Reply To: Joachim Radkau – The Era of Ecology

By Ellen Lindblom Reply to Nik

Thank you for your reflection Nik.

I also enjoyed the tracing back method Radkau uses. He traces back relevant threads in the past; The question of deforestation for instance. Instead of mention Plato and his thought on deforestation (a classical example) Radaku goes back to the debate about forests in the 1900-century, which might have an actual connection to the present. Sometimes environmental historians go way back in the past and then skips a thousand years or so and make a connection to an event or thought of ideas with no evident connections to it (we have had those examples on this course).

When I was lost in details in the seminar you were thinking of perceptions of the world and of course the seminar was about that also! Good work. I don´t agree with you on nuclear power as clean energy, thinking of the radioactive nuclear waste it is leaving for hundreds of thousand years ahead, a risky business. Never the less I agree with you on how things that happens shapes peoples worldviews or at least enhance it. I also guess the climate debate is shaping people’s perception of nuclear power. You mention researcher’s relation to the past and the origin of a studied subject and how we as researchers need to think of some kind of contextualization into the past. I addition I think researchers also have to reflection on the presents perception of a subject, this will also color the research.