Environmental History in the 1960s? An Unsuccessful Research Application and the Circulation of Environmental Knowledge

This article explores how the Swedish historian Birgitta Odén (1921–2016) sought to launch an interdisciplinary environmental research program in the late 1960s. Odén’s objective was to make history useful for political decision making, yet the research program never received any substantial funding. This article argues that the analytical concept of circulation of knowledge offers a fruitful way to revisit and contextualize this kind of failed or abandoned knowledge. Based on Birgitta Odén’s bequeathed papers and interviews with her former students, the study covers the years 1967 to 1969, and demonstrates how Oden conceived of environmental history in a period were no such field existed internationally. Moreover, the study illustrates how the humanities was connected to the social sciences, the sciences, the military research complex, and leading politicians in Sweden during the late 1960s.