Civilizing Nature

Though one might think that the booming growth of national parks worldwide represents a victory for conservation, some environmentalists beg to differ. In this volume, editors Gissibl (researcher, Leibniz-Institute of European history in Mainz, Germany), Hoohler (science and technology, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) and Kupper (senior lecturer at ETH Zurich, Switzerland) have invited over a dozen scholars to explore the darker aspects of the national park phenomenon. Several contributors advance arguments suggesting that the motives for designating territory as park land may be less about protecting the environment than advancing the economic, political and cultural agenda of imperial nation states. They contend that such states have historically sought to "civilize" nature by, for example, creating territorial boundaries that set off one area from adjacent ones, ejecting nomadic peoples who have long subsisted on wild lands, and encouraging tourism and other policies which may harm ecosystems over time. Historical, sociological and political critiques include analyses of parks as a means through which the Western powers export fundamental concepts and structures of modern capitalism to the developing world. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Patrick Kupper is Professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Innsbruck. He is the author of Creating Wilderness: a transnational history of the Swiss National Park (Berghahn 2014).