ABSTRACT

Questions of agency, narrative emplotment, and power are critical to the work of environmental historians. In an effort to expand the methodological toolbox available to those studying these interconnected problems, this paper develops an analytical distinction between agents and actors that attempts to steer us away from anthropocentric accounts of agency and in the direction of a clearer understanding of the structures and processes of power that are involved in the doing and writing of historical narratives beyond the human. It argues that expanding the scope of agency is pivotal for gaining a fuller understanding of how power moves through the environment and those it hosts and substantiates this claim through a critical reading of a broad range of recent works on environmental history concerning, either explicitly or implicitly, the role of nonhuman agency and power. In the process, this paper explores and questions the dynamics between state and environment, human and environment and ideology and environment.

摘要

能动性、叙事情节和权力问题对于环境历史学家的工作至关重要。为了扩展研究这些相互关联的问题的人可用的方法论工具箱，本文对代理人和行动者之间进行了分析区分，试图引导我们远离以人类为中心的代理账户，并朝着更清晰地理解结构和过程的方向发展。涉及超越人类的历史叙述的权力。它认为，扩大代理范围对于更全面地了解权力如何在环境及其承载者中流动至关重要，并通过对近期有关环境历史的大量著作的批判性阅读来证实这一主张，无论是明确的还是隐含的, 非人类机构和权力的作用。在此过程中，本文探讨并质疑国家与环境、人类与环境、意识形态与环境之间的动态关系。