ABSTRACT
In this chapter and the following one, the US is taken up as an example of the ways in which development focusing on the frontier and on a distinction between the social and the environmental contributes to a specific conception of state and society as well as related social and environmental concepts. This chapter shows that these conceptions of nature and society are central to the state, ideas of environment and resource use and even conceptions of the people at large. The chapter illustrates that the conceptualisation of the US as a state can, to some extent, thus be seen as following upon the specific mythical basis for some of its development.
