Environmental History Of China Research Articles

A reassessment of source citation issues in The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China by Mark Elvin

Mark Elvin’s The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China is one of the best comprehensive works on the environmental history of China both at home and abroad, and has deservedly garnered much praise. However, the rationality of the sources it cites and the suitability of their application is quite controversial, chiefly centering on how sources in the category of poetry and literature, which are newly drawing attention, can more effectively play a role in the field of environmental history. One of Elvin’s objectives was to outline the true history of environmental development, drawing upon traditional sources from the classical Chinese canons as well as previous Chinese findings, and with respect to the interpretation of specific environmental issues, he essentially realized this vision. However, that he relied solely on interpretations of poetic and literary sources in elevating microcosmic events to macroscopic constructs seems like a stretch, and errors and misinterpretations arising from substituting psychological facts for historical facts are present as well; the addition of “overreaching” value judgments causes him to unwittingly succumb to the pitfall of the theory of linear aggravation of environmental decline. He is not the sole example of such tendencies, which are also clearly reflected in environmental histories of China written by Western scholars, as represented by Robert B. Marks, Elizabeth C. Economy, and so on, and which are in urgent need of correction. Appropriate sources are the basis for an accurate understanding of environmental issues, and objective interpretation is the premise for obtaining rational solutions. Avoiding existing malpractices, transforming the historical sources in various disciplines, and clarifying the place of the “environment” in the past, present and future are still focal points in current research on the environmental history of China.

The Geography of Styles of Reasoning: East and West, North and South

Hacking’s (1985) concept of ‘styles of reasoning’ has prompted research into a multitude of markedly different areas, including: learning and teaching of science (Hawkins and Pea 1987), the history and philosophy of the use of case studies (Forrester 1996), epistemic differences in German and American embryology (Maienschein 1991), the relationship between philosophy and history of science (Radder 1997), and more recently even the relationship between sexuality, translation, and East Asian studies (Chiang 2009). This article attempts to add to this discourse by considering the concept of ‘styles of reasoning’ from the perspective of history of science and geography in China. First, it discusses observation and correlative thinking in the traditional Chinese science of dili (principles of the earth) and fengshui (wind and water), focusing on the meaning and difficulty of the translation of the concept shi , ‘configurational force,’ which embodied an astute early qualitative understanding of gravity and its relationship to fertility. Seminal texts from various dynasties considered in this discussion include the Book of Burial, Classic of Burial, Yellow Emperor’s Classic of House Siting, Arousing the Dragon Classic, Twenty Four Difficult Problems , and Water Dragon Classic . The article then argues that this different ‘style of reasoning’ displayed in the discipline of dili became blurred in Western scientific styles of reasoning to become dilixue (geography). A journal article on the history of the development of the concept of ‘mountain veins’ in traditional Chinese science by a member of the Chinese Geological Survey, Weng Wenhao (1925), is indicative of this melding of Eastern and Western styles of reasoning. It is posited that even with the strength of China’s early scientific foundations, the acceptance in China of Western scientific reasoning was markedly accelerated due to the environmental history of China (Elvin 2004). The environmental history of China over three thousand years is then compared to that of Australia over the past two hundred years using the traditional dili construct to argue that northern hemisphere peoples coming to the south have had to modify their styles of reasoning to perceive the ritualizations of knowledge inherent in northern knowledge systems, based on the generally more fertile geographies of the power bases of the north. It is argued that accepted ‘universal’ theoretical stances such as the market approach advocated by Hayek (1980 and 1976) have more of a geographic basis than is realized and that continuing to follow the ‘logic of short term advantage’ (Elvin 2004) and the ‘ethics of chance’ (Paton 2009) that have become major catalysts to present day market-based systems could have a very negative effect on the survival of the human species over the long term.

Human nature and social complexity: a common challenge for Chinese philosophy and marketing

A review of the English language academic literature on East Asian business ethical practices reveals an inordinate focus on Confucian values. This paper argues that present day business value systems in East Asia are rooted in a much more complex array of philosophical stances including Legalism, Mohism, Daoism and Buddhism from a traditional perspective, and Christianity, Marxism and the will to power of Nietzsche as more contemporary influences. The paper then posits that the latter influences made great inroads into Chinese culture in particular because of the environmental history of China, and that such environmental influences have been much neglected in the conception of western business ethics. The paper concludes with discussion of the ubiquitous social embedding of marketing that faces the same human and social complexity explored by various East Asian scholars described in this paper. We note that modern marketers often fail to own up to their macro social responsibilities.

Defining the Explicanda in the 'West and the Rest' Debate: Bryant's Critique and its Critics

BACKGROUND CONSIDERATIONS Let me begin by putting some cards on the table. My perspective is that of someone trained more than forty years ago in western European history, but who has since worked almost entirely on the history of China, primarily from sources in the original language but almost always within an explicitly or implicitly comparative framework. I wrote my doctoral thesis on the first functioning formally, that is electorally, democratic institution in China. This was the city council of the Chinese part of Shanghai from 1905-1914. I spent a lot of time looking for elements of proto-democracy in late-imperial China, and found them to be real and interesting, but late, and slight in comparison to the ideas and pressures emanating from the modern European presence in China (Elvin 1967; 1968; 1996). After that I turned mainly to other aspects of pre-modern China, and began by contributing to the upward re-evaluation of the Chinese technology and economy of the medieval and late-imperial periods in which Jacques Gernet, Joseph Needham, Robert Hartwell, and others led the way in the West (Elvin 1972; 1973a; 1975a; 1977; 1995a; 1996). My own particular role was to re-analyze and reformulate the rich empirical work of the two generations of Japanese scholarship on which a large part of this re-evaluation now ultimately rests. Names like those of Kato Shigeshi, Amano Motonosuke, Miyazaki Ichisada, Sudo Yoshiyuki, Yabuuchi Kiyoshi, Shiba Yoshinobu and other major figures from Japanese sinology dealing with economic and scientific themes in Chinese history are a currently nearly forgotten part of the bedrock of our current understanding, both 'orthodox' and 'revisionist,' however these slippery terms are interpreted. I spent the years from 1990 through 2002 mostly working on the environmental history of China (Elvin 1993b; 1995a; 1995b; 1998a; 1998b; 2002a; 2002b; 2003; 2004a). To some extent I thus lost the thread of the rapid developments in world social and economic historiography during these years. So I am out of date in this regard. At the same time, I am perhaps slightly ahead of it with respect to the history of the environment, which only plays a limited part in the themes tackled by Joseph Bryant in his critique, and Jack Goldstone, and Rosaire Langlois in their commentaries. Environmental history is, however, important in providing a crosscheck on many ideas developed by economic and sociological historians (Elvin 1993b; 1998b; 2002a). I think that the issues forcefully, and at times brilliantly, raised by Bryant, together with the ripostes of his two critics, can lead to progress in clarifying what it is that we should be trying to explain, the key explicanda of the debates about the West and 'the rest'. (1) It is worse than useless to develop theories to explain what, so far as careful scholarship can tell us, has not been the case. (Put another way, the reconstruction of the factual 'stories' to the extent our knowledge allows is still of primary importance, even if we are more conscious than in earlier days of the many-layered epistemological obstacles that can be involved. (2)) This is not just a truism. One of the long-term problems of comparative social history in this area has been the serious, and often avoidable, empirical errors made in the past regarding China even by such giants of the field as Max Weber and Fernand Braudel (Elvin 1983b; 1984; 2002c). The unsentimental clarification of what it is that actually needs to be explained is the initial duty both of the general theorist and the specialists who supply the more detailed analyses on which wider formulations are based. In particular, it is necessary to take a cool and unemotional look at western imperialism and colonialism. Both imperialism and colonialism have been common in the long sweep of human history. China, a non-western empire of long standing (Blunden and Elvin 1983a; 1998), was still itself engaging actively in imperialism on a substantial scale in the 18th century (Perdue 2005), and even in the later 19th, with the re-conquest of eastern Turkestan (Blunden and Elvin 1983a; 1998). …

Passey, Benjamin Hendricks. Ph.D., The University of Utah, 2007. - Stable Isotope Paleoecology: Methodological Advances and Applications to the Late Neogene Environmental History of China. UnM: AAT 3282751.

Passey, Benjamin Hendricks. Ph.D., The University of Utah, 2007. - <i>Stable Isotope Paleoecology: Methodological Advances and Applications to the Late Neogene Environmental History of China.</i> UnM: AAT 3282751.

The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China. Mark Elvin

<i>The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China</i>. Mark Elvin

The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (review)

The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China (review)

Bibliographie/Book Reviews

bibliographie/book reviews 436 © Brill, Leiden, 2005 T’oung Pao XCI Also available online – www.brill.nl BIBLIOGRAPHIE/BOOK REVIEWS Mark Elvin , The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China . New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2004. xxviii + 564 pp. 5 Maps, 1 Fig., 5 Tables, Notes, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 0-300-10111-2 (hb) Environmental history is a capacious field. The historian who focuses on the environment should address political, military, eco- nomic, cultural, scientific, and aesthetic topics all at once. Yet nearly all environmental historians narrow their sights, choosing only one or two lenses to view these unbounded

Retreat of the elephants: an environmental history of China

A landmark account of China's environmental history-by an internationally pre-eminent China specialist This is the first environmental history of China during the three thousand years for which there are written records. It is also a treasure trove of literary, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious sources, which allow the reader direct access to the views and feelings of the Chinese people toward their environment and their landscape. Elvin chronicles the spread of the Chinese style of farming that eliminated the habitat of the elephants that populated the country alongside much of its original wildlife; the destruction of most of the forests; the impact of war on the environmental transformation of the landscape; and the re-engineering of the countryside through water-control systems, some of gigantic size. He documents the histories of three contrasting localities within China to show how ecological dynamics defined the lives of the inhabitants. And he shows that China in the eighteenth century, on the eve of the modern era, was probably more environmentally degraded than northwestern Europe around this time. Indispensable for its new perspective on long-term Chinese history and its explanation of the roots of China's present-day environmental crisis, this book opens a door into the Chinese past.

Human Impact on the Chinese Landscape

The Retreat of the Elephants An Environmental History of China. by Mark Elvin. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2004. 592 pp. $39.95, £25. ISBN 0-300-10111-2. Drawing on some 3000 years of written records, Elvin chronicles the impact of humans on the environment of China, paying particular attention to views and feelings of the Chinese toward their landscape.

The environmental history of China: an agenda of ideas

(1990). The environmental history of China: an agenda of ideas. Asian Studies Review: Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 39-53.