Special Issue: Ecology and Environmentalism in the Global Sixties

The Global Sixties: An Interdisciplinary Journal, invites submissions for a special thematic issue on ecology and environmentalism.

Scholars have often downplayed continuities between the political and countercultural radicalisms of the global sixties and the anti-nuclear, environmental, and New Age movements of the 1970s and 1980s. The deep roots of both periods of activism—e.g., the mass anti-nuclear war mobilizations of the 1950s—have likewise often gone ignored, as have the connections between late-20th Century political mobilizations and earlier scientific explorations in systems theory, theoretical physics, and so on.

This special issue seeks contributions that trace continuities, uncover hidden connections, and break down artificial boundaries between time periods, political-geographic boundaries, and disciplines.

Disciplinary and thematic contributions are welcome from, but not confined to: history; history of science; history of ideas; science and technology studies; art history; human-animal relations; and environmental ethics.

Possible topics include: 

• exchanges between the Global North and Global South;    

• scientific knowledge and social movements;   

• ecology and religion (mainstream and alternative);   

• indigenous activism(s);   

• continuities between movements of the 1950s and early-60s (Ban the Bomb and CND, etc.), and those of the 1970s and 80s  

• environmentalism as a driver of transnational thinking and exchanges;    

• ecology and countercultures; back-to-the-land movements; anti-industrialism and neo-primitivism;    

• ecology and anti-militarism;    

• ecology and the arts; utopianism and science fiction.   

• historical roots of contemporary debates related to climate change.   

The journal especially seeks contributions that trace the socio-cultural effects of big ideas or concepts originating outside the realm of the political. Interdisciplinary approaches are strongly encouraged.

Contributions from all levels are highly encouraged, including those from graduate students and independent scholars.