RCC Perspectives

Issue 2016/4

Environmental Knowledge, Environmental Politics: Case Studies from Canada and Western Europe

Edited by Jonathan Clapperton and Liza Piper

These essays showcase examples from Canada and Western Europe, offering insights into how different forms of environmental knowledge and environmental politics come to be seen as legitimate or illegitimate.

Issue 2016/3

A Future without Waste? Zero Waste in Theory and Practice

Edited by Christof Mauch

Is a world without waste truly achievable? The essays in this volume of RCC Perspectives discuss zero waste as a vision, as a historical concept, and as an international practice. Going beyond the motto of “reduce, reuse, recycle,” they reflect on the feasibility of creating closed material cycles and explore real-world examples of challenges and successes on the way to zero waste.

Issue 2016/2

Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s “Four Theses”

Edited by Robert Emmett and Thomas Lekan

In “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Dipesh Chakrabarty examined the idea of the Anthropocene—the dawn of a new geological period dominated by human activities—in the context of history and philosophy, raising fundamental questions about how we think historically in an era when human and geological timescales are colliding.This volume of RCC Perspectives offers critiques of these “Four Theses” by scholars of environmental history, political philosophy, religious studies, literary criticism, environmental planning, geography, law, biology, and geology.

Issue 2016/1

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: The Politics and Culture of Waste

Edited by Christof Mauch

Waste is never completely or permanently “out of sight.” Once discarded, it undergoes transformations, often reappearing elsewhere in new forms. In this volume of RCC Perspectives, scholars from different disciplines—from history and art history, urban geography, environmental studies, and anthropology—investigate the traces waste leaves behind in the course of its travels.

Issue 2015/3

Unruly Environments

Edited by Siddhartha Krishnan, Christopher L. Pastore, and Samuel Temple

Bringing together scholarship from across the globe, this volume of RCC Perspectives aims to shed light and stimulate discussion on the past, present, and future of the “unruly” environments that frustrate efforts at social and environmental control.

Issue 2015/2

The Imagination of Limits: Exploring Scarcity and Abundance

Edited by Frederike Felcht and Katie Ritson

The contributions in this volume of RCC Perspectives address ways in which scarcity (and abundance) have been represented aesthetically and exploited politically in very different contexts.

Issue 2015/1

Think Global, Eat Local: Exploring Foodways

Edited by Michel Pimbert, Rachel Shindelar, and Hanna Schösler

This volume of RCC Perspectives offers insights into the motivations, benefits, and limitations of local food systems. It aims to shed light on the complexity of the debate while remaining unified by a single message: that where our food comes from and how it is produced matters.

Issue 2014/6

Beyond Doom and Gloom: An Exploration through Letters

Edited by Elin Kelsey

How can we best influence and enact a shift beyond “doom and gloom” when we talk about the environment? The letters in this Perspectives volume are responses to this dilemma. Through an exploration of new environmental narratives, this volume aims to stimulate readers to emotionally reflect on how we can embrace hope and resilience in our stories about the environment.

Issue 2014/5

Energy (and) Colonialism, Energy (In)Dependence: Africa, Europe, Greenland, North America

Edited by Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga and Helmuth Trischler

What does history tell us about energy transitions? What do energy transitions tell us about the history of colonialism? This volume of RCC Perspectives presents five histories of colonial projects that transformed potential energy sources in Africa, Europe, North America, and Greenland into mechanical energy for wealth production.

Issue 2014/4

Crossing Mountains: The Challenges of Doing Environmental History

Edited by Marcus Hall and Patrick Kupper

This issue of RCC Perspectives uses mountains as a common denominator around which to discuss overarching challenges of environmental history: challenges relating not only to mountain landscapes, but also to broader questions of sources, methods, cross-cultural research, project scale, and audience. Each author discusses some of their most intriguing discoveries, resulting in a brief and diverse collection of environmental history snapshots.