German scientific forestry is generally referred to as a starting point for the concept of sustainability and the variety of interpretations it has found in recent public and scientific discourses. Its early history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, is treated, more or less, as a `founding narrative' with all the typical aspects of this literary device: simplicity, a degree of mysticism and a teleological relation to the current state of the art. But there is more insight to be gained from the history of scientific forestry, and sustainability in particular, than the affirmative creation of tradition. The origins of sustainability were fraught with conflict. Focusing on timber production and financial revenue for the state treasury, scientific forestry simplified the biological composition of forests, re-organized their internal structure along the lines of legibility and accountability, and restricted access for users other than scientifically trained personnel. The modernization and streamlining of Central European forests provoked resistance and violent clashes. After about four decades, foresters also noted environmental changes in the forests such as increased vulnerability to drought, storms and forest pests. The history of forest management planning, introduced in the 1820s, and of experimental forestry in the 1860s, exemplifies how techno-scientific systems communicate with socio-cultural and natural environments. However strongly a science-based reform programme tries to disentangle itself from the politics of nature, such programmes, as well as the terminology by which they are fed into and received by public discourse, are subject to historical change and power struggles.
...More
Book
Boyer, Christopher R.;
(2012)
A Land between Waters: Environmental Histories of Modern Mexico
(/isis/citation/CBB001421939/)
Article
Abrams, M. D.;
Johnson, S. E.;
(2014)
Impacts of Early Homestead Abandonment on Forests and Soils at Scotia Barrens, Central Pennsylvania: Implications for Altered and Arrested Vegetation Development
(/isis/citation/CBB001421933/)
Article
Warde, Paul;
(2011)
The Invention of Sustainability
(/isis/citation/CBB001211047/)
Article
Tello, Enric;
Valldepera, Natàlia;
, Anna Ollés;
Marull, Joan;
Coll, Francesc;
Warde, Paul;
Wilcox, Paul Thomas;
(2014)
Looking Backwards into a Mediterranean Edge Environment: Landscape Changes in El Congost Valley (Catalonia), 1850--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB001421413/)
Book
Tomasz Samojlik;
Rotherham, Ian D.;
Fedotova, Anastasia;
Piotr Daszkiewicz;
(2020)
Białowieża primeval forest: Nature and culture in the nineteenth century
(/isis/citation/CBB486195774/)
Book
Mario Cerato;
(2019)
Le radici dei boschi. La questione forestale nel Tirolo italiano durante l’Ottocento
(/isis/citation/CBB370029942/)
Article
Timothy P. Barnard;
Joanna W. C. Lee;
(2022)
A Spiteful Campaign: Agriculture, Forests, and Administering the Environment in Imperial Singapore and Malaya
(/isis/citation/CBB114153520/)
Review
Broich, John;
(2007)
Review of "Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History"
(/isis/citation/CBB000720030/)
Book
Kilcup, Karen L;
(2013)
Fallen Forests: Emotion, Embodiment, and Ethics in American Women's Environmental Writing, 1781--1924
(/isis/citation/CBB001420306/)
Book
Lekan, Thomas;
Zeller, Thomas;
(2005)
Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB000601034/)
Book
Robert Griffin;
Richard A. Rajala;
(2016)
The Sustainability Dilemma: Essays on British Columbia Forest and Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB227492950/)
Article
Les Levidow;
Davis Sansolo;
Monica Schiavinatto;
(2021)
Agroecological innovation constructing socionatural order for social transformation: Two case studies in Brazil
(/isis/citation/CBB130494145/)
Book
Cox, Thomas R.;
(2010)
The Lumberman's Frontier: Three Centuries of Land Use, Society, and Change in America's Forests
(/isis/citation/CBB001212244/)
Article
Eliasson, Per;
Nilsson, Sven G.;
(2002)
“You Should Hate Young Oaks and Young Noblemen”: The Environmental History of Oaks in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sweden
(/isis/citation/CBB000300163/)
Article
Sigurmundsson, Friðρór S.;
Gísladóttir, Guðrún;
Óskarsson, Hreinn;
(2014)
Decline of Birch Woodland Cover in Þjórsárdalur Iceland from 1587 to 1938
(/isis/citation/CBB001421932/)
Article
Freschet, Grégoire T.;
östlund, Lars;
Kichenin, Emilie;
Wardle, David A.;
(2014)
Aboveground and Belowground Legacies of Native Sami Land Use on Boreal Forest in Northern Sweden 100 Years after Abandonment
(/isis/citation/CBB001421440/)
Article
Bankoff, Greg;
(2013)
“Deep Forestry”: Shapers of the Philippine Forests
(/isis/citation/CBB001320298/)
Article
Jones, Elizabeth;
(2014)
No Smoke Without Fire: Moor Burning, the Environment, and Social Reform in the German Empire, 1866--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001421780/)
Chapter
Williamson, Tom;
(2012)
The Management of Trees and Woods in Eighteenth-Century England
(/isis/citation/CBB001421366/)
Chapter
Maierhofer, Waltraud;
(2012)
Goethe and Forestry
(/isis/citation/CBB001421369/)
Be the first to comment!