Environmental History

This article discusses the critical remarks and comments that Omer Bartov, Eric Katz and Jessica Rapson offered in response to our articles published in the theme issue of the Journal of Genocide Research on "The Environmental History of the Holocaust." In our response, we clarify our understanding of how an environmental perspective can contribute to Holocaust studies. We focus on three issues; firstly: we position our research in the context of critical Holocaust studies, an emerging field in Poland, in order to draw attention to the geographically conditioned global distribution of knowledge and thus undermine convictions that non-Western humanities are necessarily peripheral. Secondly, we emphasize that the comparative perspective we adopt to address different genocides and ecocides neither seeks to undermine the uniqueness of the Holocaust nor deprive victims and survivors of their individual identity. What we do resembles the “experiments in thinking about the Holocaust” proposed by Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, demonstrating that new approaches to Holocaust studies do not want to compete with dominant modes of research, but rather supplement and complement them. Thirdly, we argue that transcending the anthropocentric perspective in Holocaust studies can expand the spectrum of testimonies and evidence to also include non-human objects, such as trees. What we propose, then, is an analysis of new kinds of sources in an effort towards developing new approaches and methods for exploring this subject. We show how current ecological debates mean that it is crucial to take into account environmental factors when planning sites of Holocaust commemoration. In light of this, we not only ask how an environmental history of the Holocaust can expand knowledge on the relationship between genocides and ecocides, but also how future-oriented thinking about the legacies of the Holocaust can influence strategies and practices of preserving it. We see potential in posing questions relating to how the Holocaust can provide a point of reference for studying other genocides as well as how an environmental (and also indigenous and postcolonial) perspective can further develop and enrich research on the Shoah.

From Henry David Thoreau to Bill McKibben, critics and philosophers have long sought to demonstrate how a sufficient life—one without constant, environmentally damaging growth—might still be rich and satisfying. Yet one crucial episode in the history of sufficiency has been largely forgotten. Green Victorians tells the story of a circle of men and women in the English Lake District who attempted to create a new kind of economy, turning their backs on Victorian consumer society in order to live a life dependent not on material abundance and social prestige but on artful simplicity and the bonds of community.
         
At the center of their social experiment was the charismatic art critic and political economist John Ruskin. Albritton and Albritton Jonsson show how Ruskin’s followers turned his theory into practice in a series of ambitious local projects ranging from hand spinning and woodworking to gardening, archaeology, and pedagogy. This is a lively yet unsettling story, for there was a dark side to Ruskin’s community as well—racist thinking, paternalism, and technophobia. Richly illustrated, Green Victorians breaks new ground, connecting the ideas and practices of Ruskin’s utopian community with the problems of ethical consumption then and now.

Christopher Otter, Ohio State University
"This highly original, absorbing, and beautifully written work rethinks Ruskin by anchoring his thought, and that of his friends and associates, in their daily routines, showing how a style of thought we might call “ecological” emerged through prosaic practices. But it also shows the difficulties inherent in creating such a style of thought, and the complexities and compromises that emerged alongside ecological thinking. The issues raised in this book, vital today, will become only more significant in the future."

Mark Frost, University of Portsmouth
"Green Victorians provides a welcome exploration of an important but overlooked aspect of British environmental history. A valuable addition to the recent upsurge of interest in Ruskin's sociocultural work and legacies, it also brilliantly revises the history of environmentalism, making a powerful case for tracing the roots of modern ideas on sustainability, low growth, and artisanship to John Ruskin and his lakeland disciples. This is a Victorian book for the Anthropocene."

Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame
"Green Victorians traces the critique of consumer society and the fossil fuel economy to John Ruskin’s circle in England’s Lake District.  There among the hills, the erratic, brilliant art historian and an idiosyncratic band of visionaries including London barrister Albert Fleming, the charismatic Coniston gardener Susanna Beever, and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley tried to revive handicraft production and simpler modes of life divorced from consumerism.  This bracing story, eloquently told, traces the allure of the ‘culture of sufficiency’ and its downfall.  A joy to read as well as an edgy political challenge, Green Victorians looks at the past with an eye to our future."

Mark Fiege, Colorado State University
“Here is a remarkable and prescient recovery of a forgotten moment when a group of people tried to reenvision what it means to be modern. Their struggles to achieve what the authors call a ‘culture of sufficiency’ remind us of the enduring need for all people to live fulfilling lives without laying waste to the planet. Thoughtful, beautifully written, and profoundly unsettling, this is a model history suited to the new epoch in which we find ourselves.”

Se donnant comme « la Modernité », les années 1770 à 1914 sont le temps de l’industrialisation et de l’expansion impériale et coloniale. La science est victorieuse, la technique est reine, la Terre est quadrillée et mesurée, les
populations sont mises en nombres, les races sont cartographiées. Laboratoires, universités et musées se répandent à l’échelle planétaire.
Réunissant les contributions de spécialistes des quatre coins du monde, ce deuxième tome de l’Histoire des sciences et des savoirs nous parle des sciences physiques et mathématiques, des sciences et des savoirs en Inde, de la révolution Meiji et du « provincialisme » colonial des sciences amé- ricaines. Il raconte aussi l’avènement des microbes et leur impact sur les sociétés, l’engouement populaire pour les expositions universelles et, déjà, les inquiétudes des contemporainsepour la détérioration du climat.
Un livre concret qui brosse un xix siècle fascinant et... inquiétant.