Page 10 [10]
8 JUDIT FARKAS
society, interpreted the human being as the absolute master and exploiter of nature,
and placed economic rationality in the foreground. At the same time, it laid the
foundations for the separation of the natural sciences from the humanities and
social sciences and subordinated all scholarship to the former.
The practitioners of EH, however, believe that the global environmental crisis
reguires new modes of thinking, new communities, and new forms of knowledge.
They are convinced that this crisis cannot be solved solely through technological
means which are simply "allocated" to passive consumers. Even the best technologies
that most effectively mitigate environmental problems are rejected for cultural
and political reasons. Unsustainable practices reguire cultural interpretation, as
does the possibility of introducing good practices. Knowledge is needed “that is
affective, or emotionally potent, in order to be effective, or capable of mobilizing
social adaptation” (Emmett — Nye 2017: 8), and capable of overriding the logic
of economic gain (Belfiore — Upchurch 2013). EH claims that this goal demands
inter- and transdisciplinary approaches for which the humanities are indispensable.
What EH does is actually translation: it transforms scientific and technological
results into texts and sociocultural discourses which can capture the attention of
both the public and the political and economic actors more than scientific reports
can. Oppermann and Iovino conclude that EH is an ethical and pedagogical project
with the help of which the above goals can be achieved (Oppermann and Iovino
2017: 1-6).
Accordingly, EH is not a new academic discipline, but:
a field of research that highlights the relationship between the human being and
nature, and which is concerned with environmental questions;
a worldview that rejects the interpretation of the human being as the absolute
lord and legitimate exploiter of nature; it strives to understand the intricate relations
between the human being, society and nature, integrating all the disciplines that
scrutinize these problems;
a method that wishes to transgress disciplinary boundaries and the limits of
creating theories and descriptions. In addition to the customary modes of knowledge
transmission, it also draws closer to applications and to activism. This is not to
say that each EH scholar is at the same time an activist. As put by the authors
Hubbell and Ryan: it doesn’t mean “that you will have to chain yourself to a
bulldozer in an old-grown forest threatened by logging” (Hubbell — Ryan 2022:
10). It is more accurate to say that by virtue of its worldview and its fundamental
issues, EH is inevitably an applied field of scholarship.
The book in the Reader’s hands is intended to become part of the body of
literature — introductions, chrestomathies — about EH, adapted to the Hungarian
context.
The Environmental Issues block enumerates the important issues concerning
the relations between human beings and the environment. EH is not an area
unfamiliar to Hungarian academia (as will be confirmed in the Introduction), but
it has never been summarized in Hungarian, hence the importance of starting the
book with it. The chapter Introduction to the Environmental Humanities surveys
the history, roots, views and goals of the concept and of the field of research, and
also includes Hungarian examples.
The studies in the first block testify to the diversity and complexity intrinsic to
EH in its intention to understand contemporary environmental issues and express