Environmental History of the Americas

At the Center for InterAmerican Studies Bielefeld, historical processes of human-nature interaction and transformation are researched and taught under the concept of interconnectedness and a decolonial perspective. The geographical focus is clearly on both Americas and the Caribbean and on the inter-American lines of connection between the two subcontinents and the Caribbean archipelago. This focus, however, cannot be understood without considering the uneven transatlantic trade, knowledge, cultural, and (forced) migration flows of the European Expansion, which thus must always be considered and made visible. Consequently, at CIAS we consider historically evolved processes of human-nature interaction and transformation and unequal power structures arising from them in an interdisciplinary perspective.

 

In the age of the Anthropocene, i.e., the age of human-induced climate change, ongoing extractivist overexploitation and destruction of ecosystems, loss of biodiversity and ecocide, and other processes threatening humans and nature, it is imperative not only to study and understand the problems of the present, but to illuminate the complex, historical processes that have led to this point. This is because, in part, the wicked problems of the present (e.g., the socially acceptable transformation of fossil energy systems) are based on historical circumstances that have evolved over a long period of time, often involving local and global, political, social, economic, and natural factors.

At the German-Latin American Maria Sibylla Merian Center for Advanced Latin American Studies (CALAS) in Guadalajara, Mexico, Eleonora Rohland and Olaf Kaltmeier, together with colleagues from the University of Guadalajara, lead the interdisciplinary research line "Managing Environmental Crises". For us, this topic is very much about the Anthropocene, the age in which humans have become a planetary force. Based on the concept of Planetary Boundaries, a group of German and Latin American researchers is investigating the historical and socio-ecological dimensions of these boundaries, which have so far been determined primarily by the natural sciences, from the particular perspective of Latin America.

We are also interested in the factors of conservation and natural heritage, climate and disaster history, health, nutrition and body history, indigenous environmental knowledge, resource and energy history, as well as the historical-literary perception and representation of nature.