History and sustainability

This edition of the podcast reports on a conference entitled
History and Sustainability which was held at the University of
Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and
Social Sciences on 6 and 7 September 2007. The podcast explores
how history can make contributions to the debate about
sustainability and the education of sustainability. This is an
exercise in thinking about the theoretical and methodological
challenges that the discipline faces as well as the question of
the place of environmental history in the academic spectrum and
curriculum. Paul Warde, co-organiser of the conference, explains
the rationale of the meeting, which is that sustainability, as a
concept can only be understood historically because it is about
survival over time. Sverker Sorlin, explains why we need to
infuse the environment as a concept into historical thinking and
that environmental historians play a crucial role in this
process. Kate Showers, Research Fellow at the University of
Sussex, talks about the importance of disciplinary synthesis for
environmental history. Finally, Libby Robin of the National
Australian Museum explores the the long now and the big here.


Websites mentioned in this podcast: Long Now Foundation website,
www.longnow.org; Missing link podcast, missinglinkpodcast.com