ABSTRACT

Of particular interest for field of an environmental sociology is the western United States, a region whose economic development was historically based on the exploitation of its natural resources (Pincetl, 2011), and which now faces the combined effects of climate change and urban sprawl. First, the management of environmental

issues in this region raises the question of the modes of domination associated with the unequal distribution of natural resources and their transformation into basic services via major technological systems. This transformation has been made possible by the construction of contemporary cities and metropolitan areas along with their “networks of power” (Tarr & Dupuy, 1988). In effect, the region has witnessed the development of massive infrastructures (dams, aqueducts, etc.) designed to encourage the large-scale irrigation of agricultural land and the expansion of urbanized regions, especially since the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902. And, beginning in the 1930s, due to public policies developed in the urban East (particularly programs developed by federal agencies), the installation of technical systems gradually transformed the West into the breadbasket of the East (Cronon, 1992), and subsequently into an autonomous center of economic development (Leslie, 2005).