A Natural History of Modernity
Bernhard Grzimek and the Globalization of EnvironmentalKulturkritik
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4070837 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thomas Lekan (0000-0003-4432-4333, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 55-82 |
| Publication date | 2016-08-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New German Critique (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/0094033x-3511871 |
| OpenAlex | W2516196891 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 27 |
This article explores the doomsday vision of humans and other animals found in the nonfiction books, documentary films, and autobiography of former Frankfurt Zoological Garden director and television star Bernhard Grzimek. Focusing on his career transition in the 1940s and 1950s from veterinarian to zoological director to global conservation activist, the article shows that the Malthusian fears that underpinned Grzimek's plea for national parks in sub-Saharan Africa that segregated people and wildlife had their origins in an environmental Kulturkritik born of post-Nazi and Cold War ruminations about human aggression and environmental destruction. Grzimek portrayed both the zoo and the national park as compensation for a "great extinction" that linked the industrialized slaughterhouse in Europe to trophy hunting in Africa. This natural history of modernity envisioned a global nature commons beyond the ideologies of Christian humanism and social democracy, yet it enfolded Africans into a European narrative of development that left no room for cultural landscapes created by customary tenure and vernacular ecologies
Civilization · Environmental ethics · Humanism · Ideology · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Solidarity · European history and politics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · History · Law · Philosophy
Civilizing Nature
Seducing the French
Maasailand Ecology
Ecological Imperialism
Literature, the Environment, and the Question of the Posthuman
Coca-Colonization and the Cold War
Imagining the Nation in Nature
Savages and Beasts
A Greener Vision of Home
Imperial Shades of Green
The world after all was one’
Ecological Imperialism
Crimes against Nature
Evolutionary Humanism
Science and the National Parks
Ways of Seeing Africa
Conservation in Africa—people, policies and practice
The Lie of the Land
Unesco and the (One) World of Julian Huxley
Imposing Wilderness
The Myth of Wild Africa
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |