Over the past three decades environmental history has become a recognized subfield, with a cannon of classics, many dozens of distinguished monographs, a steady flow of published articles, and more than one thousand active practitioners on several continents, including a growing cohort in Latin America. If one looks beyond history's disciplinary bounds, one finds other traditions that equally fit perfectly into the array of environmental history. Perhaps the broadest and deepest current is represented by Carl Sauer's Berkeley School of cultural-historical geography. Much of the work of Sauer, his students, and his associates, can be considered environmental history. Moreover, much of it is based on Latin American materials. In this paper, we trace the development of an alternative current within environmental history - one that began with Carl Sauer's doctoral dissertation in 1915, became well established by the 1950s and continues today through the work of various geographers.
Carl Sauer; Berkeley School; cultural-historical approach