The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields

Laakkonen, Simo; Pál, Viktor; Tucker, Richard P.

doi:10.1080/14682745.2016.1248544

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The evidence indicates that they responded to a common pattern. 34 However, the first great Chilean drought in the Cold War period brought certain developments associated with the Chilean state's support for science and technology to "fight" the drought. This is associated with drives and initiatives that gained significant strength in Latin America during the Cold War and which were, at times, strongly intertwined with the political-ideological contingency and needs.…”

Section: Institutional Adaptations and Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Thirsty Country: State, Water, and the “War on Drought” in Chile in the 1960s

Purcell

2022

Hist. Crit.

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Objective/Context: This paper studies the role of the Chilean state during the great drought of 1967-1969 as a mediator between human beings and nature. Institutional adaptations and the effort to improve the infrastructure were elements of continuity with respect to previous droughts, but there were novelties as well, such as attempts to pursue weather modification and the artificial melting of glaciers. The support of technologies and scientists operating from peripheral state institutions was essential for these purposes. All the above took place in the context of the Cold War when the predominant environmental imaginaries made human intervention look favorable and necessary for the modernization of countries. Methodology: Diverse primary sources were used, such as ministerial documents, decrees, bulletins, and reports of different state institutions that allowed understanding the logic of state management during the water crisis. Similarly, research in national and international press helped identify how imaginaries about the environment were expressed and disseminated publicly, which tended to validate novel efforts to control nature. Originality: This is an original study for Latin America, which addresses the early appearance of science and technology in the efforts of what today would be known as geoengineering: mainly through the observation of new actors, which expanded the traditional forms of mediation between humans and nature, led by the state, concerning climate crises. Conclusions: In the 1960s, optimism grew for the human capacity to control and manipulate water resources by appealing to ways other than those previously known, associated with infrastructure development. Expert knowledge was placed at the service of peripheral institutions of the state to promote these changes with lasting consequences. The human desire to control nature at all costs was validated, which helps explain the temporal projection of experiments with artificial rain and glacier control to the present day in Chile.

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Section: Institutional Adaptations and Infrastructurementioning

confidence: 99%

Thirsty Country: State, Water, and the “War on Drought” in Chile in the 1960s

Purcell

2022

Hist. Crit.

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“…9 In that respect, newer research has criticized earlier scholarship that placed an emphasis on waste and environmental pollution that came from inefficient industrial practices that were seen as the result of state policies rather than a boom in consumption. 10 The question emerges, however, if socialist industries were so wasteful, could socialist consumers effectively curtail waste production as a result of their consumer practices, or rather, seconded the wasteful industrial practices of socialism? Sporadic earlier research suggests that socialist consumers might have recycled significantly more than consumers in many Western countries.…”

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confidence: 99%

Trouble with the Bottle Beverage Containers and the Widening Waste Crisis in Socialist Hungary

Pál

2024

Journal of Contemporary History

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Recent studies have explored the history of consumerism in communist Eastern Europe, suggesting that socialist consumption followed its own rhythm and logic. However, when it comes to waste-making and recycling existing literature focuses on post-industrial waste practices of the Soviet bloc, paying little attention to post-consumer waste. However, socialist societies did not follow the West's example and refrained from introducing single-use materials, such as disposable beverage containers. Could this also mean that socialists did a better job to deal with their own post-consumer waste than the West? The current scientific knowledge does not answer that question. To cover that gap in the research, this article situates socialist beverage containers and especially recyclable soft drink bottles made of glass in a wider discourse about the meaning of waste, discards, recycling, and material culture in socialism, particularly in Hungary. It suggests that the socialist waste dilemma was unique to Eastern European economies because of its social, ideological, and cultural layers, of which the scientific community has limited understanding. It proposes that despite different ideological foundations, the socialists battled with similar waste problems than in the West, however systematic differences were large enough to produce less post-consumer waste and recycle that waste more efficiently compared to the West.

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Co-ops Against Castroism: USAID and the Electrification of the Global Countryside

Spinak

2023

Archimedes

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The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Thirsty Country: State, Water, and the “War on Drought” in Chile in the 1960s

Thirsty Country: State, Water, and the “War on Drought” in Chile in the 1960s

Trouble with the Bottle Beverage Containers and the Widening Waste Crisis in Socialist Hungary

Co-ops Against Castroism: USAID and the Electrification of the Global Countryside

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