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Book Review
| Views from the South: Environmental Stories from the Mediterranean World (19th-20th Centuries). Edited by Marco Armiero. Naples: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. Istituto de Studi sulle Società del Mediterraneo, 2006. 237 pp. Paper 25.00 (Euro).
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| This book consists of an introduction by the editor and fifteen short chapters, fourteen of which deal with the Mediterranean world. The exception is the initial chapter, by Donald Worster, which makes the case for the utility, indeed necessity, of environmental history in general. The fourteen chapters devoted to the Mediterranean include one on contemporary issues surrounding water use and water policy in Jordan, and thirteen on Mediterranean Europe. Eight of these deal wholly or mainly with Italy. Albania, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Croatia also receive some attention. The themes represented are mainly rural ones—woods, water, mountains, and so forth—considered as material realities or as objects of legal and administrative action. There is rather little about the cultural and intellectual sides of environmental history. In this respect it is, I believe, representative of environmental history as typically practiced in Italy and Spain. |
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The volume is the result of a conference hosted by the Istituto de Studi sulle Società del Mediterraneo, from which several of the authors hail. It gives a fair impression of what Mediterranean scholars, especially Italian ones, are up to in the field of environmental history. In his introduction, Armiero states that part of the goal of the book, and the reason it appears in English, is to bring modern environmental history in southern Europe to the attention of scholars elsewhere who might not read Italian, Spanish, and other languages of the region. It is also intended to help scholars within the region, but from different countries, profit from one another's work. |
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