Series in Ecology and History

Diana K. Davis, Edmund Burke III, Diana K. Davis, Edmund Burke III

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780821444252
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, and rivers lined with palm trees have often framed written and visual representations of the region. Embedded in these portrayals is the common belief that the environment, in most places, has been deforested and desertified by centuries of misuse. It is precisely such orientalist environmental imaginaries, increasingly undermined by contemporary ecological data, that the eleven authors in this volume question. This is the first volume to critically examine culturally constructed views of the environmental history of the Middle East and suggest that they have often benefitted elites at the expense of the ecologies and the peoples of the region. The contributors expose many of the questionable policies and practices born of these environmental imaginaries and related histories that have been utilized in the region since the colonial period. They further reveal how power, in the form of development programs, notions of nationalism, and hydrological maps, for instance, relates to environmental knowledge production.

Contributors: Samer Alatout, Edmund Burke III, Shaul Cohen, Diana K. Davis, Jennifer L. Derr, Leila M. Harris, Alan Mikhail, Timothy Mitchell, Priya Satia, Jeannie Sowers, and George R. Trumbull IV

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Imperialism, Orientalism, and the Environment in the Middle East
• Chapter 1. “A Rebellion of Technology”
• Chapter 2. Restoring Roman Nature
• Chapter 3. Body of Work
• Chapter 4. From the Bottom Up
• Chapter 5. Drafting a Map of Colonial Egypt
• Chapter 6. Remapping the Nation, Critiquing the State
• Chapter 7. Salts, Soils, and (Un)Sustainabilities?
• Chapter 8. Hydro-Imaginaries and the Construction of the Political Geography of the Jordan River
• Chapter 9. Environmentalism Deferred
• Afterword
• Contributors
• Index