An international workshop - Trento, Italy 15-17 September 2010
Deadline: 30 April 2010
Organizers: Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (Università degli Studi di Trento)
Marco Armiero (ICTA- UAB, Spain; CNR-ISSM, Naples)
Keynote lecturer: Peter A. Coates (University of Bristol)
Introduction
Putting nature and nation together could seem a dangerous alchemy: racist theories, deterministic approaches, and nationalistic chauvinism seem, in fact, to lurk under every possible discourse on nature and nation. Environmental history seems however to be the less nationalistic among all historical subfields. While history as discipline was born together with the nation-state building process, from its beginning
environmental history engaged in a radical critique of nation as an appropriate scale of analysis: looking at the earth as a whole, political borders simply disappeared. Taking into consideration the current global environmental problems, it could thus seem useless to speak about national borders. Nonetheless, the nation-state has showed an extraordinary resilience, surviving as main scale of analysis in many
environmental historical studies, in part because of the ready availability of sources about nature management and measurement just at the national level. In fact, whatever the size of our scale of analysis might be, if we are looking for historical data we have to deal with states. Evidently, states have affected nature by their laws, economic policies, and juridical systems. Determining property rights, planning
urban and industrial development, implementing public/private transportations, building national parks, fighting malaria or other, and bloodier, wars, they have played an important role in shaping the national landscape. Hence, it is quite clear that the nation-state has long been the political container of nature; even more than this, the nation has been a powerful agent in shaping and understanding the natural world. Recent environmental historical scholarship has clarified how nature shaped the national narratives about people and places, as well as being shaped by those same narratives. Therefore, the nature’s agency seems more cultural than material, while the nation’s agency has both characters, that is, it constructs narratives and places altogether. It could thus be said that nation and nature constitute mutually. If nations are also imagined community, we need to understand how nature has been used to build the national identity and how the invention of nation has affected the invention of the national nature. Nature was immanent to the historical and political space; therefore, when nation appropriated this space, nature was appropriated too.
Aims and scope
This workshop focuses on both the symbolic and practical uses that European nation-states have made of the environment and of natural resources since the Second Industrial Revolution. The workshop's geographical framework should be interpreted in the widest possible sense, including countries and regions that have been under the colonial rule of European states during the period of reference. The general aim of the workshop is thus to obtain a good overview of the role of the modern nation-state and of nationalist discourse in the structuring, management and showcasing of nature/society interactions. The main issues at stake are:
- resource use and management;
- nature conservation ;
- the role of states in front of natural disasters and calamities;
- rhetorical and symbolic uses of the natural world;
- state vs. communities in the management, knowledge, and vision of nature;
- war and appropriation of nature.
The organizers want to gather a variety of scholars, not only specialists in environmental history, but also political, cultural and social historians, historical geographers and historical anthropologists with an interest in nationalism, nature perception and/or symbolic politics. During the selection process both comparative analyses at the transnational level and specific case studies able to give new insights in the mechanism of state management of natural resources and symbolic uses of the natural world will be equally considered. Practicalities The workshop is limited to 9 participants. The working language will be English. Each participant will prepare a draft text that will be pre-circulated to workshop attendees in mid-July 2010. At the workshop, each paper will be briefly presented by the author and then fully discussed by the group in a 40 minutes session. After the workshop,
participants will be asked to revise their papers for possible inclusion in an edited volume to be submitted to an international academic press or as a journal special issue. Moreover, the organizers are planning to set up a permanent research network on nature and nation in modern Europe and discuss the funding opportunities. Those who are interested are invited thus to join a common discussion about future research
projects.
Prospective schedule
Wednesday, 15 September 2010 Arrival, Introduction, First Session and Social Event;
Thursday, 16 September 2010 Keynote lecture, Second Session, Third Session, Conclusions, and projection of a relevant movie (to be defined);
Friday, 17 September 2010 Group discussion: towards a common research project on Nature and Nation, Departure.
Funding and benefits
This event is funded by the Autonomous Province of Trento, PAT207 Post-Doc programme, and has the logistic and scientific support of the Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali of the Università degli Studi di Trento. Workshop attendees will be granted free accommodation and meals. Moreover, aiming at including a range of scholars at various stages of professional development, the organizers wish to encourage advanced
Ph.D. students, junior scholars and independent researchers to attend the workshop. All participants will thus have the possibility to obtain a grant covering at least part of their travel costs. If you have other funding possibilities for travel, please let us know as to be able to increase accordingly the grants for low-income scholars.
Application
To be considered as a workshop participant, please send an abstract of up to 300 words and a brief CV (1-3 pages) to info@natureandnation.eu by 30 April 2010. In the accompanying email please specify whether you need a travel grant and if you are
interested in the group discussion on the third day.
Website: www.natureandnation.eu
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg
Environmental historian
Postdoc PAT2007
Università di Trento
Dipartimento di Scienze Umane e Sociali
via Verdi 26
38100 Trento
Italy
mobile +39 329 2163846
skype wilko.hardenberg
twitter wilkohardenberg
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