The blood of heroes: Nationalist bodies, National soils, and the scientific conservation of the Federation of Colombian Coffee-Growers (1927–1946)

Greta Marchesi

Environment and Planning A, 2016, vol. 48, issue 4, 736-753

Abstract: This paper explores the scientific research and management programs of Colombia’s Federation of Colombian Coffee-Growers (FEDECAFE) as part of a campaign to ensure the long-term viability of the nation’s largest and most prominent export crop in the 1930s and early 1940s. Their work served a constituency of largely peasant small-holders in a period of increased erosion and declining coffee yields. Drawing on the organization’s internal records and popular publications, this research shows how new ideas about human and ecological natures were an essential component of FedeCafé hegemony, conceptually embedding the vitality of Colombian nationhood and citizenship in coffee country’s ecological systems. Further, this conceptual re-embedding of society in ecological processes was itself the result of concerted challenges to new forms of land and labor exploitation that accompanied the global capitalist commodity booms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Keywords: Colombia; science; coffee; politics; globalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X15597447 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:48:y:2016:i:4:p:736-753

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X15597447

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().