This week on Sinica, Part 2 of the interview with anthropologist Stevan Harrell, professor emeritus at the University of Washington, about his magnum opus, An Ecological History of China. Be sure to listen to Part 1 first, as many important framing concepts are discussed in that episode!
1:44 “– The Four Horsemen of Ecopocalypse” and ecological disasters during the Mao period, and the story of the double-wheel, double-bladed plow
11:00 – The effect of the introduction of water systems and fertilizers on agricultural production
21:03 – “The replumbing of China:” The South-North Water Transfer Project and the National Water Network
27:32 – Areas of progress: Air pollution and the energy mix
32:48 – Areas lacking appreciable improvement: Soil contamination, water pollution, and flood vulnerability
36:04 – Ecological civilization and breaking the binary between development and environmental protection
47:00 – Steve’s cognitive style: A fox of the two cultures
53:23 – nSteve’s views on authoritarian environmentalism
58:46 – The Environmental Kuznets curve
1:05:54 – A preview of Steve’s current book project about the Yangjuan Primary School in Liangshan
Recommendations:
Steve: Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories; Hampton Sides’ The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook; and the 2023 film The Taste of Things, starring Juliette Binoche
Kaiser: The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad
An Ecological History of Modern China, with Stevan Harrell — Part 2