Category Archives: History readings

“The Floral Archive”

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Anton Kerner von Marilaun

Anton Kerner von Marilaun

CITATION: Chapter 10 of Coen, D. R. 2018. Climate in motion: science, empire, and the problem of scale. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 
ABSTRACT: Chapter 10 introduces the reader to Anton Kerner von Marilaun (1831-1898), who is known for documenting the flora of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In addition to compiling a list of the plant species that occurred within the empire’s sprawling borders, Kerner also Continue reading →

“Environmental Crises and the Metabolic Rift in World-Historical Perspective”

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CITATION:
Moore, Jason W. 2000.  Organization & Environment, vol. 13: pp. 123-157.
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ABSTRACT:
This article proposes a new theoretical framework to study the dialectic of capital and nature over the longue duree of world capitalism. The author proposes that today’s global ecological crisis has its roots in the transition to capitalism during the long sixteenth century. The emergence of capitalism marked not only a decisive shift in the arenas of politics, economy, and society, but a fundamental reorganization of world ecology, characterized by a “metabolic rift,” Continue reading →

“Svalbard Global Seed Vault: A ‘Noah’s Ark’ for the World’s Seeds”

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CITATION:
Marte Qvenild. 2008. Development in Practice Vol. 18, No. 1, pp. 110–16.
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ABSTRACT:
News about Norway’s plans to establish a ‘doomsday vault’ for seeds in the permafrost of the Artic archipelago of Svalbard as a back-up for conventional gene banks reached the world press in 2006. The idea of a Global Seed Vault, which today is considered Continue reading →

“The Story of Big History”

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CITATION:
Ian Hesketh. 2014. History of the Present, Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 171-202.
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ABSTRACT:
Currently, a group of historians is claiming that it might be history that provides the framework for a scientific and evolutionary account of everything. Big History, so named by its foremost practitioner, David Christian, seeks to Continue reading →

“European Colonialism and the Anthropocene: A view from the Pacific Coast of North America”

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CITATION:
Kent G. Lightfoot, Lee M. Panich, Tsim D. Schneider, and Sara L. Gonzalez. 2013. Anthropocene, Vol. 4, pp. 101-115.
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ABSTRACT:
This paper argues that European colonialism from AD 1500 to the early 1800s marked a fundamental transformation in human–environment interactions across much of the world. The rapid founding of various colonial enterprises, particularly mission and managerial colonies, unleashed Continue reading →

“The Collapse of Western Civilization”

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CITATION:
Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway. 2014. The Collapse of Western Civilization (New York: Columbia University Press).
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ABSTRACT:
In this work of science-based fiction, the authors imagine a future world devastated by climate change. Dramatizing the science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, the book reasserts Continue reading →

“Postcolonial Studies and the Challenge of Climate Change”

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CITATION:
Dipesh Chakrabarty. 2012. New Literary History, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 1-18.
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ABSTRACT:
This article begins by describing how the figure of the human has been thought in anticolonial and postcolonial writing—as that of the Continue reading →

“From Biophilia to Cosmophilia: The Role of Biological and Physical Sciences in Promoting Sustainability”

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CITATION:
Lucas F. Johnston. 2010. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 7-23.
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DOI: 10.1558/jsrnc.v4il.7
ABSTRACT:
Ideas from the life sciences and the physical sciences, particularly the ideas that Continue reading →

“The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”

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CITATION:
Lynn White, Jr. 1967. Science, Vol. 155, No. 3767, pp. 1203-7.
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ABSTRACT:

This article claims that the modern ecological crisis arose out of an ethic derived from Continue reading →