Professional paper

Breaking the green cage: environmental history everywhere!

Marco Armiero ; University of Santiago de Compostela and Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain

Abstract

This article reflects on the intellectual foundations and future directions of environmental history as a historical discipline. Armiero argues that although environmental history emerged with the promise of challenging anthropocentrism, it has often remained confined within a narrow thematic and disciplinary space. He critiques the dominant definition of environmental history as the study of human–nature relationships, suggesting that it fails to fully overcome the nature–society dichotomy. Instead, the article proposes a reconceptualization of environmental history as the historical analysis of socioecological formations, emphasizing the inseparability of social, political, cultural, and ecological processes. Armiero warns against the risk of transforming environmental history into a “green ghetto” or a marginal sidebar discipline within mainstream historiography. Through examples drawn from his own research on Italian mountains, fascism, and infrastructure, he demonstrates how environmental history can critically reshape central historical narratives. The article introduces the metaphor of the “tent” versus the “fortress” to describe alternative models for the institutionalization of environmental history. While acknowledging the need for disciplinary consolidation, Armiero advocates for an open, inclusive, and transdisciplinary approach. He concludes that environmental history can remain truly transformative only if it actively unsettles dominant historical frameworks rather than adapting to them.

Keywords

environmental history; socioecological formations; anthropocentrism; historiography; interdisciplinarity

Hrčak ID:

346168

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/346168

Publication date:

30.12.2025.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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