Common ground: Integrating social and environmental history

Journal of Social History

Volumn 39, Issue 3, 2006, Pages

  Mosley, Stephen ^a,b  

^a LEEDS METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^b School of Cultural Studies   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646529887     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2006.0007     Document Type: Review

References (109)

1. I would like to thank Matt Osborn and John Walton for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Thanks also to the participants in the conference on The Future of Social History held at George Mason University in October, 2004.
2. Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes, 1914-1991 (London, 1994), pp.568-70;
3. E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (New York, 1993), pp.14-15.
4. Journal of Social History, Special Issue on "The Futures of Social History," 37, 2003. Mark M. Smith's essay on sensory history, however, does briefly discuss the issue of noise pollution.
5. The best starting point is: John R. McNeill, "Observations on the Nature and Culture of Environmental History," History and Theory, 42 (2003), pp.5-43.
6. The thematic literature includes: Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, and Christopher Sellers, (eds.), "Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments," Osiris, 19 (2004);
7. Jeffrey K. Stine and Joel A. Tarr, "At the Intersection of Histories: Technology and the Environment," Technology and Culture, 39 (1998), pp.601-40;
8. and Michael Williams, "The Relations of Environmental History and Historical Geography," Jour nal of Historical Geography, 20 (1994), pp.3-21.
9. Evolving national "styles" can be traced through: Jane Carruthers, "Africa: Histories, Ecologies, and Societies," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.379-406;
10. Peter Coates, "Emerging from the Wilderness (or, from Redwoods to Bananas): Recent Environmental History in the United States and the Rest of the Americas," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.407-38;
11. Libby Robin and Tom Griffiths, "Environmental History in Australasia," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.439-74;
12. Mark Cioc, Björn-Ola Linnér, and Matt Osborn, "Environmental History Writing in Northern Europe," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp.396-406;
13. Michael Bess, Mark Cioc, and James Sievert, "Environmental History Writing in Southern Europe," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp.545-56;
14. Ramachandra Guha, "Appendix: Indian Environmental History (1989-1999)" in idem, The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya, Expanded Edition, (Berkeley, 2000) (First published Oxford, 1989).
15. Ted Steinberg, "Down to Earth: Nature, Agency, and Power in History," American Historical Review, 107 (2002), pp.798-820: p.820 and p.805;
16. Alan Taylor, "Unnatural Inequalities: Social and Environmental Histories," Environmental History, 1 (1996), pp.6-19: p.6.
17. Donald Worster, "Appendix: Doing Environmental History" in idem, (ed.), The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History (New York, 1988).
18. See also: Timo Myllyntaus, "Environment in Explaining History: Restoring Humans as Part of Nature" in Timo Myllyntaus and Mikko Saikku, (eds.), Encountering the Post in Nature: Essays in Environmental History, (Athens, 1999).
19. For an urban view try: Christine M. Rosen and Joel A. Tarr, "The Importance of an Urban Perspective in Environmental History," Journal of Urban History, 20 (1994), pp.299-310.
20. Myllyntaus and Saikku, Encountering the Past, p.xi.
21. Worster, "Doing Environmental History," p.296.
22. Joel A. Tarr, "The Metabolism of the Industrial City: The Case of Pittsburgh," Journal of Urban History, 28 (2002), pp.511-45;
23. William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York, 1991);
24. Ian Douglas, Robert Hodgson, and Nigel Lawson, "Industry, Environment, and Health through 200 Years in Manchester," Ecological Economics, 41 (2002), pp.235-55.
25. See also: John R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century (London, 2000), Chapter 9.
26. Myllyntaus, "Environment in Explaining History," p.147.
27. Stephen Mosley, The Chimney of the World: A History of Smoke Pollution in Victorian and Edwardian Manchester (Cambridge, 2001);
28. Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Times of Feast, Times of Famine (London, 1972);
29. Gale E. Christianson, Greenhouse: The 200-Year Story of Global Warming (Harmondsworth, 1999).
30. I.G. Simmons, An Environmental History of Great Britain: From 10,000 Years Ago to the Present (Edinburgh, 2001).
31. Myllyntaus, "Environment in Explaining History," p. 146;
32. Worster, "Doing Environmental History," p.290.
33. For a stimulating overview see: John M. MacKenzie, Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires (East Linton, 1997).
34. On the development of world environmental history more generally, see: I.G.Simmons, "The World Scale," Environment and History, 10 (2004), pp.531-6.
35. John D. Wirth, Smelter Smoke in North America: The Politics of Transborder Pollution (Lawrence, 2000);
36. Mark Cioc, The Rhine: An Eco-Biography, 1815-2000 (Seattle, 2002);
37. John R. McNeill, Something New.
38. Donald Worster, "The Two Cultures Revisited: Environmental History and the Environmental Sciences," Environment and History, 2 (1996), pp.3-14: p.13.
39. ASEH membership figures are taken from McNeill, "Observations," p.11;
40. ESEH membership figures are taken from the society's website: www.eseh.org/ (01 Feb. 05);
41. H-Environment can be accessed at: www.h-net.org/~environ/
42. Alfred W. Crosby, "The Past and Present of Environmental History," American Historical Review, 100, 1995, pp.1177-89: p.1188.
43. Adrian Wilson, "A Critical Portrait of Social History" in idem (ed.) Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570-1920 and its Interpretation (Manchester, 1993), p.30.
44. Donald Worster, "Seeing Beyond Culture," Journal of American History, 76 (1990), pp.1140-47: p.1144.
45. Taylor, "Unnatural Inequalities," p.9.
46. However, there has been a trend towards a more "neutral tone" in recent years. See: McNeill, "Observations," p.34.
47. Roderick Nash, "American Environmental History: A New Teaching Frontier," Pacific History Review, 41 (1972), pp.362-72: p.363.
48. Timothy Weiskel quoted in: Carolyn Merchant, "Gender and Environmental History, "Journal of American History, 76 (1990), pp.1117-21: p.1121;
49. Elizabeth Blackmar, "Contemplating the Force of Nature," Radical Historians Newsletter, no.70 (1994), p.4;
50. McNeill, "Observations," p.36.
51. William Cronon, "Modes of Prophecy and Production: Placing Nature in History," Journal of American History, 76 (1990), pp.1122-31: p.1129;
52. Taylor, "Unnatural Inequalities," p.7.
53. Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York, 1986);
54. McNeill, "Observations," p.33;
55. John M. MacKenzie, "Empire and the Ecological Apocalypse: The Historiography of the Imperial Environment" in Tom Griffiths and Ltbby Robin, (eds.), Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies (Edinburgh, 1997);
56. John M. MacKenzie, idem, Empires of Nature, p.14.
57. Walter Johnson, "On Agency," Journal of Social History, 37 (2003), pp.113-25;
58. William H. Sewell, "Nature, Agency, and Anthropocentrism," American Historical Review online discussion forum, available at: www.historycooperative.org/phorum/list.php?f=13 (27 July 04);
59. Steinberg, "Down to Earth."
60. See also: Kristin Asdal, "The Problematic Nature of Nature: The Post-Constructivist Challenge to Environmental History," History and Theory, 42 (2003), pp.60-74;
61. William Cronon, (ed.), Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, 1995).
62. Mosley, Chimney of the World, pp.14-19.
63. See also: Bill Luckin, "The Heart and Home of Horror': The Great London Fogs of the Late Nineteenth Century," Social His tory, 28 (2003), pp.31-48;
64. Peter Brimblecombe, The Big Smoke: A History of Air Pollution in London since Medieval Times (London, 1988).
65. Mosley, Chimney of the World, p.62 and p.184.
66. For a US comparison, see: Angela Gugliotta, "Class, Gender, and Coal Smoke: Gender Ideology and Environmental Injustice in Pittsburgh, 1868-1914," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp.165-93.
67. Mosley, Chimney of the World, p.94.
68. Stephen Mosley, "Fresh Air and Foul: The Role of the Open Fireplace in Ventilating the British Home, 1837-1910," Planning Perspectives, 18 (2003), pp.1-21.
69. "Bringing the Natural World into History," American Historical Review, 107 (2002), p 797.
70. Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1995), p.17.
71. The phrase is taken from Charles Phythian-Adams, "Environments and Identities: Landscape as Cultural Projection in the English Provincial Past" in Paul Slack, (ed.), Environments and Historical Change (Oxford, 1999), p.134.
72. See also: Oral History, Special Issues on "Landscapes of Memory" and "Memory and Place," 28, 1 and 2, 2000.
73. For example, see: JoAnn McGregor, "Living with the River: Landscape and Memory in the Zambezi Valley, Northwest Zimbabwe" in William Beinart and JoAnn McGregor, (eds.), Social History and African Environments (Oxford, 2003).
74. Tim Bonyhady, and Tom Griffiths, "Landscape and Language" in idem (eds.), Words for Country: Landscape and Language in Australia (Sydney, 2002), p.1.
75. Tim Bonyhady, "So Much for a Name" Words for Country: Landscape and Language in Australia, in ibid.
76. For an overview, see: Michael Egan, "Subaltern Environmentalism in the United States: A Historiographic Review," Environment and History, 8 (2002), pp.21-41.
77. For example, see: Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959);
78. Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, 3rd ed. (New Haven, 1982);
79. Michael P. Cohen, The History of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970 (San Francisco, 1988);
80. Stephen Holmes, The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography (Madison, 1999);
81. David Lowenthal, George Perkins Marsh: Prophet of Conservation (Seattle, 2000).
82. Dolores Greenberg, "Reconstructing Race and Protest: Environmental Justice in New York," Environmental History, 5 (2000), pp.223-50.
83. See also: Susan L. Smith, Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women's Health Activism in America, 1890-1950 (Philadelphia, 1995).
84. Christopher H. Foreman and Martin V. Melosi, "Environmental Justice: Policy Challenges and Public History" in Martin V. Melosi and Philip Scarpino, (eds.), Public History and the Environment (Malabar, 2004), p-240;
85. Carolyn Merchant, "Shades of Darkness: Race and Environmental History," Environmental History, 8 (2003), pp.380-394: p.381.
86. Andrew Hurley, Environmental Inequalities: Class, Race, and Industrial Pollution in Gary. Indiana, 1945-1980 (Chapel Hill, 1995), p.181.
87. David N. Pellow, Garbage Wars: The Struggle for Environmental Justice in Chicago (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), p.67 and p.91.
88. The literature on environmental justice is now expanding beyond U.S. borders. For example, see: Nancy J. Jacobs, Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge, 2003).
89. Matthew Klingle, "Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History," History and Theory, 42 (2003), pp.94-110: p.96.
90. Richard P. Tucker, Insatiable Appetite: The United States and the Ecological Degradation of the Tropical World (Berkeley, 2000).
91. John Soluri, "Accounting for Taste: Export Bananas, Mass Markets, and Panama Disease," Environmental History, 7 (2003), pp.386-410;
92. Klingle, "Spaces of Consumption," p.96.
93. Guha, Unquiet Woods.
94. Ramachandra Guha and Juan Martinez-Alier, Varieties of Environmentalism: Essays North and South (London, 1997);
95. Vandana Shiva, Tomorrow's Biodiversity (London, 2000);
96. Ramachandra Guha, Environmentalism: A Global History (Harlow, 2000).
97. William Beinart, African History, Environmental History and Race Relations (Oxford, 1999), p.11;
98. Guha, "Indian Environmental History," p.222.
99. Susan Strasser, Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash (New York, 1999), p.16 and p.14.
100. See also: John Scanlan, On Garbage (London, 2004).
101. David E. Nye, Consuming Power: A Social History of American Energies (Cambridge, Mass., 1998).
102. See also: David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (Cambridge, Mass., 1990);
103. Bill Luckin, Questions of Power: Electricity and Environment in Inter-war Britain (Manchester, 1990).
104. Raymond Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays (London, 1980), p.83.
105. For an extended discussion of how work links people to nature, see: Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (New York, 1995).
106. Steinberg, "Down to Earth;"
107. Blackmar, "Contemplating."
108. See also: Bill Luckin, Pollution and Control: A Social History of the Thames in the Nineteenth Century (Bristol, 1986).
109. Stephen R. Dovers, "On the Contribution of Environmental History to Current Debate and Policy," Environment and History, 6 (2000), pp.131-50.