From Wilderness to the Toxic Environment: Health in American Environmental Politics, 1945-Present (2013)
Thomson, Jennifer Christine (Author)
Turner, James Morton
Harvard University
Voskuhl, Adelheid Clara
Turner, James Morton
Rosenberg, Charles E.
Voskuhl, Adelheid Clara
Edition Details: Advisor: Rosenberg, Charles E; Committee Members: Voskuhl, Adelheid Clara, Turner, James Morton.
Physical Details: 261 pp.
Language: English
This dissertation joins the history of science and medicine with environmental history to explore the language of health in environmental politics. Today, in government policy briefs and mission statements of environmental non-profits, newspaper editorials and activist journals, claims about the health of the planet and its human and non-human inhabitants abound. Yet despite this rhetorical ubiquity, modern environmental politics are ideologically and organizationally fractured along the themes of whose health is at stake and how that health should be protected. This dissertation traces how these competing conceptions of health came to structure the landscape of American environmental politics. Beginning in the early 1950s, an expanding network of environmental activists began to think in terms of protecting the health of the planet and its inhabitants from the unprecedented hazards of nuclear energy and chemical proliferation. They did this by appropriating models and metaphors of health developed by postwar ecologists, philosophers, epidemiologists and nuclear physicians. Through this process of appropriation, scientists and philosophers were likewise drawn into environmental activism. Through five case studies, this dissertation traces the collaborations between scientists, environmental activists, philosophers, and medical doctors which enabled a broad range of articulations of health: the health of the wild, the health of the environment, the health of the planet, and the health of humans within the environment. Each case study attends to the intersection of political thought and practice, and explores how science and environmental activism were in constant dialogue in the postwar period. Drawing on archival materials and extensive oral history interviews, this dissertation demonstrates the centrality of health to American environmental politics from the end of World War Two until the present day.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 74/10(E), Apr 2014. Proquest Document ID: 1417076031.
Review Pete Daniel (2020) Review of "From Wilderness to the Toxic Environment: Health in American Environmental Politics, 1945-Present". American Historical Review (pp. 1926-1927).
Similar Citations
Article
Turner, James Morton;
(2009)
“The Specter of Environmentalism”: Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right
(/isis/citation/CBB001030367/)
Book
David Stradling;
Richard Stradling;
(2015)
Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland
(/isis/citation/CBB647463332/)
Book
Doyle, Timothy;
(2013)
Environmental Movements around the World: Shades of Green in Politics and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001213198/)
Book
McGurty, Eileen;
(2007)
Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice
(/isis/citation/CBB000850764/)
Chapter
Gioielli, Robert;
(2011)
“How Can Any Community Be Expected to Accept Such a Scar?”: The Movement Against Destruction and Environmental Activism in Postwar Baltimore
(/isis/citation/CBB001214640/)
Thesis
Hay, Amy M.;
(2005)
Recipe for Disaster: Chemical Wastes, Community Activists, and Public Healthat Love Canal, 1945--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001561582/)
Book
Richard S. Newman;
(2016)
Love Canal: A Toxic History from Colonial Times to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB272782783/)
Book
Crane, Jeff;
Egan, Michael;
(2009)
Natural Protest: Essays on the History of American Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB000952187/)
Article
Wiese, Andrew;
(2013)
“The Giddy Rise of the Environmentalists”: Corporate Real Estate Development and Environmental Politics in San Diego, California, 1968--73
(/isis/citation/CBB001213632/)
Book
Longhurst, James Lewis;
(2010)
Citizen Environmentalists
(/isis/citation/CBB001034513/)
Book
Toshihiro Higuchi;
(2020)
Political Fallout: Nuclear Weapons Testing and the Making of a Global Environmental Crisis
(/isis/citation/CBB212919708/)
Book
Blum, Elizabeth D.;
(2008)
Love Canal Revisited: Race, Class, and Gender in Environmental Activism
(/isis/citation/CBB000954867/)
Article
Hamblin, Jacob Darwin;
(2006)
Hallowed Lords of the Sea: Scientific Authority and Radioactive Waste in the United States, Britain, and France
(/isis/citation/CBB000670752/)
Book
Jundt, Thomas;
(2014)
Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America
(/isis/citation/CBB001422360/)
Thesis
Bevington, Douglas;
(2007)
The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism and the New ConservationMovement, 1989--2004
(/isis/citation/CBB001561545/)
Article
Egan, Michael;
(2012)
Barry Commoner's Place in History
(/isis/citation/CBB001320460/)
Book
Eric T. Freyfogle;
(2017)
A Good That Transcends: How US Culture Undermines Environmental Reform
(/isis/citation/CBB554745324/)
Article
Bryan, William D.;
(2011)
Poverty, Industry, and Environmental Quality: Weighing Paths to Economic Development at the Dawn of the Environmental Era
(/isis/citation/CBB001034461/)
Article
Toshihiro Higuchi;
(2015)
The Strange Career of Dr. Fish: Yoshio Hiyama, Radioactive Fallout, and Nuclear Fear Management in Japan, 1954‒1958
(/isis/citation/CBB079912877/)
Article
Hecht, David K.;
(2012)
How to Make a Villain: Rachel Carson and the Politics of Anti-Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001251549/)
Be the first to comment!