Suchergebnisse

First published online: 04 December 2020 ; Through considering a "Geo Archive" as a tool of history, this paper explores several conundrums concerning environmental migration in social sciences. It demonstrates how historical perspectives can problematize and unsettle various automatisms that are widely present in journalistic, public, and policy discourses. Through examples from the Geo Archive, the article illustrates how unavoidable historical dimensions can enrich our understandings on the interaction between environmental issues and migration flows. This paper engages with an open access "archive in-the-making". This Geo Archive includes case studies of migration flows and puts those flows in conversation with environmental transformations and climatic changes. The analysed collection presents high-profile stories which are representative samples of different approaches, temporalities, geographies, sources of information, narratives, and scales. This endeavour encompasses different disciplines and fields of expertise: environmental humanities, IT and communication experts, and political ecology. The archive places itself within the realms of public history, environmental history, and history of the present and aims to reach out to wider audiences. This digital humanities project stemmed from a support action funded by the EU initiative Horizon 2020 titled CLISEL whose overarching goal was to analyse and better inform institutional responses and policies addressing climate refugees and migrants.

Through considering a "Geo Archive" as a tool of history, this paper explores several conundrums concerning environmental migration in social sciences. It demonstrates how historical perspectives can problematize and unsettle various automatisms that are widely present in journalistic, public, and policy discourses. Through examples from the Geo Archive, the article illustrates how unavoidable historical dimensions can enrich our understandings on the interaction between environmental issues and migration flows. This paper engages with an open access "archive in-the-making". This Geo Archive includes case studies of migration flows and puts those flows in conversation with environmental transformations and climatic changes. The analysed collection presents high-profile stories which are representative samples of different approaches, temporalities, geographies, sources of information, narratives, and scales. This endeavour encompasses different disciplines and fields of expertise: environmental humanities, IT and communication experts, and political ecology. The archive places itself within the realms of public history, environmental history, and history of the present and aims to reach out to wider audiences. This digital humanities project stemmed from a support action funded by the EU initiative Horizon 2020 titled CLISEL whose overarching goal was to analyse and better inform institutional responses and policies addressing climate refugees and migrants.

Abstract
The article illustrates the reemergence of the Atlantic Forest biome in Morro da Babilônia, a favela in Rio de Janeiro, due to a reforestation project started in the 1980s conducted by institutional actors and the local community. The forest has played an important role in reinvigorating the sense of community, by legitimizing ownership claims that the community has made over the area, and by serving as a mitigation strategy in a context of increasing climatic-extreme events. In 2019 a team of researchers started an oral history project to document the social and environmental transformation of the favela. Interviews with members of the community and representatives of institutional partners opened up unexpected paths into people's memories and perspectives. In a frame of socioeconomic, political and environmental violence, injustice, and vulnerability, the making of a multispecies city and its related narratives turned out to be instrumental for the community's survival.

"Focusing on extreme environments, from Umberto Nobile's expedition to the Arctic to the commercialization of Mt Everest, this volume examines global environmental margins, how they are conceived and how perceptions have changed. Mountaintops and Arctic environments are the settings of social encounters, political strategies, individual enterprises, geopolitical tensions, decolonial practises, and scientific experiments. Concentrating on mountaineering and Arctic exploration between 1880 - 1960, contributors to this volume show how environmental marginalisation has been discursively implemented and materially generated by foreign and local actors. It examines to what extent the status and identity of extreme environments has changed during modern times, moving them from periphery to the centre and discarding their marginality. The first section looks at ways in which societies have framed remoteness, through the lens of commercialization, colonialism, knowledge production and sport, while the second examines the reverse transfer, focusing on how extreme nature has influenced societies, through international network creation, political consensus and identity building. This collection enriches the historical understanding of exploration by adopting a critical approach and offering multidimensional and multi-gaze reconstructions. This book is essential reading for students and scholars interested in environmental history, geography, colonial studies and the environmental humanities"--

Focusing on extreme environments, from Umberto Nobile's expedition to the Arctic to the commercialization of Mt Everest, this volume examines global environmental margins, how they are conceived and how perceptions have changed. Mountaintops and Arctic environments are the settings of social encounters, political strategies, individual enterprises, geopolitical tensions, decolonial practises, and scientific experiments. Concentrating on mountaineering and Arctic exploration between 1880 - 1960, contributors to this volume show how environmental marginalisation has been discursively implemented and materially generated by foreign and local actors. It examines to what extent the status and identity of extreme environments has changed during modern times, moving them from periphery to the centre and discarding their marginality. The first section looks at ways in which societies have framed remoteness, through the lens of commercialization, colonialism, knowledge production and sport, while the second examines the reverse transfer, focusing on how extreme nature has influenced societies, through international network creation, political consensus and identity building. This collection enriches the historical understanding of exploration by adopting a critical approach and offering multidimensional and multi-gaze reconstructions. This book is essential reading for students and scholars interested in environmental history, geography, colonial studies and the environmental humanities.

AbstractThis article analyzes the role of soil in the making of authoritarian regimes and illustrates twentieth-century practices and discourses related to fertility across the globe. It compares two different approaches to and understandings of soil fertility: the first emerged in North Libya under Italian Fascist rule (1922–1943), the second in Central Brazil during the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). We compare two soil-forming processes that changed physical and chemical properties of the original matter and were embedded within specific ideologies of modernization. In both cases, state agendas of agrarian production played a paramount role not only in socioeconomic projects but also as an instrument to suppress opposition. Technocratic and political aspects of building and maintaining fertility were interwoven, although in different patterns in the two countries. We show how the rejuvenation of land bled into the regeneration of communities through processes that anchored the self-definition and development of these authoritarian regimes, and argue that attempts at landscape transformations through agricultural activity and strategies of fertilization are inescapable features of dictatorships. In so doing, we elaborate the concept of "authoritarian soil." The juxtaposition of these non-synchronous cases reveals how agricultural modernization developed throughout the twentieth century. Our study is rooted in environmental history and contributes to the ongoing dialogue between that field and science and technology studies. Its cross-temporal, comparative methodology draws upon sources and historiographical debates in English, Italian, and Portuguese.

First published online: 25 March 2021 ; This article analyzes the role of soil in the making of authoritarian regimes and illustrates twentieth-century practices and discourses related to fertility across the globe. It compares two different approaches to and understandings of soil fertility: the first emerged in North Libya under Italian Fascist rule (1922–1943), the second in Central Brazil during the civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985). We compare two soil-forming processes that changed physical and chemical properties of the original matter and were embedded within specific ideologies of modernization. In both cases, state agendas of agrarian production played a paramount role not only in socioeconomic projects but also as an instrument to suppress opposition. Technocratic and political aspects of building and maintaining fertility were interwoven, although in different patterns in the two countries. We show how the rejuvenation of land bled into the regeneration of communities through processes that anchored the self-definition and development of these authoritarian regimes, and argue that attempts at landscape transformations through agricultural activity and strategies of fertilization are inescapable features of dictatorships. In so doing, we elaborate the concept of "authoritarian soil." The juxtaposition of these non-synchronous cases reveals how agricultural modernization developed throughout the twentieth century. Our study is rooted in environmental history and contributes to the ongoing dialogue between that field and science and technology studies. Its cross-temporal, comparative methodology draws upon sources and historiographical debates in English, Italian, and Portuguese. ; This article was published Open Access with the support from the EUI Library through the CRUI - CUP Transformative Agreement (2020-2022)

Abstract
Urban climate insurgency refers to the ensemble of grassroots initiatives aiming to tackle climate change from a radical point of view. Insurgency in this case does not imply violence but rather refers to the radical rejection of the current socioecological system. While explicitly challenging planetary ecocide and climate-change effects, these forms of insurgency target all policies that make the urban condition yet more precarious, demonstrating that climate mobilization is inherently intersectional. The focus here is on the urban dimension of this global climate insurgency that unsettles the dichotomy between rural and urban. It is on the urban terrain, already fissured by racial capitalism but also traversed by antiracist and promigrant movements, that the climate emergency becomes a climate and social justice issue. This introductory essay offers a fresh approach to the new municipalist project and digs into its environmental agenda. From New York to Mälmo, from Rio de Janiero to Istanbul, passing through Jakarta, Bangalore, and Naples, this special issue explores the articulation of radical climate-change politics, the materialization of climate injustices, and grassroots reactions to these injustices in the urban sphere.

Urban climate insurgency refers to the ensemble of grassroots initiatives aiming to tackle climate change from a radical point of view. Insurgency in this case does not imply violence but rather refers to the radical rejection of the current socioecological system. While explicitly challenging planetary ecocide and climate-change effects, these forms of insurgency target all policies that make the urban condition yet more precarious, demonstrating that climate mobilization is inherently intersectional. The focus here is on the urban dimension of this global climate insurgency that unsettles the dichotomy between rural and urban. It is on the urban terrain, already fissured by racial capitalism but also traversed by antiracist and promigrant movements, that the climate emergency becomes a climate and social justice issue. This introductory essay offers a fresh approach to the new municipalist project and digs into its environmental agenda. From New York to Mälmo, from Rio de Janiero to Istanbul, passing through Jakarta, Bangalore, and Naples, this special issue explores the articulation of radical climate-change politics, the materialization of climate injustices, and grassroots reactions to these injustices in the urban sphere. ; QC 20220328 QC 20220715 ; Occupy Climate Change

In recent years the environmental humanities have evolved in new and exciting directions, due largely to the democratisation of information and new digital communication technologies. Social media channels, smartphones and the ease of online communication have also helped to advertise the ideas of emerging scholars in the growing field of environmental history. Inspired by the success of other academic societies in supporting their early-career members, such as the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE), the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) Grad Caucus and New Scholars network, and the Tensions of Europe Network (ToE), the Board of the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) decided to initiate its own Next Generation Action Team (NEXTGATe), which was established in June 2018. The first tenure of NEXTGATe (2018–2019) consists of six scholars: Roberta Biasillo (Rachel Carson Center, Germany); Elena Kochetkova (Higher School of Economics, St Petersburg, Russia); Tayler Meredith (University of Birmingham, UK); Simone Schleper (Leibniz Institute of European History, Germany) and Erin Spinney (University of Oxford, UK). NEXTGATe's coordinator is Viktor Pál (Higher School of Economics, Russia), who serves as Assistant to the Board.