This article analyses how the image of the Siberian North was formed by scientists, specialists, and officials as an intellectual construct that emerged from their work. The image of the region is also regarded as a phenomenon of collective consciousness. According to the author, such modelling was limited to the most vivid scientific, popular, and journalistic works, which were meant for a vast audience. The first attempt at such modelling was made in the late 1920s. This was a time of considerable administrative, social, cultural, and territorial changes, which manifested themselves not only in the central regions but also in the more remote parts of the country. The period was characterised by an intensive search for ways to develop the northern territories and uncover the potential of the region: it was to rely on a scientific use of its resources. These ideas were fully realised in the second half of the 20th century with the full-scale exploitation of oil and gas deposits. During the 20th century, the development of the Siberian North was based on the idea of the industrialisation of the region, which was later on implemented in practice. This industrialisation was perceived as a synonym for the development of the North. Anything that furthered the development of large-scale industry, transportation, and communications in the Siberian North was considered a positive development, while anything that impeded them had to be eliminated. In the symbolic and socio-economic space of the USSR, the Siberian North was a conquered land. However, this later led to anthropogenic environmental issues.
U.S.environmental law urgently needs to be"reimagined"for the future rather than subjected to a backward-looking"restatement".It is neither an inherent category of Roman law nor a body of law grounded primarily in the common law;instead,its corpus consists largely of enacted positive law,which inherently misaligns with the American Law Institute's(ALI)traditional mission of restating and system-atizing common law.Its positive-law character and forward-looking orientation stand in sharp tension with the retrospective nature of common law and the ALI's rule-clarifying logic.Environmental law is the product of dynamic interest-based political bargaining,which runs counter to the ALI's operating model of long-term stability and consensus-oriented rule-making.To restate environmental law risks entrenching its current dysfunctional state.It lacks substantive core principles susceptible to restatement.The effort to con-stitutionalize environmental rights has largely failed,and the U.S.Supreme Court has not developed a con-stitutional environmental jurisprudence.What is urgently needed is a shift from the traditional view of re-source utilization to a science-based stewardship approach.In sum,compiling a Restatement of Environ-mental Lawwould not only depart from the ALI's institutional mission and traditional logic but would also fail to accommodate the dynamic,scientific,and political dimensions of environmental law.Worse still,it could impede the very innovations necessary for responding to the ecological crisis.
This article discusses how John Steinbeck’s The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951) represents marine biology research during Steinbeck and Ricketts’s expedition into the Gulf of California in 1940. It looks at their research methods, their understanding of ecology through marine biological systems, and their interrelation with the tides that structured their routine and influenced their thought and text. The article intertwines ecocritical and Blue Humanities approaches, while analyzing the connection between ocean, marine life, tides, science, ecology, and text. The article further looks at how Steinbeck’s text is instrumental in the development of ecological consciousness and environmentalism in the USA.
This article aims to explore the relationship between imperialism and political ecology, the identifying characteristics of the historical development of ecological imperialism, and the ecosocial implications of its cosmetic adaptation—namely, green imperialism—in a context of growing threat and biophysical concern. We first provide a succinct updated definition of imperialism based on world-systems analysis, which serves to understand imperialism as the system of economic domination of global capitalism, placing countries at the core of the system at one pole of extraction of labor, energy, and material resources, and those at the periphery at the opposite pole of supply. This hierarchization helps to understand ecological imperialism as a series of externalizations that the core tends to implement globally, transforming the periphery into a drain for these externalizations. As part of it, green imperialism appears as a new mode of accumulation aimed at preserving the imperial mode of living in the core legitimized by supposedly environmentally beneficial policies and discourses. We conclude by addressing the need for a fruitful dialogue between the critiques of ecologically unequal exchange and the radical positions of contemporary degrowth in order to reduce the most harmful productive sectors and favor a socially just transition and development in the Global South.
Marx created a deep materialist ontology from his critique of capitalist humanist thought in the En-lightenment period.This materialist ontology not only emphasizes the concern for the conditions of human existence,but also puts the environment of human existence in the dimension of reality through the mate-rialist method,conceiving human practice as the intermediary to realize the reconciliation of the relation-ship between human beings and nature,and providing a theoretical path for the harmonious development of human beings and nature.This idea is centrally embodied in Marx's concept of metabolism between man and nature mediated by social production,forming a dialectical Marxist ecological theory.In contrast,post-humanism opposes the ecological analysis of historical materialism,proposes a"flat ontology",and falls into a one-dimensional"phantom"world,abandoning the fundamental standard of practical materialism,which is not conducive to the solution of the current ecological crisis.
