CALL FOR PAPERS: Ordering the Anthropocene: Law & the Environment in the Indian Ocean World (Philadelphia, 4-5 October 2019) (DEADLINE: 15 May 2019)

(Source: H-Announce)

Via H-Announce, we learned of a workshop that aims to bring together senior and junior scholars of law and/or environment who are working in the field of Indian Ocean World history.

Type: 

Workshop

Date: 

May 15, 2019

Location: 

Pennsylvania, United States

Subject Fields: 

Asian History / Studies, Colonial and Post-Colonial History / Studies, Environmental History / Studies, Law and Legal History, Maritime History / Studies

Ordering the Anthropocene: Law & the Environment in the Indian Ocean World  A workshop convened by Debjani Bhattacharyya (Drexel University) and Laurie Wood (Florida State University)4-5th October 2019Hosted by the Department of History,  Drexel University, with the generous sponsorship of the American Society for Legal History & Drexel University

What can historians of law achieve from engaging with their colleagues studying environmental changes over time? How have emerging regulatory regimes (imperial, property-oriented, maritime, medical, etc.) joined the domains of science and law in new ways? And how can legal historians retool their methods to study deep histories of landscape transformations and climate? These questions are especially pertinent for the Indian Ocean region, where these concerns have both past and contemporary relevance: e.g. rising sea levels in the Maldives and Andaman Islands; coastal erosion and disputes over new-land formation along the littorals of Bay of Bengal; island-building in Singapore (with sand from Gulf states); disaster relief following the 2004 tsunami and earthquake, which especially affected Indonesia and Malaysia; food security around the Horn of Africa; and some of the world’s busiest shipping routes.

Time shapes the traffic in what constitutes truth in these two broad disciplinary arenas. Legal historians typically analyze cases, each with a specific lifespan of years or decades. Environmental phenomena, by contrast, often span centuries or even geological epochs. We propose a workshop to address the temporality of expertise and evidence which will bring legal historians whose disciplinary focus is bounded by the temporality of a case, together with environmental historians and historians of science who are increasingly doing histories of deep-time. For instance, when legal historians study regulatory regimes of intellectual property to material cultures. It works with an anthropogenic lifespan: copyrights, patents, objects, labor, commodities. Whereas environmental phenomenon, which are increasingly entering regulatory domains, work with long timescales spanning geological, seasonal and solar temporalities. As states are beginning to exert regulatory powers increasingly in legal and scientific regimes, the legal timescale of a case is getting entangled in deep historical timescales.

We invite abstracts for an exploratory workshop, where we will discuss articles/chapters in progress and which have not been submitted for publication. Articles which are in preliminary review stages are welcome, but not those in galley proofs. The purpose of the workshop is to receive comments and feedback on works in progress with the possibility for incorporating the discussions of the workshop. The presenters will be paired with senior discussants who will offer feedback on their articles/chapters and then open it up for discussion. Presenters will be required to submit their articles/chapters of 8000 words and no more than 12,000 words by 30 August 2019. All presenters and discussants will be required to read the articles beforehand which will be made available through a secure dropbox account. We will also conduct a half-day field-trip on October 5th. The purpose of the workshop is to:

• Bring together senior and junior scholars of law and/or environment who are working in the newly-vibrant field of Indian Ocean World history.
• Generate a methodological conversation between legal historians and historians of environment and science anchored on the category of time and how differing notions shape practices of evidence selection, gathering and testimony in the court and laboratory.

The workshop will consist of 4 panels, with 2 presenters in each panel. We will pair legal historians with historians of environment to explore how common terminology around evidence, witness, reason, expertise is affected by concepts of time that are distinct in each discipline. We welcome papers exploring the following questions broadly:

• Where does law/do legal regimes collide with the material world?
• Where/when/how/why do natural phenomena become entangled in ordering regimes?
• How do these relationships (re)configure the human as social (e.g. relational, hierarchical, vocal) and material (e.g. embodied, constrained by lifespan, etc.)?

Application Instructions

Interested applicants should submit a 300-word abstract and short c.v. to the conveners by 15 May 2019: Debjani Bhattacharyya (db893@drexel.edu) and Laurie Wood (lmwood@fsu.edu ). Article-length papers (8,000-10,000 words) will be due for circulation among participants and invited commentators by 30 August 2019. Domestic airfare, accommodation, and most meals will be provided thanks to support from the American Society for Legal History and Drexel University. 

Contact Info: 

Debjani Bhattacharyya (db893@drexel.edu) and Laurie Wood (lmwood@fsu.edu )

Contact Email: 

db893@drexel.edu

More info here

BOOK: James Morton TURNER and Andrew C. ISENBERG, The Republican reversal : Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). ISBN 9780674979970, €25.00

(Source: HUP)

Harvard University Press is publishing a new book on environmental law and policy in the Republican Party from Nixon to President Trump.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Not long ago, Republicans could take pride in their party’s tradition of environmental leadership. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the GOP helped to create the Environmental Protection Agency, extend the Clean Air Act, and protect endangered species. Today, as Republicans denounce climate change as a “hoax” and seek to dismantle the environmental regulatory state they worked to build, we are left to wonder: What happened?

In The Republican Reversal, James Morton Turner and Andrew C. Isenberg show that the party’s transformation began in the late 1970s, with the emergence of a new alliance of pro-business, libertarian, and anti-federalist voters. This coalition came about through a concerted effort by politicians and business leaders, abetted by intellectuals and policy experts, to link the commercial interests of big corporate donors with states’-rights activism and Main Street regulatory distrust. Fiscal conservatives embraced cost-benefit analysis to counter earlier models of environmental policy making, and business tycoons funded think tanks to denounce federal environmental regulation as economically harmful, constitutionally suspect, and unchristian, thereby appealing to evangelical views of man’s God-given dominion of the Earth.

As Turner and Isenberg make clear, the conservative abdication of environmental concern stands out as one of the most profound turnabouts in modern American political history, critical to our understanding of the GOP’s modern success. The Republican reversal on the environment is emblematic of an unwavering faith in the market, skepticism of scientific and technocratic elites, and belief in American exceptionalism that have become the party’s distinguishing characteristics.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Morton Turner is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Wellesley College. His first book, The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964, received the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for the best book in conservation history by the Forest History Society in 2013. Turner has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Science Foundation in support of his research in environmental history, politics, and policy. Turner has also been active in local sustainability initiatives in Massachusetts.

Andrew C. Isenberg is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas and the author of many books about the American West and the environment. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, an inaugural fellow at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, and a contributor to documentaries, including America before Columbus and the award-winning Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison and American Experience: Wyatt Earp.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

1. Conservatives before and after Earth Day

2. Visions of Abundance

3. The Cost of Clean Air and Water

4. American Exceptionalism in a Warming World

Conclusion

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

More information here

BOOK: Debjani BHATTAACHARYY, Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta : The Making of Calcutta [Studies in Environment and History] (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). ISBN 9781108425742,£ 75.00

(Source: Cambridge University Press)

Cambridge University Press has published a new book which deals with aspects of colonial law and ecological change in the Bengal Delta.

ABOUT THE BOOK

What happens when a distant colonial power tries to tame an unfamiliar terrain in the world's largest tidal delta? This history of dramatic ecological changes in the Bengal Delta from 1760 to 1920 involves land, water and humans, tracing the stories and struggles that link them together. Pushing beyond narratives of environmental decline, Bhattacharyya argues that 'property-thinking', a governing tool critical in making land and water discrete categories of bureaucratic and legal management, was at the heart of colonial urbanization and the technologies behind the draining of Calcutta. The story of ecological change is narrated alongside emergent practices of land speculation and transformation in colonial law. Bhattacharyya demonstrates how this history continues to shape our built environments with devastating consequences, as shown in the Bay of Bengal's receding coastline.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Debjani Bhattacharyya, Drexel University, Philadelphia

Debjani Bhattacharyya is Assistant Professor of History at Drexel University, Philadelphia. She was a Junior Fellow of the American Institute of India Studies, and a former Research Fellow at the International Institute of Asian Studies, Leiden.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Almanac of a tidal basin
Part I. Environmental Consolidations:
1. Power and silt
2. Drying a delta
Part II. Legal Maneuvers:
3. Notarizing possessions
4. Commerce in land
Part III. Un-real Estate:
5. Speculative properties
Conclusion: disappearing coastlines.

More information with the publisher

NOTICE: Environment, Law and History Blog

David Schorr, from the Law Faculty of the Tel Aviv University, has informed us about a new blog - managed by Schorr himself and by Sarah Milov - devoted to a very original topic: the connections between environmental history and legal history (and other related fields).

Here a description of the blog:

"The connections between the environment, law, and history are deep and pervasive. Many of us, from many disciplines – law, history, geography, and environmental studies to name a few – have been working at the intersections of these fields for some time, but have had no common forum for exchanging views and information. This blog aims to enable such exchanges, allowing us to share ideas and learn about scholarship, conferences, and opportunities for collaboration with colleagues around the world".

http://environmentlawhistory.blogspot.it/.