Overview
The Latin American and Caribbean regions’ historical trajectories have been shaped by complex human-nonhuman interactions. In these histories people are important, even crucial, actors, but not the only ones. Offering a novel approach to the writing of Latin American history, this book brings nine thought-provoking chapters together with a historiographical introduction and critical afterword to centre nonhuman beings and things. The oscillating glare of the sun, the resourcefulness of insects, the tectonic instability of national territories, and the life-giving and intractable impassivity of rivers are some of the other-than-human agents driving history in the volume’s chapters. It problematises Latin American(ist) historiography’s tendency to frame ‘nature’ as a separate ontological domain that is only acted upon – conquered, manipulated, devastated – lacking the self-propelled dynamics capable of shaping the course of events. With broad regional and temporal coverage across Latin America and the Caribbean from the pre-colonial period to the present day, the book responds to environmental history’s call to write biophysical environments into the human past – a reconsideration of historical agency that, in this era of climate change, is needed now more than ever.
Full Product Details
Author: Diogo de Carvalho Cabral (Assistant Professor in Environmental History, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland)) ,
André Vasques Vital (Lecturer, Evangelical University of Goiás (Brazil)) ,
Margarita Gascón (Researcher, CONICET (Argentina))
Publisher: University of London
Imprint: University of London Press
ISBN: 9781915249500
ISBN 10: 1915249503
Pages: 290
Publication Date: 25 July 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Manufactured on demand
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.
Reviews
‘More-Than-Human Histories of Latin America and the Caribbean offers a rich and complex study of environmental history that breaks new ground in moving from human-centered approaches and methods to take seriously other biological, geographical and even solar processes that together shape human history in Latin America. The interdisciplinary scope of the studies is impressive, along with the types of sources used, geographies and timescales.’ — Martha Few, Liberal Arts Professor of Latin American History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Penn State University, USA
Author Information
Diogo de Carvalho Cabral is an Assistant Professor in Environmental History and a member of the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities (TCEH) at Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). Before that, he was a British Academy-funded Newton International Fellow based at the Institute of Latin American Studies/School of Advanced Study, University of London (United Kingdom). His academic awards include the Journal of Historical Geography Best Paper Prize (2016) and an honourable mention in the Milton Santos Prize (2017). He is the author of Na Presença da Floresta: Mata Atlântica e História Colonial (Rio de Janeiro, 2014) and co-edited Metamorfoses Florestais: Culturas, Ecologias e as Transformações Históricas da Mata Atlântica (Curitiba, 2016) with Ana Bustamante. Sitting at the interface between History, Geography, Ecology, and Anthropology, his work addresses the historical dimensions of multispecies environmental change in modern Brazil. André Vasques Vital is an Associate Professor in Environmental Sciences at the Evangelical University of Goiás -UniEVANGELICA, Brazil. He is co-editor of Águas no Brasil: Conflitos, Atores, e Práticas (Editora Alameda, 2019) and has published articles in important international journals such as Feminist Media Studies and ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. He also co-edited the special issue Tropical Imaginaries and Climate Crisis: Embracing Relational Climate Discourses (eTropic, 2021). His works propose a non-humanist historical perspective, mainly through fantasy and science fiction animations, where waters and non-human animals are understood as active agents in the constitution of the past. Margarita Gascón earned her master's and Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa, Canada. She is a tenured researcher of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET) in Argentina and also teaches at undergraduate and graduate levels in Mendoza. Among her most recent publications are the Afterword to De viejas y nuevas fronteras en América y Europa, edited by Macarena Sánchez Pérez and Katherine Quinteros Rivera (Editorial Universidad Finis Terrae, 2022) and chapters in Critica de la Razón Indígena, edited by Carlos Felimer del Valle Rojas and Alejandra Cebrelli (Editorial Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2023), and the 'Land Use' and 'Climatic Change' Handbooks: The Anthropocene as multiple crisis. Perspectives from Latin America (CALAS, 2023–2024).
