Wendee, you speak the language of "Political Ecology" a subfield of the Field of Geography. Paul Robbins, editor of the Journal Geoforum (on Elsevier) has been a pioneer in identifying different "narratives" of the land and its resources in the United States. He's written a couple of textbook-style Political Ecology books which have a "history of" introductions. likely the article has been written already by you, it's worth reading a few abstracts of Geoforum.
Adam Herbert
