Understanding the History of Environment | Ranjan Chakrabarti | Professor of History, Jadavpur University, Kolkata |
| The study of environmental history has now become important as a natural and inevitable result of a perceived ‘environmental crisis’ in today’s world. This perception has resulted in the development of a broad area called Environmental Studies. However, in view of the important role of the scientists in the emergence of Environmental Studies – and the subsequent contribution of scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to this field – it has remained an open-ended subject. Within the field, ‘environmental history’ remains universally acknowledged as a critically important area of inquiry, but without well-defined disciplinary canons and methodological guidelines. It is strongly felt that only professional historians with the requisite methodological training will be able to (1) develop and define the agenda and disciplinary canons of this filed of inquiry, and (2) historical the present-day concerns and anxieties in the broad area of Environmental Studies. Unfortunately, professional historians in India and abroad appear to be reluctant to come forward to undertake this task in a concerted and coordinated manner | It is fairly well known that history is essentially a continuous dialogue between the past and the present. Historians give voice to the silences of the archives. The pattern of historical research changes frequently and there is no doubt that it has changed substantially in recent times. It seems that under the forceful impact of post-modernism today we are hearing the voice of alternative histories instead of a simple single track I agree with one of our colleagues (Dr. Sekhar Bhandapadhyay, Bengal : Rethinking History) that history was survived the onslaught of post-modernism. The present lecture attempts to throw some light on one of the merging frontiers of historical research. One significant area where the changing approach of historians has yielded smart result is what has come to be called ‘history of environment’. The purpose of the present lecture is to raise three important questions that the scholars interested in this particular branch of history might with to ask. These questions are: | - Iis it a separate sub-discipline under the discipline of history or it is just a recent offshoot of social history/cultural history/intellectual history/economic history/history from below/tribal history/history of peasant resistance/history of socio-political crime etc.?
- What is the present state of scholarship in this field and what is the shape of the historiography of the subject at present?
- What could be the strategy or methodology to be pursued by the scholars practicing this genre of history?
|
|
|
Last Updated ( Monday, 14 September 2009 )
|
