But this week we examined views of planetary/global environmental history: asking critically what makes us define certain events as "global," rather than simply local. Does this include events that take place at one site, but with effects that extend more widely? Can it include the spread of ideas, as well as physical changes? To what extent does our understanding of these events reflect the capacity of certain powerful institutions or interests to define things that concern them as global (and therefore something that everyone should think about), while those things that concern others are merely local? The fascinating video Events in the Collective Environmental Memory of Humanity by Jan Oosthoek gave us much to discuss concerning how certain events come to be constructed as global.
We also considered such questions by thinking about the Anthropocene. Reviewing the genesis of this concept over the last 15 years, I emphasized how it has been constructed as a scientific idea, amenable to empirical description, but how it also has many contested social and political dimensions and implications. Thus, much of the influence of the Anthropocene concept is an instance of the capacity of science to define how we understand the world (a phenomenon which itself has many political implications, as I discuss in excruciating detail in my Environmental Science and Politics course!)
And finally, we looked at how a global event can be understood locally -- particularly in the era before global communications and the spread of global perceptions. We looked at newspapers from June 1816 that reported on the strange weather experienced in Canada (snow, frost, failing crops) the year after the great eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia, which injected a vast amount of dust into the atmosphere, causing a global "year without a summer". The wonderful study resources made available by Alan MacEachern were essential to this activity.
And so here's my slides from the class:
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