Lightning Lectures in Environment, Health, and History
Eiko Maruko Siniawer. Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018. 414 pp. $53.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-5017-2584-5.
Reviewed by Dustin Wright
Published on H-Envirohealth (October, 2022)
Commissioned by Michitake Aso (University at Albany, SUNY)
Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=53418
I admit that when first opening Eiko Maruko Siniawer’s Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan, my initial move was to shed any pretext of scholarly sophistication and search the index for Marie Kondo. Kondo has built an empire of best-selling books, a Netflix reality show, and a line of products that are all aimed to help grown adults sort their underwear. For a Western audience, Kondo taps into a belief in an inherent Japanese simplicity that is informed by an ancient tradition of venerating all objects as inhabited by spirits, making even the most mundane ephemera and waste of everyday life worthy of, at the very least, a nod of appreciation before you chuck them in the trash. Kondo certainly makes an appearance in the book, in which readers will learn that she is only one manifestation of danshari, a term coined by the “clutter consultant” Yamashita Hideko to mean something akin to the “sense of freedom, mindfulness, and serenity” that comes with decluttering (p. 266). Siniawer, a historian, sees the current boom in danshari methods and guidebooks as part of a pattern of waste consciousness in modern Japan.
This makes Waste a timely book, not least because of the work Siniawer does to messy and historicize the current global “tidying up” craze. There is the material waste, the trash, of course. Anyone who has spent an hour in Japan has likely found themselves producing shocking amounts of plastic waste: well-known is the single banana at the local supermarket, still in its perfect peel and yet curiously wrapped in plastic. The accumulation of trash on the go will also allow one to appreciate the seeming dearth of trash receptacles in Japan. In my own American town, trash cans abound, yet so does the trash accumulating around them.
The four parts of the book draw us through a teleological telling of waste as a metric to understand Japan’s postwar development and middle-class consumption habits. Well written and clearly organized, Waste helps us understand the political, environmental, and social understandings of accumulation in the modern world. For Siniawer, it is the “idea of waste,” just as much as the actual accumulation of trash, that tells us much about postwar Japan. Most compellingly, Waste introduces us to a wide range of individuals, institutions, and government programs that have grappled with how to live in, accommodate, and address a world of objects (and ideas) that were both desperately desired and, frequently, forgotten or later loathed.
Parts 1 and 2 detail the early postwar through the economic boom years, in which modernity and wealth were clearly linked to middle-class accumulation, though some made efforts to valorize frugality. Much of the story centers on the effects of the famously expanding middle class in the 1960s and the materials that they accumulated. Amidst an environment with a growing appetite for consumption, deprivations brought about by the 1973 Oil Shock served as a reminder of the war years, when rationing of goods was a constant reminder of everyday struggles. The Toilet Paper Panic after the 1973 Oil Shock, when shoppers descended on markets to hoard goods that they feared would be limited in a paralyzed economy, is an example of consumer panic that will likely hit home and remind many readers of the early weeks of the first COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 (Waste was published in 2018). Together with the interurban “Garbage War,” in which neighborhoods fought to keep trash incinerators as far away as possible, Siniawer shows that the late 1960s and the entirety of the 1970s were years in which people became more keenly aware of the garbage they created. Of course, this did little to stop the waste from piling up. Siniawer shows that the Oil Shock (and to a lesser extent, the second Oil Shock of 1979-80) played a significant role in compelling people and institutions to rethink their attachment to consumption, but after the shock subsided, levels of trash continued to climb for the rest of the decade (p. 152).
One of the great strengths of Waste is that, even with an ambitious and extensive array of sources, the overall theme of capitalist modernity and its discontents is never lost. Children’s literature, government campaigns, newspaper archives, and fashion advertisements are only a few of the sources Siniawer separates into their appropriate bins. The text uses an abundance of trash, fears of wasted work time and inefficient household management, and gratuitous consumption that served as a substitute for deeper meaning, to more brightly illuminate modern Japan. Siniawer writes: “As the warts of recent achievement were laid bare, waste became a site of reflection about the values and priorities of the society that high growth had created. The recognition dawned that a society of mass consumption might also be one of mass waste. Japan was declared a ‘throwaway culture’ with a ‘culture of disposability’ epitomized by wasteful attitudes towards things, resources, and energy” (pp. 95-96).
Over time, “views of rubbish were modified” and many consumers began to question the entirety of modern economics and culture. Society had entered a dirty new epoch: the “throwaway age” (pp. 101, 113). The author’s discussion about the formation of the Association for Thinking About the Throwaway Age is a wonderfully enlightening journey into a revanchist attempt to highlight what was being lost in the age of accumulation (p. 121). With a slogan of “For convenience, disposability even throws away the future,” organizations sounded the alarm of the “throwaway age” and understood that a society based on consumerism was likely to lose deeper meanings of community and place.
While the finger wagging of the anti-disposability crowd sought to curtail waste, Siniawer shows that “waste” could also be a life devoid of joy, as depicted in a 1975 manga in which the miserly main character finds meaning in a new romantic relationship (p. 142). This was a moment in which a top-down stinginess (kechi) movement was flowing through both the home and the workplace, with recommendations on how people could use less and value more. Long before the energy conservation measures put in place after the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster that brought down a Fukushima nuclear power plant, companies and governments were asking offices to limit their air cooling and for men to shift away from the stifling corporate business suit. We are introduced to the sartorial wonder that was the short-sleeved suit, which unsurprisingly never took off. Waste includes a photograph of Prime Minister Oyhira Masayoshi wearing one and looking a bit like an uncomfortable pharmacist (p. 155). It turned out that politicians were not really the clothing models that the public wanted, though these campaigns did signal an approval for lighter summer suits. Amid these calls for frugality and conservation, which once again echoed war rationing to many ears, some companies pushed back. Siniawer shows how the department store Isetan Shinjuku’s advertising campaign slogan of “Luxury is Splendid” was a nod to the wartime sentiment that luxury was the enemy. “The declaration of indulgence as ‘splendid’ (suteki),” she observes, “was unequivocal in its encouragement to purchase the advertised products, from Camembert cheese to pearl necklaces” (p. 161).
Parts 3 and 4 of Waste focuses on the “Abundant Dualities” of wealth and waste and the “Affluence of the Heart” from the 1980s to the present. In 1987, the avant-garde artist Akasegawa Genpei saw a world awash with objects both necessary and useless, which compelled him to help establish the Society for the Study of Disposability (Tsukaistue Kōgen Gakkai), a discussion group that explored how Japan had become a “disposing superpower” (p. 185). Siniawer notes that Akasegawa “highlighted the ubiquity of meaningless objects intentionally created by the desires of a commodified society by drawing attention to the rarity of their antithesis—objects that had seemingly outlived their use” (p. 186). A peculiar staircase that went nowhere was part of a collection of random objects that Akasegawa dubbed “Thomassons,” after the American drafted late in his career by the Yomiuri Giants who, disappointingly, “had a fully-formed body and yet served no purpose to the world” (p. 187).
Some readers might already be aware of the Island of Dreams, which was built atop a vast landfill in Tokyo Bay (Waste is a generally Tokyo-centric book) and opened in 1978. This marked a transformation from mountains of Japan’s postwar trash to a space of recreation and amusement. As Siniawer keenly observes, “There is something metaphorical about the Island of Dreams Park that presaged the decade to follow—that on a hidden foundation of material waste would rise a symbol of enjoyment and leisure in daily life” (p. 193).
Siniawer identifies the seemingly natural consequence of material affluence, which is the inevitable “poverty of affluence” (p. 198). In this section, the author again expertly synthesizes a wide range of sources in order to paint a fuller image. The office of Social Welfare Division’s Lifestyle Section, an economist, an NHK commentator, and a social commentator all variously conclude that “financially and materially affluent lives” are but superficial measurements for what is truly important: spiritual and emotional wealth. The manga Manual for Poor Living in Greater Tokyo provided a tantalizing example of this, suggesting “how to get by on a small budget and much more about how to engage intentionally with structures of labor, money, and consumption in order to lead a full life” (p. 202). Siniawer writes, “The desire for an affluence of the heart was thus not born of a period of economic downturn as a response to the elusiveness of realizing any other kind of wealth, but a time of financial affluence and material plenty, even excess” (p. 208). As in other parts of Waste, the author is illuminating a global condition as much as one of Japan.
The final section of the book looks at the most recent decade (“The Decluttered Self”), with Marie Kondo and other purveyors of danshiri. If material affluence had not solved modernity’s happiness dilemmas or made everyone happy, the next course was toward an “affluence of the heart.” Japanese society is in the paradox of “economic anemia and material plenty,” where underemployed young people who never knew the boom years of high growth are nonetheless awash in a world of readily available stuff (p. 275). “The recent popularity of decluttering, minimalism, and the theme of looking beyond money and things,” the author writes, “both reflect the dissonances of contemporary Japan and suggest ways in which people are attempting to work through them” (p. 292). In a way, Waste asks readers to perhaps see the current happiness industry, including its subcontractors of self-care and wellness, as fitting into a longer history of institutions and government responding (wisely or poorly) to the needs and desires of individuals, who are themselves continually reshaping their own relationships to the things around them.
Citation:
Dustin Wright. Review of Siniawer, Eiko Maruko, Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan.
H-Envirohealth, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2022.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53418
Warm greetings from Manipal. We are delighted to announce our upcoming one-day Interdisciplinary Conference on Health, Science and Society in India to be held on 10 February, 2023 at the Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, Karnataka. We are calling for abstracts from Doctoral and Early Career Scholars addressing diverse understandings of health in colonial and postcolonial India. Key themes of this Conference include, but are not limited to:
Disease and Medicine
Medicine / State / Law / Policies
Gender and Health
Science, Technology and Society
Mental Health and Wellbeing
Hygiene and Sanitation
Body and Healthcare
Research Methodology and Public Health Ethics
We take this opportunity to invite conference abstracts (250 words) and a brief bio-note (150 words) by 15 October 2022 to hssconference.mch.2023@gmail.com Applicants will be notified by 1 November 2022. Food and accommodation (on sharing basis) will be provided to the presenters. No registration fees will be charged.
For any queries, please contact the conference organisers Dr Jagriti Gangopadhyay jagriti.g@manipal.edu and Dr Ranjana Saha ranjana.saha@manipal.edu
We look forward to seeing you on 10 February 2023.
Environment, Health, and Well-being (Book Series at Michigan State University Press)
This series tackles the relationship between health and the environment, paying particular attention to changes occurring over time and across place. It seeks to illuminate the causes and consequences of human, more-than-human, and environmental ill-health, while also attending to possibilities for well-being, flourishing, and repair. Encouraging an expanded notion of health, Environment, Health, and Well-being presents scholarship that considers human well-being as directly correlated with health systems; extends the notion of health and well-being beyond the purely human frame; and interrogates planetary health through specific landscapes, ecologies, and human and more-than-human activities. Recognizing the ecological, political, social, and viral turbulence of our current times, the monographs and edited collections in this series look to interdisciplinary practice within the field of the environmental humanities as a way of understanding the present, reflecting upon the past, and rethinking possibilities of the future.
Environment, Health, and Well-being, while grounded in the environmental humanities, understands the barriers to environmental health as tied to legacies of extraction, consumption, colonization, and unlimited growth. It is thus especially interested in scholarship from Indigenous, race, gender and queer, and disability studies, as well as approaches that address histories and futures of labor and profit. Environment, Health, and Well-being welcomes projects from new and established scholars, in and outside of academia, which make visible for audiences the timeliness and necessity of interdisciplinary research on the relationships between humanity and environments. The contributions in this series capture the multifaceted nature of environmental health and foreground the importance of perpending the planet’s well-being in these ecologically precarious times.
Series Editor
Tatiana Konrad (University of Vienna)
Contact: tatiana.konrad@univie.ac.at
Editorial Board
Olivia Banner (University of Texas at Dallas)
Clare Hickman (Newcastle University)
Cymene Howe (Rice University)
Iain Hutchison (University of Glasgow)
Christian Riegel (University of Regina)
Gordon Sayre (University of Oregon)
Genese Sodikoff (Rutgers University)
Environment, Health, and Well-being (Book Series at Michigan State University Press)
This series tackles the relationship between health and the environment, paying particular attention to changes occurring over time and across place. It seeks to illuminate the causes and consequences of human, more-than-human, and environmental ill-health, while also attending to possibilities for well-being, flourishing, and repair. Encouraging an expanded notion of health, Environment, Health, and Well-being presents scholarship that considers human well-being as directly correlated with health systems; extends the notion of health and well-being beyond the purely human frame; and interrogates planetary health through specific landscapes, ecologies, and human and more-than-human activities. Recognizing the ecological, political, social, and viral turbulence of our current times, the monographs and edited collections in this series look to interdisciplinary practice within the field of the environmental humanities as a way of understanding the present, reflecting upon the past, and rethinking possibilities of the future.
Environment, Health, and Well-being, while grounded in the environmental humanities, understands the barriers to environmental health as tied to legacies of extraction, consumption, colonization, and unlimited growth. It is thus especially interested in scholarship from Indigenous, race, gender and queer, and disability studies, as well as approaches that address histories and futures of labor and profit. Environment, Health, and Well-being welcomes projects from new and established scholars, in and outside of academia, which make visible for audiences the timeliness and necessity of interdisciplinary research on the relationships between humanity and environments. The contributions in this series capture the multifaceted nature of environmental health and foreground the importance of perpending the planet’s well-being in these ecologically precarious times.
Series Editor
Tatiana Konrad (University of Vienna)
Contact: tatiana.konrad@univie.ac.at
Editorial Board
Olivia Banner (University of Texas at Dallas)
Clare Hickman (Newcastle University)
Cymene Howe (Rice University)
Iain Hutchison (University of Glasgow)
Christian Riegel (University of Regina)
Gordon Sayre (University of Oregon)
Genese Sodikoff (Rutgers University)
Following the success of the ‘Medical (Post) Humanities? Reassessing and Reimagining the Human' conference held in Sheffield on April 27th 2022 (funded by WRoCAH), we are planning a Special Issue of Interconnections: Journal of Posthumanism to respond to the questions raised during the event.
One of the guiding threads running through the day was the question of whether critical posthumanism can meaningfully interact with, and contribute to, the practice of medical care in relation to both human and animal life. Mediating work through theory is great, but how can we work to translate theory in practice? Continuing our inquiry into Des Fitzgerald and Felicity Callard’s proposal that ‘we need to displace, if not significantly reimagine, how medical humanities has tended to the figure the ‘human’”, this special issue will critically consider the ways in which medical approaches have centred human health. The editors are collating a set of papers which think carefully about whether, and in what ways, critical posthumanism can help us reimagine medical practice, including practices of care and ways of caring. In order to push the boundaries of this interdisciplinary discussion, contributions should respond to the possibility that posthumanism can reproduce humanistic assumptions, as well as the tensions that arise through the intersection of theory and practice.
If you are interested in contributing please send an expression of interest in the form of a short abstract (approximately 250 words) by 5pm on Monday 27th June to: medicalposthumanities@gmail.com. The special issue is being edited by Mary Dawson (The University of Leeds), Shauna Walker (The University of Leeds), Eva Surawy Stepney (The University of Sheffield) and Rosie Crocker (The University of Sheffield).
Shauna Walker - The University of Leeds
Call for Papers -- 54th annual NeMLA conference (23-26 March 2023, Niagara Falls, New York USA)
What does it mean to write and think about nature? Do language, thought, and mimesis ultimately have the capacity to impact (and possibly cultivate) our natural environments, and do these environments in turn have the capacity to impact (and possibly cultivate) our words and ideas? Taking such questions as a starting point, this panel aims to explore how the relationship between the human community and the environment has occupied a central space within literature and thought across various epochs and epistemological arenas.
Rather than operating as a “framework” for potential contributions, this intentionally broad series of themes and questions is instead intended as an invitation into an interdisciplinary conversation that might go in a number of directions. As such, the panel hopes to address issues and themes of critical urgency within our current moment of environmental crisis, but to do so by way of timeless topics, writers, and texts. Proposals (of roughly 300 words, accompanied by a short vita) from all cultural and literary traditions are welcome, and the final composition of the panel will strive for balance in this respect. Possible topics could include, but are by no means limited to, areas of inquiry such as:
o New interpretive approaches to nature writing, nature poetry, or eco-poetics more generally;
o The role of the natural environment as an object of philosophical and/or phenomenological study;
o Interventions in past and/or ongoing ecocritical debates;
o Considerations of the relationship between literary, artistic, philosophical, or scientific modes of representing the natural world.
Please submit abstracts and vitae by 30 September 2022 via the NeMLA website: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP
Dr. Alexander Sorenson
The aim of this conference, which will take place from March 23 to March 25 at Sorbonne University in Paris, France, is to study the general question of wellness and health, primarily in English-speaking countries, but it also welcomes comparative approaches in other countries or regions. This conference will attempt to shed light on the practices, principles, values or institutions which have had an impact on health and wellness, both from a strictly medical point of view and from a broader moral or social perspective.
The objective of the conference will be to try and trace the contours of wellness and health, both from a historical point of view and from more contemporary perspectives, in all their forms, be they artistic, sociological, political or economic, from modern times to the present day.
The full Call for Papers can be found at the following address: http://hdea.paris-sorbonne.fr/node/283 (scroll down for the English version).
Proposals for papers (500 words maximum) in English or French, with a working title and a short bio, should be sent to HDEA2023@gmail.com by 30 June 2022.
Claire Dutriaux, Associate Professor in US History and Film, member of the HDEA research team, Sorbonne University, Paris, France.
HDEA (Histoire et Dynamique des Espaces Anglophones), Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
Claire Dutriaux, Associate Professor in US History and Film, member of the HDEA research team, Sorbonne University, Paris, France.
HDEA (Histoire et Dynamique des Espaces Anglophones), Sorbonne Université, Paris, France.
Please consider submitting an abstract for the NeMLA session "Modern and Current Environmental Crises in Italy" (54th Annual NeMLA Convention March 23-26, 2023 in Niagara Falls, NY).
The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2022. You can submit an abstract for this session here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19857
Session Abstract:
Now more than ever it is important to interrogate the impact and discourses of the modern and contemporary environmental crises afflicting the world. This panel takes an interdisciplinary approach in order to explore the meaning of such key terms as “environment,” “ecology,” “nature” within the Italian context. More specifically, the panel examines how the impact of environmental crises and the discourses on current dilemmas in the Italian peninsula are integrated into the critical analyses of key Italian literary and cinematic texts.
The panel draws on the lessons learned from Italian modern and contemporary authors in order to investigate the underlying causes behind the environmental issues humanity currently faces, as well as how these issues have affected Italy in particular. The broader objective of the panel is to examine the global issue of environmental crisis through an Italian lens in order to investigate how Italy’s writers and artists have related to these ongoing problems.
Papers may utilize any media that has explored modern and current environmental issues. These include, but are not limited to, poetical texts (e.g., Ungaretti, Quasimodo, Montale, Pasolini), literary texts (e.g., Silone, Ortese, Cassola, Celati, Calvino, Saviano), and cinematic texts (e.g., Gregoretti, Antonioni, Rohrwacher, Garrone).
Some questions raised by this panel might be: How did Italian writers and cinematographers address modern and current environmental issues in their works? What kind of critiques did they level? What solutions did they propose? How did they relate Italy’s problems to the environmental problems affecting humanity and the world on a global scale?
You can find the Call for Papers for the entire conference here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP
For questions about the session please contact the chair, Giordano Mazza, at gimazza@sewanee.edu.
Stories of the climate crisis often focus on the future, but agricultural historians already know a great deal about its many pasts. Through accounts of deforestation, the plowing of grasslands and digging up of peat, the rise of animal agriculture, artificial fertilizers, and fossil fuel based systems of food production, we trace the roots of the crisis. By examining the emergence of empires and markets in crops, lands, and people, we can better illuminate both these roots and the asymmetric effects that the crisis is already having. We also know that past climate change such as the Little Ice Age, and extreme weather such as droughts, frosts, and floods created challenges and opportunities for past agriculturalists. By examining their responses as well as the emergence of new forms of agriculture, we can better understand the profound agricultural transformations that are currently being proposed.
With this conference we hope to sustain and extend the conversations begun at the 2022 "Greening the Field" Conference in Stavanger, Norway. We ask, what existing historical work should be informing our understanding of the climate crisis? What new connections might we need to fully understand that crisis?
As always, we accept papers not centered on the conference theme. Theme-related topics could include but are certainly not limited to:
- The emergence of agricultural practices that have catalyzed or driven the crisis physically, e.g. deforestation, grass and peatlands destruction, mechanization, over-fertilization, and the shift to intensive animal agriculture
- The larger social structures of markets, subsidies, development, coercion, incarceration, migration, and colonialism that undergird these agricultural practices, as well as some of the proposed solutions
- Related accounts of resistance, power struggles, and agrarian activism
- Examples of rural vulnerability and resilience in the face of crises
- Accounts of rural fossil fuel development: fracking, pipelines, coal-mines, and oil wells
- Histories of "organic," "alternative," and "regenerative" agriculture
- Histories of other forms of culture being proposed as solutions, from tree plantations to kelp farms, cultured corals, and cellular and microbial agriculture
- Examinations of the role of identity in shaping rural lives and agricultural policies
- Stories of displacement, migration, mobility, and multinational refugee events related to changing climates
- Evolving foodways, diets, and other cultural connections, either driving or adapting to changing climates
- Policies, corporate practices, and NGO involvement related to agriculture and climate
As we take on an evolving global crisis, we hope to hear from a broad spectrum of voices and disciplines. Reflecting the society's inclusive tradition, we especially encourage contributions from emerging and contingent scholars and researchers covering understudied geographical regions or periods.
Instructions:
Conventional session proposals should include the organizer's contact information, a two-hundred-word abstract for each paper, and a one-page CV for each panel member
Session proposals in other formats (roundtables, workshops, etc.) should include the organizer's contact information, a two-to-three-hundred-word abstract, and a one-page CV for each participant.
Individual paper proposals should consist of contact information, a two-hundred-word abstract, and a one-page CV.
Poster proposals should include contact information, a two-hundred-word abstract, and a one-page CV.
All proposals should be submitted electronically in a single file in MS Word format to the Program Committee by email at: pawleye@dickinson.edu.
Deadline for submissions is September 15, 2023
Program Committee:
Megan Birk, University of Texas
Andrea Duffy, Colorado State University
Emma Moesswilde, Georgetown University
Emily Pawley, Dickinson College (Chair)
Justin Randolph, Texas State University
Emily Pawley
Environmental Hermeneutics and Ecocriticism
Presenter: Endre Harvold Kvangraven (University of Stavanger, Norway)
Respondent: Dr Forrest Clingerman (Ohio Northern University)
9 June 2022, 18.00 CET / 17.00 BST / 12.00 ED
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/environmental-hermeneutics-and-ecocritici...
About this seminar
In recent decades, environmental hermeneutics has emerged as a distinct field, drawing on literary theory, philosophy, theology, and a range of other disciplines. In this talk, I link environmental hermeneutics with ecocriticism, applying it to three novels: Tarjei Vesaas’s Fuglane (The Birds, 1957), Agnar Lirhus’s Nå hogger de (Now they’re logging, 2020) and Tomas Bannerhed’s Korparna (The Ravens, 2011). Drawing on John van Buren’s critical environmental hermeneutics (1995), Forrest Clingerman’s concept of “emplacement” (2004) and Ricoeurian notions of narrative identity (Bell 2014), I explore how environmental identities are formed through interpretation, and how conflicting interpretations interact. In these novels, birds and plants are integral parts of the environment, not only functioning as backdrop and setting but contributing towards forming the characters’ narrative identities. Finally, I discuss birding as a form of environmental interpretation where perceptual engagement and ornithological knowledge leads to personal “emplacement” and local meaning-making.
Presenter
Endre Kvangraven is a PhD candidate in Nordic Literature at the Department of Cultural Studies and Languages at the University of Stavanger, and author of Ulv i det norske kulturlandskapet (Wolves in a cultural landscape, 2021). His research interests span from comparative literature to environmental philosophy and the environmental humanities more broadly.
Respondent
Forrest Clingerman is Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Ohio Northern University (USA). His work spans the environmental humanities, philosophy, and theology, and is focused on how to interpret place and landscape. He is co-editor of Interpreting Nature: The Emerging Field of Environmental Hermeneutics (Fordham UP) and Arts, Religion, and the Environment: Exploring Nature's Texture (Brill).
Chair: Dr Tyson Retz, University of Stavanger.
Assoc. Prof. Tyson Retz
H-Envirohealth announces the inaugural installment of a new series, Lightning Lectures in Environment, Health, and History. These lectures, generally of two minutes or less, highlight research projects at the intersection of environmental and health or medical history and their relevance to contemporary events.
--Jack Greatrex, "The Uses of 'Natural Enemies': Biocontrol in British Malaya and Hong Kong, 1890s to 1940s'
Jack Greatrex is a doctoral student at the University of Hong Kong studying the concept of 'natural enemies' as it spanned, and was co-produced acrossed, public health and pest control.
We envision this as an opportunity to feature and promote new scholarship important for today’s issues. We especially look to highlight the work of recent Ph.D.s, and junior and independent scholars. Anyone wishing to contribute, please contact us both to inform us of your interest and send us a one-to-two sentence sketch of your proposed topic: H-Envirohealth Co-Editors Amy Hay amy.hay@utrgv.edu and Christopher Sellers christopher.sellers@stonybrook.edu. Mini-lectures should be two minutes or less and self-produced, using Zoom or any other widely available software.