Book & podcast collection

Arid Empire: The Entangled Fates of Arizona and Arabia

byNatalie Koch

Geographer Natalie Koch traces unexpected connections between Arizona and the Arabian Peninsula, two arid regions shaped by fantasies of mastery over desert landscapes. Agriculture, irrigation, energy, military facilities, universities, tourism, and urban development reveal exchanges of technology, expertise, capital, and political ideas. The book shows how deserts have been treated as empty laboratories even though Indigenous peoples, migrant laborers, and ecosystems bear the consequences. Koch uses these linked histories to examine American empire and environmental power, arguing that desert development is never only local and that scarcity itself is politically produced.

Publisher

Verso Books

Publication date

2023

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9781839763694