When Environmental History Goes Public in China

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Na Li
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Illustrative Case ◽  
Environmentally Conscious ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
West Lake ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
China Today

This article starts out from looking at what is missing from environmental history in China today, and then goes on to ask a particular set of questions: How does one interpret environmental history with the public? How does one present environmental history in public space? How does one engage with an environmentally conscious public? And ultimately, is it possible to establish public environmental history as a new mode of knowledge? In answer to these questions, it focuses on relationships, including the relationships between nature and culture, the environment and people, and history and memory. Using the dredging history of West Lake in Hangzhou as an illustrative case, it explores nature as material culture, calls attention to the rhetorical power of nature, and argues that environmental history should be interpreted and presented as public memory.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 5-18
Author(s):  
Amy Murrell Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Union Army ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Federal Bureaucracy ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of

The introduction offers an overview of the book by setting up its main questions and themes. It begins with a discussion of the geography of the refugee camps and describes how a new federal bureaucracy came into being in order to manage them. It describes the language used—then and now—to refer to the people seeking refuge from slavery and the spaces in which they lived. And it argues that“refugee” is a term that is rooted in the language of the 1860s and is more respectful of the personhood of these individuals than the term “contraband.” The introduction also urges readers to view this wartime period of emancipation as a distinct one, defined by its position inside military conflict and by the central challenge of seeking freedom inside the bureaucracy, culture, and spaces of the Union army. The introduction also describes the book’s methods, ranging from its examination of the material culture and environmental history of the refugee camps, to its microhistory approach that focuses on the stories of particular individuals. These approaches, the introduction explains, are necessary for understanding the most fundamental aspect of seeking freedom during the Civil War: survival.

scholarly journals Recycling in early modern science

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-646 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON WERRETT
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
Material Resources ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis essay follows recent work in environmental history to explore the history of recycling in physical sciences in Britain and North America since the seventeenth century. The term ‘recycling’ is here used broadly to refer to a variety of practices that extended the life of material resources for doing science in the early modern period. These included practices associated with maintenance, repair, exchange and the adaptation or reuse of material culture. The essay argues that such practices were common in early modern science, and informed experimental spaces and techniques and the ideas that they generated. The essay considers some of the varied motivations that led to such practices, and concludes by examining the endurance of recycling in science since the end of the eighteenth century, particularly in recent efforts to create sustainable scientific research practices.

Subversive Mobilities

Transfers ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Thelle
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Public Action ◽  
History Of ◽  
Urban Conflict

The article approaches mobility through a cultural history of urban conflict. Using a case of “The Copenhagen Trouble,“ a series of riots in the Danish capital around 1900, a space of subversive mobilities is delineated. These turn-of-the-century riots points to a new pattern of mobile gathering, the swarm; to a new aspect of public action, the staging; and to new ways of configuring public space. These different components indicate an urban assemblage of subversion, and a new characterization of the “throwntogetherness“ of the modern public.

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