Class 4
The role of nature in environmental change I: determinism
Christos Zografos, PhD
Institute of Environmental Science & Technology (ICTA)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
christos.zografos@uab.cat
Environmental Change and Governance
MA Environmental Humanities 2011-12
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Introduction
•Purpose: nature (geography) can also determine the course of environmental change
•Why important to know?
–Another explanation (i.e. beyond social factors) of what is the driving force behind environmental
change brought by humans
•
•Outline
–Watch video; while watching, think/ make notes:
•What is the question JD tries to answer?
•What is the answer he gives?
–Have a discussion (based on questions on Diamond’s explanation/ approach)
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GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL
EPISODE TWO: ‘CONQUEST’
•http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6846344734969027300
2

A note: ecological change
•What sorts of ecologies were produced by colonialism?
–An ecology hostile to its ‘initial’ inhabitants
–both due to guns and steel (built environment elements) and germs (natural environment)
•

JD’s question and answer
•Which is JD’s question?
–http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6846344734969027300#docid=-4008293090480628280
–Min: 04.40 – 07.00
•The Question: “What explains unequal distribution of wealth and power among societies around
world?”
–“Yali’s question”
–Beyond the race (colonialist) explanation
•
•What is his answer?
–What explains unequal distribution?
–
•The Answer: “Distribution of wealth and power among societies around the world has been powerfully
shaped by biogeographic factors”
•
4

The argument (McNeill, 2001)
•Proximate causes of success in history: guns, germs, and steel
•
•But behind them lay the ultimate causes of success: a favourable environmental endowment
[geography]
•
5

Ultimate causes (McNeill, 2001)
•Environmental endowment sharply favoured some societies (continents) over others
–Highly probable that lucky ones would in time prevail over unlucky
–
•Great advantages: parts of world fortunate to
–have many domesticable plants and animals
–located so as to favour the migration and diffusion of domesticated plants and animals (the E-W
nexus of knowledge/ technology diffusion)
–
•These parts of world:
–developed useful things farming, metallurgy, writing, states, etc. earlier than other societies
–earlier exposure to "crowd diseases," and so earned wider immunities to lethal infections earlier
•
6

Classroom question: your views
•How do you find JD’s explanation?
–Agree, disagree? With what? Why?
•Key factor: initial natural endowments
–What does it imply about: success?
–What does it imply about: the result of the encounter between Europeans and America (its peoples
and ecologies)?
7

Criticism: determinism
• Geographical determinism
–Given the importance of ‘initial natural endowments’
–Eurasian dominance was inevitable, or at least very likely
–i.e. initial endowments [may be taken to] determine the result of the encounter between Europeans
and America (its peoples and ecologies)
•Could/ does that justify domination perhaps?
–JD asks if inevitability "justifies domination”: he denies that it does
–
•Success defined in terms of survival and spatial spread (McNeill, 2001)
–more-or-less darwinian view of how societies relate to one another [and their environs]
•
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Other issues: who is ‘powerful’?
•Who had the power to produce those ecologies and control them?
–Empowered by their ‘geography’, Spanish (Europeans) were able/ had the power to produce and
control those ecologies (with guns, germs, and steel)…
–…meaning they become in full control of both the indigenous populations and their natural
resources (gold, silver, etc.)
•
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Class question
•
•Possible power (“ability to control their environment including behaviour of other entities”) of
local populations?
–The actions of those populations have also shaped history and environment (e.g. early Inca
uprisings responsible for colonial realities too)
–
•Possible power of local ecologies?
–Local environmental conditions have also shaped course of colonial project (in its ecological
terms also) – next class
•
•Does this explanation ‘leave out’ anything?
•If yes, what may that be?
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Criticism: general
•Political factors: important
–Importance of politics: Ottoman closure of lucrative trading routes to Orient -> traders: look for
other trade routes
–Importance of culture: individualism, capitalism, rationalism, etc.
•Weaknesses in arguments
–European dominance and colonial success not always based on clear technological superiority in
armaments, nor the spread of disease (e.g. Brits in India dependent on local military force +
divide-and-rule policy)
• Eurocentrist
–Blaut: examples of North-South diffusion of crops in Western Hemisphere, e.g. cultivation of maize
in Peru -> adoption in North America
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