Sarah Johnson
The fifth volume in the reader series, ’Themes in Environmental History’.Comprising essays selected from Environment and History and Environmental Values, these inexpensive paperbacks address important aspects of environmental history through theoretical essays and case studies. The readers are attracting increasing interest from course-organisers. Trees addresses the roots of environmental history in forest history, offering a substantial section on forestry practice and ideology and the power-relations that have been and continue to be played out in global forests. While histories of forests and forestry have at times, by focus on the woods, obscured our vision of the trees, this volume contains several essays about the nurturing of specific trees, from street trees to penal planting. A theme that runs through many of the essays is the psycho-social significance of trees, from nationalism to legend, imperialism to post-modern uncertainty; trees can be aligned with identity, power, betrayal or redemption. The human relationship with trees that Dargavel and Johann have figured as one of ’science and hope’ is an arena for endlessly diversified construction and negotiation, experiment and experience.
