Rivers are ideal subjects for environmental historians not only because water access is a pressing issue today, but also as they are sites of complex human-nature interactions. Human transformations of river systems have not always been detrimental, but generally they have had major negative consequences, emblematic of the Anthropocene. Early historians of river systems (influenced by the contemporary environmentalist movement), like Donald Worster, were interested in how they were exploited for human use, believing that the stories of rivers were those of declension. Eventually, the declension focus gave way to a hybrid understanding of nature. Instead of cleaving the human and non-human apart: historians like Richard White have argued in favor viewing changes to “nature” as additions to a “second nature” not an aberration of “pristine nature.”
Rivers, Rights, and Riveting Historiography
Rivers, Rights, and Riveting Historiography
Rivers, Rights, and Riveting Historiography
Rivers are ideal subjects for environmental historians not only because water access is a pressing issue today, but also as they are sites of complex human-nature interactions. Human transformations of river systems have not always been detrimental, but generally they have had major negative consequences, emblematic of the Anthropocene. Early historians of river systems (influenced by the contemporary environmentalist movement), like Donald Worster, were interested in how they were exploited for human use, believing that the stories of rivers were those of declension. Eventually, the declension focus gave way to a hybrid understanding of nature. Instead of cleaving the human and non-human apart: historians like Richard White have argued in favor viewing changes to “nature” as additions to a “second nature” not an aberration of “pristine nature.”