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ABSTRACT
This article explores how living and working in South Africa has shaped my career as a global environmental historian. It focuses on the concept of network analysis to highlight how theoretical and empirical research is informed by life experiences and by our engagement with the profession of history. The article concludes by thinking about how the study of our own lives can lead us to have more introspection as scholars and teachers.
Notes
1 My article is informed by research in life-writing and autobiography, a growing field of scholarly study. I find the study of individual contexts to be a valuable insight into the scholarship of specific historians. As a PhD student, I gained greatly by reading through the chapters in Wm. R. Louis, ed., Burnt Orange Britannia Adventures in History and the Arts (London: I.B. Taurus Press, 2005).
2 See A. Lester, ‘Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire’, History Compass, 4, 1 (2006), 124–141. A. Lester and D. Lambert, eds, Colonial Lives across the British Empire: Imperial Careering in the Long Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and B.M. Bennett and J. Hodge, eds, Science and Empire: Knowledge and Networks of Science across the British Empire, 1800–1970 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011).
3 For an example, see B.M. Bennett, ‘Naturalising Australian Trees in South Africa: Climate, Exotics and Experimentation’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 2 (2011), 265–280.
4 See especially B.M. Bennett and F. Kruger, Forestry and Water Conservation in South Africa: History, Science and Policy (Canberra: ANU Press, 2015).
5 In this area I am particularly influenced by the work of William Beinart, Simon Pooley, Saul Dubow, Karen Brown, Kate Showers, and Katie McKeown.
6 I fully acknowledge that many of the concerns raised by Lance van Sittert remain perennial problems for state-centred environmental histories. See L. van Sittert, ‘The Nature of Power: Cape Environmental History, the History of Ideas and Neoliberal Historiography’, Journal of African History, 45, 2 (2004), 305–313. This is not a place for a discussion of his debate with William Beinart, but their debate casts a long shadow over my thinking.
7 For a historical context, see Louis, Burnt Orange Britannia Adventures.
8 T. Fleming, Opposing Apartheid on Stage: King Kong the Musical (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2020).
9 R.W. Daughty, The Eucalyptus: A Natural and Commercial History of the Gum Tree (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2002).
10 These ideas are heavily influenced by the interpretation of German forestry laid out by J. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), chapter 1.
11 B. Bennett, ‘The El Dorado of Forestry: The Eucalyptus in India, South Africa and Thailand, 1850–2000’, International Review of Social History, 55, Supplement 18 (2010), 27–50.
12 J. Carruthers and L. Robin, ‘Taxonomic Imperialism in the Battles for Acacia: Identity and Science in South Africa and Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, 65, 1 (2010), 48–64.
13 W.J. Swart, M.T. Seaman, P.A.L. le Roux, and B.B. Janecke, ‘A Tribute to Frederick (Fred) J. Kruger’, Koedoe, 62, 2 (2020), a1639, https://doi.org/10.4102/koedoe.v62i2.1639.
14 Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, AIATSIS Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research (Canberra: AIATSIS, 2020).
15 The result of this work can be seen in the following publications: I.A. Dickie et al., ‘Conflicting Values: Ecosystem Services and Invasive Tree Management’, Biological Invasions, 16, 3 (2014), 705–719; R.T. Shackleton et al., ‘Explaining People’s Perceptions of Invasive Alien Species: A Conceptual Framework’, Journal of Environmental Management, 229 (2019), 10–26; B.M. Bennett and L. van Sittert, ‘Historicising Perceptions and the National Management Framework for Invasive Alien Plants and Weeds in South Africa’, Journal of Environmental Management, 229 (2019), 174–181.
16 U. Kirchberger and B.M. Bennett, eds, Environments of Empire: Agents and Networks of Ecological Change (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
17 B.M. Bennett, ‘A Global History of Species Introduction and Invasion: Reconciling Historical and Ecological Paradigms’, in U. Kirchberger and B.M. Bennett, eds, Environments of Empire: Agents and Networks of Ecological Change (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020), 224–245.
18 For a detailed discussion of this period, see B.M. Bennett, G.A. Barton, S. Hifazat, B. Tsuwane, and L.M. Kruger, ‘Sustaining the University of Johannesburg and Western Sydney University Partnership in the Time of Covid: A Qualitative Case Study’, Yesterday and Today, 24 (2020), 71–90.
19 My own work on the local-global relationship has been deeply influenced by the historical geography research of D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
20 My recent foray into deep history and ecology focuses on the Indo-Pacific region. See B.M. Bennett and G. Barton, ‘Temporality, Space and Networks in Indo-Pacific Environmental Histories’, Pacific History Review, 90, 2 (2021), 140–156.
21 R. Morbidelli et al., ‘The History of Rainfall Data Time-Resolution in a Wide Variety of Geographical Areas’, Journal of Hydrology, 590 (2020), 125258.
22 My engagement arose as a result of Ellison’s comments to an early article I co-authored on the subject. See B.M. Bennett and G. Barton, ‘The Enduring Link Between Forest Cover and Rainfall: A Historical Perspective on Science and Policy Discussions’, Forest Ecosystems, 5 (2018), 5.
23 B.M. Bennett, ‘Environmentalism and Decolonization in Australia and South Africa’, Itinerario, 41, 1 (2017), 27–50.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Brett M. Bennett
Brett M. Bennett is Associate Professor of History in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University and Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of History in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. He has published three books and over twenty-five peer reviewed articles focused on the history of forests, water, and climate. His most recent book, co-authored with Gregory Barton, is Saving the World: How Forests Inspired Global Efforts to Stop Climate Change (London: Reaktion Press).