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Invisible Hooves: Markets and the Environment in the History of American and Transnational Cattle Ranching, 1867-2017

Abstract

This dissertation examines the making and breaking of landscape-based economic markets over time. It provides a historical narrative of the formation and failure of various market situations in the United States beef economy from 1867 to 2017—including the open range, grazing privileges on public lands, corporate structure of meatpacking, consumer beef prices, live cattle futures contracts, international trade markets, and carbon markets—based on archival research and historical datasets. The narrative emphasizes the role of ideas, laws (and other types of exchange-rules), and organizations in changing the nature of capitalist markets and their relationship with the natural environment. The dissertation argues that actors from across the beef economy purposefully altered capitalist markets based on differing notions of how free markets and landscapes ought to interact. All efforts were united by an enduring faith that markets (if corrected) could serve ecological and social goals. The dissertation concludes that different market constructions are possible within capitalism and yield different social and environmental outcomes, but it also finds that, in general, capitalist markets tend towards instability making them poor mechanisms for managing human-environment relationships.

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