Brian Williams (Author)
Riley, Mark (Author)
Oral history has much to offer environmental history, yet the possibilities and promises of oral history remain underutilised in environmental history and environmental studies more broadly. Through a reflection on work in environmental history and associated disciplines, this paper presents a case for the strength and versatility of oral history as a key source for environmental history, while reflecting on questions of its reliability and scope. We identify three major insights provided by environmental oral history: into environmental knowledge, practices and power. We argue that, rather than being a weakness, the (inter)subjective and experiential dimensions of oral accounts provide a rich source for situating and interrogating environmental practices, meanings, and power relations. Oral history, moreover, provides a counterweight to a reliance on colonial archives and top-down environmental accounts, and can facilitate a renewal - and deepening - of the radical roots of environmental history. Furthermore, as a research practice, oral history is a promising means of expanding the participatory and grassroots engagement of environmental history. By decentring environmental expertise and eroding the boundaries (both fictive and real) of environmental knowledge production, oral environmental histories can provide key interventions in pursuit of a more just, sustainable world.
...More
Article
Hu, Zonggang;
(2011)
Tong Te-Kong and Oral History of Science Works
(/isis/citation/CBB001221317/)
Article
Wang, Yangzong;
(2011)
The Chinese Way in Science and the Oral History of Modern Science in China
(/isis/citation/CBB001221315/)
Article
Paul Merchant;
(2019)
What Oral Historians and Historians of Science Can Learn from Each Other
(/isis/citation/CBB829034696/)
Article
Duan, Lian;
(2011)
Museums of Natural Science and Technology and Oral History
(/isis/citation/CBB001221318/)
Article
Daniela K. Helbig;
(2019)
Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg's Zettelkasten and History of Science as Theoretical Attitude
(/isis/citation/CBB837512068/)
Article
Joachim L. Dagg;
(2019)
Motives and merits of counterfactual histories of science
(/isis/citation/CBB710171767/)
Article
Ian Hesketh;
(2016)
Counterfactuals and history: Contingency and convergence in histories of science and life
(/isis/citation/CBB385183310/)
Article
Stephen J. Weininger;
(2022)
“The Poor Sister:” Coming to Grips with Recent and Contemporary Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB175973451/)
Article
David Larsson Heidenblad;
(2018)
Mapping a New History of the Ecological Turn: The Circulation of Environmental Knowledge in Sweden 1967
(/isis/citation/CBB264729520/)
Article
Hallvard J. Fossheim;
(2019)
Past responsibility: History and the ethics of research on ethnic groups
(/isis/citation/CBB562849198/)
Book
Michel Blay;
(2017)
Critique of the History of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB122907818/)
Article
Eric F. Luckey;
(2020)
The Psychologist's Biographer: Writing Lives in the History of Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB629029968/)
Article
Ana Simões;
Antonio Sánchez;
(2020-12-01)
Introduction: The Fabulous 1930s in the History of Science and Technology
(/isis/citation/CBB183695658/)
Article
Peter J. T. Morris;
Jeffrey I. Seeman;
(2022)
The Importance of Plurality and Mutual Respect in the Practice of the History of Chemistry
(/isis/citation/CBB375881495/)
Article
Roberts, Strother E.;
(2012)
Changes in the Genre: A Brief Survey of Early Mid-Atlantic Environmental Histories
(/isis/citation/CBB001200342/)
Article
Comfort, Nathaniel;
(2011)
When Your Sources Talk Back: Toward a Multimodal Approach to Scientific Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB001220956/)
Article
Wang, Chunfa;
(2011)
Origin, Progress, and Significance of the Project for Collecting Historic Data of Scientists' Academic Life
(/isis/citation/CBB001221325/)
Article
Rie, Hogetsu;
(2012)
From the Laboratory to the Kitchen: The Oral History of Nutrition and Its Application to the History of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001214342/)
Chapter
Leena Rossi;
(2011)
Oral History and Individual Environmental Experiences
(/isis/citation/CBB092708801/)
Book
Xiong Weimin;
(2017)
Dui yu lishi, kexuejia you hua shuo: 20 shiji Zhongguo kexuejie de ren yu shi对于历史,科学家有话 说:20世纪中国科学界的人与事 [ Scientists Have Something to Say about History: The People and Issues of Twentieth-Century China’s Scientific World]
(/isis/citation/CBB188761728/)
Be the first to comment!