A New Ecological Order: Development and the Transformation of Nature in Eastern Europe

by Stefan Dorondel (Editor), Stelu Serban (Editor)

Overview

The rise of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century forged a new ecological order in North American and Western European states, radically transforming the environment through science and technology in the name of human progress. Far less known are the dramatic environmental changes experienced by Eastern Europe, in many ways a terra incognita for environmental historians and anthropologists. A New Ecological Order explores, from a historical and ethnographic perspective, the role of state planners, bureaucrats, and experts—engineers, agricultural engineers, geographers, biologists, foresters, and architects—as agents of change in the natural world of Eastern Europe from 1870 to the early twenty-first century.

Contributors consider territories engulfed by empires, from the Habsburg to the Ottoman to tsarist Russia; territories belonging to disintegrating empires; and countries in the Balkan Peninsula, Central and Eastern Europe, and Eurasia. Together, they follow a rhetoric of “correcting nature,” a desire to exploit the natural environment and put its resources to work for the sake of developing the economies and infrastructures of modern states. They reveal an eagerness among newly established nation-states, after centuries of imperial economic and political impositions, to import scientific knowledge and new technologies from Western Europe that would aid in their economic development, and how those imports and ideas about nature ultimately shaped local projects and policies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822988847
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	05/03/2022
Series:	INTERSECTIONS: Histories of Environment
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ştefan Dorondel is a senior researcher at the Francisc I. Rainer Institute of Anthropology of the Romanian Academy and affiliated with the Institute for South East European Studies, Bucharest. He is the author of Disrupted Landscapes: State, Peasants, and the Politics of Land in Postsocialist Romania and coauthor of When Things Become Property: Land Reform, Authority and Value in Postsocialist Europe and Asia.

Stelu Şerban is a sociologist at the Institute for South East European Studies, Bucharest, with an interest in postsocialist transformations in South East Europe, everyday life in rural societies, ethnicity, and political ecology. He is the author of Elites: Parties and Political Spectrum in Interwar Romania.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction. Planning Development, Changing Nature in Eastern Europe-Stefan Dorondel and Stelu Şerban Part I. Planning Territory 1. The Quest for a New Urban Landscape: Spatial Transformation in the Nineteenth-Century Belgrade Environment-Dragana Ćorović 2. From Slavic Swamp to Promised Land: Social and Environmental Engineering in a Southern Macedonian Swamp, 1913–1936-George L. Vlachos 3. In Quest of Development: Territorialization and the Transformation of the Southern Ukrainian Wetlands, 1880–1960-Stefan Dorondel and Anna Olenenko Part II. Nature, Economy and Experts 4. From Weeds to Commodities: The Translation of Plants into Medicines in Early Twentieth-Century Transylvania-Ágota Ábrán 5. The Economy of a Leashed River: State, Experts, and Politics along the Lower Danube, 1900–1940-Stelu Şerban and Stefan Dorondel 6. From Nature to National Networks: Hydraulic Bureaucracy and the Modernization of Waters in Czechia, 1890s–1960s-Ji ří Janáč 7. Big Dam Biographies in Central Asia: Tracing Goals, Actors, and Impacts from World War II to the Present Day-Jeanne Féaux de la Croix and Flora Roberts Part III. Imaging New Nature 8. Goats, Axes, and Uncertain Narratives: Representations of Nature and People in Asia Minor-Hande Özkan 9. Constructing Forest Expertise: Foresters in the Białowieża Forest-Eunice Blavascunas 10. The Political Ecology of Scientific Innovation in Russia: A Study of a Muskox Domestication Experiment in Siberia-Vladislava Vladimirova 11. Humans, Predators, and State Projects: A Look at the Lower Danube, Northwest Bulgaria-Yulian Konstantinov Epilogue. A New Ecological Order at a European Margin-Stefan Dorondel and Helmuth Trischler Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

A New Ecological Order provides a new perspective on the ways nature was mobilized by the developmental policies of Eastern Europe’s nation states in their struggle to escape the periphery. Analyzing environmental changes and the way new ideas and new actors have been involved in this complex process, it offers an exceptional contribution to the history and anthropology of the government of nature.” —Marc Abélès, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
 

“Surely destined to become a classic, this innovative book focuses on how the complex region that is Eastern Europe employed natural resources to bring about economic benefit and growth. Explaining the intertwined and ever-changing socio-political national regimes and their histories, these well researched case studies offer tantalizing comparisons with other parts of the world.” —Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa
 

“Did the ‘West’ colonize the ‘East’ of Europe with infrastructure projects? The answer—laid out in this excellent collection—is no, or at least, not quite. But the case studies . . . achieve even more than resetting the colonial narrative. They bring nature into the story and discuss how nationalistic bureaucracies planned its exploitation. . . . The contributors to this volume not only bring fresh perspectives, they also expertly fill a gap, not least by showing how much more such studies we need for a fuller picture of European environmental history.” —Verena Winiwarter, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences
 

"Overall, A New Ecological Order provides credible historical analyses of state intervention in the management of local natural sources aimed at promoting regional modernity in Eastern Europe."
—CEU Review of Books
 

"This superbly edited volume deserves readership far beyond the nascent subfield of Eastern European environmental history."
—Environmental History

"The anthology advances eastern European environmental scholarship significantly due to the richness of the empirical material, the broad scope of cases and regions, and its theoretical ambition. The writing is clear and concise; students and scholars will find it a wonderful resource in environmental historiography."
—Slavic Review

"A New Ecological Order is an important contribution to the history of technology, science, and environment of Eastern Europe, and it is well worth the read."
—Centaurus 

From the Publisher