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The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment : How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth / Perrin Selcer.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Columbia Studies in International and Global HistoryPublisher: New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Description: 1 online resource : 12 b&w illustrationsContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780231166485
  • 9780231548236
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 363.7/0526
LOC classification:
  • GE195
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction. Science, Global Governance, And The Environment -- 1. Behind The Burlap Curtain -- 2. Conserving The World Community -- 3. Men Against The Desert -- 4. The Soil Map Of The World And The Politics Of Scale -- 5. Locating The Global Environment -- 6. Spaceship Earth In The Age Of Fracture -- Conclusion. The View From A Utopia'S Ruins -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index
Summary: In the wake of the Second World War, internationalists identified science as both the cause of and the solution to world crisis. Unless civilization learned to control the unprecedented powers science had unleashed, global catastrophe was imminent. But the internationalists found hope in the idea of world government. In The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment, Perrin Selcer argues that the metaphor of "Spaceship Earth"-the idea of the planet as a single interconnected system-exemplifies this moment, when a mix of anxiety and hope inspired visions of world community and the proliferation of international institutions.Selcer tells the story of how the United Nations built the international knowledge infrastructure that made the global-scale environment visible. Experts affiliated with UN agencies helped make the "global"-as in global population, global climate, and global economy-an object in need of governance. Selcer traces how UN programs such as UNESCO's Arid Lands Project, the production of a soil map of the world, and plans for a global environmental-monitoring system fell short of utopian ambitions to cultivate world citizens but did produce an international community of experts with influential connections to national governments. He shows how events and personalities, cultures and ecologies, bureaucracies and ideologies, decolonization and the Cold War interacted to make global knowledge. A major contribution to global history, environmental history, and the history of development, this book relocates the origins of planetary environmentalism in the postwar politics of scale.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780231548236

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction. Science, Global Governance, And The Environment -- 1. Behind The Burlap Curtain -- 2. Conserving The World Community -- 3. Men Against The Desert -- 4. The Soil Map Of The World And The Politics Of Scale -- 5. Locating The Global Environment -- 6. Spaceship Earth In The Age Of Fracture -- Conclusion. The View From A Utopia'S Ruins -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In the wake of the Second World War, internationalists identified science as both the cause of and the solution to world crisis. Unless civilization learned to control the unprecedented powers science had unleashed, global catastrophe was imminent. But the internationalists found hope in the idea of world government. In The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment, Perrin Selcer argues that the metaphor of "Spaceship Earth"-the idea of the planet as a single interconnected system-exemplifies this moment, when a mix of anxiety and hope inspired visions of world community and the proliferation of international institutions.Selcer tells the story of how the United Nations built the international knowledge infrastructure that made the global-scale environment visible. Experts affiliated with UN agencies helped make the "global"-as in global population, global climate, and global economy-an object in need of governance. Selcer traces how UN programs such as UNESCO's Arid Lands Project, the production of a soil map of the world, and plans for a global environmental-monitoring system fell short of utopian ambitions to cultivate world citizens but did produce an international community of experts with influential connections to national governments. He shows how events and personalities, cultures and ecologies, bureaucracies and ideologies, decolonization and the Cold War interacted to make global knowledge. A major contribution to global history, environmental history, and the history of development, this book relocates the origins of planetary environmentalism in the postwar politics of scale.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mrz 2022)