Description
In the wake of the Second World War, internationalists identified science as both the cause of and the solution to world crisis. Unless civilization learned to control the unprecedented powers science had unleashed, global catastrophe was imminent. But the internationalists found hope in the idea of world government. In The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment, Perrin Selcer argues that the metaphor of "Spaceship Earth"-the idea of the planet as a single interconnected system-exemplifies this moment, when a mix of anxiety and hope inspired visions of world community and the proliferation of international institutions.
Selcer tells the story of how the United Nations built the international knowledge infrastructure that made the global-scale environment visible. Experts affiliated with UN agencies helped make the "global"-as in global population, global climate, and global economy-an object in need of governance. Selcer traces how UN programs such as UNESCO's Arid Lands Project, the production of a soil map of the world, and plans for a global environmental-monitoring system fell short of utopian ambitions to cultivate world citizens but did produce an international community of experts with influential connections to national governments. He shows how events and personalities, cultures and ecologies, bureaucracies and ideologies, decolonization and the Cold War interacted to make global knowledge. A major contribution to global history, environmental history, and the history of development, this book relocates the origins of planetary environmentalism in the postwar politics of scale.
About the Author
Perrin Selcer is an assistant professor in the History Department and Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan.
Reviews
Perrin Selcer shows the persistent attempts by UN-related researchers to produce global citizenship. In the process, he shows convincingly, a global epistemic community was created. Impressively researched, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment is highly original. An authoritative study. -- Alison Bashford, author of Global Population: History, Geopolitics and Life on Earth
The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment reveals the hidden history of international society's formative ideas. Before NGOs, before a world community could have moral weight, there had to be a theory of reform that was both widely shared and planetary in scale. Selcer shows how foundational beliefs of globalism-development, conservation, world citizenship, localism, the biosphere-originated among an international community of scientists and activists seeking answers for aggression, disease, and scarcity. Along the way are vivid portraits of iconic thinkers, such as Margaret Mead, Gunnar Myrdal, George Kennan, who often formed unexpected alliances. An absorbing, thoroughly detailed account. -- Nick Cullather, Indiana University, Bloomington
Selcer's path-breaking study provides an original and thought-provoking account of the origins of global environmentalism within the world of mid-twentieth-century internationalism and its associated movements. His work brims with novel and important insights that will reshape scholarship in international history, environmental history, and the history of science. -- Jessica Wang, University of British Columbia
An engaging microhistory. * Choice *
In these accounts, the environment was a cause for diplomats and scientists, not just wild-haired, Birkenstock-clad activists. In this sense, [The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment] move environmental history from the periphery to the mainstream of postwar intellectual and political history. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Provides a useful nonlinear understanding of a commonly overlooked postwar success: the creation of potential energy stored in a transnational understanding of ecology that awaits a receptive political climate for influence and application by technocrats. * Journal of American History *
An insightful book. Selcer has made a valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarship that links environmental history, the history of science, and international history. * Diplomatic History *
A major contribution to the global history of environmental sciences and politics that lays new ground for
future research. * Isis *
Book Information
ISBN 9780231166485
Author Perrin Selcer
Format Hardback
Page Count 400
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
Selcer tells the story of how the United Nations built the international knowledge infrastructure that made the global-scale environment visible. Experts affiliated with UN agencies helped make the "global"-as in global population, global climate, and global economy-an object in need of governance. Selcer traces how UN programs such as UNESCO's Arid Lands Project, the production of a soil map of the world, and plans for a global environmental-monitoring system fell short of utopian ambitions to cultivate world citizens but did produce an international community of experts with influential connections to national governments. He shows how events and personalities, cultures and ecologies, bureaucracies and ideologies, decolonization and the Cold War interacted to make global knowledge. A major contribution to global history, environmental history, and the history of development, this book relocates the origins of planetary environmentalism in the postwar politics of scale.
About the Author
Perrin Selcer is an assistant professor in the History Department and Program in the Environment at the University of Michigan.
Reviews
Perrin Selcer shows the persistent attempts by UN-related researchers to produce global citizenship. In the process, he shows convincingly, a global epistemic community was created. Impressively researched, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment is highly original. An authoritative study. -- Alison Bashford, author of Global Population: History, Geopolitics and Life on Earth
The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment reveals the hidden history of international society's formative ideas. Before NGOs, before a world community could have moral weight, there had to be a theory of reform that was both widely shared and planetary in scale. Selcer shows how foundational beliefs of globalism-development, conservation, world citizenship, localism, the biosphere-originated among an international community of scientists and activists seeking answers for aggression, disease, and scarcity. Along the way are vivid portraits of iconic thinkers, such as Margaret Mead, Gunnar Myrdal, George Kennan, who often formed unexpected alliances. An absorbing, thoroughly detailed account. -- Nick Cullather, Indiana University, Bloomington
Selcer's path-breaking study provides an original and thought-provoking account of the origins of global environmentalism within the world of mid-twentieth-century internationalism and its associated movements. His work brims with novel and important insights that will reshape scholarship in international history, environmental history, and the history of science. -- Jessica Wang, University of British Columbia
An engaging microhistory. * Choice *
In these accounts, the environment was a cause for diplomats and scientists, not just wild-haired, Birkenstock-clad activists. In this sense, [The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment] move environmental history from the periphery to the mainstream of postwar intellectual and political history. * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Provides a useful nonlinear understanding of a commonly overlooked postwar success: the creation of potential energy stored in a transnational understanding of ecology that awaits a receptive political climate for influence and application by technocrats. * Journal of American History *
An insightful book. Selcer has made a valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarship that links environmental history, the history of science, and international history. * Diplomatic History *
A major contribution to the global history of environmental sciences and politics that lays new ground for
future research. * Isis *
Book Information
ISBN 9780231166485
Author Perrin Selcer
Format Hardback
Page Count 400
Imprint Columbia University Press
Publisher Columbia University Press
