Technology and Sustainability: The Consequences of Modernization on German Environmentalism Open Access

Abstract

Nature and the environment have long been a central concern in German culture and society. Since the rise of industrialization in the eighteenth century, Generally speaking, modernization involved the exploitation of nature for human needs, regardless of the costs. Ecocriticism, a new scholarly phenomenon that studies fiction with specific focus on the environment, allows one to interpret environmental connections to literature. Adding to this existing scholarship, this thesis will examine the environmental discourse in Germany, beginning at the start of the Green movement in the 1960s. This thesis studies two thinkers, Hans Jonas and Nicolas Born, from the 1960s and 1970s whose works represent the diverging schools of thought in environmentalism: pragmatism and fatalism. Additionally, I will contextualize two works of fiction, Wolfgang Petersen’s film Smog and Günter Grass’s novel Headbirths or the Germans are Dying Out, with the schools of thought presented by Jonas and Born. I specifically aim to understand how Jonas’s and Born’s schools of thought relate to the public discourse on environmentalism around the beginning of the West German Green movement. Finally, I will relate the two schools of environmental thought with contemporary journalism, measuring any changes to the public discourse since the late twentieth century and the modern media culture surrounding sustainability. Ultimately, this thesis explains why some people are not receptive to changes to behavior for the sake of environmentalism. While a movement advocating for the desertion of technology from society took place in the 1960s and 1970s, I learn that this movement has come to a halt, with many thinkers acknowledging the necessity of living with technology, despite the dangers it poses.

Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..……..……….……1

Chapter 1………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….………..5

Chapter 2……………………………………………………………………………………………………….………………….……..20

Chapter 3………………………………………………………………………………………………..………………………….…….34

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…….46

Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..………..………49

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	German
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Sustainability Literature, Germanic Environmental Philosophy
Keyword	Environmentalism
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Paul Buchholz, Emory University
Committee Members	Didem Uca, Emory University Noëlle McAfee, Emory University

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