Abstract
At Nature’s Edge is a timely and significant contribution to the growing body of literature on human–environment relationships in the Anthropocene, an era believed to be characterised by decisive human impact on the Earth’s geological record. The editors of this edited volume, Gunnel Cederlöf and Mahesh Rangarajan, argue that many contemporary narratives of the Anthropocene, both academic and popular, are shaped by universalising assumptions that dangerously flatten time and space by ignoring the social-political particularities of ‘nations, classes, and communities’ in favour of ‘histories of humanity as a whole’ (xiv). While there have been several important critiques of the universalising logic of the Anthropocene in recent years, what distinguishes Cederlöf and Rangarajan’s approach is their emphasis on bringing the specificity of place or the where of the Anthropocene back into ongoing conversations about time or the when of the Anthropocene. ‘To map change’, they argue, one ‘needs a sense of place’ (xvii). For example, they contrast the long-term status of elephants in India and China, noting that the use of tamed elephants in war in India offered them a modicum of protection that they did not receive in China where their habitat was gradually destroyed over a 3000-year period. In other words, attitudes towards animals and relationships with them were not spatially uniform and must be understood in-place, in relation to specific ‘politics and polities, economics and technologies’ (xx). Paying attention to such particularities of regional and local experiences, Cederlof and Rangarajan suggest, will enrich our understanding of the multiple and varied ways in which different landscapes experienced continuities and shifts in terms of human relationships with and impacts on the non-human worlds of which they were a part. ‘Studying the Anthropocene’, they powerfully assert, ‘is a call for a more, not less, rigorous history of the particular’ (xix).
The essays in the volume take up this challenge to craft particular histories of the Anthropocene admirably, unravelling the specific trajectories of human and non-human experiences across time and space. An excellent example of how tracing the specific histories of non-human entities can add depth to our understanding of environmental change comes in Rohan Arthur’s fascinating essay on marine resource use in Lakshadweep. Arthur argues that the global success of green turtle conservation has had disastrous consequences for seagrass meadows and the many marine species, especially fish, that depend on them for sustenance. In the Lakshadweep atoll, specifically, a high density of green turtles led to the overgrazing and eventual decline of seagrass meadows and the fish species that used them. Arthur tells us that this hypothesis emerged initially from detailed interviews with local fishers who had a sophisticated, grounded analysis of how the increased presence of green turtles had affected fish stocks despite the fact that the former do not consume the latter. Arthur’s essay is a powerful critique of the anthropocentric hubris that lies at the heart of the concept of the Anthropocene, specifically the idea that any significant environmental change can only be human-authored. It reminds us that we must take seriously the agency of non-human actors (as local fishers do) if we are to understand the environmental challenges that confront us in the moment.
Another theme that the essays engage with great complexity is the important role that states and politics play in shaping people’s relationships with the environment in particular times and places. David Biggs’s essay on militarised landscapes in Vietnam argues that environmental historians must take seriously the inextricable connections between war and environment. His essay describes how the Vietnamese landscape itself has come to be definitively shaped by the intersection of military, ecological, and environmental processes. The challenge of demilitarising Vietnam, then, is as much environmental as it is political and social. The Vietnamese state’s rush to set up agroforestry plots and export processing units in former military camps (that the state views simplistically as rubble), Biggs suggests, does not take into account the complex histories of these landscapes and the significant spiritual and everyday significance they hold for the ordinary Vietnamese who live in and around them. Biggs’s essay reminds us of the importance of challenging and complicating Anthropocene narratives that ignore how environmental change and destruction are often the outcomes of war and capitalism. Any solution to this moment of environmental crisis must take into account these violent histories and their unequal effects on different humans and non-humans.
A third theme that emerges from the essays is the importance of discarding romanticised notions of past ‘pristine’ natures in favour of historically grounded analysis of changes in landscapes and human–environment relationships over time. Vasudha Pande’s rich essay on the Western Himalayan region maps how landscapes that are understood as ‘ancient’ and ‘original’ were, in fact, the product of varied human and non-human use over a long period. Late Pleistocene and early Holocene era foraging and hunting, in particular, played an important role in denuding the mountains of forest cover and producing the pastures that are considered ‘natural’ to the region today. At a time when restoration ecology is being increasingly touted as a solution to environmental destruction, Pande’s essay is a good reminder of the importance of long-term situated analysis of environmental change in particular regions.
Each of the essays collected in this remarkable volume are rich and illuminating, providing a nuanced and textured account of human relationships with non-humans across a diversity of sites. Together, they make an irrefutable and important case for the importance of place in contemporary accounts of the Anthropocene. The volume will be of interest not only to scholars of environmental history, but also to general readers who seek to understand the ways in which the specificities of time and place shape human relationships with the environment.