Bridging Political Ecology and STS: A Field Analysis of the Rosgen Wars

Since the late 1990s there have been many calls to bring critical geography into conversation with science and technology studies (STS). Although the strongest cross-fertilization to date has been ontological, political economy is another productive area for conversation between the two fields. More specifically, I argue that fully understanding the role that environmental science plays in expropriation requires expanding our focus of analysis to include not just the application of science but also its production and circulation. Through a field analysis of the Rosgen Wars, a fight that has convulsed the American stream restoration field since the mid-1990s, I demonstrate how Bourdieu's analytical framework can bridge political ecology and STS, revealing the political economic relations central to the development of scientific knowledge claims, education, authority, and policy.