[When I came across the Nature and Nation network on Twitter I thought it might be of interest for Canadian environmental historians/historical geographers, as they often have to grapple with the significance of national boarders in shaping the environmental history of North America. I asked the organizers to write a reports about their first workshop as a way to introduce the new network to our membership.]
The “Nature and Nation in Europe since 1860” workshop gathered a varied group of scholars interested in the historical links between nature and nations in modern Europe. The workshop, sponsored by the Autonomous Province of Trento within the Postdoc PAT2007 program and organized by Wilko Graf von Hardenberg (University of Trento) and Marco Armiero (ISSM-CNR, Naples and ICTA-UAB, Barcelona) was held in Trento, Italy, in mid-September 2010.
The aim of the workshop was to obtain an overview of the role of modern nation-states and of nationalist discourses in the structuring, managing and showcasing of nature/society interactions. The main issues at stake were: use, conservation and management of natural resources and landscapes; rhetorical, aesthetic and symbolic uses of the natural world; the role of the state in the social and cultural appropriation of nature.
Nine participants were selected from a pool of almost 40 applicants with the aim to maintain a balance between the east and the west of Europe, and between junior and senior scholars. The organizers wanted to set up an unconventional and rather informal meeting that could allow scholars at varying career stages to have a fruitful and immediate feedback and to embed their “national” case studies in a wider comparative framework.
Marco Armiero and Wilko Graf von Hardenberg introduced the workshop with a paper reflecting on the relationships between nation and nature and exploring the paths in which historians and other social scientists have addressed this issue. The role of environmental history as a post-nationalistic field of inquiry was stressed, even if historians still need to deal with states and their administrative structures when researching, mainly because of the availability of sources about nature management and measurement just at the national level. The need for a different approach was highlighted, that may be able to analyze the actual links between nature and nation. The nature/nation relationship offers the opportunity to look at environmental and nationalism studies from a new, interdisciplinary perspective. Nations, in fact, may be considered, with Benedict Anderson, imagined communities, that are in part based also on a common view of the natural world. Nature, and in particular its perception, on the other hand, may be seen as a cultural construct, greatly influenced by nationalist rhetoric. Just the intersection of these theoretical approaches leads to a multiplicity of research questions that will hopefully lead to a new understanding of the links between nature and nation and that have been addressed in various ways during the workshop.
Mark Bassin (Södertörns University) opened the actual workshop with a talk in which he discussed the existence of a peculiarly Russian “frontier hypothesis” among 19th century positivist historians and its role in attempting to give a deterministic explanation to Russia's alleged backwardness. The discussion almost obviously focused on the differences and actual similarities between Turner's model and the approach related by Bassin. Dorothy Zeisler-Vralsted (United Arab Emirates University) presented then her research, inspired by Schama's work, about the river Volga, its representation and perception, and its use in the construction of a Russian national narrative, paying in particular attention to the role of the Moscow Volga Canal in building a nationalist and modernizing discourse under Soviet rule. One important question that arose from the following debate was how multinational rivers, and in general environments (e.g. the Danube or the Alps), were appropriated by different nationalist rhetorics and how the ensuing transnational symbolic conflicts were managed. Day one was closed by Loreta Zydeliene (University of Hull) with her study of forestry in Lithuania in the inter-war years, its social and political perception as depicted in periodicals, and the failed attempts to manage its forests sustainably. What was stressed in this case by the audience's feedback was the need to look at discourses about nature in a comprehensive way, taking into consideration that there is not only one nationalist rhetoric, but rather many of them, each produced by different social sectors and classes.
Day two was opened by Peter Coates' keynote lecture about invasive species in the UK and US, that is the role of animal nationality in raising support for their protection or in damning them as pests and vermin. Central features of his intriguing talk were the point that ecological colonialism is always a two-way process, the highlighting of the rhetorical similarities between far-right xenophobia and discourses about alien animals, and the analysis of the scientific untenability of nativism as a criterion for ensuring protection or not.
The following session was opened by Valentin Nicolescu (National School for Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest) with a talk about the role of nature in building the Romanian concept of nation: the link between the latter and a protective nature, constituted mainly of forests, was at the core of the Romanian 'imagined community' and still inspires the ecologist discourse. Johannes Zechner (Freie Universität, Berlin) talked then about the development of the forest as the archetypal German nature since the 19th century. Inspired by Anderson and Schama, recurring references in this workshop, Zechner minted the concept of 'imagined landscapes', that is the fact that any nature is actually an 'empty vessel' open to any interpretation and construed by the human mind. The morning session was closed by Tait Keller's (Rhodes College) talk about the appropriation of the Alps as a symbol of Greater-German national identity and the role of race and feelings of national superiority in alpine associationism. This time the discussion, linking the two talks, focused on the question of how a nation, such as the German one, which has various possibilities available (e.g. the Alps, the forest, the Rhine) chooses and manages its symbols of national identity.
The afternoon session was opened by Marcus Hall (University of Zürich) who presented the just published book Nature and History in Modern Italy, co-edited by him and Marco Armiero, as a case-study of an editorial project linking together environmental history and the history of nation. (http://www.ohioswallow.com/book/Nature+and+History+in+Modern+Italy). Judith O'Connell (NUI Galway) talked then about the socialisation of nationalism and of its symbols through the example of the varying representation over time of the Great Irish Famine in textbooks. Each different depiction of this crucial event in Irish history reflects, in fact, the contemporary political landscape. The session was closed by Charles-François Mathis (Sorbonne University) with an engaging talk about the development of nature preservation in 19th century England from a sentimental conception to rising professionalism.
The workshop was closed by a round-table in which the participants discussed the possibility for future cooperation and further research activities. The first needs that arose from this discussion were to go beyond the geographical limits of this workshop and include colonial and post-colonial studies in the scope of research, and to expand the period of reference to the whole 19th century. Moreover, demands were made to incorporate the perspective of tourism historians, to look at the different national views of the nature/city dichotomy, to go back to the ground and include materiality in the analysis, to discuss the tension between real and imagined nature, to analyze the role of nationalist discourses in reinventing and shaping nature, and to study the means and ways by which migrant recreated their national natures abroad. Peter Coates suggested that the nature and nation approach could be a means to contest the American exceptionality as regards the view of nature and wilderness.
The participants decided thus to create a scholarly network aimed at organizing future workshops, widen the interest for the analysis of the nature and nation relationship, and support future joint research and publishing projects. For further information about the network and it activities please have a look at its website: http://www.natureandnation.eu
Wilko Graf von Hardenberg & Marco Armiero
