New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World
A kaleidoscopic rethinking of how we come to know the earth.
 
This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world traditions understood human and geological origins? How does the inclusion of multiple cosmologies change the meaning of the Anthropocene and the global climate crisis? By carefully examining these questions, New Earth Histories sets an ambitious agenda for how we think about the earth.
 
The chapters consider debates about the age and structure of the earth, how humans and earth systems interact, and how empire has been conceived in multiple traditions. The methods the authors deploy are diverse—from cultural history and visual and material studies to ethnography, geography, and Indigenous studies—and the effect is to highlight how earth knowledge emerged from historically specific situations. New Earth Histories provides both a framework for studying science at a global scale and fascinating examples to educate as well as inspire future work. Essential reading for students and scholars of earth science history, environmental humanities, history of science and religion, and science and empire.
1143200015
New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World
A kaleidoscopic rethinking of how we come to know the earth.
 
This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world traditions understood human and geological origins? How does the inclusion of multiple cosmologies change the meaning of the Anthropocene and the global climate crisis? By carefully examining these questions, New Earth Histories sets an ambitious agenda for how we think about the earth.
 
The chapters consider debates about the age and structure of the earth, how humans and earth systems interact, and how empire has been conceived in multiple traditions. The methods the authors deploy are diverse—from cultural history and visual and material studies to ethnography, geography, and Indigenous studies—and the effect is to highlight how earth knowledge emerged from historically specific situations. New Earth Histories provides both a framework for studying science at a global scale and fascinating examples to educate as well as inspire future work. Essential reading for students and scholars of earth science history, environmental humanities, history of science and religion, and science and empire.
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New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World

New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World

New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World

New Earth Histories: Geo-Cosmologies and the Making of the Modern World

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Overview

A kaleidoscopic rethinking of how we come to know the earth.
 
This book brings the history of the geosciences and world cosmologies together, exploring many traditions, including Chinese, Pacific, Islamic, South and Southeast Asian conceptions of the earth’s origin and makeup. Together the chapters ask: How have different ideas about the sacred, animate, and earthly changed modern environmental sciences? How have different world traditions understood human and geological origins? How does the inclusion of multiple cosmologies change the meaning of the Anthropocene and the global climate crisis? By carefully examining these questions, New Earth Histories sets an ambitious agenda for how we think about the earth.
 
The chapters consider debates about the age and structure of the earth, how humans and earth systems interact, and how empire has been conceived in multiple traditions. The methods the authors deploy are diverse—from cultural history and visual and material studies to ethnography, geography, and Indigenous studies—and the effect is to highlight how earth knowledge emerged from historically specific situations. New Earth Histories provides both a framework for studying science at a global scale and fascinating examples to educate as well as inspire future work. Essential reading for students and scholars of earth science history, environmental humanities, history of science and religion, and science and empire.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226828596
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 11/06/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 400
File size: 24 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Alison Bashford is Scientia Professor in History and codirector of the New Earth Histories Research Program at the University of New South Wales in Australia. Emily M. Kern is assistant professor of history of science at the University of Chicago. Adam Bobbette is a lecturer in geographical and earth sciences at the University of Glasgow. 

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Foreword

Dipesh Chakrabarty

Introduction: New Earth Histories

Alison Bashford, Emily M. Kern, and Adam Bobbette


Part I New Earthly Cosmologies

1 Of Celestial Gods and Terrestrial Globes in Modern India

Sumathi Ramaswamy

2 Living in an Eggshell: Cosmological Emplacement in Nguyễn Vietnam, 1802–1883

Kathryn Dyt

3 The Mountain’s Many Faces: How Geologists Mistook Chomolungma for Everest

Ruth Gamble

4 Think like a Fish: New Oceanic Histories

Anne Salmond, Dan Hikuroa, and Natalie Robertson


Part II New Geo-Theologies

5 The Voices of an Eloquent Earth: Tracing the Many Directions of Colonial Geo-Theology

Jarrod Hore

6 The Spiritual Geographies of Plate Tectonics: Javanese Islam, Volcanology, and Earth’s New History

Adam Bobbette

7 Geo-Spiritualities of the Flood: Political Geologies of the Great Deluge on the Mountains of Anatolia

Zeynep Oguz


Part III New Elemental Histories

8 “Glass Worke”: Precious Minerals and the Archives of Early Modern Earth Sciences

Claire Conklin Sabel

9 “The Agent of the Most Dire of Calamities”: Ice, Waste, and Frozen Futures

Alexis Rider

10 Hydropolitics for a New Nation: Hydrological Origins and Limits for the Australian Interior

Ruth A. Morgan

11 Earth Time, Ice Time, Species Time: The Emergence of Glacial Chronology

Emily M. Kern

12 Exchanging Fire: A Planetary History of the Explosion

Nigel Clark


Part IV New Geo-Temporalities

13 Holocene Time Perspective

Perrin Selcer

14 “American Blitzkrieg” or “Ecological Indian”? Inequalities in Narrating Environmental Degradation through Deep Time

Melissa Charenko

15 Imperial Melancholy and the Subversion of Ruins in the Amazon

Raphael Uchôa

16 Gondwanaland Fictions: Modern Histories of an Ancient Continent

Alison Bashford


Afterword

Alison Bashford, Emily M. Kern, and Adam Bobbette

Notes

Index

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