Mapping Common Ground: Ecocriticism, Environmental History, and the Environmental Humanities

Abstract

The emergence of the environmental humanities presents a unique opportunity for scholarship to tackle the human dimensions of the environmental crisis. It might finally allow such work to attain the critical mass it needs to break out of customary disciplinary confines and reach a wider public, at a time when natural scientists have begun to acknowledge that an understanding of the environmental crisis must include insights from the humanities and social sciences. In order to realize this potential, scholars in the environmental humanities need to map the common ground on which close interdisciplinary cooperation will be possible. This essay takes up this task with regard to two fields that have embraced the environmental humanities with particular fervour, namely ecocriticism and environmental history. After outlining an ideal of slow scholarship which cultivates thinking across different spatiotemporal scales and seeks to sustain meaningful public debate, the essay argues that both ecocriticism and environmental history are concerned with practices of environing: each studies the material and symbolic transformations by which "the environment" is configured as a space for human action. Three areas of research are singled out as offering promising models for cooperation between ecocriticism and environmental history: eco-historicism, environmental justice, and new materialism. Bringing the fruits of such efforts to a wider audience will require environmental humanities scholars to experiment with new ways of organizing and disseminating knowledge.

Conservation social science: Understanding and integrating human dimensions to improve conservation

“…The environmental humanities is a trans-disciplinary field of research and practice that emphasizes methodological and conceptual innovation among humanities scholars concerned with environmental problems and that encourages collaborations among the human, social, engineering, and natural sciences (Bergthaller et al, 2014;Holm et al, 2015Holm et al, , 2013Palsson et al, 2013;Rose et al, 2012;Sörlin, 2012). Within conservation, a key contribution has been the field's emphasis on producing insights about the human-in-its-environment that can better orient thought and action, especially in situations of increased uncertainty, ambiguity, rapid change, and ethical ambivalence where standard methods of knowing and acting become less desirable or effective (Bergthaller et al, 2014).…”

“…Within conservation, a key contribution has been the field's emphasis on producing insights about the human-in-its-environment that can better orient thought and action, especially in situations of increased uncertainty, ambiguity, rapid change, and ethical ambivalence where standard methods of knowing and acting become less desirable or effective (Bergthaller et al, 2014). To this end, environmental humanities scholars have shown that the concepts conservation uses to understand and shape the world have cultural histories, political consequences and ecological impacts that need to be understood by responsible environmental researchers and practitioners (Cronon, 1996;Pilgrim and Pretty, 2010) Therefore, the field tends to focus on the refinement and creation of concepts and insights that better reflect what it means to be human (anthropos) as causal agent and in responding to local, regional, and global ecological change (the Anthropocene).…”

Does environmental archaeology need an ethical promise?

“…Eco-historicism or environmental history (Wood 2008) as well as eco-criticism or the environmental study of literature (Buell 2011;Marland 2013;Hiltner 2015) together make up the field of environmental humanities (Bergthaller et al 2014). Writings in this genre -going back to founding contributions such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) Rigby (2009) has presented a strong argument for environmental ethical engagement from the humanities specifically in relation to disasters (Rigby 2015).…”

Deborah Bird Rose (1946–2018)

“…Debbie went on to play a leadership role in consolidating the environmental humanities as a distinctive field of research in Australia and beyond, often in collaborations with the historian Libby Robin and the philosophers Val Plumwood and Freya Mathews (Bergthaller et al. ; Rose and Robin ). Debbie, Libby, and Val established an Ecological Humanities group at the ANU with their graduate students .…”

“…This was perhaps the first publication venue dedicated to interdisciplinary humanities work on the environment. From 2009 to , I coedited this section with Debbie, until we closed it and launched a new, international journal, Environmental Humanities , dedicated to this emerging field. Debbie continued her editorial role until 2015, when illness required her to step down.…”