H-Environment recently posted
"Environmental Protection in a Light-Green Country", Chris Pearson's review of
Une protection de l'environnement à la française? (Charles-Francois Mathis & Jean Francois Mouhot eds., Éditions Champ Vallon, 2013), a
collection of essays on the history of environmental protection in France and its empire. Pearson writes:
As well as asking what is distinctive about French nature protection and environmentalism, particularly in comparison to Britain, France, Germany, and the United States, many of the chapters engage with Michael Bess’s compelling and influential arguments in The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000 (2003). According to Bess, France has become a “light-green society” in which environmentalist ideas are widespread but shallow; “the result is a social order in which virtually every activity is touched by environmentalist concerns--but modestly, moderately, without upsetting the existing state of things too much.” It is noteworthy how the volume turns towards Bess and other Anglophone environmental historians for inspiration, rather than the approaches outlined by the Annales school or other French historians interested in the human-nature relations, such as Andrée Corvol.
