Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-wq484 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T14:01:00.766Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond Social Science History: Population and Environment in the US Great Plains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2018

Myron P. Gutmann
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article advocates for broadening social science history to include an even larger horizon, to reach a new level of understanding of human society in the past. It builds on and shares insights from 20 years of research that integrates environmental knowledge and environmental science into a history of social change, while trying to understand in detail how people changed the environment. The focus of the research is the demographic, social, agricultural, and environmental history of the US Great Plains, from the 1870s to the end of the twentieth century. Beyond supporting the argument for a broader interdisciplinary vision of history, the article shows how the Great Plains environment was changed by human action, and the ways that the environment shaped human behavior in turn. The history of the plains shows that the impact of human action on the land was dramatic and unmistakable. People radically changed land cover, but their actions were only one factor in causing events like the Dust Bowl, and only one part of the measurable increase in greenhouse gases. At the same time, the environment also constrained and shaped human behavior, even though it had less to do with family organization than broad trends in social change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The environment's most dramatic contribution was to spur out-migration in the 1930s when drought caused widespread agricultural failure, further confirmation of the importance of going beyond purely social factors to understand how people lived in the past.

Type
SSHA Presidential Address
Information
Social Science History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , Spring 2018 , pp. 1 - 27
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bean, Lee L., Mineau, Geraldine P., and Anderton, Douglas L. (1990) Fertility Change on the American Frontier: Adaptation and Innovation. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bengtsson, Tommy, Campbell, Cameron, and Lee, James Z. (2004) Life under Pressure: Mortality and Living Standards in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coale, Ansley J., and Rives, Norfleet W. (1973) “A statistical reconstruction of the black population of the United States 1880–1970: Estimates of true numbers by age and sex, birth rates, and total fertility.” Population Index 39: 3–36.Google Scholar
Coale, Ansley J., and Zelnik, Melvin (1963) New Estimates of Fertility and Population in the United States: A Study of Annual White Births from 1855 to 1960 and of Completeness of Enumeration in the Censuses from 1880 to 1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cook, Benjamin I., Seager, Richard, and Smerdon, Jason E. (2014) “The worst North American drought year of the last millennium: 1934.” Geophysical Research Letters 41: 7298–7305.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff (2001) “The New Deal's land utilization program in the Great Plains.” Great Plains Quarterly 21: 193–210.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff (2005) On the Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.Google Scholar
Cunfer, Geoff, and Krausmann, Fridolin (2015) “Adaptation on an agricultural frontier: Socio-ecological profiles of Great Plains settlement, 1870–1940.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 46: 355–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daly, Christopher, Gibson, Wayne P., Taylor, George H., Johnson, Gregory L., and Pasteris, Philip (2002) “A knowledge-based approach to the statistical mapping of climate.” Climate Research 22: 99–113.Google Scholar
Daly, Christopher, Halbleib, Michael, Smith, Joseph I., Gibson, Wayne P., Doggett, Matthew K., Taylor, George H., Curtis, Jan, and Pasteris, Phillip P. (2008) “Physiographically sensitive mapping of climatological temperature and precipitation across the conterminous United States.” International Journal of Climatology 28: 2031–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deane, Glenn D., and Gutmann, Myron P. (2003) “Blowin’ down the road: Investigating bilateral causality between dust storms and population in the Great Plains.” Population Research and Policy Review 22: 297–331.Google Scholar
Del Grosso, Stephen J., Mosier, Arvin R., Parton, William J., and Ojima, Dennis S. (2005) “DAYCENT model analysis of past and contemporary soil N2O and net greenhouse gas flux for major crops in the USA.” Soil and Tillage Research 83: 9–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Del Grosso, Stephen J., Parton, William J., Mosier, Arvin R., Walsh, M. K., Ojima, Dennis. S., and Thornton, Peter E. (2006) “DAYCENT national-scale simulations of nitrous oxide emissions from cropped soils in the United States.” Journal of Environmental Quality 35: 1451–60.Google Scholar
Egan, Timothy (2006) The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Ewbank, Douglas C. (1991) “The marital fertility of American whites before 1920.” Historical Methods 24: 141–70.Google Scholar
Gregory, James N. (1991) American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P. (2000) “Scaling and demographic issues in global change research: The Great Plains, 1880–1990.” Climatic Change 44: 377–91.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P. (2005) Great Plains Population and Environment Data: Agricultural Data, 1870–1997 [machine-readable dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P. (2007) Great Plains Population and Environment Data: Social and Demographic Data, 1870–2000 [machine-readable dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., and Cunfer, Geoff (1999) A New Look at the Causes of the Dust Bowl. Lubbock: International Center for Arid and Semiarid Land Studies, Texas Tech University.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., and Fliess, Kenneth H. (1993) “The determinants of early fertility decline in Texas.” Demography 30: 443–57.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Deane, Glenn D., and Witkowski, Kristine (2011) “Finding frontiers in the US Great Plains from the end of the Civil War to the eve of the Great Depression,” in Merchant, Emily R., Deane, Glenn D., Gutmann, Myron P., and Sylvester, Kenneth M. (eds.) Navigating Time and Space in Population Studies. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands: 161–83.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Pullum-Piñón, Sara M., and Pullum, Thomas W. (2002) “Three eras of young adult home leaving in twentieth-century America.” Journal of Social History 35: 533–76.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Deane, Glenn D., Lauster, Nathan, and Peri, Andres (2005a) “Two population-environment regimes in the Great Plains of the United States, 1930–1990.” Population and Environment 27: 191–225.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Parton, William J., Cunfer, Geoff, and Burke, Ingrid C. (2005b) “Population and environment in the US Great Plains,” in Entwisle, Barbara and Stern, Paul. C. (eds.) Population, Land Use, and Environment: Research Directions. Washington, DC: National Academies Press: 84–105.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Pullum-Piñón, Sara M., Baker, Susan Gonzalez, and Burke, Ingrid C. (2004) “German-origin settlement and agricultural land use in the twentieth century Great Plains,” in Kamphoefner, Walter and Helbich, Wolfgang (eds.) German-American Immigration and Ehtnicity in Comparative Perspective. Madison: Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies, University of Wisconsin: 138–70.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Pullum-Piñón, Sara M., Witkowski, Kristine, Deane, Glenn D., and Merchant, Emily (2012) “Land use and family formation in the settlement of the US Great Plains.” Social Science History 36: 279–310.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Connor, Dylan S., Cunningham, Angela R., Dykes, James, Leonard, Susan H., Mikecz, Jeremy, and Sylvester, Kenneth M. (2017) “Out-migration, human capital, and environmental shocks in the 1930s.” Paper presented at the Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Montréal, Canada, November.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Myron P., Brown, Daniel, Cunningham, Angela R., Dykes, James, Leonard, Susan Hautaniemi, Little, Jani, Mikecz, Jeremy, Rhode, Paul W., Spielman, Seth, and Sylvester, Kenneth M. (2016) “Migration in the 1930s: Beyond the Dust Bowl.” Social Science History 40: 707–40.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R. (1989) “American fertility in transition: New estimates of birth rates in the United States, 1900–1910.” Demography 26: 137–48.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R. (1996) “Long-term marriage patterns in the United States from colonial times to the present.” The History of the Family 1: 15–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haines, Michael R. (2006) “Table Ab52–117: Total fertility rate and birth rate, by race and age: 1800–1998,” in Carter, Susan B., Gartner, Scott Sigmund, Haines, Michael R., Olmstead, Alan L., Sutch, Richard, and Wright, Gavin (eds.) Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R. (2010) Historical, Demographic, Economic, and Social Data: The United States, 1790–2002 [machine-readable dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R., and Fitch, Catherine (2006) “Table Ae481–488: Median age at first marriage, by sex and race, 1850–1999,” in Carter, Susan B., Gartner, Scott Sigmund, Haines, Michael R., Olmstead, Alan L., Sutch, Richard, and Wright, Gavin (eds.) Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haines, Michael R., Fishback, Price V., and Rhode, Paul W. (2014) United States Agriculture Data, 1840–2010 [machine-readable dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Hartman, Melannie D., Merchant, Emily R., Parton, William J., Gutmann, Myron P., Lutz, Susan M., and Williams, Stephen A. (2011) “Impact of historical land-use changes on greenhouse gas exchange in the US Great Plains, 1883–2003.” Ecological Applications 21: 1105–19.Google Scholar
Hoig, Stan (1984) The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. Oklahoma City: Oklahoma Historical Society.Google Scholar
Keyfitz, Nathan, and Flieger, Wilhelm (1968) World Population: An Analysis of Vital Data. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kittel, Timothy G. F., Rosenbloom, Nan A., Royle, J. Andrew, Daly, Christopher, Gibson, Wayne P., Fisher, Henry H., Thornton, Peter E., Yates, David N., Aulenbach, Steve, Kaufman, Cristina, McKeown, Rebecca, Bachelet, Dominique, and Schimel, David S. (2004) “VEMAP Phase 2 bioclimatic database. I. Gridded historical (20th century) climate for modeling ecosystem dynamics across the conterminous USA.” Climate Research 27: 151–70.Google Scholar
Küchler, August W. (1975) Potential Natural Vegetation of the Conterminous United States. New York: American Geographical Society.Google Scholar
Lauenroth, William K., Burke, Ingrid C., and Gutmann, Myron P. (1999) “The structure and function of ecosystems in the central North American grassland gegion.” Great Plains Research 9: 223–59.Google Scholar
Leonard, Susan Hautaniemi, and Gutmann, Myron P. (2005) “Isolated elderly in the US Great Plains: The roles of environment and demography in creating a vulnerable population.” Annales de Démographie Historique: 81–108.Google Scholar
Leonard, Susan Hautaniemi, Gutmann, Myron P., Deane, Glenn, and Sylvester, Kenneth M. (2010) “Drought and the lifecycle/landuse trajectory in agricultural households,” in Kurosu, Satomy, Bengtsson, Tommy, and Campbell, Cameron (eds.) Demographic Responses to Economic and Environmental Crises. Kashiwa, Japan: Reitaku University: 204–26.Google Scholar
Lundh, Christer, and Kurosu, Satomi (2014) Similarity in Difference: Marriage in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgan, S. Phiip, Watkins, Susan Cotts, and Ewbank, Douglas C. (1994) “Generating Americans: Ethnic differences in fertility,” in Watkins, Susan Cotts (ed.) After Ellis Island: Newcomers and Natives in the 1910 Census. New York: Russell Sage Foundation: 83–124.Google Scholar
Opie, John (1993) Ogallala: Water for a Dry Land. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Parton, William J., Hartman, Melannie, Ojima, Dennis, and Schimel, David (1998) “DAYCENT and its land surface submodel: Description and testing.” Global and Planetary Change 19: 35–48.Google Scholar
Parton, William J., Gutmann, Myron P., Hartman, Melannie D., Merchant, Emily R., and Lutz, Susan M. (2012) Great Plains Population and Environment Data: Biogeochemical Modeling Data, 1860–2003 [machine-readable dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Parton, William J., Gutmann, Myron P., Williams, Stephen A., Easter, Mark, and Ojima, Dennis (2005) “Ecological impact of historical land-use patterns in the Great Plains: A methodological assessment.” Ecological Applications 15: 1915–28.Google Scholar
Parton, William J., Gutmann, M. P., Hartman, Melannie D., Merchant, Emily, Lutz, Susan M., and Grosso, S. J. Del (2013) “Simulating biogeochemical impacts of historical land use changes in the US Great Plains from 1870 to 2003,” in Brown, Daniel G., Robinson, Derek T., French, Nancy H. F., and Reed, Bradley C. (eds.) Land Use and the Carbon Cycle: Science and Applications in Coupled Natural-Human Systems. New York: Cambridge University Press: 287–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parton, William J., Gutmann, Myron P., Merchant, Emily R., Hartman, Melannie D., Adler, Paul R., McNeal, Frederick M., and Lutz, Susan M. (2015) “Measuring and mitigating agricultural greenhouse gas production in the US Great Plains, 1870–2000.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112: E4681–E4688.Google Scholar
Ruggles, Steven, Alexander, J. Trent, Genadek, Katie, Goeken, Ronald, Schroeder, Matthew B., and Sobek, Matthew (2010) Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [machine-readable dataset]. Minneapolis: Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Social Science History Association (1976) “Constitution of the Social Science History Association.” Social Science History 1: iii–vi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., and Gutmann, Myron P. (2008) “Dustbowl legacies: Long-term change and resilience in the shortgrass steppe,” in Redman, Charles L., and Foster, David R. (eds.) Agrarian Landscapes in Transition: Comparisons of Long-Term Ecological and Cultural Change. New York: Oxford University Press: 122–51.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., and Rupley, Eric S. A. (2012) “Revising the Dust Bowl: High above the Kansas grasslands.” Environmental History 17: 603–33.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., Gutmann, Myron P., and Brown, D. G. (2016) “At the margins: agriculture, subsidies and the shifting fate of North America's native grassland.” Population and Environment 37: 362–90.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., Brown, Daniel G., Deane, Glenn D., and Kornak, Rachel N. (2013) “Land transitions in the American plains: Multilevel modeling of drivers of grassland conversion (1956–2006).” Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 168: 7–15.Google Scholar
Sylvester, Kenneth M., Brown, Daniel G., Leonard, Susan H., Merchant, Emily, and Hutchins, Meghan (2015) “Exploring agent-level calculations of risk and returns in relation to observed land-use changes in the US Great Plains, 1870–1940.” Regional environmental change 15: 301–15.Google Scholar
Tolnay, Stewart F., Graham, Stphen N., and Guest, Avery M. (1982) “Own-child estimates of US white fertility, 1886–99.” Historical Methods 15: 127–38.Google Scholar
Tsuya, Noriko O., Wang, Feng, Alter, George, and Lee, James Z. (2010) Prudence and Pressure: Reproduction and Human Agency in Europe and Asia, 1700–1900. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
US Department of Agriculture (2014) “Gridded soil survey geographic (gSSURGO) database conterminous US package.” http://datagateway.nrcs.usda.gov/Catalog/ProductDescription/GSSURGOus.html Google Scholar
Worster, Donald (1979) Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar