Towards an Environmental History of the Greater Caribbean Looking for a Common Ground on the Two Shores
The Caribbean basin (Islands and continental territories) is one of the most vulnerable regions to the impacts of climate change. A historical approach to the environmental history of the Greater Caribbean is critical to understanding the challenges of the climatic crisis within the long patterns of human interactions with nature during centuries of colonization and imperialist control over natural resources, the rise and fall of the plantation system from the days of slavery to the twentieth century, waves of migrations or the more recent expansion of mass tourism. To understand this process better, it is necessary to connect economic, social, political, or cultural history with the current Environmental History and Environmental Humanities approach. In this talk, I will emphasize the common historical patterns of human interaction with the rest of nature in the wider Caribbean, even considering the diversity and particularities of the national or regional histories within the basin. In search of common ground, I will embrace the social metabolism methodology to explore the long-term flows of material and energy and study the ecological transitions in the Great Caribbean through the dialogue between the Social Sciences and Humanities and the Natural Sciences.
Date:
11 March 2025, 17:00
Venue:
Latin American Centre Library, 1 Church Walk OX2 6LY
Venue Details:
Main Seminar Room, Latin American Centre, 1 Church Walk, Oxford
Speaker:
Reinaldo Funes-Monzote (University of Havana)
Organising department:
Latin American Centre
Organiser:
Eduardo Posada-Carbó
Organiser contact email address:
eduardo.posada-carbo@lac.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
LAC Main Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Eliza Flindall
