Sabine Höhler

Depth records and ocean volumes: Ocean profiling by sounding technology, 1850-1930

Oceanographic research commencing in the mid-19th century could not rely on the direct observation of its object, but had to create its images of ocean depth through remote investigation. Depth became a matter of scientific definitions, systematic measurements, and graphic representations. In the course of a century, the opaque ocean of the 1850s was densely depicted in physical terms and transformed into a technically and scientifically sound oceanic volume. Tracing the history of deep-sea sounding technology from wire sounding around 1850 to acoustic sounding in the early 1920s, the paper investigates the relation and interplay between conceptual, pictorial, and technological depth performance. Addressing the conditions and limitations oceanographers encountered in producing single measurements and arranging them into profiles and contour line charts, the paper takes on a narrative approach to spatial representation: resembling a narrated or written story, the texture of depth depended on the richness and coherence of its plots.

The environment as a life support system: the case of Biosphere 2

This paper studies an attempt to replicate the Earth’s biosphere in the second half of the twentieth century with the aim of preserving and refashioning the environment as a self‐reproducing ecological system. Ecosystems dynamics framed the planet Earth as a closed system and directed scientific attention to questions of global environmental management. The image of the Earth as a spacecraft and operable in a similar way supported ideas of placing the environment in a laboratory setting. Using the case of Biosphere 2, launched in the Arizona desert in 1983, this paper studies the images of nature and environment contained in this quest to create an ecosystem and human habitat as good as, or superior to nature on Earth (known in this context as Biosphere 1). The second biosphere was designed as ‘a prototype for a space colony’ that would eventually enable its deteriorating predecessor, the Earthly biosphere, to reproduce and allow human settler societies to migrate to other planets. The paper draws on the cultural history of the ship in Western culture and on ships and spaceships as archetypes of autarkic enclosures set apart from nature. It argues that Biosphere 2 as an example of a technologically controlled endosphere advanced an understanding of the environment as a ‘life support system’ that emphasized not completeness but systems integrity, and was based on principles of functionality and replaceability. The paper will explore how notions of biospheric life support shaped demands on the natural and social environments in Biosphere 2 and Biosphere 1.

THE LAW OF GROWTH

This paper addresses the conditions and implications of aggregating humans into ‘populations’ through statistical means. Engaging with statistical constructions of world population and population growth in the 20th century the paper discusses the ‘biological law of population growth’ which corroborated predictions of a ‘population explosion’ and demands for ‘population control’ after World War II. The biostatistical model and curve were developed in experimental animal population biology to describe the self-limiting growth of self-contained populations over time, and informed the human development studies of the 1960s and 1970s reckoning on a limited global ecological ‘carrying capacity’. The paper explores the economies inherent in the ‘law of growth’, arguing that the law structured and insinuated a biopolitical system of classification and allocation of human lives. The paper analyses the scientific strategies of abstraction, reduction, formalization, and visualization effective in the growth law and traces its increasing power to account for growth phenomena in general. Population issues, so the claim, were assigned to the realm of the life sciences, to the effect that sociopolitical approaches were overruled by bioeconomical: statistical accountability constructed populations as assessable and either valuable or dispensable on a global scale.

Profilgewinn. Karten der Atlantischen Expedition (1925-1927) der Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft

One of the prestigious projects of the “Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft”, the German association promoting the sciences after World War I, was the “German Atlantic Expedition” aboard theMeteor (1925–1927), which became famous for systematically sounding and charting a large part of the South Atlantic Ocean’s floor. Focussing on two examples of theMeteor’s depth charts, the profile and the map, the paper claims that these visualizations of ocean depth not only gave evidence of Germany’s unbroken scientific excellence: they also acquired symbolic meaning within the German after-war struggles to regain lost colonial territory. The charts created public space for the revaluation of the German nation by visually constituting a new spatial realm of German influence. The paper investigates the production and function of visual depth evidence by tracing how the depth profile and map developed from single depth measurements into coherent and authentic pictures, which allowed for conceptualizing the abstract data volume of acceanographic space in terms of newly procured national grounds.

Von Biodiversität zu Biodiversifizierung: Eine Neue Ökonomie der Natur?

From Biodiversity to Biodiversification: A New Economy of Nature? This paper explores the relations between economy and ecology in the last quarter of the 20th century with the example of biodiversity. From its definition in the 1980s, the concept of biodiversity responded not only to conservational concerns but also to hopes and demands of economic profitability. The paper argues that archival systems of inventorying and surveying nature, the biodiversity database and the biodiversity portfolio, changed the view on nature from a resource to an investment. The paper studies the alliances of ecologists and environmental economists in managing nature according to economic principles of successful asset management, “diversification”, with the aim to distribute risk, minimize ecological loss and maximize overall ecosystem performance. Finally, the paper discusses the assumptions and the consequences of transferring principles from financial risk management to landscape management. How has the substitution of the existential values of nature by shareholder value affected the relations between ecology, environment, and ecosystem conservation? Who gains and who looses in exchanging natural capital and financial capital, yields, and profits?

Wider den Umweltdeterminismus – Nachhaltigkeitsforschung qualifiziert sich durch Gender

„Die Arktis ist heis“, bemerkte Schwedens Arktis-Botschafter Gustaf Lind im Marz 2012, und er meinte damit nicht nur die globale Erwarmung (The Economist 2012). Von einem Dasein als globales Randgebiet ist die Arktis ins Zentrum internationaler Politik und Forschung geruckt. Das sich zuruckziehende Polareis hat ungeheure kommerzielle und politische Aktivitaten im Zugang zu bislang unerschlossenen Erz- und Ollagerstatten, Fischgrunden sowie Wald- und Wildbestanden freigesetzt. Hoffnungen auf Ressourcen, neue Transport- und Handelswege und nicht zuletzt der wachsende Tourismus haben die Arktis zu einem geopolitisch umkampften Terrain werden lassen. Neben den arktischen Bewohner_innen und den selbst ernannten Arktisstaaten (darunter auch Schweden) umfasst die zunehmende Zahl sogenannter ‚Stakeholder‘ auch geographisch ferne Staaten wie China, Indien und Japan, supranationale Zusammenschlusse wie die Europaische Union, eine Vielzahl von Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NGOs), wissenschaftlicher Institutionen sowie lokaler und multinationaler Unternehmen, die ihre Anspruche mit Blick auf globale Sicherheitsfragen zu legitimieren suchen: militarische Sicherheit, Energiesicherheit und Umweltsicherheit.

Einleitung: Rechnen mit der Natur: Ökonomische Kalküle um Ressourcen

Der internationale Handel bestehe hauptsächlich im Tausch von Manufakturprodukten gegen Rohstoffe und Naturprodukte, schrieb der Ökonom und Staatswissenschaftler Friedrich List 1841 in Das nationale System der politischen Ökonomie. Infolge Angebot und Nachfrage ergebe sich eine gegenseitige Abhängigkeit zwischen rohstoffproduzierenden und industriegüterexportierenden Ländern, oder in den Worten Lists: