Environmental Humanities: Why Should Biologists Interested in the Environment Take the
Humanities Seriously? Author(s): Sverker Sörlin Source: BioScience , Vol. 62, No. 9 (September 2012), pp. 788-789 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2012.62.9.2
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Environmental Humanities: Why Should
Biologists Interested in the Environment Take the Humanities Seriously?
Sverker Sörlin
W hat do the humanities have to
do with the environment? As they are commonly understood, envi- Almanac (1949). When the important Princeton conference on “The Earth as transformed by human action” took where we must again determine path- ways to sustainability. It seems this time that our hopes ronmental problems are issues that place in 1955, Lewis Mumford, the are tied to the humanities. In February manifest themselves primarily in the planner and urban historian, was a 2012, the Responses to Environmen- environment itself. Natural scientists notable speaker. tal and Societal Challenges for Our research these problems and suggest However, the humanities presence Unstable Earth (RESCUE) initiative, solutions, aided by technology, eco- faded quickly, and for half a century, commissioned by the European Science nomics, and policy; it was bioscien- there were few humanities scholars at Foundation and Europe’s intergovern- tists who defined the modern usage the top levels of environmental science mental Cooperation in Science and of the concept of the environment planning and as policy advisers. They Technology program, presented its syn- after World War II. Ecologist William themselves commonly accepted the thesis report. It gives a high profile to Vogt famously used it in his 1948 outsider role. the humanities, arguing that in a world volume The Road to Survival: “We Now we seem to be in for a change. where cultural values, political and reli- live in one world in an ecological—an The background is the current inad- gious ideas, and deep-seated human environmental—sense.” He and others equacy of the established science, policy, behaviors still rule the way people lead at the time thought of the environ and economics approaches. In fact, their lives, produce, and consume, the ment as a composite of issues that had despite all our efforts, most indica- idea of environmentally relevant know been in the making for some time— tors of our future point in the wrong ledge must change. We cannot dream most prominently, population growth, direction. As some of us, members of a of sustainability unless we start to pay which had been much discussed since team led by ecologist Johan Rockström, more attention to the human agents the World Population Conference in discussed in an article in Nature (2009, of the planetary pressure that environ- Geneva in 1927, but also soil erosion, doi:10.1038/461472a), humanity is rap- mental experts are masters at measuring desertification (observed by Paul Sears idly transgressing a set of planetary but that they seem unable to prevent. in his famous 1935 book, Deserts on boundaries, including atmospheric Some of the shift toward the human the March), pollution, food, poverty, carbon dioxide, biodiversity loss, and sciences has to do with the funda- and starvation. ocean acidity. We face both local and mental shift in understanding that is In the public’s mind, environmen- global coupled multiscalar crises of represented by the Anthropocene con- talism is still connected with the 1960s, geopolitical instability, resource scar- cept, coined by Crutzen and Stoermer from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring city, economic collapse. in 2000 (Global Change Newsletter 41: (1962) to the foundation of the US Our belief that science alone could 17–18). If humanity is the chief cause Environmental Protection Agency and deliver us from the planetary quag- of the ominous change, it must surely Earth Day in 1970, but in reality, its mire is long dead. For some time, be inevitable that research and policy start was earlier, and humanist think- hopes were high for economics and will be focused on human societies ers were deeply part of the first phase incentive-driven new public manage- and their basic functions. After half a of the environmental revolution. In ment solutions. However, after the 20 century of putting nature first, it may France, a cohort of eminent historians years since the Rio Conference in 1992 be time to put humans first. Some started the journal Annales d’histoire of focusing policies on what Maarten A. members of the RESCUE team have économique et sociale in 1929, which Hajer in The Politics of Ecological moved further and are publishing a became an outlet for a take on his- Discourse (1995) termed ecological mod lead article titled “Reconceptualizing tory as an interaction of humans with ernization, including efforts for green the ‘Anthropos’ in the Anthropocene” physical geographies. Aldo Leopold and clean growth, ecoefficiency, decou- for a special issue of Environment and was as much a philosopher as an ecol- pling, and the ever more sophisticated Science Policy due out later this year. ogist when he developed his concept management of landscapes and species, Other initiatives point in the same of a land ethic in A Sand County the world seems to have come to a point direction. Considerable energies are
129.241.236.17 on Tue, 08 Aug 2023 09:42:00 +00:00 All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Viewpoint
going into the emerging concept of values, ideas, history, thinking, religion, established truths. Although ecologists environmental humanities. This is a and communication to bring their and economists have put consider- broad multidisciplinary approach that knowledge to bear on critical global able hope over the last two decades signals a new willingness in the human- issues. Norway has started the Cultural into the idea that we may be able to ities to forgo the primary focus on Conditions Underlying Social Change defend ecosystem services by translat- disciplines (as in, e.g., environmental program. Among its highest-priority ing them into monetary terms, several philosophy, environmental history) for areas of interest are the environment humanities scholars (in alliance with a common effort in which the rel- and climate change. many skeptical scientists) have pre- evance of human action is on par with Some of the most remarkable sented fundamental criticism of this the environmental aspect. Programs work on the environment in recent approach. Uncritically applying the for the environmental humanities have years has already been carried out by indiscriminately universalizing tool of already started to emerge in universities humanities scholars. Lawrence Buell monetized services risks doing more in Europe, Australia, and the United at Harvard sparked off the ecocritical harm than good to the environment. States, including at Stanford. The Con- movement in literary studies from the In particular, it runs the risk of margin- sortium of Humanities Centers and 1990s with a string of books, including alizing social groups—and, therefore, Institutes (CHCI), an assembly of more his Writing for an Endangered World civic values—as they try to articulate than 70 humanities centers worldwide, (2001). His colleague Ursula K. Heise value-based agendas for defending has its own Initiative Humanities at Stanford articulated the emerging nature and urban space. for the Environment, which “serves idea of a global humanity with a plan- The arrival of humanists to the as a network and resource for cen- etary conscience in her book Sense of environmental enterprise should be ters to develop (or extend) program- Place and Sense of Planet (2008). If this welcomed. It will mean new opportu- ming, research, and dialogue related is an emerging idea, the outlook in a nities for bioscientists to collaborate to contemporary environmental chal- few generations may in fact be brighter with those in the humanities and vice lenges” (http://initiatives.chcinetwork. than we think. versa, as is already the case in the deeply org/environment). The Transatlantic In France, superstar sociologist– transnational International Geosphere– Environmental Research Network in philosopher Bruno Latour is currently Biosphere Programme’s Integrated Environmental Humanities links sev- reconfiguring his country’s leading pol- History and Future of People on Earth eral universities in the United States icy school, the Sciences Po, putting his (IHOPE). It will mean deeper reflexiv- and Canada with primarily German ideas of a major environmental turn of ity and an increased competition of counterparts, including the recently set the planetary enterprise at center stage. ideas and perspectives. It will also bring up Rachel Carson Center in Munich. At the Science Policy Research depart- a sense of realism back to our work Princeton’s Institute for Advanced ment at the University of Sussex, Andy for the environment and sustainability. Study has devoted 2013 and 2014 to Stirling has invited us to consider what When even humanists have come to the environmental humanities as their he calls directionality as we conceive the point at which they consider the chosen thematic field. research policy for economic growth in environment (almost) as important as A new journal, Environmental order to achieve real progress, not just people, there may—malgré tout—be Humanities, will be launched this more of the same destructive kind of reason for hope. November; it is based at the University growth. Literary scholar Rob Nixon at of New South Wales, where there is the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Sverker Sörlin (sorlin@kth.se) is a professor of also an interdisciplinary environmental argues that a “slow violence” (part of environmental history in the Division of History of humanities program. Several scholarly the title of his 2011 book, Slow Violence Science, Technology and Environment, at the Royal environmental humanities networks and the Environmentalism of the Poor) Institute of Technology (KTH), and is affiliated with the Stockholm Resilience Centre, both in are active in Scandinavia, and some of plagues the poorest people on Earth, Stockholm, Sweden. He is responsible for setting up their work will appear a new volume, who shoulder a disproportionate share the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Defining the Environmental Humanities, of the burden when the rich outsource which will be in full operation as of 2013. He is the derived from a recent conference in their ecological footprint—dumping editor, with Libby Robin and Paul Warde, of Sweden. After decades of very little waste, axing forests, or relocating dan- The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change (forthcoming from Yale University Press). interest in funding large-scale environ- gerous workplaces. mental work in the humanities, funders Environmentally aware humanities have started to invite experts on human scholars have already begun to challenge doi:10.1525/bio.2012.62.9.2
