ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates what environmental historians can gain by employing the tools of historical anthropology through a microhistory of post-1949 water and soil conservation in Northwest China’s Loess Plateau region. Combining fieldwork and oral history interviews conducted in Shaanxi province’s Baishui county with archival research reveals how the conjuncture of biophysical, socio-economic, and political processes generated environmental change, as well as how the rural people whose work altered the natural landscape experienced those transformations. Agents of the PRC state identified and promoted local knowledge and practices already in use in rural society, but tensions existed between the goals of state-initiated conservation campaigns and the priority that the rural populace placed on sustaining agricultural production and ensuring subsistence. The archives show that local leaders engaged in constant negotiations with the rural populace to resolve these contradictions.
