Overview
This volume explores the complex webs of interaction between the environmental movement, socialism, and the «natural» environment in Germany, and beyond, in the twentieth century. There has long been a divide between the environmental, or «green,» movement and socialist movements in Germany, a divide that has expressed itself in scholarship and intellectual discourse. And yet, upon closer inspection, the split between «red» and «green» is not as clear as it might at first seem. Indeed, little about the interaction between socialism and environmentalism, or socialism and the environment, fits into a neat binary. In a way, the discourses, positions, and policies that structure the interactions between environmentalism, nature, and socialism in German history and culture can be said to constitute a kind of ecology – a complex and interdependent web of relations, which can appear as antagonisms, but which can also contain deeper, less immediately visible, interdependencies. Ecologies of Socialisms attempts to combine the work of scholars from a wide range of disciplines (history, literature, German/Austrian studies, philosophy, geography) in order to contribute to a better and more nuanced understanding of how «green» and «red» have clashed and also merged in German history and culture.
Full Product Details
Author: Sabine Mödersheim ,
Scott Moranda ,
Eli Rubin
Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd
Imprint: Peter Lang Ltd
Edition: New edition
Volume: 70
Weight: 0.503kg
ISBN: 9781787075771
ISBN 10: 178707577
Pages: 336
Publication Date: 12 September 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
Ecologies of Socialisms invites readers on a rewarding journey that leads to a much richer understanding of the Left in recent German history and culture. The relationship between socialism and environmental thought is explored via multiple pathways, all of them questioning our firm beliefs in the incompatibility of ecology and socialism - a welcome addition to recent debates in the environmental humanities. (Sabine Wilke, Professor of German, University of Washington) For many today, ecological socialism is either the most urgent political dream or the gravest political threat. This book tells the history of the tensions between `red' and `green' under conditions of actual existing socialism in East Germany. It shows in detail how attachment to `prometheanism' and dedication to growth upset divisions of Left and Right. Through contributions from some of German history's most important younger scholars, it helps us understand the past but, perhaps more importantly, to think more clearly about the challenges of the present. (Quinn Slobodian, author of Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism)
Author Information
Sabine Mödersheim is Associate Professor in the Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, where she teaches courses on environmentalism in German culture and visual culture. She most recently co-edited Deutsche Geheimgesellschaften (2013) with Jost Hermand. Scott Moranda is Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Cortland, where he teaches central European and environmental history. Previous publications include The People’s Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism, and Dictatorship in East Germany (2014). Eli Rubin is Professor of History at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he teaches modern European history. He is the author of Synthetic Socialism: Plastics and Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic (2008) and Amnesiopolis: Modernity, Space, and Memory in East Germany (2016).
