Business, Government, and the Environment

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Businesses and governments have interacted throughout the world in shaping the environment, for better and worse. This roundtable brings together scholars with expertise in U.S. and Asian history to explore those far-reaching interactions. In addition to questions about government regulation and private governance, we’ll consider the environmental history of state-owned enterprises. Though our focus will be on the 20th century, we will go backward into the 19th century and forward to the present.

William Bryan (Research Director, Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance; Visiting Scholar, Emory University) has written about business and resource conservation in the American South in the decades around 1900. His work now on a pioneering developer of environmentally-sensitive resorts raises questions about the role of business and government in shaping land use.

Elizabeth Chatterjee (Assistant Professor of History, University of Chicago) is writing about the history of energy policy in postcolonial India, with a focus on changing business-state relations.

After working for years on the history of environmental activism, Adam Rome (Professor of Environment and Sustainability, University at Buffalo) is writing about the limits of business sustainability initiatives in the U.S. since 1990.

Christine Meisner Rosen (Associate Professor, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley) is writing about efforts to address air and water pollution during the period of rapid urbanization and industrial growth in the U.S. from the 1840s until the 1920s.

Ying Jia Tan (Associate Professor of History and East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University) explores how the state accelerated the development of electrical power infrastructure and plastic industries in Chinese East Asia by transferring the environmental cost of industrial pollution to taxpayers.

Donald Worster (Professor Emeritus of History, University of Kansas) will serve as moderator.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Moderator

• Rachel Gross, University of Colorado Denver

Presenters

• William Bryan, Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance

• Elizabeth Chatterjee, University of Chicago

• Adam Rome, University at Buffalo

• Christine Meisner Rosen, Haas School of Business, University of California -- Berkeley

• Ying Jia Tan, Wesleyan University