Environment, Technology, and Development

Abstract

Histories of environment and histories of technology have moved in exciting, interdisciplinary directions in recent years, with increasing recognition that both environments and technologies are made and remade, gaining meaning only in specific historical settings. With historical scholarship weighted towards examples from the North Atlantic world, this volume provides a collection of grounded case studies from across the modern world that interrogate the relationship between environment and technology in developmental practices and discourses. Development projects have often involved assumptions that humans can create and wield technology to harness, improve or protect the non-human environment. This volume will not simply discredit these assumptions by revealing their nefarious effects on our society and planet, but instead historicise them by locating them within specific power structures and epistemologies. The connections and conversations between dispersed cases raised here point us to more nuanced conclusions about the causes and effects, the objects and subjects of history, in this dynamic interaction between environment, technology, and development.