-
1. Thinking Big: The Broad Outlines of a Burgeoning Field
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
The First One Hundred Thousand Years Thinking Big The Broad Outlines of a Burgeoning Field F r a n k U e k o e t t e r •It has become conventional wisdom among scholars that environmental history has grown up. From a marginalized field caught between counterculture activism and professional rigor, it has developed into an established part of the scholarly community that no self-respecting history department would ignore. Environmental history meetings routinely attract audiences in the hundreds, the number of books and journal articles on the topic has expanded enormously, and the field has matured in methodological terms as well. Whereas declensionist narratives were still a powerful current only two decades ago, declensionism now features as a subject entry in Carolyn Merchant’s Columbia Guide to American Environmental History.1 Environmental historians know well that growth usually comes at a cost, however. The field has certainly benefitted from this boom, but the growth has also changed its general character. Most crucially, studies have become more specialized in recent years. While the first generation of environmental history books often covered centuries and multiple countries, or even continents, recent studies are more limited in chronological and geographic terms. This development is certainly not peculiar. Specialization is a frequent trend in booming fields, and arguably an inevitable one, and it does have its merits. Few scholars would doubt that a growing specialization of environmental history research has helped to boost a diversity of themes and methodologies, which has made the discipline richer than ever. But at the same time this boom is making the big trends of environmental history increasingly obscure. For the first generation of scholars, environmental history was not just a set of case studies but 1 1 a fundamental challenge to our understanding of history. This challenge is still there, although somewhat hidden under a growing pile of specialized studies. Environmental history is more than a cluster of interesting fields: it points to the need for more comprehensive thinking about the past that includes animals and plants, the land, the sea, and the atmosphere, and to the wide range of ideas and practices that link these entities with human societies. It is time for scholars to survey the field in a broad way to widen our view from case studies to the key trends that now define the field. And that is what this book intends to do. Turning Points For environmental historians seeking a broader understanding of history, turning points are a great way to start. After all, the implications of turning points are enormous: they define time frames and chronologies, they highlight certain trends at the expense of others, they provide structure and focus—in short, turning points provide a backbone to narratives that no scholarly study of history can do without. Discussions over periodizations have been an enduring concern among students of history, a perfect way to stimulate conversation between subdisciplines . For all the diversity of scholarship today, most historians still agree that turning points are important. In fact, when it comes to environmental issues , looking at turning points is far more than an academic endeavor. The issue goes right to the heart of environmental thinking: since the nineteenth century, notions of “decline” and “renewal,” of a “fall from grace,” and of a “turnaround from the brink” have permeated the environmental discourse and continue to resonate in modern environmentalism. Countless environmental initiatives have been touted as “a watershed” or even a “last chance,” invoking a notion of prospective turning points that has spurred many laws and other measures. Even the dystopias and horror scenarios so dominant in environmental discourses mirror thinking in grand chronological schemes. It is difficult to talk about environmental issues without talking about turning points. Returning to the big questions hanging over environmental history begs us to reconsider some of the classic studies in the field. Specifically, it deserves attention that some of the early landmark publications were essentially reflections on turning points. A classic example is Lynn White’s famous essay on “the historical roots of our ecological crisis,” which put the blame for environmental destruction on the rise of Christianity, with the honorable exception of St. Francis.2 A second example is Rolf Peter Sieferle’s attempt to structure world history with a view to its energy base, which had a solar energy regime dominating since the f r a n k u e k o e t t e r [44.204.204.14] Project MUSE (2024...