Overview

Thinking through the Environment: Green Approaches to Global History is a collection offering global perspectives on the intersections of mind and environment across a variety of discourses - from history and politics to the visual arts and architecture. Its geographical coverage extends to locations in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America. A primary aim of the volume is, through the presentation of research cases, to gather an appropriate methodological arsenal for the study of environmental history. Among its concerns are interdisciplinarity, eco-biography, the relationship of political and environmental history and culturally varied interpretations and appreciations of space - from Bangladesh to the Australian outback. The approaches of the indigenous peoples of Lapland, Mount Kilimanjaro and elsewhere to their environments are scrutinised in several chapters. Balancing survival - both in terms of resource exploitation and of response to natural catastrophes - and environmental protection is shown to be an issue for more and less developed societies, as illustrated by chapters on Sami reindeer herding, Sudanese cattle husbandry and flooding and water resource-use in several parts of Europe. As the title suggests, the volume exposes the lenses - tinted by culture and history - through which humans consider environments; and also foregrounds the importance of rigor- ous 'thinking through' of the lessons of environmental history and the challenges of the environmental future.

Full Product Details

9781874267713

Table of Contents

Reviews

'the book is highly recommended not only for all environmental historians >but also to other historians. The book offers fresh perspectives on history >in general and, above all, it provides evaluations of common methodological >tools and their application in environmental history that have often and >loudly been requested.' (Petri Juuti, Ymparistohistoria, Finnish Journal of >Environmental History) >'interest over a broad spectrum of themes' (Douglas Weiner, Environmental >History) >' its variety is deliberate and intriguing' (Richard Tucker, Environment and >History)

Author Information

Timo Myllyntaus is Professor of Finnish history at the University of Turku, Finland. His articles on environmental history deal with forest, water and climate history as well Finnish historiography. He co-edited Encountering the Past in Nature, Essays in Environmental History (2001) and the anthology Pathbreakers, Small European Countries Responding to Glo- balisation and De-globalisation (2008). He is the Board member of the European Society for Environmental History and chairs the local organising committee of ESEH's 2011 conference in Turku.

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