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Book Review
| Incorporare la natura: Storie ambientali del novecento [To Incorporate Nature: Environmental History of the 1900s]. By Simone Neri Serneri. Rome: Carocci, 2005. 335pp. Endnotes. $30.
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| Usually, it is rather difficult to review a collection of essays, but this is not the case here. In fact, the essays collected in this book represent a coherent path of research, offering both a synthesis of the author's works and a fresh and interesting interpretation of Italian environmental history. |
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Cities, industries, cultures, and policies: these are the basic topics of the thirteen essays in Serneri's volume, which span from the beginning of Italian industrialization in the 1880s up to the 1980s. Serneri reconsiders the story of the sanitization of cities from an environmental perspective, showing that those sanitization policies were unable to deal effectively with the new ecological contradictions of urbanization. Additionally, the first Italian laws about industrial pollution seem to have created more problems than they solved (for instance, the policy of sending away the polluting industries was not only useless but also dangerous). It is possible to see these essays as falling into groups dealing with three main subjects (industries, cities, and cultures and policies, with an additional discussion of the history of the discipline), but the connections among the essays are numerous. Neri Serneri's consideration of policies and cultures, social conflicts and technological solutions, cities and industries all together enriches the discussion of each essay individually. Environmental history should be a history of relationships viewed holistically. Incorporare la natura is a good example of the benefits of this heuristic and methodological approach. |
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Serneri's work also makes an original contribution in terms of the range of topics it addresses. It is often noted that in Italy, as well as in Spain, environmental history has its roots in the old agrarian history. Consequently, Italian environmental history has developed a significant amount of research on forests or, at least, on rural landscape, while the issues of urban and industrial environments have been left largely unexplored. Incorporare la natura addresses this imbalance: by reading this book, we know something more about the history of Italian cities and industries, and Italian environmental history becomes richer and more complete. Water is the tool used by the author to demonstrate the deep connections of urban/industrial environments with the whole nature of nation. |
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Finally, Serneri's regional approach to the study of Italian environmental policies is original and useful. It allows for the consideration of the political and institutional history of Italy over the last forty years (from the start of regions in the 1970s), and shows that environmental policies arise from negotiations between central and local powers and among various interest groups. This simultaneous national and local perspective allows Serneri to verify the results of these policies adopted by the decision makers, rather than simply to compile a list of laws and/or intentions. |
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In a forthcoming interview ("Il XX secolo e la storia dell'ambiente. Intervista a John McNeill," in I frutti di Demetra. Bollettino di storia e ambiente), John McNeill suggests that urban environmental history is becoming one of the most interesting fields of research in our discipline. Incorporare la natura confirms this thesis. |
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Marco Armiero is a postdoctoral fellow at the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University. In Italy, he is researcher at the National Research Council and teaches environmental history at the University of Naples L'Orientale. He is the author of several books and essays on the history of forests, fishing, environmental conflicts, and on environmental historiography. |
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