Alan Mikhail (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199768677
- eISBN:
- 9780199979608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199768677.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This chapter introduces the field of Middle East environmental history. It begins by discussing an older geophysical and biological literature that has set the stage for this book. It then points to ...
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This chapter introduces the field of Middle East environmental history. It begins by discussing an older geophysical and biological literature that has set the stage for this book. It then points to what global environmental historians stand to gain from a consideration of the Middle East and North Africa's ecological past: knowledge of how one of the central regions of Eurasian history fits into global patterns of trade and commerce, the ability to test out theories of environmental change in a region that affords one of the longest documentary records of any on earth, and an understanding of how the cultural traditions of the Middle East and North Africa engaged with nature and environmental processes. This chapter then takes the opposite perspective to explain how Middle East Studies can benefit from adopting some of the methodologies of environmental history. The benefits include breaking out of traditional understandings of periodization and geographic demarcation; including new actors in the historiography of the field; and thinking in new ways about major debates in Middle East Studies, such as imperial decline in the early modern period or the politics of oil in the twentieth century.Less
This chapter introduces the field of Middle East environmental history. It begins by discussing an older geophysical and biological literature that has set the stage for this book. It then points to what global environmental historians stand to gain from a consideration of the Middle East and North Africa's ecological past: knowledge of how one of the central regions of Eurasian history fits into global patterns of trade and commerce, the ability to test out theories of environmental change in a region that affords one of the longest documentary records of any on earth, and an understanding of how the cultural traditions of the Middle East and North Africa engaged with nature and environmental processes. This chapter then takes the opposite perspective to explain how Middle East Studies can benefit from adopting some of the methodologies of environmental history. The benefits include breaking out of traditional understandings of periodization and geographic demarcation; including new actors in the historiography of the field; and thinking in new ways about major debates in Middle East Studies, such as imperial decline in the early modern period or the politics of oil in the twentieth century.
Dana Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195137699
- eISBN:
- 9780199787937
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195137699.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Popularly, ecology is still associated with utopian values and concepts such as balance, harmony, and community, despite the fact that scientists no longer see these values and concepts as relevant ...
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Popularly, ecology is still associated with utopian values and concepts such as balance, harmony, and community, despite the fact that scientists no longer see these values and concepts as relevant to the natural world. The common misunderstanding of ecology is in part a reflection of the fact that ecology is still a relatively young science, one that focuses on the complexity of the natural world, which is something it cannot study successfully in laboratory experiments, but must encounter through fieldwork and therefore under less than ideal conditions. Ecology's difficulties were for a long time compounded by its origins in natural history and in holistic or “organismal” ways of thinking, which were shot through with forms of myth, metaphor, and allegory not always recognized as such by ecologists. Ecology was therefore sometimes dismissed as a “point of view” and not a true science. In fact, ecologists were often unable to confirm their expansive theories (some of which were at odds with the Darwinian theory of evolution, already becoming the backbone of biology by the last quarter of the 19th century). Ecocriticism needs to be aware of ecology's record of underachievement. It also needs to be aware of the fact that in recent years ecology has become a more reductive, more mechanistic science than it once was, one in which such relatively disheartening concepts as chaos, disturbance, patchiness, and stochasticity (i.e., random variation) are becoming increasingly central to both theory and fieldwork.Less
Popularly, ecology is still associated with utopian values and concepts such as balance, harmony, and community, despite the fact that scientists no longer see these values and concepts as relevant to the natural world. The common misunderstanding of ecology is in part a reflection of the fact that ecology is still a relatively young science, one that focuses on the complexity of the natural world, which is something it cannot study successfully in laboratory experiments, but must encounter through fieldwork and therefore under less than ideal conditions. Ecology's difficulties were for a long time compounded by its origins in natural history and in holistic or “organismal” ways of thinking, which were shot through with forms of myth, metaphor, and allegory not always recognized as such by ecologists. Ecology was therefore sometimes dismissed as a “point of view” and not a true science. In fact, ecologists were often unable to confirm their expansive theories (some of which were at odds with the Darwinian theory of evolution, already becoming the backbone of biology by the last quarter of the 19th century). Ecocriticism needs to be aware of ecology's record of underachievement. It also needs to be aware of the fact that in recent years ecology has become a more reductive, more mechanistic science than it once was, one in which such relatively disheartening concepts as chaos, disturbance, patchiness, and stochasticity (i.e., random variation) are becoming increasingly central to both theory and fieldwork.
S. RAVI RAJAN
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199277964
- eISBN:
- 9780191707827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199277964.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
The emphasis in this study is forestry in the British Empire. This choice stems from the fact that British colonial forestry was arguably one of the most extensive imperial frameworks of scientific ...
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The emphasis in this study is forestry in the British Empire. This choice stems from the fact that British colonial forestry was arguably one of the most extensive imperial frameworks of scientific natural resource management anywhere, and continues to be a key locus of environmental conflicts across Asia and Africa. This introductory chapter sets the context for the argument to follow. It begins by critically discussing what is involved in focusing on science and technology in doing environmental history. It then locates the historiography of British colonial forestry within the context of this analysis, thereby laying the groundwork for the ensuing chapters.Less
The emphasis in this study is forestry in the British Empire. This choice stems from the fact that British colonial forestry was arguably one of the most extensive imperial frameworks of scientific natural resource management anywhere, and continues to be a key locus of environmental conflicts across Asia and Africa. This introductory chapter sets the context for the argument to follow. It begins by critically discussing what is involved in focusing on science and technology in doing environmental history. It then locates the historiography of British colonial forestry within the context of this analysis, thereby laying the groundwork for the ensuing chapters.
Maxine Berg
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265321
- eISBN:
- 9780191760495
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265321.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter investigates timing and reasons for the ‘turn’ to global issues in historical writing. These have included dissatisfaction with the older frameworks of national histories and area ...
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This chapter investigates timing and reasons for the ‘turn’ to global issues in historical writing. These have included dissatisfaction with the older frameworks of national histories and area studies, and a new interest in comparative and connected histories. The chapter critically addresses the focus of much recent debate on comparisons of East and West, and the question of the ‘Great Divergence’. It raises new questions of transmissions of material cultures and technologies, and of human agency and the histories of families and individuals, in global context. There are serious methodological questions for historians, those of sources, interdisciplinary approaches, and collaborations.Less
This chapter investigates timing and reasons for the ‘turn’ to global issues in historical writing. These have included dissatisfaction with the older frameworks of national histories and area studies, and a new interest in comparative and connected histories. The chapter critically addresses the focus of much recent debate on comparisons of East and West, and the question of the ‘Great Divergence’. It raises new questions of transmissions of material cultures and technologies, and of human agency and the histories of families and individuals, in global context. There are serious methodological questions for historians, those of sources, interdisciplinary approaches, and collaborations.
Karl Brooks
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199790562
- eISBN:
- 9780199896820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790562.003.0019
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter reviews the Mississippi Valley Historical Association-Organization of American Historians relationship with environmental history. It suggest that in the early period, the editors of the ...
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This chapter reviews the Mississippi Valley Historical Association-Organization of American Historians relationship with environmental history. It suggest that in the early period, the editors of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review recognized that place matters to people, but later editors, especially in the postwar period, did not give the field the encouragement they gave to the new social history. The failure to supply this help emphasizes the Journal's “conviction that people came first, last, and always.” Refusal to endorse environmental history's legitimacy until the 1990s and to bring it together with other fields prevented the discipline from becoming as strong as it could now be.Less
This chapter reviews the Mississippi Valley Historical Association-Organization of American Historians relationship with environmental history. It suggest that in the early period, the editors of the Mississippi Valley Historical Review recognized that place matters to people, but later editors, especially in the postwar period, did not give the field the encouragement they gave to the new social history. The failure to supply this help emphasizes the Journal's “conviction that people came first, last, and always.” Refusal to endorse environmental history's legitimacy until the 1990s and to bring it together with other fields prevented the discipline from becoming as strong as it could now be.
Mark Atwood Lawrence, David Kinkela, and Erika Marie Bsumek
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199755356
- eISBN:
- 9780199345090
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755356.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter performs three functions that introduce the overall contours and goals of the collection. First, it observes that present-day nation-states face a tremendous challenge in managing ...
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This chapter performs three functions that introduce the overall contours and goals of the collection. First, it observes that present-day nation-states face a tremendous challenge in managing environmental problems such as climate change that pay no heed to human-created political boundaries. It goes on to suggest, however, that this problem is nothing new and to indicate that this book will explore how nations have attempted to cope with such problems in the past two centuries or so. Second, the chapter examines how previous scholars have attempted to bring together environmental and international/diplomatic history. Third, this chapter provides brief summaries of all the essays in the book.Less
This chapter performs three functions that introduce the overall contours and goals of the collection. First, it observes that present-day nation-states face a tremendous challenge in managing environmental problems such as climate change that pay no heed to human-created political boundaries. It goes on to suggest, however, that this problem is nothing new and to indicate that this book will explore how nations have attempted to cope with such problems in the past two centuries or so. Second, the chapter examines how previous scholars have attempted to bring together environmental and international/diplomatic history. Third, this chapter provides brief summaries of all the essays in the book.
Richard S. Kirkendall (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199790562
- eISBN:
- 9780199896820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199790562.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The field of American history has undergone remarkable expansion in the past century, all of it reflecting a broadening of the historical enterprise and democratization of its coverage. Today, the ...
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The field of American history has undergone remarkable expansion in the past century, all of it reflecting a broadening of the historical enterprise and democratization of its coverage. Today, the shape of the field takes into account the interests, identities, and narratives of more Americans than at any time in its past. Much of this change can be seen through the history of the Organization of American Historians, which, as its mission states, “promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history.” This century-long history of the Organization of American Historians—and its predecessor, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association—explores the thinking and writing by professional historians on the history of the United States. It looks at the organization itself, its founding and dynamic growth, the changing composition of its membership and leadership, the emphasis over the years on teaching and public history, and pedagogical approaches and critical interpretations as played out in association publications, annual conferences, and advocacy efforts. The majority of the book emphasizes the writing of the American story by offering a panorama of the fields of history and their development, moving from long-established ones such as political history and diplomatic history to more recent ones, including environmental history and the history of sexuality.Less
The field of American history has undergone remarkable expansion in the past century, all of it reflecting a broadening of the historical enterprise and democratization of its coverage. Today, the shape of the field takes into account the interests, identities, and narratives of more Americans than at any time in its past. Much of this change can be seen through the history of the Organization of American Historians, which, as its mission states, “promotes excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and encourages wide discussion of historical questions and equitable treatment of all practitioners of history.” This century-long history of the Organization of American Historians—and its predecessor, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association—explores the thinking and writing by professional historians on the history of the United States. It looks at the organization itself, its founding and dynamic growth, the changing composition of its membership and leadership, the emphasis over the years on teaching and public history, and pedagogical approaches and critical interpretations as played out in association publications, annual conferences, and advocacy efforts. The majority of the book emphasizes the writing of the American story by offering a panorama of the fields of history and their development, moving from long-established ones such as political history and diplomatic history to more recent ones, including environmental history and the history of sexuality.
J. R. McNeill
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199768677
- eISBN:
- 9780199979608
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199768677.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This chapter is a global and comparative analysis of the Middle East and North Africa's environmental history. It argues that three distinct features—termed “eccentricities"—help to explain the ...
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This chapter is a global and comparative analysis of the Middle East and North Africa's environmental history. It argues that three distinct features—termed “eccentricities"—help to explain the particular environmental history of the region. These eccentricities are in the realms of water, grass, and energy. The eccentricities of the Middle East and North Africa with respect to water include both the obvious shortage of fresh water in much of the region, and the less-noticed distinct and beneficial geography of saltwater seas, gulfs, and bays. The eccentricity of grass in the region derives mainly from the fact that grasslands exist in a complex quilt pattern rather than in huge expanses. Finally, the eccentricities of energy in the Middle East and North Africa reside in the region's long reliance on biomass and animals, its minimal resort to coal, and its near-total refashioning in the age of cheap oil.Less
This chapter is a global and comparative analysis of the Middle East and North Africa's environmental history. It argues that three distinct features—termed “eccentricities"—help to explain the particular environmental history of the region. These eccentricities are in the realms of water, grass, and energy. The eccentricities of the Middle East and North Africa with respect to water include both the obvious shortage of fresh water in much of the region, and the less-noticed distinct and beneficial geography of saltwater seas, gulfs, and bays. The eccentricity of grass in the region derives mainly from the fact that grasslands exist in a complex quilt pattern rather than in huge expanses. Finally, the eccentricities of energy in the Middle East and North Africa reside in the region's long reliance on biomass and animals, its minimal resort to coal, and its near-total refashioning in the age of cheap oil.
T. C. Smout
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635139
- eISBN:
- 9780748651375
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635139.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This volume brings together the best of the author's recent articles and contributions to books and journals on the topic of environmental history and offers them as a collection of ‘explorations’. ...
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This volume brings together the best of the author's recent articles and contributions to books and journals on the topic of environmental history and offers them as a collection of ‘explorations’. The author's interests are multi-faceted and, though often focussed on post-1600 Scotland, by no means restricted to that area.Less
This volume brings together the best of the author's recent articles and contributions to books and journals on the topic of environmental history and offers them as a collection of ‘explorations’. The author's interests are multi-faceted and, though often focussed on post-1600 Scotland, by no means restricted to that area.
T. C. Smout
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635139
- eISBN:
- 9780748651375
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635139.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter focuses on how the British came to understand that the environment had a history. The British discovered environmental history during the Enlightenment. As good a date as any to start is ...
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This chapter focuses on how the British came to understand that the environment had a history. The British discovered environmental history during the Enlightenment. As good a date as any to start is 1788, when the Scottish geologist James Hutton, friend of Hume and Smith, published his Theory of the Earth and concluded a scientific lecture given before the Royal Society of Edinburgh with the scalp-tingling words, ‘we find no vestige of a beginning — no prospect of an end’. It is also argued that the history of the environment in Britain seemed less to be environmental history in the American sense of a history of misunderstanding and violent misuse, as a history of relatively benign and gradual landscape change and of an agriculture that, by certain definitions at least, was environmentally sustainable until after the Second World War.Less
This chapter focuses on how the British came to understand that the environment had a history. The British discovered environmental history during the Enlightenment. As good a date as any to start is 1788, when the Scottish geologist James Hutton, friend of Hume and Smith, published his Theory of the Earth and concluded a scientific lecture given before the Royal Society of Edinburgh with the scalp-tingling words, ‘we find no vestige of a beginning — no prospect of an end’. It is also argued that the history of the environment in Britain seemed less to be environmental history in the American sense of a history of misunderstanding and violent misuse, as a history of relatively benign and gradual landscape change and of an agriculture that, by certain definitions at least, was environmentally sustainable until after the Second World War.
R. Bin Wong
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780197265321
- eISBN:
- 9780191760495
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197265321.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
China provides a distinctive perspective for a regional approach to global history. The Chinese empire should be seen as a part of multiple regions, for example, North East Asia, or the East and ...
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China provides a distinctive perspective for a regional approach to global history. The Chinese empire should be seen as a part of multiple regions, for example, North East Asia, or the East and Southeastern maritime regions. Can an analysis of different kinds of space take us beyond environmental history into wider issues of global history?Less
China provides a distinctive perspective for a regional approach to global history. The Chinese empire should be seen as a part of multiple regions, for example, North East Asia, or the East and Southeastern maritime regions. Can an analysis of different kinds of space take us beyond environmental history into wider issues of global history?
Mark Carey
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195396065
- eISBN:
- 9780199775682
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195396065.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Latin American History
Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change ...
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Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change over time. It analyzes how people around Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range grappled with climate‐induced glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which killed approximately 25,000 people since 1941. As survivors grieved, they formed community organizations and demanded state programs to drain dangerous glacial lakes. Yet they rejected hazard zoning in their communities. Peruvian engineers working with miniscule budgets invented innovative strategies to drain dozens of unstable lakes that continue forming in the twenty first century. But hazard mitigation, disaster responses, and climate change adaptation were never just about engineering the Andes to protect vulnerable populations. Local urban and rural populations, engineers, hydroelectric developers, irrigators, tourists, and policymakers all perceived and responded to glacier retreat differently, based on their own view of an ideal Andean world. Disaster prevention projects involved debates about economic development, state authority, race relations, class divisions, cultural values, the evolution of science and technology studies, and shifting views of nature. Over time, the influx of new groups helped transform glaciated mountains into commodities to consume. Locals lost power in the process and today comprise just one among many stakeholders—and perhaps the least powerful. Climate change transformed a region, triggering catastrophes while simultaneously jumpstarting political and economic modernization processes. This book's historical perspective illuminates these trends that would be overlooked in any scientific projections about future climate scenarios.Less
Climate change is producing profound changes globally. This environmental history analysis offers a much needed but barely examined ground‐level study of human impacts and responses to climate change over time. It analyzes how people around Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range grappled with climate‐induced glacial lake outburst floods and glacier avalanches, which killed approximately 25,000 people since 1941. As survivors grieved, they formed community organizations and demanded state programs to drain dangerous glacial lakes. Yet they rejected hazard zoning in their communities. Peruvian engineers working with miniscule budgets invented innovative strategies to drain dozens of unstable lakes that continue forming in the twenty first century. But hazard mitigation, disaster responses, and climate change adaptation were never just about engineering the Andes to protect vulnerable populations. Local urban and rural populations, engineers, hydroelectric developers, irrigators, tourists, and policymakers all perceived and responded to glacier retreat differently, based on their own view of an ideal Andean world. Disaster prevention projects involved debates about economic development, state authority, race relations, class divisions, cultural values, the evolution of science and technology studies, and shifting views of nature. Over time, the influx of new groups helped transform glaciated mountains into commodities to consume. Locals lost power in the process and today comprise just one among many stakeholders—and perhaps the least powerful. Climate change transformed a region, triggering catastrophes while simultaneously jumpstarting political and economic modernization processes. This book's historical perspective illuminates these trends that would be overlooked in any scientific projections about future climate scenarios.
Dana Phillips
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195137699
- eISBN:
- 9780199787937
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195137699.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This book surveys trends in environmental thought in the US from the mid-19th century to the present day. Its author's chief interest is in ecocriticism — a new field of inquiry that focuses on ...
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This book surveys trends in environmental thought in the US from the mid-19th century to the present day. Its author's chief interest is in ecocriticism — a new field of inquiry that focuses on environmental literature — and some key premises of which he calls into question. His perspective is, however, interdisciplinary: he considers literary alongside popular, philosophical, sociological, political, and scientific approaches to understanding the natural world, and attempts to weigh the relative strengths and weakness, and identify the biases of each approach. He also addresses a variety of more specific topics, including the shortcomings of arguments for the social construction of nature, the difference between literary and scientific realism, the supposed conflict between nature and culture, the American preoccupation with individual experience as reflected in the nature writing tradition, the difficulty of resolving ecological crises in light of the great complexity of nature, and the challenge of understanding all these issues from an interdisciplinary viewpoint that draws inspiration from both the arts and the sciences.Less
This book surveys trends in environmental thought in the US from the mid-19th century to the present day. Its author's chief interest is in ecocriticism — a new field of inquiry that focuses on environmental literature — and some key premises of which he calls into question. His perspective is, however, interdisciplinary: he considers literary alongside popular, philosophical, sociological, political, and scientific approaches to understanding the natural world, and attempts to weigh the relative strengths and weakness, and identify the biases of each approach. He also addresses a variety of more specific topics, including the shortcomings of arguments for the social construction of nature, the difference between literary and scientific realism, the supposed conflict between nature and culture, the American preoccupation with individual experience as reflected in the nature writing tradition, the difficulty of resolving ecological crises in light of the great complexity of nature, and the challenge of understanding all these issues from an interdisciplinary viewpoint that draws inspiration from both the arts and the sciences.
Christopher Sneddon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284316
- eISBN:
- 9780226284453
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284453.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Large dams, brought into being through a combination of technological prowess, engineering expertise and political-economic calculation, have radically altered humanity’s relationship with planetary ...
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Large dams, brought into being through a combination of technological prowess, engineering expertise and political-economic calculation, have radically altered humanity’s relationship with planetary river systems. This ‘concrete revolution’ was deeply connected to global geopolitics and efforts by the United States foreign policy apparatus to exert influence over newly emerging nation-states via technical and economic assistance. This chapter introduces the book’s major themes: the intimate linkages among geopolitics, technologies, and large-scale environmental transformations carried out in the name of “development”; and the production and transfer of the powerful ideal that the river basin is the most appropriate unit for a host of inter-related water development and management activities. These themes are examined through a conceptual framework that integrates contemporary thinking on assemblages, technopolitics, environmental history and the geopolitics of development. Large dams, as technological objects constituted through assemblages of capital, knowledge and power, represent a crucial spatial and temporal node of technopolitics in the 20th century. These hybrids behave in often unpredictable ways, despite the best efforts to plan for and take account of the social and biophysical changes wrought by damming a river.Less
Large dams, brought into being through a combination of technological prowess, engineering expertise and political-economic calculation, have radically altered humanity’s relationship with planetary river systems. This ‘concrete revolution’ was deeply connected to global geopolitics and efforts by the United States foreign policy apparatus to exert influence over newly emerging nation-states via technical and economic assistance. This chapter introduces the book’s major themes: the intimate linkages among geopolitics, technologies, and large-scale environmental transformations carried out in the name of “development”; and the production and transfer of the powerful ideal that the river basin is the most appropriate unit for a host of inter-related water development and management activities. These themes are examined through a conceptual framework that integrates contemporary thinking on assemblages, technopolitics, environmental history and the geopolitics of development. Large dams, as technological objects constituted through assemblages of capital, knowledge and power, represent a crucial spatial and temporal node of technopolitics in the 20th century. These hybrids behave in often unpredictable ways, despite the best efforts to plan for and take account of the social and biophysical changes wrought by damming a river.
T. C. Smout
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748635139
- eISBN:
- 9780748651375
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748635139.003.0015
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This introductory chapter focuses on the development of environmental history. It considers its close links to economic history, cultural history and historical geography, and how engagement and ...
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This introductory chapter focuses on the development of environmental history. It considers its close links to economic history, cultural history and historical geography, and how engagement and collaboration with science is crucial to the advancement of environmental history. It also discusses how environmental history is often understood as if it first emerged in America in the 1970s. The American initiative, with its enormous talent and crusading energy, set its stamp on the worldwide development of the subject for at least a generation. Its first driving theme was the impact of man on wilderness, so appropriate to the history of the United States, and readily translated to the histories of Australia (where it had already begun to be independently explored), and to Africa and India where it could be conveniently spliced with imperial history.Less
This introductory chapter focuses on the development of environmental history. It considers its close links to economic history, cultural history and historical geography, and how engagement and collaboration with science is crucial to the advancement of environmental history. It also discusses how environmental history is often understood as if it first emerged in America in the 1970s. The American initiative, with its enormous talent and crusading energy, set its stamp on the worldwide development of the subject for at least a generation. Its first driving theme was the impact of man on wilderness, so appropriate to the history of the United States, and readily translated to the histories of Australia (where it had already begun to be independently explored), and to Africa and India where it could be conveniently spliced with imperial history.
Alan Mikhail (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199768677
- eISBN:
- 9780199979608
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199768677.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
This book is a holistic environmental history of the Middle East and North Africa over the last half millennium. It shows how the intimate connections between peoples and environments shaped ...
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This book is a holistic environmental history of the Middle East and North Africa over the last half millennium. It shows how the intimate connections between peoples and environments shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and often unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book demonstrate the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of historical research and understanding. The book furthermore traces how the Middle East and North Africa deeply affected the global histories of climate, disease, trade, energy, environmental politics, ecological manipulation, and much more. At the intersection of three continents and as many seas, the Middle East and North Africa have been central to world history for millennia. Studying the ecological implications of these global connections, both for the region itself and for the rest of the world, helps bring the Middle East and North Africa into global history and shows how the region must be an essential part of any understanding of the environments of Eurasia over the last five hundred years.Less
This book is a holistic environmental history of the Middle East and North Africa over the last half millennium. It shows how the intimate connections between peoples and environments shaped political, economic, and social history in startling and often unforeseen ways. Nearly all political powers in the region based their rule on the management and control of natural resources, and nearly all individuals were in constant communion with the natural world. To grasp how these multiple histories were central to the pasts of the Middle East and North Africa, the chapters in this book demonstrate the power of environmental history to open up new avenues of historical research and understanding. The book furthermore traces how the Middle East and North Africa deeply affected the global histories of climate, disease, trade, energy, environmental politics, ecological manipulation, and much more. At the intersection of three continents and as many seas, the Middle East and North Africa have been central to world history for millennia. Studying the ecological implications of these global connections, both for the region itself and for the rest of the world, helps bring the Middle East and North Africa into global history and shows how the region must be an essential part of any understanding of the environments of Eurasia over the last five hundred years.
Robert W. Righter
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195149470
- eISBN:
- 9780199788934
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195149470.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This is the story of water, a valley, and a city. The city was San Francisco, the valley was Hetch Hetchy, and the waters were from the Tuolumne River watershed, located within Yosemite National ...
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This is the story of water, a valley, and a city. The city was San Francisco, the valley was Hetch Hetchy, and the waters were from the Tuolumne River watershed, located within Yosemite National Park. In 1905, for the first time in American history, a significant national opposition led by John Muir and the Sierra Club sought to protect the valley from a dam, believing that its beauty should be enjoyed by the American people. On the other side, San Franciso mayor James Phelan believed it was his civic responsibility to provide his 750,000 constituents with a pure, abundant source of water. From 1905 until 1913, the two sides fought over the destiny of the Hetch Hetchy: Would the glacier-carved valley become a reservoir or remain an inviolate part of Yosemite National Park? Finally, Congress decided the issue by passage of the Raker Act, granting the valley to San Francisco's use. By 1923, San Francisco engineers completed the huge O'Shaughnessy Dam, submerging the valley under over 200 feet of water. However, the battle did not end. Who would control the vast watershed of the Tuolumne River: The City of San Francisco or the National Park Service? And would the hydro electric power provide for a city-owned system or would it be sold to a private company? For the first time, the full story of this epic battle is told in an evenhanded way. It is a story without end, however, and the final chapter discusses the idea of removing the dam and restoring the valley, an idea which is gaining currency throughout the US.Less
This is the story of water, a valley, and a city. The city was San Francisco, the valley was Hetch Hetchy, and the waters were from the Tuolumne River watershed, located within Yosemite National Park. In 1905, for the first time in American history, a significant national opposition led by John Muir and the Sierra Club sought to protect the valley from a dam, believing that its beauty should be enjoyed by the American people. On the other side, San Franciso mayor James Phelan believed it was his civic responsibility to provide his 750,000 constituents with a pure, abundant source of water. From 1905 until 1913, the two sides fought over the destiny of the Hetch Hetchy: Would the glacier-carved valley become a reservoir or remain an inviolate part of Yosemite National Park? Finally, Congress decided the issue by passage of the Raker Act, granting the valley to San Francisco's use. By 1923, San Francisco engineers completed the huge O'Shaughnessy Dam, submerging the valley under over 200 feet of water. However, the battle did not end. Who would control the vast watershed of the Tuolumne River: The City of San Francisco or the National Park Service? And would the hydro electric power provide for a city-owned system or would it be sold to a private company? For the first time, the full story of this epic battle is told in an evenhanded way. It is a story without end, however, and the final chapter discusses the idea of removing the dam and restoring the valley, an idea which is gaining currency throughout the US.
Matthew Kelly
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620320
- eISBN:
- 9781789629958
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620320.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This introduction considers the ‘environmental turn’ taken in the humanities, and particularly in historical study, suggesting ways in which these developments might animate the future study of ...
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This introduction considers the ‘environmental turn’ taken in the humanities, and particularly in historical study, suggesting ways in which these developments might animate the future study of nineteenth-century Ireland. Question of agency and the relationship between human and non-human nature are addressed. Also considered is how current environmental concerns, and climate change in particular, should lead us to think anew about the past, rendering familiar subjects unfamiliar. Particular attention is paid to how Ireland’s past might be located within larger global processes, attracting the interest of scholars from throughout the world. It then introduces the individual contributions in the volume, tracing a narrative thread through them in order to demonstrate how a change in optic can significantly change how we think about Ireland’s recent past.Less
This introduction considers the ‘environmental turn’ taken in the humanities, and particularly in historical study, suggesting ways in which these developments might animate the future study of nineteenth-century Ireland. Question of agency and the relationship between human and non-human nature are addressed. Also considered is how current environmental concerns, and climate change in particular, should lead us to think anew about the past, rendering familiar subjects unfamiliar. Particular attention is paid to how Ireland’s past might be located within larger global processes, attracting the interest of scholars from throughout the world. It then introduces the individual contributions in the volume, tracing a narrative thread through them in order to demonstrate how a change in optic can significantly change how we think about Ireland’s recent past.
Matthew Kelly (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620320
- eISBN:
- 9781789629958
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620320.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
The environmental humanities are one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas of interdisciplinary study, and this collection of essays is a pioneering attempt to apply these approaches to ...
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The environmental humanities are one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas of interdisciplinary study, and this collection of essays is a pioneering attempt to apply these approaches to the study of nineteenth-century Ireland. By bringing together historians, geographers, and literary scholars, new insights are offered into familiar subjects and unfamiliar subjects are brought out into the light. Essays re-considering O’Connellism, Lord Palmerston, and Isaac Butt rub shoulders with examinations of agricultural improvement, Dublin’s animal geographies, and Ireland’s healing places. Literary writers like Emily Lawless and Seumas O’Sullivan are looked at anew, encouraging us to re-think Darwinian influences in Ireland and the history of the Irish literary revival, and transnational perspectives are brought to bear on Ireland’s national park history and the dynamics of Irish natural history. Much modern Irish history is concerned with access to natural resources, whether this reflects the catastrophic effect of the Great Famine or the conflicts associated with agrarian politics, but historical and literary analyses are rarely framed explicitly in these terms. The collection responds to the ‘material turn’ in the humanities and contemporary concern about the environment by re-imagining Ireland’s nineteenth century in fresh and original ways.Less
The environmental humanities are one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas of interdisciplinary study, and this collection of essays is a pioneering attempt to apply these approaches to the study of nineteenth-century Ireland. By bringing together historians, geographers, and literary scholars, new insights are offered into familiar subjects and unfamiliar subjects are brought out into the light. Essays re-considering O’Connellism, Lord Palmerston, and Isaac Butt rub shoulders with examinations of agricultural improvement, Dublin’s animal geographies, and Ireland’s healing places. Literary writers like Emily Lawless and Seumas O’Sullivan are looked at anew, encouraging us to re-think Darwinian influences in Ireland and the history of the Irish literary revival, and transnational perspectives are brought to bear on Ireland’s national park history and the dynamics of Irish natural history. Much modern Irish history is concerned with access to natural resources, whether this reflects the catastrophic effect of the Great Famine or the conflicts associated with agrarian politics, but historical and literary analyses are rarely framed explicitly in these terms. The collection responds to the ‘material turn’ in the humanities and contemporary concern about the environment by re-imagining Ireland’s nineteenth century in fresh and original ways.
Christopher Sneddon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284316
- eISBN:
- 9780226284453
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284453.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
The construction of tens of thousands of large dams across the planet’s surface brought about one of the largest biophysical transformations of the twentieth century and has irrevocably altered ...
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The construction of tens of thousands of large dams across the planet’s surface brought about one of the largest biophysical transformations of the twentieth century and has irrevocably altered human-environment relations. The geopolitical dimensions of this “concrete revolution” have remained largely hidden. The history of large dams and more generally river basin development is simultaneously environmental, social, technical and geopolitical. This book focuses on the activities of the United States government, in particular the Bureau of Reclamation, America’s premier water development agency, to exercise and disseminate technical expertise regarding large hydroelectric dams and river basin planning and development to the world’s “underdeveloped regions” from the 1930s to the 1970s. The Bureau’s water resource development activities, which ranged from short-term consultations to intensive multi-year programs, were deeply influenced by the imperatives of US foreign policy during the Cold War era. Detailed cases presented in the book—including Bureau interventions in China, Lebanon, Ethiopia and the Mekong Basin—underscore how the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War facilitated an alignment of economic and technical networks of development that were highly favorable to the dissemination of large dams. Large dams and other technology-centered development projects are never purely technical undertakings whose successes or failures hinge on the ingenuity of the engineers who design and build them or the motivations of state officials who fund and promote them. The lessons of the history presented here are that large dams and river basin planning are complex hybrids of nature, technology and society.Less
The construction of tens of thousands of large dams across the planet’s surface brought about one of the largest biophysical transformations of the twentieth century and has irrevocably altered human-environment relations. The geopolitical dimensions of this “concrete revolution” have remained largely hidden. The history of large dams and more generally river basin development is simultaneously environmental, social, technical and geopolitical. This book focuses on the activities of the United States government, in particular the Bureau of Reclamation, America’s premier water development agency, to exercise and disseminate technical expertise regarding large hydroelectric dams and river basin planning and development to the world’s “underdeveloped regions” from the 1930s to the 1970s. The Bureau’s water resource development activities, which ranged from short-term consultations to intensive multi-year programs, were deeply influenced by the imperatives of US foreign policy during the Cold War era. Detailed cases presented in the book—including Bureau interventions in China, Lebanon, Ethiopia and the Mekong Basin—underscore how the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War facilitated an alignment of economic and technical networks of development that were highly favorable to the dissemination of large dams. Large dams and other technology-centered development projects are never purely technical undertakings whose successes or failures hinge on the ingenuity of the engineers who design and build them or the motivations of state officials who fund and promote them. The lessons of the history presented here are that large dams and river basin planning are complex hybrids of nature, technology and society.
