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SUMMARY:The fisherman's catastrophe\, the historian's problem: on historic
 izations of water bodies as Second Nature - Hilbrand Wouters (University o
 f Konstanz)
DTSTART:20260223T130000Z
DTEND:20260223T140000Z
UID:TALK244138@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:132391
DESCRIPTION:Water makes a poor archive. Eddies whirl without leaving trace
 \, tides erase footprints. The apparent immutability of large water bodies
  has long lured modern fishing societies into catastrophically volatile pr
 actices\, and has likewise challenged historians studying past interaction
 s of humans with marine ecologies – the historical record essentially lo
 st at sea.\n\nIn this seminar\, I discuss Arthur McEvoy’s 1986 _The Fish
 erman's Problem: Ecology and the Law in the California Fisheries 1850–19
 80_\, an account of a tragic boom and bust-cycle. Instead of simply chasti
 sing greed\, McEvoy combined law\, economic history\, anthropology\, and i
 nnovative ecological science to create a finer understanding of the knowle
 dge and myths that (mis)guide fish-dependent communities.\n\nThough hardly
  the first and certainly not flawless\, McEvoy was relatively early in doi
 ng what many are still doing: combining historical methods with ecology to
  narrate complex human-environment interactions. Prompted by growing envir
 onmental awareness\, recent scholarship has widely theorized on the method
 ological and narrative innovations required for historicizing such relatio
 ns – through McEvoy\, I sketch a modest prehistory of these continuing c
 hallenges.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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