Examining the Science of Stream restoration, Rebecca Lave argues that the neoliberal emphasis on the privatization and commercialization of knowledge has fundamentally changed the way that Science is funded, organized, and viewed in the United States.
About the Author: Rebecca Lave is an assistant professor and the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Geography at Indiana University..
What is at stake in the Rosgen wars, argues Lave, is not just the ecological health of our rivers and streams but the very Future of Environmental science.
Drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, Lave demonstrates that the primary cause of Rosgen\'s success is neither the method nor the man but is instead the assignment of a new legitimacy to scientific claims developed outside the academy, concurrent with academic scientists\' decreasing ability to defend their turf.
Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, as well as by resource agencies in dozens of states.
S.
Forest Service, the U.
S.
Rosgen\'s methods are now promoted by federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.
Despite this, Rosgen\'s Natural Channel Design approach, classification system, and short-course series are not only accepted but are viewed as more legitimate than academically produced knowledge and training.
Since the mid-1990s, many academic and federal agency-based scientists have denounced Rosgen as a charlatan and a hack.
The most widely respected expert in the field, Dave Rosgen, is a private consultant with relatively little formal scientific training.
Stream Restoration Science and practice is in a startling state.
Examining the Science of Stream restoration, Rebecca Lave argues that the neoliberal emphasis on the privatization and commercialization of knowledge has fundamentally changed the way that Science is funded, organized, and viewed in the United States