"Editorial" for Environment and History 2, no. 1 (Feb., 1996)
An introduction to papers delivered in 1992 at an international and interdisciplinary symposium on environmental history at the Lammi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki.
An introduction to papers delivered in 1992 at an international and interdisciplinary symposium on environmental history at the Lammi Biological Station of the University of Helsinki.
This paper examines age as a parameter in colonial and recent science. It then recounts attempts to impose an ordered progression of age classes on the forests of Victoria and Queensland according to the classical principles of forestry transmuted through an imperial model.
This essay explores the progression of theoretical models and empirical research linked to the understanding of the capacity of forested systems to regulate the hydrological regimes of a given area.
The influence of scientific forestry in southwestern Cameroon (today Southwest Province) is examined.
This paper explores the ideology of forest conservation and the evolution of silviculture in the post bellum Cape, as well as the socio-economic impact of these policies, focusing in particular on African populations residing in the Eastern Cape and the impoverished woodcutters from the Knysna Forests.
The second part of this two-part paper looks at the influence on forestry of knowledge and management practices exchanged through professional-scientific networks.
The author argues in this paper that the basis of these cattlemen’s use of fire to manage the land was their understanding of the practices during the ‘pioneering’ period of European settlement and of Aboriginal people before that.
The forces that started formal forestry education in Australia and New Zealand from 1910 and 1924 respectively are traced.
For nearly a century, we have relied increasingly on science and technology to harness natural forces, but at what environmental and social cost?
The modernization, the declinist, and the inclinist paradigms of the late twentieth century, despite their differences, all tended to frame environmental change in a unilinear Nature-to-Culture fashion, which in turn entailed homogenizing the agency, process, and outcome of environmental change. This article examines the characteristics of each paradigm, as well as some of the paradoxes that have arisen in their wake. Finally, it looks to alternative approaches.