Deep Time and Disaster
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 18979188 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Christine Hansen (University of Gothenburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 226-240 |
| Publication date | 2018-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2201-1919 • E-ISSN: 2201-1919 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/22011919-4385543 |
| OpenAlex | W2809358589 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 8 |
In the late summer of 2009, a massive firestorm swept through more than one million acres of dense bush in the southeast corner of Australia, killing 173 people and leaving more than 7,000 homeless. In the aftermath of the disaster, commentators almost universally described the blaze as “unprecedented.” This essay examines that claim in the light of contextualizing environmental histories and finds that although such firestorms are rare, they are far from unprecedented; they are in fact a necessary part of the cycle of regeneration in certain types of eucalypt forest. The idea that a never-before-witnessed event is unprecedented calls into question the shallow temporal frames through which deep time environmental phenomena are understood in Australian settler culture and offers an insight into often unnoticed ways in which contemporary society struggles with the colonial legacy. This struggle sits next to the ambition of land management authorities to adopt traditional Indigenous mosaic-patterned cool-burning techniques as part of a fire mitigation strategy, without directly addressing the colonial history inscribed on the land they are commissioned to manage
Archaeology · Colonialism · Deep time · Economic history · Environmental ethics · Environmental history · Ethnology · Geography · Indigenous · Inscribed figure · Mosaic · Political science · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Fire effects on ecosystems · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Ecology
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |