Pavlínek Petr - Environmental Transitions

May they always temper desire with compassion and ambition with justice.

May they live to see a cleaner and better world.

In the early 1990s, while at the University of Kentucky, we each began our formal engagement with the study of the political economy of social and environmental change in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). One of us was a young (but aging) socialist from a working-class background and region of the North of England, steeped in the traditions and oppositions of Cold War geopolitics, grown politically and intellectually through the study of and engagement with the black consciousness and anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, who completed doctoral and post-doctoral studies in the USA under Reagan and Bush. The other of us was a still young anti-communist from a working-class background and region of Eastern Bohemia in Czechoslovakia, forcibly steeped in the bureaucracies and ideological training of state socialist Mittel-Europa, grown of age politically in the Velvet Revolution in Prague, and steeled in Anglo-American traditions of political economy and regional development in America under Clinton and Gingrich.

The transformations wrought by the events of 1989 were viewed by each of us vicariously as scholars working in critical geographical studies at the University of Kentucky and directly in various research sites in Central and Eastern Europe during that time. At each point we have been suspicious of the rhetoric of transition (and the triumphalism and neo-imperialism the term connotes). Instead, we have been drawn to alternative readings and renderings of the multiple processes of transformation that the term transition hides. At each turn we have tried to ask how actually existing actors have struggled to comprehend and build particular environmental practices and futures. In this endeavor we have each benefitted from exchanges with many colleagues.

Colleagues at the University of Kentucky have provided a supportive environment for critical studies and have contributed directly and indirectly to our thinking in many ways. Among them are Keiron Bailey, Dwight Billings, Martin Bosman, Stan Brunn, Larry Burmeister, Barbara Cellarius, Carl Dahlman, Michael Dorn, Oliver Froehling, John Paul Jones, Mark Klar, Jennifer Kopf, Tom Leinbach, Peter Little, Eugene McCann, Matt McCourt, Patrick Mooney, Wolfgang Natter, Mohameden Ould-Mey, Jeff Popke, Karl Raitz, Herb Reid, Susan Roberts, Rich Schein, Chad Staddon, Karen Tice, Dick Ulack, and Ernest Yanarella.

We are fortunate over the years to have benefitted from discussion and collaboration with several scholars and institutions in CEE. In the Czech Republic Ji Blaek, Michal Illner, Jan Kra, Zdenk Kukal, Ludk Skora, and Jan Vozb, in Slovakia Mikul Huba, and in Poland Katarzyna Klich and Tomasz ylicz have helped along the way. In Hungary Sandor and Judit Peter have been engaged in parallel work on the economic and legal contexts of environmental reforms, and have been both colleagues and friends in this endeavor. In Bulgaria colleagues at the Institute of Geography at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Department of Geography at Sofia University have given unselfishly of their time and understanding, and also have become friends. In particular, we owe a debt of gratitude to Assen Assenov, Mariana Assenova, Roumiana Dobrinova, Christo Ganev, Zoya Mateeva, Didi Mikhova, Mariana Nikolova, Peter Petrov, Anton Popov, Poli Roukova, Vassil Vassilev, and Stefan Velev. Apostol Apostolov, Mitko Dobrev, Ivan Marev, and Simeon Simeonov were kind enough to share information, data, and insights into their work on environmental and agrarian change, and we are grateful. Staff of the Regional Environmental Center in Budapest and its regional center in Sofia provided useful materials and insight. In Germany Gnther Taege introduced us to the Tagebau south of Leipzig.