Kheraj, Sean. “Episode 19: Metropolitanism and Environmental History.” Nature’s Past podcast, 24 January 2011. MP3, 42:58. http://niche-canada.org/2011/01/24/natures-past-episode-19-metropolitanism-and-environmental-history/.
The point of departure for this podcast is an article by Canadian historian James Maurice Stockford Careless published in 1954 in the Canadian Historical Review. Therein Careless advances his Metropolitan Thesis. In part a response to the US model of the Frontier Thesis, the influence of Careless’s Metropolitan Thesis can be found in works such as William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis (1991). The podcast’s interlocutors assess the model’s influence on environmental history more generally and how best to proceed going forwards with reference to a range of issues, from natural resource industries and commodity flows to industrial technologies and consumer demand. Historians Liza Piper of the University of Alberta and James Murton of Nipissing University are joined by Matthew Evenden, Associate Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia.
Metropolitanism and Environmental History (39.34 MB)
Music credits: Reveling Pitx, 205 – Melonoite, Bye Bye 2010
Nature’s Past podcasts are posted on a monthly basis on the website of the Network in Canadian History & Environment / Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l’environnement (NiCHE). The podcasts contain discussion about the environmental history community and research in Canada. They are hosted by Sean Kheraj, an assistant professor in the Department of History at York University in Toronto, Canada.
- Careless, James Maurice Stockford. "Frontierism, Metropolitanism, and Canadian History." Canadian Historical Review 35, no. 1 (1954): 1-21. doi:10.3138/CHR-035-01-01.
- Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: Norton, 1991.
- Evenden, Matthew. Fish Versus Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser River. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
- Murton, James. Creating a Modern Countryside: Liberalism and Land Resettlement in British Columbia. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007.
- Piper, Liza. The Industrial Transformation of Subarctic Canada. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009.