conservation

Commentary on the articles in this special issue of Environment and History, “Ecological Visionaries/Ecologised Visions.”

This special issue of Environment and History stems from a series of conference sessions that attempted to address the gap between environmental history and the history of ecology.

In Sweden, during the 20th century, a number of different groups or institutions have nominated themselves as being Nature’s representatives. This essay deals with the ideas, motives or reasons for nature conservation advanced by these groups.

Olwig asserts that the discipline we now know as environmental history owes a great deal of its impetus to the emergence at the beginning of the nineteenth century of a socially engaged and environmentally committed interdisciplinary ‘proto-discipline.’

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 article argues that local religious institutions are used by ruling lineages for political control, to grant preferential access to particular resources, and to enhance political hegemony.

Focusing first on official discourse and the conflict which accompanied the passage of early conservation legislation, this article then looks at the different interpretations of the effects of implementation in Shurugwi communal area.

An introduction to the essays in this special issue, which provide new perspectives on local as well as state and international environmental politics, and their interactions.

The idea for this journal began as a result of a conversation between the editor and Professor Ranajit Guha in 1988. “What we need now,” Professor Guha claimed, “is a history of sticks and stones.”