Situating
Environmental History
By-
Ranjan Chakrabarti (ed)
Concern
for the environment is not new; it has always existed. One of the flash points
in the inner conflicts within human societies of the past was fuelled by the
continuous effort to resolve the legitimate use of the natural world. Nature is
one of those spaces where we observe the most intense form of class struggle
and power politics—the more privileged control the natural resources. The rapid
unfolding of power relations, the rise of new technology to exploit the
environment, the growing resource crunch, and a perceived ‘environmental
crisis’ have resulted in the development of a new field of study—environmental
history, an important gateway to knowledge in general and Environmental Studies
in particular.
Situating
Environmental History,
brings together several eminent scholars who share a common interest in the
environmental history of South Asia. The work is divided in four sections. In
Section I, Understanding Environmental History, Karl Jacoby, Alok Kumar Ghosh,
Arun Bandopadhyay and Archana Prasad contribute to our understanding of
environmentalism, its historiography and the role of state legislation and the
popular response thereto. In Section II, Communities on the Margin, Vinita Damodaran
and Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay focus on different communities in the periphery
lying outside the supposed ‘mainstream’ and their fight for their own
perceptions of ‘justice’ and ‘legitimate claims’. In Section III, Colonialism,
Post-Colonialism, the State and the Management of Nature, Kaushik Roy, Arabinda
Samanta, Amal Das, Sahara Ahmed, Jagdish N. Sinha and Sumit Guha look at the
evolution of state policy on environmental questions through different periods
of Indian history.
In
Section IV, Beyond India, Rita Pemberton, Lawrence Gundersen and Tridib
Chakrabarti study environmental issues in the countries beyond India.
Ranjan
Chakrabarti,
a Fulbright Scholar at Brown University (1994-5) and a Charles Wallace Fellow
at SOAS (1997), is one of the earliest scholars in India to unertake research
in the environmental and sports history of South Asia. Dr Chakrabarti is
currently Professor and Co-ordinator of the UGC Special Assistance Programme on
Environmental History of South Asia in the Department of History, Jadavpur
University, Kolkata.
ISBN 81-7304-683-2 2007 396p. Rs.995/ Pounds 55
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