Valuing Shorebirds: Bureaucracy, Natural History, and Expertise in North American Conservation.

This article follows shorebirds-migratory animals that have gone from game to nongame animals over the course of the past century in North America-as a way to track modern field biology, bureaucratic institutions, and the valuation of wildlife. Doing so allows me to make interrelated arguments about the history of wildlife management and science. The first is to note the endurance of observation-based natural history methods in field biology over the long twentieth century and the importance of these methods for the persistent contribution of amateurs. The second major line of argument advances the historical significance of scientific, government bureaucracies as sites of natural knowledge production. Historians of biology and ecology have tended to stress scientists with institutional homes in universities, museums, and at land-grant field stations-particularly as various forms of field biology became professionalized over the twentieth century. In contrast, migratory animals like shorebirds, whether under the auspices of the US Biological Survey or the contemporary Fish and Wildlife Service, were primarily studied and conserved by biologists in bureaucratic agencies. Mid- to low-level bureaucrats, along with avocational birders, have mainly been responsible for developing what we know about shorebird migration, behavior, and life history. And third, shorebirds foreground the importance of bureaucratic context for the valuation of nature, from their economic value to agriculture in the early twentieth century to their value as rare, endangered species in the twentyfirst.

Domesticating nature? Surveillance and conservation of migratory shorebirds in the "Atlantic Flyway".

Using a recent environmental controversy on the U.S. east coast over the conservation of red knots (Calidris canutus rufa) as a lens, I present a history of North American efforts to understand and conserve migratory shorebirds. Focusing on a few signal pieces of American legislation and their associated bureaucracies, I show the ways in which migratory wildlife have been thoroughly enrolled in efforts to quantify and protect their populations. Interactions between wildlife biologists and endangered species have been described by some scholars as "domestication"-a level of surveillance and intervention into nonhuman nature that constitutes a form of dependence. I pause to reflect on this historical trajectory, pointing out the breaks and continuities with older forms of natural history. Using the oft-mobilized Foucauldian metaphor of the panopticon as a foil, I question the utility and ethics of too-easily declaring "domesticated" wildlife an act of "biopower." Instead, I argue that Jacob von Uexküll's "umwelt" from early ecology and ethology, and more contemporary Science and Technology Studies (STS) analyses emphasizing multiple ontologies, offer more illuminating accounts of endangered species science. Neither science, conservation, nor history are well-served by the conflation of wildlife "surveillance" with the language of Foucauldian discipline.

The making of public health emergencies: West Nile virus in New York City.

In this article we use the case of the West Nile virus (WNV) to investigate the social construction of public health emergencies (PHEs) and the subsequent changes in public health governance that they instigate. Informed by medical sociological literature on the social construction of illness, science and technology studies, and risk and disaster literature, we create a conceptual framework for connecting health and crisis. Our investigation of the WNV analyses PHEs as brief, but vitally important, moments in which a 'crisis' is co-constructed between states, affected populations and disease vectors. In these moments of crisis new interventions are enacted, which have long-term effects for institutional structures and disease management. Using extensive qualitative data collection, we conceptualise two mechanisms that underlie the declaration of PHEs and the expansion of related 'emergencies' across space and time: (i) crisis interventions that have the potential to marginalise the interaction of citizens with state institutions and (ii) institutional rearrangement of state agencies stemming from the original crisis issue, resulting in altered networks and institutional practices and drawing heavily upon the crisis as a symbol of similar, future public health threats.

Living lawns, dying waters: The suburban boom, nitrogenous fertilizers, and the nonpoint source pollution dilemma.

The March 1963 issue of Consumer Bulletin included a four-page article titled "How to grow a better lawn", the lead paragraph of which assured readers that "one does not have to be an expert or spend large sums of money to have a good lawn. It is necessary, however, to follow certain established practices in the construction and maintenance of any lawn." These two assertions may have struck readers, as I suspect they would strike lawngrowers today, as somewhat contradictory. Given the list of established practices that followed--"the construction of the lawn base, with proper grading, drainage, and preparation of the seedbed; selection of the type of grass and spreading of the seed; and maintenance, including fertilizing, mowing, and control of weeds"--it is difficult to imagine how the homeowner could have accomplished all of this without large sums of money or expertise. In fact, building lawns in the manner described by Consumer Bulletin required tremendous amounts of both. Recognizing these established practices in lawn construction and maintenance as a technological system allows us to better understand the persistence of this grassy landscape in America.