“Hungry for Knowledge”: Towards a Meso‐History of the Environmental Sciences

Abstract

In recent years, cultural studies and cultural theory have experienced a new wave of ecological thought. Despite the engagement with the Anthropocene the history of ecology and the environmental sciences has remained somewhat of a puzzle. This goes especially for the 20th century, a period when the sciences of the environment came to matter on a broader scale. Why do we actually know so little about the environmental sciences in the 20th century? And what could a history of the environmental sciences in that period look like? This article answers these questions with two interrelated arguments. First, by reflecting on different approaches to write the history of ecology since the 1970s, it uncovers crucial entanglements between the history of science and ecological thought that created blind spots regarding the environmental sciences in the 20th century. Second, it argues for a shift in scales of analysis—towards meso‐scales. With a more regional approach historians can engage with the often‐neglected aspects of the political and economic history of the environmental sciences in the 20th century and thereby also reveal their fundamental infrastructural dimension. Because at its core, the article claims, the environmental sciences were and are essentially infrastructural sciences.

Ecologies of co-production in the Anthropocene

“…Attention to the diverse forms of knowledge-making practices that have constituted the ‘environment’ and the ‘Anthropocene’ in the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century can help demonstrate the differential historical constructions and realities through which new ways of ordering come into being and become durable formations (Trischler 2016). In doing so, critical social scientists and environmental geographers can reflect on the histories and constitutions of knowledge-making (Güttler 2019) to help inform more responsible and reflective frameworks of deliberate co-production (Miller and Wyborn 2018) and recognise the historical role multiple co-productions play in the broader institutionalisation and circulation of ‘new’ knowledge and changing social order – in the Anthropocene or otherwise (Honeybun-Arnolda 2022).…”

Scientizing the ‘environment’: Solly Zuckerman and the idea of the School of Environmental Sciences

“…If the 'environmental sciences' were to materialize as a response to these nascent challenges to society and future-making, then the infrastructure to support this needed to be in placewith the new research council being one step towards this. 61 But why choose 'environmental sciences', rather than 'natural resources', to describe the new configuration of conceptual, practical and political questions? As Edward Playfair noted, framing the problem as one of 'natural resources' could damage the whole premise, not least because it did not accurately describe the council's proposed remit:…”

Gegenexpert*innen: Umwelt, Aktivismus und die regionalen Epistemologien des Widerstandes

“…Denn die Geschichte der Umweltwissenschaften war über das gesamte 20. Jahrhundert hinweg eine Geschichte regionaler Epistemologien (Güttler 2019 ). Die Gegenexpert*innen fügten sich in das nahräumig formatierte Feld des Umweltwissens gut ein und waren aus ihm bald nicht mehr wegzudenken.…”

“…Sie bündelten lokales Wissen und verbanden es mit den „ganz großen“ Fragen. Die Geschichte der ökologischen Gegenexpert*innen lädt insofern dazu ein, dem Diskurs um das Anthropozän einen weiteren, „nahräumigeren“ scale hinzuzufügen und ihn damit stärker zu provinzialisieren: den meso scale (Güttler 2019 ). Die schmutzigen und lärmenden technischen Umwelten der „Ära der Ökologie“ können also ein guter Ausgangspunkt sein, um im vergrößerten Ausschnitt die Rolle von Wissen und Wissenschaft in den Umweltkrisen des 20. und 21.…”