Morgan Robertson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3635684 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Morgan Robertson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Morgan |
| FAMILY NAME | Robertson |
| SIGNATURE | ROBERTSON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1049 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Making a market in environmental credits II: Watershed moments
This pair of papers examines and describes the state action necessary to make markets function as environmental policy instruments and as strategies of governance. We do this through a detailed look at the mechanics of environmental credit compliance markets in the US states of Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina in which stream credits are privately created and sold to developers who have impacted protected stream systems. In this paper, we observe…
Neoliberal policy refugia: The death and life of biodiversity offsetting in the European Union and its member states
The past decade has been a dynamic one for biodiversity offsetting policy. Efforts to incorporate offsetting into the Convention on Biological Diversity as a compliance mechanism did not succeed. The expansion of offsetting outside of the Natura 2000 network in the European Union (EU), which looked all but inevitable in the early 2010s, was withdrawn in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition from environmental groups and the business sector. …
Habitat banking at a standstill: The case of Spain
Q-method and the performance of subjectivity: Reflections from a survey of US stream restoration practitioners
Flexible Nature: Governing with the Environment in the Development of U.S. Neoliberalism
The environment is organic to the neoliberal turn, not just as more or less cooperative material inputs or as a surface on which the changes to production and labor relations play out. The frequent finding that nature is being privatized and commodified in new ways is often described as nature's neoliberalization, but these trends do not exhaust the ways in which nature is integral to recent economic transformations. This article is structured ar…
Value is Simple. Valuation is Complex
Value can appear so complicated that it is not only a terribly intimidating topic, but actually fruitless to pursue. That is, the concept of value is either a dead end or best left to the experts. We disagree. At the most general level, having value can be understood as having the capacity to be measured and compared against another thing (or a standard). This is consistent with Marxian concepts (which are elaborated with special reference to the…
River Federalism
In studying rivers, physical and social science researchers tend to analyze water resource regulation at a national scale, treating “the state” as a monolithic entity mechanistically executing its regulatory code. Yet variation abounds in the interpretation and application of any national environmental policy. This study examines the complex geography of a small but crucial component of the U.S. Clean Water Act—compensatory stream mitigation—and …
The Value of Nature to the State
In recent years geographers have produced a considerable literature on the creation of markets in environmental goods and services. This literature reveals numerous complications with such market-based conservation strategies, yet it has failed to address the conception of value that underlies capitalism and drives the capitalist state. To address this gap, we offer an analysis of how the concept of the value of nature has been taken up in U.S. e…
Intervention: Critical physical geography
A recent opinion piece rekindled debate as to whether geography's current interdisciplinary make-up is a historical relic or an actual and potential source of intellectual vitality. Taking the latter position, we argue here for the benefits of sustained integration of physical and critical human geography. For reasons both political and pragmatic, we term this area of intermingled research and practice critical physical geography (CPG). CPG combi…
Ecosystem services: Tensions, impurities, and points of engagement within neoliberalism
Across the world, governments, NGOs, scientists, policy-makers, and resource managers are learning to speak in the language of ecosystem services. It is a concept that seems to belong to what many geographers call neoliberal-style environmental policies. However, the policies and practices around the ecosystem service concept deviate considerably from neoliberal doctrine. Our primary aim is to open up space for informed conversation about ecosyst…
Measurement and alienation: Making a World of Ecosystem Services
The development of markets in water quality, biodiversity and carbon sequestration signals a new intensification and financialisation in the encounter between nature and late capitalism. Following Neil Smith's observations on this transformation, I argue that the commodification of such 'ecosystem services' is not merely an expansion of capital toward the acquisition or industrialisation of new resources, but the making of a new social world comp…
Privatizing stream restoration in the US
In this paper, we use a case study of the stream restoration field to demonstrate how the particular state and market logics of neoliberalism are shifting both the practice of restoration scientists and the relations between public and private sector science. In particular, the embrace of neoliberal environmental management regimes has intensified the demand for environmental scientists to produce applied science that can: (1) be taught as a stan…
Performing environmental governance
Behind enemy lines: Reflections on the practice and production of oppositional research
Discovering Price in All the Wrong Places: The Work of Commodity Definition and Price under Neoliberal Environmental Policy
Price plays a unique role in neoliberal economic theory, quantifying value and providing markets with the information needed to produce equilibrium conditions and optimal social welfare. While the role of price is clear, the mechanisms by which prices are discovered, and by which the commodities they value are defined, are left obscure in neoliberal theory. Automatic price discovery, and self‐evident commodity identities, are assumed. Observation…
The Nature That Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services
The development of stable markets in ecosystem services is now a major neoliberal policy initiative in the United States and elsewhere. Such markets, however, require ecosystem scientists to play a new and challenging role in certifying the value of the commodities traded, which are defined using the holistic measures of ecology rather than the uncontroversial measures of weight, volume, or time. As ecosystem science increasingly serves as a metr…
The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: Wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance
Territorialization, science and the colonial state: The case of Highway 55 in Minnesota
This paper examines a recent conflict over the rerouting of Highway 55 in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. During a three-year struggle over the project, a group of indigenous people argued that the space where the highway would pass was sacred and of historical importance. We analyse a Cultural Resource Assessment prepared by a team of scientists that responded to these claims and cleared the way for the reroute. Our reading, which draws from…
No Net Loss: Wetland Restoration and the Incomplete Capitalization of Nature
The practice of restoration ecology (the creation and restoration of ecosystems)has important implications for theorizing nature in the traditions of O'Connor's‘capitalized nature,’ Haraway's hybrid socionatures, and other recent work in poststructural approaches to political ecology. The prominent US environmental discourse of ‘no net loss of wetlands’ has spurred the rapid expansion of restoration practices, which promise to open a new frontier…
The Nature That Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services
The development of stable markets in ecosystem services is now a major neoliberal policy initiative in the United States and elsewhere. Such markets, however, require ecosystem scientists to play a new and challenging role in certifying the value of the commodities traded, which are defined using the holistic measures of ecology rather than the uncontroversial measures of weight, volume, or time. As ecosystem science increasingly serves as a metr…
The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: Wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance
Measurement and alienation: Making a World of Ecosystem Services
The development of markets in water quality, biodiversity and carbon sequestration signals a new intensification and financialisation in the encounter between nature and late capitalism. Following Neil Smith's observations on this transformation, I argue that the commodification of such 'ecosystem services' is not merely an expansion of capital toward the acquisition or industrialisation of new resources, but the making of a new social world comp…
Intervention: Critical physical geography
A recent opinion piece rekindled debate as to whether geography's current interdisciplinary make-up is a historical relic or an actual and potential source of intellectual vitality. Taking the latter position, we argue here for the benefits of sustained integration of physical and critical human geography. For reasons both political and pragmatic, we term this area of intermingled research and practice critical physical geography (CPG). CPG combi…
Ecosystem services: Tensions, impurities, and points of engagement within neoliberalism
Across the world, governments, NGOs, scientists, policy-makers, and resource managers are learning to speak in the language of ecosystem services. It is a concept that seems to belong to what many geographers call neoliberal-style environmental policies. However, the policies and practices around the ecosystem service concept deviate considerably from neoliberal doctrine. Our primary aim is to open up space for informed conversation about ecosyst…
The Value of Nature to the State
In recent years geographers have produced a considerable literature on the creation of markets in environmental goods and services. This literature reveals numerous complications with such market-based conservation strategies, yet it has failed to address the conception of value that underlies capitalism and drives the capitalist state. To address this gap, we offer an analysis of how the concept of the value of nature has been taken up in U.S. e…
No Net Loss: Wetland Restoration and the Incomplete Capitalization of Nature
The practice of restoration ecology (the creation and restoration of ecosystems)has important implications for theorizing nature in the traditions of O'Connor's‘capitalized nature,’ Haraway's hybrid socionatures, and other recent work in poststructural approaches to political ecology. The prominent US environmental discourse of ‘no net loss of wetlands’ has spurred the rapid expansion of restoration practices, which promise to open a new frontier…
Value is Simple. Valuation is Complex
Value can appear so complicated that it is not only a terribly intimidating topic, but actually fruitless to pursue. That is, the concept of value is either a dead end or best left to the experts. We disagree. At the most general level, having value can be understood as having the capacity to be measured and compared against another thing (or a standard). This is consistent with Marxian concepts (which are elaborated with special reference to the…
Territorialization, science and the colonial state: The case of Highway 55 in Minnesota
This paper examines a recent conflict over the rerouting of Highway 55 in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. During a three-year struggle over the project, a group of indigenous people argued that the space where the highway would pass was sacred and of historical importance. We analyse a Cultural Resource Assessment prepared by a team of scientists that responded to these claims and cleared the way for the reroute. Our reading, which draws from…
Discovering Price in All the Wrong Places: The Work of Commodity Definition and Price under Neoliberal Environmental Policy
Price plays a unique role in neoliberal economic theory, quantifying value and providing markets with the information needed to produce equilibrium conditions and optimal social welfare. While the role of price is clear, the mechanisms by which prices are discovered, and by which the commodities they value are defined, are left obscure in neoliberal theory. Automatic price discovery, and self‐evident commodity identities, are assumed. Observation…
Privatizing stream restoration in the US
In this paper, we use a case study of the stream restoration field to demonstrate how the particular state and market logics of neoliberalism are shifting both the practice of restoration scientists and the relations between public and private sector science. In particular, the embrace of neoliberal environmental management regimes has intensified the demand for environmental scientists to produce applied science that can: (1) be taught as a stan…
Performing environmental governance
Q-method and the performance of subjectivity: Reflections from a survey of US stream restoration practitioners
River Federalism
In studying rivers, physical and social science researchers tend to analyze water resource regulation at a national scale, treating “the state” as a monolithic entity mechanistically executing its regulatory code. Yet variation abounds in the interpretation and application of any national environmental policy. This study examines the complex geography of a small but crucial component of the U.S. Clean Water Act—compensatory stream mitigation—and …
Neoliberal policy refugia: The death and life of biodiversity offsetting in the European Union and its member states
The past decade has been a dynamic one for biodiversity offsetting policy. Efforts to incorporate offsetting into the Convention on Biological Diversity as a compliance mechanism did not succeed. The expansion of offsetting outside of the Natura 2000 network in the European Union (EU), which looked all but inevitable in the early 2010s, was withdrawn in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition from environmental groups and the business sector. …
Habitat banking at a standstill: The case of Spain
Flexible Nature: Governing with the Environment in the Development of U.S. Neoliberalism
The environment is organic to the neoliberal turn, not just as more or less cooperative material inputs or as a surface on which the changes to production and labor relations play out. The frequent finding that nature is being privatized and commodified in new ways is often described as nature's neoliberalization, but these trends do not exhaust the ways in which nature is integral to recent economic transformations. This article is structured ar…
Making a market in environmental credits II: Watershed moments
This pair of papers examines and describes the state action necessary to make markets function as environmental policy instruments and as strategies of governance. We do this through a detailed look at the mechanics of environmental credit compliance markets in the US states of Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina in which stream credits are privately created and sold to developers who have impacted protected stream systems. In this paper, we observe…
Behind enemy lines: Reflections on the practice and production of oppositional research
No Net Loss: Wetland Restoration and the Incomplete Capitalization of Nature
The practice of restoration ecology (the creation and restoration of ecosystems)has important implications for theorizing nature in the traditions of O'Connor's‘capitalized nature,’ Haraway's hybrid socionatures, and other recent work in poststructural approaches to political ecology. The prominent US environmental discourse of ‘no net loss of wetlands’ has spurred the rapid expansion of restoration practices, which promise to open a new frontier…
Territorialization, science and the colonial state: The case of Highway 55 in Minnesota
This paper examines a recent conflict over the rerouting of Highway 55 in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota. During a three-year struggle over the project, a group of indigenous people argued that the space where the highway would pass was sacred and of historical importance. We analyse a Cultural Resource Assessment prepared by a team of scientists that responded to these claims and cleared the way for the reroute. Our reading, which draws from…
The neoliberalization of ecosystem services: Wetland mitigation banking and problems in environmental governance
The Nature That Capital Can See: Science, State, and Market in the Commodification of Ecosystem Services
The development of stable markets in ecosystem services is now a major neoliberal policy initiative in the United States and elsewhere. Such markets, however, require ecosystem scientists to play a new and challenging role in certifying the value of the commodities traded, which are defined using the holistic measures of ecology rather than the uncontroversial measures of weight, volume, or time. As ecosystem science increasingly serves as a metr…
Discovering Price in All the Wrong Places: The Work of Commodity Definition and Price under Neoliberal Environmental Policy
Price plays a unique role in neoliberal economic theory, quantifying value and providing markets with the information needed to produce equilibrium conditions and optimal social welfare. While the role of price is clear, the mechanisms by which prices are discovered, and by which the commodities they value are defined, are left obscure in neoliberal theory. Automatic price discovery, and self‐evident commodity identities, are assumed. Observation…
Performing environmental governance
Behind enemy lines: Reflections on the practice and production of oppositional research
Privatizing stream restoration in the US
In this paper, we use a case study of the stream restoration field to demonstrate how the particular state and market logics of neoliberalism are shifting both the practice of restoration scientists and the relations between public and private sector science. In particular, the embrace of neoliberal environmental management regimes has intensified the demand for environmental scientists to produce applied science that can: (1) be taught as a stan…
Measurement and alienation: Making a World of Ecosystem Services
The development of markets in water quality, biodiversity and carbon sequestration signals a new intensification and financialisation in the encounter between nature and late capitalism. Following Neil Smith's observations on this transformation, I argue that the commodification of such 'ecosystem services' is not merely an expansion of capital toward the acquisition or industrialisation of new resources, but the making of a new social world comp…
Ecosystem services: Tensions, impurities, and points of engagement within neoliberalism
Across the world, governments, NGOs, scientists, policy-makers, and resource managers are learning to speak in the language of ecosystem services. It is a concept that seems to belong to what many geographers call neoliberal-style environmental policies. However, the policies and practices around the ecosystem service concept deviate considerably from neoliberal doctrine. Our primary aim is to open up space for informed conversation about ecosyst…
River Federalism
In studying rivers, physical and social science researchers tend to analyze water resource regulation at a national scale, treating “the state” as a monolithic entity mechanistically executing its regulatory code. Yet variation abounds in the interpretation and application of any national environmental policy. This study examines the complex geography of a small but crucial component of the U.S. Clean Water Act—compensatory stream mitigation—and …
The Value of Nature to the State
In recent years geographers have produced a considerable literature on the creation of markets in environmental goods and services. This literature reveals numerous complications with such market-based conservation strategies, yet it has failed to address the conception of value that underlies capitalism and drives the capitalist state. To address this gap, we offer an analysis of how the concept of the value of nature has been taken up in U.S. e…
Intervention: Critical physical geography
A recent opinion piece rekindled debate as to whether geography's current interdisciplinary make-up is a historical relic or an actual and potential source of intellectual vitality. Taking the latter position, we argue here for the benefits of sustained integration of physical and critical human geography. For reasons both political and pragmatic, we term this area of intermingled research and practice critical physical geography (CPG). CPG combi…
Value is Simple. Valuation is Complex
Value can appear so complicated that it is not only a terribly intimidating topic, but actually fruitless to pursue. That is, the concept of value is either a dead end or best left to the experts. We disagree. At the most general level, having value can be understood as having the capacity to be measured and compared against another thing (or a standard). This is consistent with Marxian concepts (which are elaborated with special reference to the…
Flexible Nature: Governing with the Environment in the Development of U.S. Neoliberalism
The environment is organic to the neoliberal turn, not just as more or less cooperative material inputs or as a surface on which the changes to production and labor relations play out. The frequent finding that nature is being privatized and commodified in new ways is often described as nature's neoliberalization, but these trends do not exhaust the ways in which nature is integral to recent economic transformations. This article is structured ar…
Q-method and the performance of subjectivity: Reflections from a survey of US stream restoration practitioners
Habitat banking at a standstill: The case of Spain
Neoliberal policy refugia: The death and life of biodiversity offsetting in the European Union and its member states
The past decade has been a dynamic one for biodiversity offsetting policy. Efforts to incorporate offsetting into the Convention on Biological Diversity as a compliance mechanism did not succeed. The expansion of offsetting outside of the Natura 2000 network in the European Union (EU), which looked all but inevitable in the early 2010s, was withdrawn in the face of unexpectedly strong opposition from environmental groups and the business sector. …
Making a market in environmental credits II: Watershed moments
This pair of papers examines and describes the state action necessary to make markets function as environmental policy instruments and as strategies of governance. We do this through a detailed look at the mechanics of environmental credit compliance markets in the US states of Oregon, Ohio, and North Carolina in which stream credits are privately created and sold to developers who have impacted protected stream systems. In this paper, we observe…
Political science (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Ecology (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (7 works) · Environmental Conservation and Management (7 works) · Law (7 works) · American Environmental and Regional History (6 works)