Defining Environmental History with Marc Hall - EEH podcast

The Exploring Environmental History Podcast is nearing the end of a very interesting series of short interviews with important names in the field of Environmental History. The question to each of the was to give a definition of the field and host Jan Oosthoek asked them to expand a bit on the given points.

In the third interview he spoke with Marc Hall (Marc Hall on mp3) and Hall reacts very much like the previous speakers, Donald Worster and Paul Warde, by not fitting the discipline in one catchy line. He also points out there is a historic development of the field which has made is enlarge from using history to view the problems with environment, to studying the environment as a phenomenon in human history whether troubling or beneficial. Eventually the field of Environmental History could also be seen as an umbrella under which historians with a different subjects and angles meet each other.

What they then have in common is that they not only interact with sociologists and economists as other historians but also with other, ecological, disciplines. Consequently they add to the subjects in history of race, class and gender, new subjects like health, globalization, evolution and so on. Just like the previous speakers he regards the field as new, still relatively small and still in development. Surely taking the human habitat as a relevant point has enriched perspectives in history. It is very interesting to take in these short interviews one after the other.

More Exploring Environmental History:
Defining Environmental History - Paul Warde,
Defining Environmental History - Donald Worster,
Natural Disasters,
Canada and New Zealand,
Environmental history.