Transcript Slide 1
“Major Themes in Environmental History” First Semester 3 ECTS Marco Armiero Marie Curie Fellow – ICTA [email protected] http://marcoarmiero.webnode.it/ Synthesis of the previous lesson • What is the Ecological Imperialism (the making of Neo-Europes) • Relevance of no-human agents • The risk of determinism • The three main paths in doing an eh of empires: • Causations; effects; cultures Social history and eh • The metaphor of the parachutist • Env historians can have a vision of the whole, but they miss the details Risks and criticism about environmental history » Holistic approach: oversimplification; it allows humans and nature to be seen as an integral whole, but blurs out conflicts between different human groups (Cronon) » Ecological reductionism: neglecting the issue of politics in the sense of forms of social action and power relations. It can happen if we focus our attention on technological solutions and problems without analyzing their social and political implication (Blackmar) » Lack of interest in modes of production and their role in shaping human beings’ relationships with their environment (Worster; Steinberg). Consequences: failure to address the role of social differences in environmental change. Therapy • Gender-class-race analysis (GDR) • Study of conflicts • Social appropriation and power relations T Collateral effects… Does nature disappear again, after so many efforts spent in making it visible in history discourse? • Looking at how different social and/or ethnic groups have used and interpreted resources does not conceal these resources behind class relations, cultures, and economic structures; on the contrary, this approach can highlight the diversity of nature itself, and not just of ways of using it. • Power relations and social inequalities are inscribed into nature and not external to it Take a forest, for instance… Scenario a. (i) It is simply invisible because irrelevant (ii) It is the fixed, “natural” background for the human actions (traditional history, political history, etc.) Scenario b. It is a mine of wood (economic history) Scenario c. It does not exist or at least what really matters are the discourses about it (cultural, post-modernist history) Scenario d. (i) The forest is there but it is not as it used to be (eh declensionist narrative) Applying social history to eh • nature is neither the backdrop nor the base buried under the sediment of social relations and cultural constructions; nature is mixed with them and we need to find the nature in society as well as the social in nature. A forest, again • Different actors – ecological complexity and not just social complexity Conservationism and class analysis in the Adirondacks • What happens when we apply this approach to the history of conservation? Environmental inequalities • Race + Class in the zoning of the US cities • Workers movement + civil rights • Environmentalism was nothing less than elitism • Safe drinking water act 1974 • Toxic Control substance act 1976 • Amendments to the Clean Clear Act • Federal Water Pollution Control Act An interview with the author • Studying mountains in Modern Italy