The Mythical Forest, the Becoming-Desert: Environmental Knowledge Production and the Iconography of Destruction in the Gran Sabana, Venezuela

10.1068/d0609 ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 672-690 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjørn Sletto
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Environmental Knowledge

The Challenge of Oral History to Environmental History

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Williams ◽  
Mark Riley
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Environmental Practices ◽  
Knowledge Practices ◽  
Colonial Archives ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
Key Interventions

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.

scholarly journals Stakeholder participation in environmental knowledge production

Futures ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 254-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Hage ◽  
Pieter Leroy ◽  
Arthur C. Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Stakeholder Participation ◽  
Environmental Knowledge

China’s Eco-Dream and the Making of Invisibilities in Rural-Environmental Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 115-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Lord
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Environmental Protection ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Environmental Research ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Historical Legacies

This chapter starts from the premise that technologies of knowing the environment are molded by broader political and societal contexts. Just as “science” is never singular, but rather an ever-changing product of personal commitments, institutional struggles, and historical legacies, environmental research, data, and methods that are never dryly environmental. It focuses on the production of environmental knowledge as an explicitly political process, one that is in constant conversation with institutional, ideological, and economic forces. Examining environmental knowledge production is important because China's green dream reaches the population unevenly and builds on inequalities to realize itself. The chapter identifies key parameters that regulate rural-environmental research. These include pressures to prioritize economic growth over environmental protection, the commercialization of academia, governmental controls of what is considered acceptable or unacceptable research, as well as limitations on fieldwork access. The chapter also details how economic and political parameters bound environmental research in specific ways.

The nature of indigenous environmental knowledge production: evidence from Bedouin communities in southern Egypt

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Briggs ◽  
Joanne Sharp ◽  
Hoda Yacoub ◽  
Nabila Hamed ◽  
Alan Roe
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Environmental Knowledge

scholarly journals Contested extractivism: impact assessment, public engagement, and environmental knowledge production in Alaska's Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1166-1188
Author(s):  
Jonathan Tollefson ◽  
Bindu Panikkar
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Environmental Impact Statement ◽  
Gold Mine ◽  
The Public ◽  
Truth Claims

For large extractive mineral projects, Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) processes function in part as a procedural tool to adjudicate the legitimacy of divergent environmental truth claims. Successful anti-extraction movements work to litigate divergent knowledge claims in the public arena, but few anti-extraction communities have access to a broad public audience. This article examines the proposed Donlin Gold mine in southwestern Alaska, a locally divisive yet publicly invisible extraction controversy, to understand how communities contest the boundaries of knowledge production and legitimacy set out by EIS procedures without the benefit of broad public awareness. Through a multi-method analysis of the public engagement segment of Donlin's Draft EIS, we find that anti-Donlin activists worked to construct environmental knowledge that drew jointly on claims to local knowledge and scientific expertise through a temporary assemblage of local activists and external consultants. The contested epistemic understandings of residents, expert consultants, and state and federal regulators further reveal the role of regulatory processes in constructing and maintaining boundaries of epistemic legitimacy, while also pointing to emergent possibilities for social action based in locally-situated environmental truth claims.Key Words: Environmental Impact Statement, mining, truth claims, Donlin Gold mine, Alaska

scholarly journals Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Sustainability Science ◽  
Behavioral Science ◽  
Leading Edge ◽  
Environmental Knowledge ◽  
Critical Commentary ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Disciplinary Diversity

Situating Sustainability reframes our understanding of sustainability through related concepts, practices, and case studies. The point of departure is the continual need to be conscious of how environmental knowledge and sustainability are issues constituted by long-standing inequalities. This book addresses the necessity in sustainability science to recognize how diverse cultural histories define environmental politics today. The differing geographic scope of this volume is joined by the disciplinary diversity of the contributors and their wide-ranging areas of specialization, bringing together researchers from cultural studies, anthropology, literature, law, behavioral science, urban studies, design, and development. As a truly transdisciplinary work, Situating Sustainability calls for research guided by the humanities and social sciences in collaboration with local actors informed by histories of place. The authors of this volume believe that situating sustainability cannot limit itself to the geographic borders of nations, epistemic standpoints, or to unmasking perspectives that falsely present themselves as objective or universal. The approach includes not only material practices like extraction or disaster recovery, but extends into the domains of human rights, education, and academic interdisciplinarity. Researchers are joined by artists whose work provides a platform to conduct research at the edges of performance, knowledge production, and critical commentary on socio-ecological infrastructures. All this will enable readers to better understand what sustainability means (or might yet mean) in their own locations, and how work in one place might support the efforts of others in other places. Designed for students, scholars, and interested readers, Situating Sustainability introduces the conceptual practices that inform the leading edge of engaged research in sustainability.

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