Çevresel Tarih Nedir?

What is History?

by J. Donald Hughes, M. Fatih Çalışır (Translator)

Sadece insanların değil insanların da içinde yer aldığı doğal çevredeki canlı-cansız tüm varlıkların ve bu varlıklar arasındaki etkileşimin yazılması gereken bir tarihi olduğu düşüncesini savunan çevresel tarih, insan ve sosyal bilim araştırmalarına getirilmiş en yenilikçi ve en kapsayıcı yorum/izah tarzlarından biridir. İnsanın çevre, çevrenin de insan üzerindeki etkisine özel bir vurgu yapan bu alan siyasi, askeri, sosyal, iktisadi ve kültürel tarih gibi geleneksel tarihyazım şekillerine ilave edilecek ve bunlar üzerinde yeniden düşünmemizi sağlayacak devrimci bir niteliğe sahiptir. Antik döneme kadar uzanan öncüleri olmakla birlikte 1960’lardan bu yana kapsamı ve hedefleri belirli bir disiplin olarak ABD’den Rusya’ya, Brezilya’dan Hindistan’a dünyanın farklı coğrafyalarında icra edilen bu yeni tarihçilik biçemi ülkemizde de bilinir ve uygulanır hale gelmiştir. Elinizdeki kitap çevresel tarihe meraklı öğrenci ve araştırmacılar için rehber eser niteliğindeki What is Environmental History? 2nd edition (Cambridge: Polity, 2016) başlıklı çalışmanın çevirisidir. Alanın öncü ve üretken isimlerinden J. Donald Hughes tarafından kaleme alınan bu eser gerek sağladığı kapsamlı bakış açısı gerekse konuları ele alış biçimiyle kısa sürede başucu kitabı olma niteliği kazanmıştır.

'' Hughes tarihsel incelemeler yapmak için hangi kavramları kullanmamız gerektiği konusunda yol gösterici olmakla birlikte hangi çevresel tarih kaynaklarına bakmamız gerektiğini de elimizdeki kısa giriş kitabında yetkinlikle gösteriyor. Ben kendi hesabıma bu kitabı eline alan ve şöyle bir karıştıran herkesin kendi özel kütüphanesi için bir tane edinmek isteyeceğinden eminim. Bu kitap tüm lisans ve lisansüstü tarih öğrencileri yanı sıra tarihle amatör ya da profesyonel uğraşan herkese faydalı olacaktır.''

Selçuk DURSUN, ODTÜ Tarih Bölümü, Ankara

Genres: History, Nonfiction

220 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2006

Reviews

[Sense of History]

Scientists probably don't like to hear it, but also science is subject to fashionable trends, especially (but not only) the social sciences and humanities. I remember the 1980s when, under the influence of the renewed Cold War, the study of war and peace, conflicts and conflict management suddenly became very popular at universities and research institutes. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, just a few years later, this completely disappeared from view. At this moment environmental studies are on the rise, and this is of course also linked to current events: the increasing awareness of environmental problems and especially the acute issue of climate change and the decline of biodiversity. There is nothing wrong with this ‘fashion’ in itself: science is not practiced in a clinical environment, and it is good that it keeps in touch with issues that affect us all. But these apparently trendy movements in academic studies also carry a risk: they are accompanied by forms of myopia, especially in the initial phase. For example, in historical studies from about ten to twenty years ago, it was noticeable that suddenly everything was attributed to climatic conditions, especially for antiquity. Fortunately, these always are temporary phases (although studies with a monocausal slant are still regularly published).
This book provides a good overview of the predecessors and pioneers of environmental studies, of the most important themes and perspectives and of possible further developments. Due to its specific focus, it remains interesting mainly for academics. But Hughes is right: Environmental Studies is unlikely to be a passing phenomenon like previous fashions. And that has everything to do with the pressing issues facing our planet: “Perhaps the most pressing reason for the continuing growth of environmental history is the assured persistence of environmental concern, deriving from the growing sense among many thoughtful commentators throughout the Earth that increasing human impact upon the living systems of the planet is bringing us no closer to utopia, but instead into a crisis of survival.”

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first reading for the global environmental history course I’m taking this semester. I thought I’d take an opportunity to write this as a way of reviewing before class tomorrow.

This book was sort of like an annotated bibliography, and provided a nice overview of the field. Reading it actually got me fairly excited for this course. I think there’s actually quite a lot of overlap with STS and environmental history (e.g. nature/culture dichotomy and non-human agency), and while I definitely lean a lot closer to STS than the main currents of environmental history in my own personal reading interests, there’s some really interesting scholarship in environmental history that seems quite a bit outside the main currents of STS, and I look forward to becoming more familiar with how to approach history more rigorously. My own research interests are historical in nature and I am completely untrained in history at this point. I was happy to see my research interests lie within a number of the new directions Hughes specifies for the field, including “energy and resources” and “oceans and seas”, and I’m attempting to connect forests of Turtle Island with the Royal Navy vessels of British empire, through the mediating sites of watermills, so that was somewhat encouraging.

James O’Connor, a Marxist environmental historian, was discussed for more than half a page, and I’m looking forward to read some of his work. Mike Davis was mentioned in passing, but he’s likely my favourite of the historians mentioned in this text, maybe because he’s one of the few I’ve actually read already (William Cronon and Jared Diamond being the only other two I’ve read at some length; they represent two opposite ends of the culture-nature spectrum for Hughes). Davis is also a Marxist of sorts, or at least an eco-socialist, and his book Late Victorian Holocausts was an exceptionally interesting read for me. Carolyn Merchant is mentioned; I encountered her in STS readings and have planned to read her since last semester. I hope to get to her in the coming months. The local and global chapters (ch. 4 and 5) were especially interesting to me, and there are a number of books I’ve marked down to follow up on, particularly those focused on empire (of which there are quite a few like Worster, Crosby, Grove, McNeil). I’m also thinking about following up on some interesting references to Ancient environmental history done by Herodotus (who considered constructed bridges and water infrastructure like canals as acts of human pride that might be punished by the gods), Thucydides (who specifically mentions military objectives involving the conquest of forests as timber was vital for military interests like ship-building), and both Plato and Mencius describing the negative impacts of deforestation.

Despite some interesting scholars like Ramachandra Guha and Madhav Gadgil being mentioned, the canon seems to be predominantly white men still. The Southeast Asian subsection was particularly disappointing. There’s very little mention of Indigenous knowledge, let alone Indigenous scholarship. I think STS still does a better job at this sort of stuff, but I definitely am not familiar enough with the canon to properly critique it, so I look forward to familiarizing myself with this field to more fully engage with its change; I already know the field has been undergoing massive changes within the past few years and I hope to participate in this ongoing wave of change in some small way. I feel like STS has a lot to bring to this subject.

[Jean-françois Virey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm only giving this book three stars because I was slightly mistaken about its contents and am not really in its target audience, but do not let that detract you from it if you are.

I expected the book to be a short and pithy overview of the field, giving me an introductory tour of its main concepts, forerunners and methods, a bit like Oxford's VSI series. That is what the title, cover and the table of contents suggested it was. What it it instead is mostly a reading guide, directing the reader to the classics and latest (as of 2016) scholarship, generally through one-sentence (or, at best, one-paragraph) summaries and evaluations. The intended readership for the book, I think, is people contemplating studying the subject academically, and potentially willing to invest hundreds of hours reading up on it. University librarians, too, would find it very useful in helping them orient students or select titles for their environmental history section.

The first 135 pages are the main text, the next 40 are the notes (i.e. the exact references for the books mentioned, with publishers and dates), and the last 10 are a select bibliography.

If you want more in-depth discussions of the books listed, you can have a look at Richard Adrian Reese's several self-published volumes, which are collections of his book reviews here on GoodReads, a large proportion of which are about environmental history (in fact, I had already purchased some of Hughes's recommended titles based on Reese's reviews.)

[incila ̤̮ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çevresel tarih alanında Türkçeye çevrilmiş o kadar az kitap var ki... Umarım alana verilen değer artar ve en azından klasikleşmiş eserler Türkçeye çevrilir. Benim için çok verimli bir giriş oldu, bir sürü makale ve kitap not aldım. Kitabı okurken ana sayfanızı çevresel tarih literatürüyle doldurmuş olabilirim bu yüzden :)

" ...'İlerleme', tartışmasız şekilde iyi bir şey olarak kabul edilmiştir ve hâkim anlatılar insanoğlunu mevcut sosyal ve ekonomik durumdan bir sonrakine neredeyse bir zafer edasıyla yükseltir. Her ne kadar tanımlanmamış olsa da 'ilerleme' ile kastedilen şey gelişen teknolojiler sayesinde elde edilen ekonomik büyümedir. Dünya tarihi ders kitaplarında bilim ve sanatta kazanılan başarılara da yer verilmiştir. Ancak ilerlemedeki amaç Homer'inkinden daha iyi bir kitap, Lascaux Mağarası'ndaki fresklerden daha iyi tablolar yahut fizikte Einstein'ın bulgularını geride bırakacak keşifler değildir. Asıl amaç fabrikaların, enerji tesislerinin, finansal kurumların ve yeryüzünün kaynaklarını insanoğlunun kullanımına açan diğer tüm yapıların var olup olmadığıyla ilgilidir. Konu çevre meselelerine geldiğinde kalkınma merkezli bu anlatılar çoğu kez canlı ve cansız dünyayı görmezden gelirler. Bir ulusun kalkınmasında başarılı olması için yeraltı ve yerüstü kaynaklarını kullanmış olması, ormanlarını keresteye dönüştürmesi, kömür ve demir maden yataklarından çelik üretmesi gerekmektedir. Bu süreçte hava daha çok kirlenecek, nehirler atık ve erozyonun taşıdığı toprakla dolacaktır..."

[Floris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book distills J. DOnald Hughes' decades of research, conversations, experiences, and thoughts in the field of Environmental History into what is essentially a glorified critical bibliography. Great as an account of environmental history's development and most prominent trends, this book feels a bit too dated to still be considered an authoritative summary of the field for the 2020s. A very explicit (and deliberate, I should add) focus on Anglo-Amererican themes and scholarship is sometimes padded with some remarks about East Asian, Latin American, or Pacific scholarship, but half of these are still written by Anglo-American scholars. Discussion about the interdisciplinary nature and potential for environmental history is disappointingly limited to only other historical fields, historical geography, and perhaps a tiny bit of sociology. Throughout the book there is a huge emphasis on the works of only a handful of influential pioneers (Donald Worster, J.R. McNeill, Carolyn Merchant, William Cronon), but it would have been nice to see some newer names get the same kind of love and attention, especially for a second edition. Although I respect what the author has achieved here, the question the book tries to answer probably warranted a collaborative effort (e.g. edited volume). Don't get me wrong, I don't think anyone will be misinformed by this book - I'd just prefer to see people attempt an updated version for the 2020s and beyond.

[Göker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Çevresel tarihin bir alan olarak sınırlarının ne olduğunu, zaman içerisin nasıl bir gelişim gösterdiğini, literatürde nelere sahip olduğu ve gelecekte nelere sahip olabileceğini merak edenler için zorlanmadan okuyabilecekleri çok güzel bir kaynak.

[Berthoud High]

Ms. Steele read this book!

[Özgür Göndiken · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is a perfectly organized text, including the essential names and works of the environmental history with useful guidances and suggestions of the area for future. I really like it. History is in the need of new perspectives without being narrative.

[Evelyn R · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential overview of the field. Greatly appreciated it as a environmental historian-in-becoming.