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- Convenors:
-
Iris Borowy
(Shanghai University)
Matthias Heymann (Aarhus University)
Colin Coates (Glendon College, York University)
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- Chair:
-
Matthias Heymann
(Aarhus University)
- Formats:
- Roundtable
- Streams:
- Deeper Histories, Diverse Sources, Different Narratives
- Location:
- Room 8
- Sessions:
- Monday 19 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This roundtable seeks to integrate a positive global history narrative of improvements with longer, healthier and more comfortable lives for most people with a negative narrative of increasing social inequality and environmental destruction into one single, contradictory history of transformations.
Long Abstract:
There are two principal master narratives about modern global development. One is a positive story of significantly improved quality of life. Over the last 200 years, people around the world have grown taller and lived longer, the result mainly of better nutrition, better housing, better clothing, better education, higher incomes, more tax revenues and better healthcare policies.
This narrative competes with a negative view of increasing environmental degradation and social injustice. The most extreme case is probably climate change, resulting from approximately two centuries of industrialization, which has been framed as a small minority of people and nations having splashed out on fossil fuels to the detriment of the majority of people, who are suffering the consequences in the form of droughts, floods, extreme weather conditions and a plethora of secondary social and political consequences.
Both narratives are well established, using specific sets of questions, sources, methods and frames to provide overriding perspectives on global history. Often, they are cultivated in separation with only limited connection to the other, although they often describe different facets of essentially the same transformations.
This roundtable seeks to explore ways in which the diverging narratives can be integrated into more comprehensive ones that account for both positive and negative views on global development.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Monday 19 August, 2024, -Contribution short abstract:
This paper looks at the very long trajectory of human development and considers whether the assessments of positive or negative outcomes are suitable are useful categories, of whether they merely different moments in a continuous evolution of events.
Contribution long abstract:
In an old Chinese parable, an old man's horse runs away, then returns bringing more horses, then the man's son breaks his leg trying to ride one of the new horses, then war breaks out and the broken leg allows him to escape recruitment into the army and probable death. Every time the story appears to have a good ending a new twist brings misfortune, and vice versa. The experience that assessments of events can change when the time frame is modified forms part of human life, on the everyday as well as on the grand historical scale. Some examples are notorious: the Aral Sea provided irrigation water for food and cotton production until it dried out, leaving communities destitute. While obvious in hindsight, the change in water level stretched over decades, obscured by the slow pace of change. In his recent book "War", Ian Morris argues that warfare, while brutal and the sources of immense suffering, is beneficial since it tends to create large empires that, in turn, creates more peaceful lives for its subjects. Similarly, the shift towards agriculture and sedentary societies has provided millions of people with food and allowed the creation of cities, science and arts. But it has also brought social inequality, violence and disease. This paper looks at the very long trajectory of human development and considers whether the assessments of positive or negative outcomes are suitable are useful categories, of whether they merely different moments in a continuous evolution of events.
Contribution short abstract:
This work addresses the different perceptions of the soybean territorial advance in Brazil during the Great Acceleration: a plant that produces both modernity (techno-scientific and wealthy) and, on the other hand, inequalities.
Contribution long abstract:
The IRI Research Institute (IRI) was a philanthropic research institution founded by US multimillionaire brothers Nelson and David Rockefeller in 1950. Initially, the institute's purpose revolved around developing small scale projects of agricultural technification in Brazil and Venezuela. The expertise developed by the institute over the course of the 1950s, however, expanded the IRI's area of activity in the following decades through contracts financed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Alliance for Progress initiated by the John Fitzgerald Kennedy administration in 1961. Conceived on the premise of neo-Malthusian and anti-communist notions, the IRI adapted its approach to the context of the Cold War and the Green Revolution, in the belief that the improvement of the so-called underdeveloped nations would be based on the technical utilization of available natural resources, combined with experiments in agriculture and livestock farming. The focus of this paper, therefore, is on the experiments to introduce exotic plants and animal breeds with a view to producing fats to supply the foreign market. In particular, the experiments on soybeans and the change in pig herds followed the demands of the international market, contributing to significant changes in animal management techniques, the clearing of forests to plant soybeans and, finally, the replacement of lard by soybean oil as the main oil consumed in the Global South.
Contribution short abstract:
Global history, countering geo-political contours, global national economic interests, space race, augmented reality techniques, technological advancements, smart homes, artificial intelligence etc……. but while climbing stairs of human civilizational success, much has been left on the ground.
Contribution long abstract:
Global history, countering geo-political contours, global national economic interests, space race, augmented reality techniques, technological advancements, smart homes, artificial intelligence etc……. “All the world’s a stage” (Shakespeare).
Paper explores that human civilization innovations and discoveries have indeed made immense contribution in enhancing quality of human life. But while climbing stairs of human civilizational success, much has been left on the ground. The paper examines sustainable solutions for today’s endangered environment by ways and means used by our grandparents to live sustainable lives.
Paper introspects that these are epoch-making times to introspect contested conflicting ideas for our priorities and our decisions about environment. Time has come to believe that nations, world leaders, diplomats, NGOs, social groups, individuals, teachers, students etc all must …together resolve. To save us and our environment, we need to pursue what James Mill disclosed centuries back “greatest good of greatest numbers”, essence of collective good will lead the pathway to environmental sustainability. The need of change in habits for saving environment, which has been long over-due. It’s a high time warning to humans - if they did not restrict themselves from their devastating greed of more and more then probably - time is not far when we will die of scarcity of two most basic essentials i.e. air and water. Ecological disasters have already given mightier warnings, urging to enlighten ourselves, to awaken us from deep slumbered of technological advanced gadgets. World has to learn lessons of ‘restriction’ and ‘refrain’. Rehearsing ‘restrain’ from being an untailored material possession collector and ‘refrain’ from conflict of interest and influence.
March together to build sustainable cities and world all together !
Contribution short abstract:
This input highlights the results of a big inflow of Japanese second-hand cars in the Russian Far East since the end of the Soviet Union. Cherished by car drivers as reliable and affordable means of transport, they have also led to daily congestions and a substantial deterioration of air quality.
Contribution long abstract:
Already in the 1980s exhaust emissions were considered the biggest source of noxious substances in the air of Soviet Far Eastern cities like Vladivostok. However, it is after the end of the Red Empire that the numbers of cars in these cities started to rise in dizzying speed. Thanks to the closeness of Japan, the import of second-hand Japanese cars became a mass phenomenon. Due to this influx, by the end of the 2000s Primorsky Krai with its administrative centre Vladivostok had become the region with the highest density of cars in Russia and has retained this status ever since. Drivers in the region much appreciate the reliability and affordability of the Japanese second-hand cars and thereby have come to see their accessibility as a clear gain in liveability. Hence, when in 2008 the authorities restricted the influx of Japanese second-hand cars, residents responded with mass protests. Meanwhile, the density of these cars in Far-Eastern cities has led to daily congestions and a considerable deterioration of air quality. In most recent years, due to the closeness of Japan and China Primorsky Krai has also become the region with the most electric cars in Russia (in absolute numbers) and could thus become a frontrunner in low-emission car-transport. This contribution argues that on a micro-scale the case of Japanese second-hand cars in the Russian Far East illustrates quite well contradicting narratives of development that are worthwhile to deal with in view of the more comprehensive picture the roundtable seeks.
Contribution short abstract:
As an historian of the international oil industry and the environment, I have studied the plans of oilman and environmental diplomat Maurice Strong to develop Third World oil resources, which reveal a tension between the positive and negative development narratives.
Contribution long abstract:
In July 1979, Maurice Strong, a Canadian oil and minerals businessman who had started a second career in UN environmental and development politics, created the International Energy Development Corporation (IEDC). Recognizing the severe economic repercussions of the 1979 oil shock for oil-importing countries in the developing world, the Geneva-based IEDC was intended to facilitate oil exploration to turn these countries with negative oil trade balances into oil producers. To implement his vision of finding oil for the developing world – all while abiding by the highest environmental standards and winning the trust of host governments with fair investment procedures – Strong recruited a highly respected and experienced management team and gained major corporate invostors for exploration projects in Congo, Egypt, Sudan, Ghana, Angola, Tanzania and Turkey. Strong’s own company and his partners, however, ran into financial difficulties before the explored resources could be exploited for the benefit of the host countries. The IEDC was acquired by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation in 1983, which ended up developing part of the explored fields, but nowhere near what Strong had envisioned for the developing world. The case of the IEDC represents a unique and understudied case of North-South energy and development cooperation and reveals the ambiguity in the actions and rhetoric of Maurice Strong, who propagated sustainable growth and development, which in his eyes included developing Third World oil fields.
Contribution short abstract:
This study aims to investigate the dynamics between major corporations and transnational environmental activism in the Southeast Asian palm oil agribusiness sector, with a focus on sustainable palm oil and food security. It also aims to assess the impact of greenwashing practices in this context.
Contribution long abstract:
The ever-versatile global commodity palm oil, often criticized for its association with deforestation, has sparked extensive debate across academia, government, and the media. Malaysia and Indonesia, the two largest palm oil producers, have been criticized for environmental issues, including deforestation and carbon emissions. Despite being labelled as the 'least disruptive crop' when compared to other edible oils, palm oil continues to be a target of criticism from various green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth (FOE), and the Rainforest Action Network (RAN). These targeted campaigns persist despite numerous studies demonstrating the efficient land use associated with palm oil production. The intensity of these criticisms brings into question the greenwashing activities of major corporations and may have blinded these green groups from recognizing the inherent advantages of palm oil over other edible oils. This study investigates the dynamics between these major firms and green organizations, assessing whether sustainable palm oil could comprehensively address poverty and various dimensions of food security. Additionally, it places a spotlight on the industry's shift towards transnationalism and the emergence of transnational environmental activism as central themes for analysis.
Contribution short abstract:
A transnational entangled history could connect and balance the positive and negative master narratives. Three challenges for such a history: (1) connections to (neo)colonial histories, (2) going beyond anthropocentric history and (3) debunking 'newness' and linearity.
Contribution long abstract:
The two master narratives, a positive signaling the improved quality of life, and a negative one focused on environmental degradation and social injustice are two sides of the same coin. Focusing on just one side gives a false understanding of developments i.e. a gain without pain and a loss without revenues. To connect these developments could be studied as one entangled history. For this a transnational focus is needed that crosses national and continental boundaries. In doing so it encounters (neo)colonial histories. These are sensitive and often politicized literatures and navigating them requires a plurality of voices and viewpoints. A transnational approach can show positive and negative effects of the whole socio-technical system. This could unpack the mechanisms that caused these demeaning practices and environmental effects in various places. Secondly, such history could stretch the boundaries including transnational commons and non-human agents. It can show how exploitation of commons changed environments and how environmental systems adapted, were resilient and relapsed. Attention to these phenomena signal that history continues beyond anthropocentric developments and the contemporary is not a ‘final chapter’. A final challenge is to debunk the linear nature and ‘newness’ entrenched in both narratives. These obscure histories of temporal decline and revival. Thinking cyclical also opens questions about historic ideas about and beyond a ´end of life´ narrative – what happens after disposal, destruction, extinction? Attention to the whole system can shed light on shifting practices, resilience, niche practices, revivals and resistance that can inform rethinking of contemporary arrangements.