Forests

This is a chapter of the virtual exhibition “Famines in Late Nineteenth-Century India: Politics, Culture, and Environmental Justice”—written and curated by sociologist Naresh Chandra Sourabh and economic historian Timo Myllyntaus.

Famines in Late Nineteenth-Century India: Politics, Culture, and Environmental Justice

Between 1850 and 1899, India suffered 24 major famines, a number higher than in any other recorded 50-year period, resulting in millions of deaths. This exhibition—written by sociologist Naresh Chandra Sourabh and economic historian Timo Myllyntaus—describes the environmental and social factors that contributed to these cataclysmic events, situating their causes and costs within the complex natural and cultural contexts of nineteenth-century colonial India.

Naresh Chandra Sourabh and Timo Myllyntaus

About the authors

Myllyntaus, Timo

University of Turku, Finland

Timo Myllyntaus is Professor of Finnish history at Turku University. He earned his first two degrees at Helsinki University and a Ph.D. in economic history at the London School of Economics. His research interests stretch from economic and social history to environmental history. His edited volumes include Thinking through the Environment: Green Approaches to Global History (2011) and Invisible Bicycle. New Insights in Bicycle History (co-edited with Tiina Männistö-Funk, forthcoming in 2016). He has also published around one hundred scientific articles and fifty popular articles. Myllyntaus has directed more than a dozen research projects, participated in activities of various scientific organizations including the European Society for Environmental History, and acted as a peer-reviewer for several journals.

Sourabh , Naresh Chandra

Institute of Social Research and Development, India

Naresh Chandra Sourabh is professor and founder Director at the Institute of Social Research and Development, Patna, India. He received his M.A. degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, in 1982 and his Ph.D. also in Sociology from the University of Helsinki in 2008. He is the author of the socio-ethnographic work The Culture of Women’s Housework. Previously, Dr. Sourabh lectured “Food in Indian History- Production, Consumption and Culture from the Colonial Times to the Present” at Turku University, where he was a fellow with the project Finnish Harvest Failures and Famines in the International Context, funded by the Academy of Finland.

Browse the exhibition

Sustainability and the Origins of Wildland Fire Research

by Diane Smith

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Arcadia, 2015, no. 13

Read more about Sustainability and the Origins of Wildland Fire Research

Conservation and Forestry in the American Tropics: John Clayton Gifford in Puerto Rico

by Ian Tyrrell

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Arcadia, 2015, no. 10

Read more about Conservation and Forestry in the American Tropics: John Clayton Gifford in Puerto Rico

Norwegian Government Implements Carbon Tax on Emissions due to Acid Rain

In the early 1970s industrialization in Norway causes acid rainfall which damage indigenous spruce forests. As a result, the government implements a market-based carbon tax on fossil fuels in order to control pollution levels and decrease acid rainfall.

Tags:

Themes:

Environmental Politics

Landscape Transformation

Pollution

Regions:

Norway

Earth First! 5, no. 5

In this issue of Earth First! an essay by Bob Spertus on the “Dark Side of Wilderness” is featured; Michael Hamilton discusses professionalism, compromise, and co-option in the environmental movement; and news items from Alaska to Africa, from Florida to British Columbia, about forests, deserts, and beaches are presented.

Read more about Earth First! 5, no. 5

Policing the Forest: State Resource Control in Java Indonesia

In Java, Indonesia, the State Forestry Agency (SFA) controls valuable production forests and views local peasant farmers as a threat. As a result, the SFA has established a militaristic style of forest security that also functions as a form of social control on the island.

Tags:

access rights

forestry

forests

Themes:

Environmental Politics

Regions:

The Sundarbans Inscripted as UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Sundarbans, one of the largest remaining areas of mangroves in the world with an exceptional level of biodiversity, is inscripted as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Themes:

Landscape Transformation

Regions:

Black Stork, White Stork

An ethnographic documentary film that follows an aging misfit bachelor as he negotiates his status in a world changed by nature conservation and the loss of traditional farming and forestry in Poland’s Białowieża Forest.