What Is Environmental History? Why Environmental History?

In: Capitalism, nature, socialism: CNS ; a journal of socialist ecology, Band 8, S. 3-29

Abstract

Argues against postmodernist authors that it is better to decode the history of environmentalism as a developmental logic of capitalism rather than as a particular narrative form. Environmental history is defined in the former terms as the study of how human agency shapes & modifies nature & constructs built environments & spatial configurations. It is suggested that this definition has led historians to the only totalizing social science, Marxism. Environmental history writing is situated in the context of three prior types of history: political, economic, & social/cultural. It is argued that, because environmental history encompasses the development of capitalism & its political, economic, social/cultural, & environmental revolutions, it is properly described as the culmination of history writing in the capitalist epoch. The more that nature is viewed as a product of labor, property, exploitation, & social struggle in particular contexts, the better the chances of developing a more socially just future. D. M. Smith