Environmental History

Coordinator: Gabriella Corona

Abstract

Reflections on the Anthropocene as a new opportunity to redefine the organisation of knowledge in the face of the changing human capacity to intervene in the mechanisms that regulate the functioning of the entire planet have taken shape over the last two decades as one of the greatest scientific and political issues of our time. The Anthropocene as a difficult and complex issue that places the fate of the Earth system at the centre of international public debate requires an equally complex and articulated scientific and technological, social, cultural and political response. The contribution of the human and social sciences is still undervalued and generally undervalued, even though their area of competence is considered central in the formation of values and ethical principles, in the elaboration of decisions and public interventions.

With this project, which focuses on environmental history, we intend to take up the challenge that the debate on the Anthropocene has also thrown down to history. That is, the challenge of adapting its epistemological status to a new social demand for knowledge based on the need to explain the ways in which the processes through which mankind has become one of the main agents of transformation of the ecological and geological cycles that characterise the functioning of the Earth system have taken shape. The period between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was a timeframe in which the human capacity to shape the environment, although initiated in previous centuries, experienced an extraordinary and unprecedented acceleration due to population growth, the widespread use of fossil fuels, the growth of economic variables, and industrialisation.

What differentiates the environmental history of this historical period from previous phases is the scale on which the transformations that have affected the environment are taken into consideration, which becomes planetary and involves the entire Earth System. Along with the scale, the ecological history of the last two centuries is also characterised by its intensity, the extraordinary acceleration that has led to an increase in variables such as population, energy consumption and income. It is in this context that the choice of looking at humanity as a whole as the main historical subject is justified. However, this does not alter the fact that ecological history is the fruit of social, economic, political and cultural models of production and consumption made possible by a condition of resource abundance. It is therefore a visual angle that requires an interweaving between the history of nature and the history of socio-economic systems, and while taking human beings as the main historical subject to be observed, it cannot ignore the analysis of social and territorial inequalities. The researches that are part of the project, while focusing on Italy in particular and, more generally, on the Mediterranean countries, elaborate interpretative schemes and reading keys that assume a broader value applicable to other places and other contexts.

Objectives

The work of the research line is aimed at obtaining publications in national and international journals of particular prestige, participating in scientific congresses and conferences, contributing to the elaboration of competitive and non-competitive research projects, promoted by national and European institutions. The research aims at strengthening ISMED’s presence within the international network of centres active on the topic and at strengthening contacts with local public institutions in order to offer advice and support in policy choices. In addition, the line’s researchers are building relationships with a number of universities in order to transfer the contents and results of their activities into courses of study and teaching. The project aims to respond to increasingly strong needs that are emerging in the public debate and in the scientific community, in identifying pathways to build a sustainable and inclusive society.

Activities

The research activities envisaged are manifold: collection and processing of data taken from official statistics; documentation taken from newspapers and scientific journals; sources and documents in international, national and local archives; interviews with different types of actors and stakeholders on issues relating to the period after the Second World War; national regulations and legislative material; trial sources in judicial institutions; documentation collected from private and corporate archives.

Themes

The themes of the research project have as their common denominator the analysis of the historical processes through which the human capacity to intervene in the ecological and geological mechanisms that regulate the functioning of the Earth system has grown over a period of time that begins at the end of the 18th century and continues to the present day. Many of the project’s research activities are the natural evolution of previous projects that represent ISMed’s research capital in this field and that have focused in recent years on the reconstruction of the processes through which today’s environmental problems have taken shape.

The topics on which the research focuses most are the following:

1) the constitution of the technosphere and the transformation of urban systems: pollution, waste disposal, exploitation of the subsoil;

2) the environmental and social implications of the artificialisation of agricultural practices and livestock farming;

3) the energy transition: transition to fossil fuels, development of the hydroelectric industry, nuclear energy;

4) natural and anthropogenic disasters;

5) the historical roots of ecological transition: drives and resistances: new forms of energy, new materials, role of consumption;

6) climate change and its effects: urban areas, effects on biodiversity, conflicts over resources, environmental migration;

7) environmental policies between Europe and Italy;

8) environmentalism and protectionism.

Main collaborations

The research group leading the project collaborates with the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society of Munich, the Department of Culture, Politics and Society of the University of Turin, the Department of Humanities of the University of Catania, the Department of Humanistic Studies of the University of Naples Federico II, the Department of Management of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Systems of the University of Florence, the Research Centre “Territory, Health and Environment” of the University of Catania, the journal of history and social sciences “Meridiana”.

Main collective products

As far as collective products are concerned, the editorial activity continues from which the “Global Environment. A Journal of Transdisciplinary History”, the four-monthly international journal promoted and produced within ISMED in collaboration with the Rachel Carson Center in Munich and published by the English publisher The White Horse Press, continues its editorial activity.

Last update

20 November 2023, 10:33