Borderland, No-Man's Land, Nature's Wonderland: Troubled Humanity and Untroubled Earth (2014)
Building on an interest in the presence of biodiversity where we do not expect to find it, this essay ponders the irony that human strife can be beneficial for the rest of nature by investigating the coexistence of troubled humanity and untroubled nature at various places around the world. It also looks at efforts to formalise the protection inadvertently provided in conflict and no-go zones after human tensions have abated. Focusing on borderlands, militarised landscapes, shatter zones, forbidden zones and other sites of upheaval and trauma, mostly in post-1945 Korea, Germany, Eastern Europe and Cyprus (but beginning with the nineteenth-century American West), I investigate the notion of the serendipitous survival of other-than-human nature and the 'threat' of demilitarisation and normalisation in places such as the Iron Curtain zone, where civilian activities may be more invasive and disruptive than military practices and other forms of restricted access. A related subject is the more recent, post-Cold War tale of nature's preservation, de facto and formal, in former environments of strife that also functioned involuntarily as shelter zones. This involves engagement with a particular manifestation of the deep-seated belief in nature's therapeutic value. The theme of the natural world's reconciliatory properties is pursued with reference to peace parks and other forms of transboundary conservation. I conclude with a discussion of the relationship between the narrative of nature and the narrative of history, specifically the belief that they are mutually exclusive and that the new emphasis on the 'return to nature' involves an act of erasure. KEYWORDS: Warfare, borderlands, militarised landscapes, transboundary conservation, Korean DMZ, European Green Belt, Chernobyl, Green Line, West Polesie
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Alexander Aisher;
Thomas Widlok;
Jean-Baptiste Pettier;
Lorena Córdoba;
Paul J. Lane;
Lecain, Timothy James;
Michael Bollig;
Gänger, Stefanie;
(October 2019)
Forum: Commodifying the “Wild”: Anxiety, Ecology and Authenticity in the Late Modern Era
(/isis/citation/CBB319730977/)
Book
Barnard, Timothy P.;
(2014)
Nature Contained: Environmental Histories of Singapore
(/isis/citation/CBB001422376/)
Book
Rothman, Hal;
Miller, Char;
(2013)
Death Valley National Park: A History
(/isis/citation/CBB001422339/)
Thesis
Bargheer, Stefan;
(2011)
Moral Entanglements: The Emergence and Transformation of Bird Conservation in Great Britain and Germany, 1790--2010
(/isis/citation/CBB001562727/)
Article
da Silva Rosa, Teresa;
Carneiro, Maria José;
(2010)
O acesso livre à produção acadêmica como subsídio para políticas públicas: um exercício sobre o Banco de Teses da Capes
(/isis/citation/CBB001420479/)
Article
Leal, Claudia;
(2015)
Conservation Memories: Vicissitudes of a Biodiversity Conservation Project in the Rainforests of Colombia, 1992--1998
(/isis/citation/CBB001422371/)
Book
Munira Khayyat;
(2022)
A Landscape of War: Ecologies of Resistance and Survival in South Lebanon
(/isis/citation/CBB405618303/)
Review
Broich, John;
(2007)
Review of "Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History"
(/isis/citation/CBB000720030/)
Book
Stefan Dorondel;
Stelu Serban;
(2022)
A New Ecological Order: Development and the Transformation of Nature in Eastern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB828864235/)
Book
Lekan, Thomas;
Zeller, Thomas;
(2005)
Germany's Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB000601034/)
Article
Gormo, Jean;
Nizesete, Bienvenu Denis;
(2013)
Des végétaux et leurs usages chez les peuples du Nord-Cameroun: sélection et mode d'emploi du XIXe au XXe siècle
(/isis/citation/CBB001420656/)
Article
Sara Peres;
(2016)
Saving the gene pool for the future: Seed banks as archives
(/isis/citation/CBB133555994/)
Book
McNeill, John R.;
Peter Engelke;
(2016)
The great acceleration: An environmental history of the anthropocene since 1945
(/isis/citation/CBB150318381/)
Book
Ingram, Darcy;
(2013)
Wildlife, Conservation, and Conflict in Quebec, 1840--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001422396/)
Article
Bello, David A.;
(2014)
Relieving Mongols of Their Pastoral Identity: Disaster Management on the Eighteenth-Century Qing China Steppe
(/isis/citation/CBB001420326/)
Article
Thomas van Goethem;
Jan Luiten van Zandem;
(2019)
Who is Afraid of Biodiversity? Proposal for a Research Agenda for Environmental History
(/isis/citation/CBB304097264/)
Chapter
Maierhofer, Waltraud;
(2012)
Goethe and Forestry
(/isis/citation/CBB001421369/)
Article
Carruthers, Jane;
(2008)
Conservation and Wildlife Management in South African National Parks, 1930s--1960s
(/isis/citation/CBB000774602/)
Book
Ayres, P.G.;
(2012)
Shaping Ecology: The Life of Arthur Tansley
(/isis/citation/CBB001421420/)
Book
Sinclair, Anthony;
(2012)
Serengeti Story: Life and Science in the World's Greatest Wildlife
(/isis/citation/CBB001421438/)
Be the first to comment!