bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
In and Out of Time
Authors: Gault Richard 
Published: June 2007

This paper explores the nature of time and its relation to our concerns for the future. It is shown how a new sense of time, chronological time, emerged with the rise of science and modernity. This now familiar time is rarely questioned. Yet, it is argued, this time is intimately bound up with our contemporary problems and our failure to effect solutions. In analysing chronological time it is revealed that the future is devoid of reality in it. This absence of a real sense of the future explains our careless despoiling of the environment. To save our environment we need to resurrect a real sense for the future: only then can the future be truly valued. This means re-discovering another sense of time. This other time is named kairological time. In kairological time there is a more vivid awareness of the future. In this time, too, new ways of acting for the future are opened up. Possibilities for a wiser way to the future in part stem from a revaluation of the past. So the sense of being out of time to save ourselves and our planet can be overcome by a living in this other time, kairological time.
The Isle of Harris Superquarry: Concepts of the Environment and Sustainability
Authors: Barton Harry 
Published: June 2007

In 1991 Redland Aggregates Ltd. put forward a proposal to embark upon the largest mining project in Europe, the chosen location being the remote island of Harris and Lewis in the Western Isles of Scotland. The proposal sparked off an impassioned debate between planners, conservationists and developers, while the local residents have attempted to come to terms with an operation on a scale previously inconceivable on the island. This paper attempts to examine the proposed development from a sociological angle – it is less concerned with justifying or condemning the project on economic or political grounds and more with analysing the roots of the various viewpoints held by those involved, willingly or unwillingly, in the debate. From this analysis arise implications regarding different perspectives on the environment and different interpretations of the term sustainable. It is argued that these diverse perceptions are grounded in different interpretations of the environment, shaped by the cultural and historical context within which the groups or individuals that hold these views exist and interact. Ultimately, the paper makes a plea for a wider recognition of the diversity of meanings and interpretations implied by the term ‘environment’, a broader definition of the term ‘development’, and an expansion of the concept of sustainability to incorporate the variety of situations and perceived needs of different cultures.
Environmental Victims: Arguing the Costs
Authors: Williams Christopher 
Published: June 2007

The costs of anthropogenic environmental change are usually discussed in broad terms, for example embracing damage to the ecosystem or buildings. There has been little consideration of the direct human dimension –the cost to and of environmental victims – except in clinical terms. In order to prevent and minimise environmental victimisation it seems necessary to present cost arguments to governments and commerce. This paper outlines the personal, social and cash costs of environmental victimisation, using the psycho-social literature, and brief case studies of intellectual disability, road transport and cross-border pollution. It is proposed that governments and commerce might not respond in obvious ways to these cost arguments, but ‘trust’ is identified as a cost that both may recognise. It is concluded that the concept of loss-costs should be central to any analysis, and the paper provides a ‘Framework for comprehensive argument of the costs of environmental victimisation’, in the form of a simple matrix.
Environment and Society: Long-Term Trends in Latin American Mining.
Authors: Dore Elizabeth 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Drawing on historical and environmental research, this essay examines long-term trends in the ways that mining affected labour and the environment in Latin America. The article begins with a theoretical framework for analysing the changing conditions of labour and of the environment under capitalism. This is followed by a periodisation of Latin American mining, divided into six parts: pre-conquest, conquest, colony, neo-colony, capitalist modernisation and debt crisis. In each period (excepting the first) I assess the major social and environmental transformations associated with the industry. My central conclusion is that there has been an inverse relationship between two long-term trends: first, the brutality of labour conditions in the industry; second, the scope of environmental destruction linked to mining. The article concludes with a discussion of two more speculative issues: the impact this inverse relationship has had on contemporary political concerns, and whether the turn of the millennium marks the end of this inverse relationship.
Basutoland: A Historical Journey into the Environment.
Authors: Singh Meena 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Reconstructing the environment of Lesotho in order to assess soil erosion at different time scales, highlights conflicting views about the initiation of accelerated erosion. Indigenous agricultural practices were sensitive to the fragile environment and aimed to ensure a protective vegetative cover. The imposition of colonial conservation techniques overlooked local wisdom regarding soil erosion prevention, was often ineffective, and arguably accelerated soil erosion. Loss of flat fertile land to the Boers, changes from indigenous agriculture to commercial cultivation, concentration of population on steep slopes, were among causes that contributed to accelerated erosion, and to indigenous agricultural systems becoming less effective.
Control of Air Pollution in Manchester prior to the Public Health Act, 1875.
Authors: Bowler Catherine , Brimblecombe Peter 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Industrialising cities of the 19th century are seen as lax in environmental matters. However, Manchester took a strong stand against air pollution. It modified complex medieval administrative practices to address industrial pollution, and created new bodies (e.g. Police Commissioners) that considered environmental matters. Its committees and inspectors worked diligently, but pro-industrial sympathies prevented systematic prosecution of industrial offenders. Nevertheless, the smoke menace was certainly systematically addressed. Effective response was limited by inadequate abatement technology, despite a rapid evolution of the administrative policy prior to the Public Health Act 1875.
Utilitarianism and the Identity of the Indian Forest Service
Authors: Hannam Kevin 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This paper discusses the historical identity of the Indian Forest Service, the elite environmental organisation which controlled and managed nearly a third of India during the late nineteenth century. This organisation has been widely criticised by numerous authors, however it has rarely been analysed directly. Based upon an evaluation of the key voice of the forest service, the journal the Indian Forester, as well as the memoirs of various forest officers, this article will attempt to provide an outline of the identity of the Indian Forest Service in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Firstly, I demonstrate that despite some antagonism from the Indian Civil Service, the Indian Forest Service was initially structured along the same utilitarian lines. In particular, I show how, in the face of popular protests, the Indian Forest Service created and maintained its own esprit de corps through particular methods of recruitment and training. Secondly, I show that the Indian Forest Service had a crisis of identity and was at pains to distinguish itself from the Indian Civil Service, mainly through recourse to a more muscular definition of masculinity.
Grasslands and Thickets: Bush Encroachment and Herding in the Kalahari Thornveld
Authors: Jacobs Nancy 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This paper addresses bush encroachment around Kuruman, South Africa. The 'received wisdom' is that bushes result from overgrazing, displace the climax community, and lower carrying capacity. In contrast, this paper is informed by non-equilibrium ecological and range management science, as well as recent challenges to degradationist interpretations about environmental change in Africa. To what extent has bush encroachment occurred? Has a consequent drop in sustainability contributed to dependence upon wage labour among black households? Using documentary evidence, the paper establishes a broad chronology for change. It asserts that because of non-human and human factors black herders live in a bushier environment than they did when the first travellers arrived around 1800. It concludes with oral evidence to consider the effects of the change. Interviews show that people do not consider bush encroachment to be an environmental problem. They are too poor to keep many grazing cattle, and the browsing small stock and donkeys they can afford are well suited to bushes. Also, because bushes survive drought better than grass, they are valued fodder for all animals. Dependence upon wage labour results from wider social factors and this environmental change has not degraded livelihoods.
Can Climate Influence Cultural Development? A View through Time
Authors: Haberle Simon G. , Lusty Alex Chepstow 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Despite the devastating impact that flooding, drought and fire associated with the 1982/3 and 1997/8 El Nino events had on both the natural environment and human society, there is little information on the persistence or impact similar events may have had in the 'deeper' past. Palaeoecologists can offer insight into the nature of environmental change over a range of spatiotemporal scales, utilising high-resolution techniques that can broaden the interpretation of issues that are specifically relevant to historians, geographers and anthropologists. In some cases there appears to be a correspondence between major climatic events and a change in cultural development that leads us to ask the question, 'How significant has climate change been in the development of human society?' We discuss the role of environmental history in studies of cultural change, and critically assess four case studies where climate may have had a significant impact on the development of human society: human evolution in Africa, development of agriculture in New Guinea, urban collapse in Central and South America, and Pacific island occupation.
Yorkshire's 'Sloughs of Despond': An Inter-War Perspective on Resource Development in Britain
Authors: Sheail John 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Not only do questions of environmental management have an intrinsic importance, but the manner in which they were addressed may offer insight into the relevance and robustness of the mechanisms by which they might be resolved. The paper provides a case study of the range of preoccupations which the statutory planner, agricultural interests and mineral developer brought to bear on the conflict arising from the early twentieth-century development of the Yorkshire 'concealed' coalfield. Where mechanisms existed for reconciling the sectoral interests within, say, a city and its immediate environs, there was increasing need in the inter-war years for such accommodation to extend to whole river-catchments or regions. Where the geographically-largest unit in local government, the county council, might appear to favour agriculture, central government was especially protective of local mining interests. Whilst the consequent impact of surface subsidence on land drainage created considerable acrimony, the raised political consciousness proved essential in sustaining the ill-defined, four-fold process by which agreement was achieved for the ameliorative action required.
Frontier Foods for Late Medieval Consumers: Culture, Economy, Ecology
Authors: Hoffmann Richard C. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
A continual western history of humans feeding beyond the bounds of natural local ecosystems goes back to Europe's high and later Middle Ages. This essay considers medieval long distance trades in grain, cattle, and preserved fish as antecedents to today's globalised movements of foodstuffs. Pulled by demand from consumers in populous and wealthy western Europe, significant amounts of plants, animals, their biomass, and their calories moved across major ecological boundaries, notably from thinly populated areas on Europe's peripheries. As today, the large cultural, economic, and ecological consequences are unevenly acknowledged. Distant zones of perceived abundance let consumers avoid changing their own cultural preferences and social practices by externalising, even forgetting, the social and environmental costs of satisfying them.
The Wasting of Wolin: Environmental Factors in the Downfall of a Medieval Baltic Town
Authors: Broich John 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This medieval environmental history examines the tenth-century industrial and trade town of Wolin which grew rapidly on an island immediately off the northwestern coast of Poland. It arose in an environment incapable of supporting its population of 8000 - the largest population in the Baltic during the period. Palaeobotanical evidence records the island's large-scale deforestation and the rapid deterioration of its soils. Having outstripped its local natural assets, Wolin quickly became dependent on imported grain, lumber, and industrial resources. By the mid-eleventh century, Wolin could no longer sustain itself, and became too exhausted to repulse, or recover from, sea-borne raids.
Geo-Environmental Disconnection and the Colorado River Delta: Technology, Culture, and the Political Ecology of Paradise
Authors: Ward Evan R. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This article examines the alienation of water users in the lower Colorado River Basin from the river and its delta during the twentieth century. The author posits technological advances, affluence, geographic distance from the river itself, and prevalent Newtonian attitudes towards the landscape as the principal reasons for these geo-environmental disconnections. Politically, the competition between municipal, agricultural, and tourist-related activities contributed to the severing of ecological linkages between the urban and irrigated oases and the delta.
Technological Transformation and Water Conflicts in the Bhavani River Basin of Tamil Nadu, 1930-1970
Authors: Saravanan Velayutham 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This article examines in a historical perspective (1930-1970) the water conflicts that have occurred due to technological transformation in water lifting devices (viz.: electric and oil-engine pumpsets) in the agricultural sector in the old Kalingarayan channel and new Lower Bhavani Project canal of the Bhavani River Basin in Tamil Nadu. It discusses the consequences of technological transformation leading to water conflicts between the head-reach and tail-end farmers during the colonial and post-colonial periods. It also analyses the role of politicians in these conflicts. Further, it looks into government policies and the role of the judiciary in resolving these conflicts.
The Conservation Society: Harbinger of the 1970s Environment Movement in the UK
Authors: Herring Horace 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
The Conservation Society was the first environmental society in the UK. It was founded in 1966 in response to the then widely perceived global threat of over-population. It was an uneasy coalition between political radicals wanting wider public access to birth control and traditional conservationists, like Lady Eve Balfour of the Soil Association. By the early 1970s, under the Directorship of John Davoll, it moved away from population concerns to articulate an 'environmental' message based on an integrated view of population, resources and technology (strongly influenced by Paul Ehrlich). Despite its initial success it went into a slow decline from 1973. It was at heart a conservative and traditional organisation and it could not compete with the more dynamic and youthful Friends of the Earth. Its inability to adapt to a changing culture was its downfall, but its intellectual message was the foundation for 1970s environmentalism.
'Welcome to the Atomic Park': American Nuclear Landscapes and the 'Unnaturally Natural'
Authors: Wills John 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Atomic landscapes in the American West are typically understood as despoiled and irradiated territories. Nevada Test Site, with its grim medley of twisted military structures, bombed-out craters and radioactive desert, is an emblem of the nuclear age. By contrast, Yosemite National Park is a very different icon to hail from Western climes. Yosemite is legendary for its wild nature and monumental scenery. The two landscapes, Nevada Test Site and Yosemite National Park, have, on the surface, very little in common. However, in recent years, a number of nuclear and post-nuclear landscapes have been praised for attracting rare species of flora and fauna. A few nuclear sites have even become nature reserves. While aware that so-called atomic parks are hardly likely to become the Yellowstones and Yosemites of the late twenty-first century, this article explores a few of the unexpected links between two forms of landscape for so long considered extreme opposites.
Subaltern Environmentalism in the United States: A Historiographic Review
Authors: Egan Michael 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
When a group of people is faced with both social and environmental subordination, they are the victims of environmental injustice. This subordination is manifest in the disproportionate siting of environmental hazards in poor or minority communities and also in the inequitable distribution of ecological resources, both of which perpetuate the marginalisation of subaltern groups. At the heart of the environmental justice movement is a fight for the empowerment of subaltern groups, heretofore excluded from environmental decision-making. In recognising that the environmental health of their living spaces and families is critical to exacting any kind of improvement of their socioeconomic conditions, subaltern groups have added a dynamic new dimension to their social struggles. This counter-hegemonic struggle for ecological democracy is one of the fastest growing social movements in contemporary society, and requires the attention of environmental historians to situate it within the broader context of the history of environmentalism.
Co-Management of Natural Resources: The Long View from Northwestern Spain
Authors: Guillet David 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
Stakeholder co-management, a relatively new approach to environmental management, has come under criticism in recent years. The ethnographic and ethnohistorical record of co-management offers a rich body of experiences in responding to these criticisms. To illustrate, the history of local resource management of forests, water, land, and pastures in the upper Duero basin of Spain from the Reconquest to the liberal administrative reforms of the nineteenth century is discussed.
Native Forest and the Rise of Preservation in New Zealand (1903-1913)
Authors: Star Paul 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This paper analyses the turning-point in attitudes to the most distinctive feature of one nation's indigenous environment. Some conservation of New Zealand's native forest began long before the Scenery Preservation Act of 1903, but until then the primary motivation was economic. After 1903, aesthetics and national identity became recognised as important additional factors. In 1913, the Forestry Commission found that managed native forest was incommensurate with New Zealand's long-term timber requirements. This left the way clear for preservation for primarily non-economic reasons to become, increasingly, the hallmark of New Zealand's approach to native forest.
Water Quality as Property: Industrial Water Pollution and Common Law in the Nineteenth Century United States
Authors: Paavola Jouni 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This article examines how riparian law governed the disposal of industrial wastes into watercourses in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The article investigates how the introduction of the doctrine of reasonable use and the balancing test gradually weakened the protection of customary water uses and facilitated industrial waste disposal. The article also examines the counter-reaction to weak protection of customary water uses at the turn of the twentieth century, which tightened the rules regulating industrial waste disposal. The article argues that riparian law was an ineffective governance institution because it created disincentives for the enforcement of riparian rights. The article also argues that riparian law arranged participation in collective choices over the rules of water use according to ability and willingness to pay, which largely explains the change of riparian law in the nineteenth century. However, the courts also gave weight to prevailing social values, which initially affirmed developmental uses of water but later took a more critical view of the interests of big business in water use.
The Grey Seal in Britain: A Twentieth Century History of a Nature Conservation Success
Authors: Lambert Robert A. 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
This article examines the complex history of the grey seal problem in Britain since 1914. In particular, it will focus on our different reactions to the animal over time, and show how fishing communities and organisations have called for a government-sponsored seal cull since the mid-1920s, and how the very different types of culls that came in the 1960s and 1970s were opposed and halted by public outcry in Britain and emerging international environmentalism. The essay is broad based, to show how the grey seal problem has been a political, environmental, social, cultural, economic and animal welfare issue. The study illustrates the value of an historical perspective in assessing the different strands of contemporary debate as to the wisdom and content of consciously managing a large mammal population. From this case study, using primary evidence from England and Scotland, wider conclusions about our changing modern relationship to the natural world can be drawn.
Environmental History and the Challenges of Interdisciplinarity: An Antipodean Perspective
Authors: Pawson Eric , Dovers Stephen 
Published: June 2007

Abstract
The environment has attracted more 'integrative' or 'interdisciplinary' efforts than any other substantive focus, one of which is the diverse and evolving field of environmental history. However, the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity, in environmental history and elsewhere, is unclear and contested ground. In this paper, we explore the nature of interdisciplinary work in environmental history. Drawing on three brief project narratives from environmental history, the paper discusses issues and problems, both intellectual and practical, that face those who seek to move across disciplinary boundaries in environmental history (as most of us do, wittingly or not). We then propose and discuss four 'intersections' that we believe have potential as loci of interdisciplinary engagement: mutual understanding; spatial scale and locale; time and change; and the environment and agency.