• RCC Publication Roundup 2018

    RCC Publication Roundup 2018

    If you are looking for some good reading material for the festive period and have a taste for environmental history and humanities, look no further! Here is a roundup of the 2018 publications from the RCC and affiliate publishers. RCC Perspectives The online journal publishes provocative, less formal pieces related to the Rachel Carson Center’s…

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  • CfP: Irregular Ecologies: The Environmental Impact of Unconventional Warfare

    CfP: Irregular Ecologies: The Environmental Impact of Unconventional Warfare

    Workshop, 20.07.2019 – 21.07.2019 Location: Florianopolis, Brazil Conveners: Christof Mauch (Rachel Carson Center, LMU Munich) and Javier Puente (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile) Warfare seldom affects humans alone. While inflicting devastating effects on societies, armed conflicts also shape economic, cultural, sociopolitical, and ecological transformations. As violence territorializes, armed conflicts begin to affect the ecologies and livelihoods…

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  • Pushing Wine in a “Bierland”: The Case of East Germany

    Pushing Wine in a “Bierland”:  The Case of East Germany

    By John Gillespie In some way or another, all modern states establish alcohol policies. One important question in any study of these systems is whether or not the type of drink makes any difference.

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  • Saturday Morning’s Politics of Seeing

    Saturday Morning’s Politics of Seeing

    Nancy Jacobs, Professor of History at Brown University, Rhode Island (USA), provides a rich and personal account of practicing interdisciplinary research. On a field trip to uncover knowledge and beliefs about the African grey parrot in Cameroon, Nancy worked together with her brother (an experienced birder) and her field assistant (an ornithologist), gaining deep insights…

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  • Mumbai Deluge 2017: Nowadays Rain Gods Have a New Tool—Plastic Bags!

    by Ayushi Dhawan We often do not think twice before buying a plastic bag at a supermarket or a shopping mall. It’s bought because it’s needed and discarded after being used for a short while. How harmful can these everyday practices be to our environment? Mumbai’s recent floods definitely have a story to tell in…

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  • Toxic Floods: Let’s Talk about the Weather

    By Simone M. Müller We’ve probably all been thinking about the weather lately. Our officemates are sneezing, others are coughing, the first one is turning in a sick note. It’s the time of year when weather-related topics start dominating our everyday conversation: the change of the season, the turning of the leaves from deep green…

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  • Day 7. Danube Excursion: Bratislava—Munich

    by Lea Wiser Bratislava †’ Munich   Spending a night on a boat and waking up to views over the glimmering river is not something that happens every day. After a long night, a hearty breakfast helped us to regain our energy for the last guided tour with Peter Pisut, who specializes in the historical…

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  • Day 6. Danube Excursion: Vienna—Bratislava

    by Laura Kuen Vienna †’ Orth †’ Gabčíkovo †’ Bratislava Traveling from Vienna to Bratislava, our day’s topics branched in quite different directions: water power and nature conservation. We first visited the Austrian National Park Donau-Auen in Orth and later the Gabčíkovo Dams, Slovakia’s biggest hydroelectric plant. Conservation in the Donau-Auen The national park, which spans the distance…

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  • Day 2. Danube Excursion: Deggendorf—Passau

    Written by Leon Gomoll Deggendorf †’ Vilshofen †’ Jochenstein †’ Passau Bridge-Building and Nature Conservation on the Donau Early Modern Bridges and Politics in Bavaria On the second day of our field trip, we learned about Early Modern bridge-building in Bavaria. Martin Keßler’s talk focused on the politics of bridges, using as an example the…

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