Climate change is global. But in a democratic society, the changes required to increase human resilience must always be—to one extent or another—local. This lecture will trace the historical roots of a set of social and political behaviors that Indiana historian James H. Madison once labeled, simply, the Indiana Way: in brief, a stubborn preference for incremental change over rapid reform, for personal action over communal regulation.
Today’s Hoosiers, facing at last the environmental consequences of a two-century-long industrial revolution, do so shadowed by the cumulative impact of a distinctive conservatism and localism, prevalent since territorial days, that favors a social status quo at the cost of an environmental one.
The lecture by Elizabeth Grennan Browning will consider the impact of that selective conservatism upon Indiana in our own time. Browning is a U.S. historian, focusing on environmental history, intellectual history, urban history and cultural history. She joined IU’s Environmental Resilience Institute as the Midwestern/Indiana Community History Fellow after receiving her Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis.
This event will be free and open to the public, and is sponsored by Themester 2021: Resilience, an initiative of the IU College of Arts and Sciences.
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