skills, and that class conflicts have beenoverridden by common challenges and prob-lems. Could economic uncertainty also lead to in-creased polarization within the ethnoburb itself?

Canadian readers may be a bit disappointedthat the third plank of Li’s model, that offavourable local conditions, was not further elab-orated. While she is careful to point out (pp.39–40) that LA’s ethnoburbs emerged under con-ditions of multicentred, dispersed, low-densitygrowth, the final chapter does scant justice tosuch a theme in the ethnoburbs of Toronto andVancouver. What becomes the ‘ethnoburb’ in anurban region with an attractive downtown anda favourable inner-city image? Under such cir-cumstances, does ethnoburb formation furtherincrease social distances or inhibit racial intoler-ance? When all is said and done, could ‘local con-ditions’ be the most crucial? Not withstanding,this is a thoughtful, well-organized, documentedtext, pointing the way toward similar studies ofother areas and ethnicities.

References

LI, W. ed. 2006 ‘From Urban Enclave to Ethnic Suburb: NewAsian Communities in Pacific Rim Countries’ (Honolulu:University of Hawaii Press)

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MURRAY, W. 2006 ‘Geographies of Globalization’ (London: Rout-ledge)

IAN LINDSAY

Ryerson University

Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park,1909–1939

by Jennifer Brower, Athabasca University Press,Edmonton, 2008, vii + 184 pp., paper, $29.95(ISBN 978-1-897425-10-7)

Unlike other books on the history of Canadiannational parks, this one is different because itdescribes and explains the history of ‘a forgot-ten park’ that no longer exists. Buffalo NationalPark was established near Wainwright, Alberta in1909 but closed in 1939. The book, based onan MA thesis, is rigorously researched and thor-oughly footnoted. The author argues that ‘BuffaloNational Park cannot be considered a wildlifepreservation effort. Rather, the park was anartifact defined and shaped by the cultural, polit-ical and economic climate of early twentieth cen-tury Canada’ (p. 2). I would contend that it was awildlife preservation effort but, as the author ex-plains, one whose success in increasing the buf-falo population led to its evolution into ranching,degradation of the habitat, and ultimate aban-donment.As its name implies, the park originated out ofconcern about the decline of the plains buffaloin North America at the turn of the twentiethcentury. An area of 170 square miles south ofthe Battle river, considered of low agriculturalvalue and similar in character to the area inMontana from where the buffalo were coming,was designated for the park and fenced in 1908.The following year 325 buffalo were brought in.The herd grew rapidly and, while this was ini-tially seen as a success, it soon proved problem-atic. By 1922, the size of the herd threatenedthe ecological viability of the insufficient range.In 1923, culled animals were found to be mal-nourished and some were infected with liverfluke and tuberculosis. To reduce the herd, from1925 to 1928, 6,673 buffalo were shipped northto Wood Buffalo National Park. This was donedespite widespread opposition on the grounds

that interbreeding between plains and wood bi-son was inevitable and undesirable, and that thewood buffalo would be infected by tuberculosis.Both predicted impacts occurred and continue tocompromise the ecological integrity of Wood Buf-falo National Park.

By 1926, it was realized that shipping animalsnorth would be insufficient to control the sizeof the herd and its degradation of the habitat.Efforts were made, therefore, to develop a buf-falo meat trade but there was insufficient de-mand and diseased animals could not be sold.The park also became involved in experimentsin the United States and Canada to cross-breedbuffalo and cattle. While various hybrid ‘cattalo’or ‘Arctic cows’ were produced, they were oftensterile and of little commercial value.

By the 1930s, the objective of saving the en-dangered buffalo had been achieved but pop-ulation growth remained problematic, the parkenvironment had degraded and the health of thebuffalo compromised. Furthermore, the park wascosting $45–50,000 per year to operate, as itwas not really profitable as a ranch and gainedlittle income from tourists. So, in 1939, the parkwas closed and all remaining buffalo, as well asmoose, elk and deer, were slaughtered. The landwas relinquished to the Department of NationalDefence as a training ground for World War Two,in exchange for land to expand Elk Island Na-tional Park.

The author concludes that ‘little was known ofwildlife management when Buffalo National Parkwas established so administrators were tread-ing in unfamiliar territory. Lack of federal fund-ing to operate the park after it was established,however, contributed greatly to the downfall ofthe park’ (p. 170). It is also noted that ‘BuffaloNational Park was modeled after the mountainparks, but this touristic template was not trans-ferable to a prairie park’ (p. 169). The history ofthe park also reveals the ecological unsustainabil-ity of small parks, the need to control excessiveanimal populations and the dangers of introduc-ing wildlife to new locations, all lessons, I wouldsuggest, that remain relevant today.

The book is complemented by six tables, threehistoric maps and thirteen historic photos thatare interesting but poorly reproduced. There is asubstantial bibliography divided into archival pri-mary sources (notably the Library and Archives



of Canada), published primary sources (includingseveral oral history interviews) and a wide arrayof secondary sources. The book will mainly ap-peal to academics, wildlife managers and othersinterested in the history of national parks andwildlife conservation in Canada. It suggests thepotential for other books on parks that no longerexist or were proposed but never established inCanada.

JOHN MARSH

Trent University

The Cultivated Landscape: An Exploration ofArt and Agriculture

by Craig Pearson and Judith Nasby, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal and Kingston,2008, viii + 293 pp., cloth $45.00 (ISBN 978-0-7735-3246-5)

Geographers need not fear that the particularoutlooks and world views we invent are irrele-vant to those beyond the discipline’s already flex-ible borders. If it were so, there would not be somuch good geography written by nongeographers(e.g., Cronon 1983; Schama 1995). The CultivatedLandscape: An Exploration of Art and Agricul-ture is yet another example of the rediscovery ofthe geographical approach by others. This com-pelling synthesis of culture, agriculture and po-litical economy is written by, at a first glance,an unlikely pair of scholars at the University ofGuelph. First author Craig Pearson is the formerchief scientist with the Bureau of Rural Sciencesin the Australian government and past presidentof the Canadian Faculties of Agriculture and Vet-erinary Medicine, one time Dean of the OntarioAgricultural College of the University of Guelph,he is now presidential advisor on internationalprograms and professor of agricultural policy atthe University. Second author Judith Nasby is ad-junct professor of Fine Arts and Director andCurator of the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre.The fruit of their eclectic collaboration will beof interest to many in rural studies, agricultural,cultural, or historical geography and landscapearchitecture. The Cultivated Landscape reflectsthe University of Guelph’s long tradition of agri-

cultural research and training, rural planning andextension, as well as the growing renown of theMacdonald Stewart Art Centre.

In this good, critical examination of the ‘cul-ture’ of agriculture, Pearson and Nasby re-veal its political and economic underpinnings,its importance in landscape evolution and itssubsequent expression in art media. From theEuropean Middle Ages to today’s globalized foodsystem, the authors document change in West-ern agriculture and the accompanying social, eco-nomic and environmental impact wrought by theforces of specialization, trade, colonization, in-tensification and industrialization in the produc-tion of food and fiber. These changes do notform a smooth evolution but are identified asa series of overlapping eras that tend to endin abrupt paradigm shifts: expansion, production,productivity and sustainability. Geographers willreadily relate this theorization to the standardlanguage of agricultural revolutions, Atkins andBowler’s (2001) critical discussion of changingagricultural regimes, or the much-debated stand-off between productivism and postproductivism.While treating these eras chronologically, it isevident to the authors that the influences ex-erted by each remain in the landscape, in society,and in the cultural imagination long after newparadigms emerge. The ultimate sustainabilityof today’s industrial agriculture, heavily focusedon intensive production, is seriously questioned.The volume concludes with the call for a moresocially and environmentally responsible agricul-ture, a vision that is actually within our grasptoday. Implicit to this work, then, is the holis-tic understanding and synthesis of these humanand environment relations across time and space,which allow us to call this work geography.

The book is illustrated in color with a geo-graphically diverse selection of 87 works fromthe Macdonald Stewart Art Centre’s collection.These range from Paulus Potter’s 17th cen-tury representation of the Dutch rural idyll toWilliam Kurelek’s iconic Canadian prairie land-scapes. Among the pastoral and the sublime,however, are images of social disruption andenvironmental degradation that are the conse-quence of agricultural expansion and the drivefor ever-increasing productivity. One photographshows the disposal of dead stock during Britain’s2001 Foot and Mouth Disease pandemic, as


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arresting for its artistic merit as for its testi-mony to the failure of intensive livestock produc-tion. More abstractly, Gu Xiong’s sculpture, TheSickle and the Cell Phone, evokes the rapid indus-trialization of Chinese agriculture and its socialrepercussions. The context and significance ofthese images in social and economic change andlandscape evolution are deftly woven throughoutthe text.

Well-written in accessible language, the finescholarship of this work is equally well-documented in appendices, notes, a bibliographyand further information on many illustrations.The Cultivated Landscape is a valuable additionto the geographer’s bookshelf and would be anappropriate reading in a mid-level undergraduatecourse. It is a marvelously sweeping treatment ofthe changing human relationship with that mostfundamental of economic activities, the produc-tion of food.

References

ATKINS, P. and BOWLER, I. 2001 ‘Food in Society: Economy, Culture,Geography’ (London: Arnold)

CRONON, W. 1983 ‘Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists andthe Ecology of New England’ (New York: Hill and Wang)

SCHAMA, S. 1995 ‘Landscape and Memory’ (Toronto: RandomHouse)

CHARLOTTE McCALLUM

University of Guelph

Does North America Exist? Governing theContinent after NAFTA and 9/11

by Stephen Clarkson, University of Toronto Press,Toronto, 2008, 592 pp., hardcover $95.00 (ISBN978-0-8020-9712-5)

It is fair to say that while the politics and gover-nance of the European Union have attracted con-siderable academic and media interest, those ofthe emergent NAFTA (North American Free TradeAgreement) have garnered considerably less at-tention. This is somewhat puzzling given theheated politics in Canada over the signing of theCUFTA (Canada United States Free Trade Agree-ment) in 1989 and later NAFTA in 1994–1995which galvanized fears over loss of sovereignty(in Canada and Mexico) and employment (es-

pecially in the United States and Canada). ToStephen Clarkson’s credit, his latest book notonly addresses the considerable restructuringand dislocations, to which NAFTA contributed,especially in Mexico, but brings to the forefrontand problematizes the implications of NAFTAand 9/11 for the political, social, and economicgovernance of North America.He argues that NAFTA has heralded a transi-tion from an old to new North America. Un-der the old North America, an autarkic Mexicoaligned with Latin American states in both itsuse of import substitution economic policiesand political anti-Americanism. Canada becameincreasingly economically integrated with theUnited States whilst trying to maintain an honestbroker role internationally. In the 1970s, in reac-tion to increasing US protectionism as its post-war economic hegemony was challenged, Canadaexperimented with (mild) nationalist economicstrategies. In the 1980s and 1990s economic andpolitical crises led Canada and then Mexico to re-orient themselves and enter into free-trade agree-ments (most notably NAFTA), with the UnitedStates and each other.

Yet questions arise as to what actually consti-tutes the new North America and especially thenature of relations between the United States,Canada and Mexico. However, Clarkson’s centralfocus is not so much on documenting increasingNorth American cross-border economic inte-gration per se. Rather, his principal concern iswhether such integration heralds the emergenceof a world region with a self-contained mode ofregulation in which North America exists as adistinct geopolitical entity, or is simply the re-gional manifestation of global integration. In hisanalysis Clarkson draws on recent debates insocial science which argue for the rise of trans-border governance via the increasing role ofmarket and civil-society actors in defining andimplementing policy, as the power of formalgovernment declines. While accepting the in-sights of this argument, Clarkson wisely chal-lenges some of its assumptions, stressing notonly the unevenness of this process, given thatthe lines between government and governanceare often opaque, but that in many cases NorthAmerican integration, especially since 9/11, hasoften strengthened government discretion, if notautonomy.



In making these arguments Clarkson dividesthe book into five parts—state re-regulation viaregional institutionalization, market and eco-nomic reconfiguration at the continental scale,global governance in North America and thepersistence of state dominance. Each sectionfeatures detailed case studies ranging fromtransborder labour and environmental gover-nance, energy, agriculture, steel and apparel tothe governance of banking and capital markets,genetically modified food, border security, de-fense and the recent Security and ProsperityPartnership. He finds that NAFTA has developedstrong rules yet weak institutions to regulatecontinental-scale accumulation. Transborder gov-ernment of a democratic kind has not arisen,but a governance of sorts between states andbusiness (especially) and civil society groups hasemerged. Some economic sectors, such as steeland capital markets, have largely lost the NorthAmerican orientation they possessed only adecade ago, while banking, intellectual propertyrights and genetically modified organisms arebeing restructured within a largely global gover-nance structure via such institutions as the WTO.In this process the United States has extendedits power continentally, even when its pursuitof other bilateral and multilateral interests haveat times contradicted this continental gover-nance. In contrast, while still relevant, Mexicanand Canadian autonomy has been weakened.When compared to (especially United States)corporations, labour, environmental and othergroups’ attempts to shape policies and developgovernance structures across borders have beenat best uneven and weak. Thus even thoughgroups such as the Zapatistas still mount resis-tance to the catastrophic impacts of NAFTA onthe Mexican peasantry, they are largely confinedwithin national borders. Yet despite such change,as Clarkson emphasizes, NAFTA governance ismostly based on hegemony, which means thatits weaker partners can exert some influenceover the United States. Thus in the post-9/11period, even as Canadian and Mexican autonomyvis-a-vis the United States declined, their statecapacity, although at the behest of the UnitedStates, has been enhanced through increasedborder control and security.

Clarkson’s book is to be recommended—especially for its detailed empirical case studies

that significantly deepen our understanding ofthe evolution of government and governanceunder NAFTA. However, the New North Americahas some empirical and theoretical omissions.The automobile industry, arguably the pioneer, ifnot the quintessential North American integratedeconomic sector, is barely mentioned. Althoughthis might be explained by the great attentionthat has been paid to the industry by socialscientists and especially geographers such asHolmes, it nonetheless would offer insights intothe restructuring and governance challengesemerging in other sectors. Also, although Cana-dian banking is coming under increasing globalpressure, the current crisis whose epicenter isin the US banking system may help preserveCanada’s nationally distinctive banking regula-tions from converging too much with the UnitedStates. In terms of theory, while Clarkson isclearly interested in rescaling processes, includ-ing the emergence of cross-border regions asan extension of new forms of governance, thetheoretical implications of rescaling are moreimplicit than explicit in the text. As such, thebook might have benefited from more directlyengaging with rescaling debates to which ge-ographers and other social scientists such asBrenner, Sparke and Perkmann and others havecontributed. These lacunae aside, Clarkson’sambitious project to capture the contradictionsof new governance is a successful one which willbe of great value to both students and scholarswith an interest in the restructuring of the NorthAmerican political economy.

References

BRENNER, N. 2004 ‘New State Spaces: Urban Governance and theRescaling of Statehood ’(New York: Oxford University Press)

HOLMES, J. 1993 ‘From Three Industries to One: Towards anIntegrated North American Automobile Industry’ in Driv-ing Continentally: National Policies and the North AmericanAuto Industry ed. M. Appel Molot (Ottawa: Carleton Univer-sity Press), 23–62

PERKMANN, M. 2007 ‘Construction of New Territorial Scales: AFramework and Case Study of the EUREGIO Cross-borderRegion’ Regional Studies 41, 253–266

SPARKE, M. 2005 ‘In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Ge-ographies of the Nation-State’ (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press)

TOD RUTHERFORD

Syracuse University


the cultivated landscape: an exploration of art and agriculture by craig pearson and judith nasby

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