scholarly journals Man Destroys Nature?

2018 ◽  
pp. 196-221
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Feminist Epistemology ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Human Relationships ◽  
Environmental Narratives ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
Human World ◽  
Justice Studies

This essay takes up one particular iteration of sustainability discourse, rooted in the American environmentalist tradition: seeing “man,” writ large, as an undifferentiated and usually malevolent force affecting “nature.” While this is but one strand of environmental thought, it is important (and, clearly, enduring). Here, I use this “man destroys nature” framework as a foil for this particular strand of environmental thought. That we often talk about environmental decline as a one-way street, from man to nature, reflects larger problems in how sustainability and justice are imagined. The fields of environmental feminism, environmental history, and environmental justice studies give us the tools to destabilize declensionist environmental narratives, thinking more critically about “man,” “nature,” and “destruction.” I outline key themes and contributions in these fields that offer new insights into how we can understand the complex milieu of our human relationships to the non-human world. What these fields suggest to us is that sustainabilities, like feminist epistemology, must be situated in contingent and intersectional environmental knowledge and experience.

scholarly journals Mining, Waste and Environmental Thought on the Central African Copperbelt, 1950–2000

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iva Peša
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Environmental Aspects ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Central African Copperbelt ◽  
Environmental Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Forestry Policies

Since the early twentieth century, the copper-mining industry on the Zambian and Congolese Copperbelt has moved millions of tonnes of earth and dramatically reshaped the landscape. Nonetheless, mining companies, governments and even residents largely overlooked the adverse environmental aspects of mining until the early 1990s. By scrutinising environmental knowledge production on the Central African Copperbelt from the 1950s until the late 1990s, particularly regarding notions of ‘waste’, this article problematises the silencing of the environmental impacts of mining. To make the environmental history of the Copperbelt visible, this article examines forestry policies, medical services and environmental protests. Moreover, by historically tracing the emergence of environmental consciousness, it contextualises the sudden ‘discovery’ of pollution in the 1990s as a local and (inter)national phenomenon. Drawing on rare archival and oral history sources, it provides one of the first cross-border environmental histories of the Central African Copperbelt.

6. Social and political movements

2018 ◽  
pp. 77-90
Author(s):  
Robin Attfield
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Social Ecology ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Deep Ecology ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Political Movements ◽  
Human Species ◽  
Human World

Large contributions have been made to environmental ethics by social and political movements, such as Deep Ecology, ecofeminism, Social Ecology, the Environmental Justice Movement, and Green political movements. ‘Social and political movements’ considers these in turn. Social Ecology and the Environmental Justice Movement serve as correctives to Deep Ecology in foregrounding social structures in which environmental problems are often found. But Deep Ecology and ecofeminism serve as counter-correctives to these movements, with their concern for non-human species, habitats, and ecosystems. Green movements (and Deep Ecology too) emphasize our obligations to future generations and to the non-human world. Tensions can arise between environmentalism and liberalism, but they are not always insuperable.

The Challenge of Oral History to Environmental History

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Williams ◽  
Mark Riley
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Environmental Practices ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Colonial Archives ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Key Interventions

Oral history has much to offer environmental history, yet the possibilities and promises of oral history remain underutilised in environmental history and environmental studies more broadly. Through a reflection on work in environmental history and associated disciplines, this paper presents a case for the strength and versatility of oral history as a key source for environmental history, while reflecting on questions of its reliability and scope. We identify three major insights provided by environmental oral history: into environmental knowledge, practices and power. We argue that, rather than being a weakness, the (inter)subjective and experiential dimensions of oral accounts provide a rich source for situating and interrogating environmental practices, meanings, and power relations. Oral history, moreover, provides a counterweight to a reliance on colonial archives and top-down environmental accounts, and can facilitate a renewal - and deepening - of the radical roots of environmental history. Furthermore, as a research practice, oral history is a promising means of expanding the participatory and grassroots engagement of environmental history. By decentring environmental expertise and eroding the boundaries (both fictive and real) of environmental knowledge production, oral environmental histories can provide key interventions in pursuit of a more just, sustainable world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document