A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and the Conflict of the Gran Paradiso, 1919-1949

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg

ISBN 10: 0822946351 / ISBN 13: 9780822946359

Published by University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021

About this Item

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Seller Inventory # B9780822946359

Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Monastery for the Ibex: Conservation, State, and the Conflict of the Gran Paradiso, 1919-1949
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Publication Date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0822946351
• ISBN 13: 9780822946359
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 526 grams

About this title

Synopsis

Finalist, 2023 Turku Book Award

Gran Paradiso National Park is Italy’s oldest, and was instrumental in preventing the extinction of the Alpine ibex between World War I and just after World War II. Today, there are more than 30,000 ibex living in the Alps, all of which descended from that last colony protected in Gran Paradiso under Mussolini’s rule. Wilko Graf von Hardenberg merges the history of conservation with the area’s social history and Italy’s larger political history to produce a multifaceted narrative about the park as an institution, the conflicts it triggered, and practices adopted to manage the ibex despite hurdles placed by the fascist regime. The book’s central argument is that, in fascist Italy, preservation―propaganda notwithstanding―was a product of the regime’s continuities with the previous liberal system. Italy’s total fascist transformation, accomplished only more than a decade after Mussolini took power, virtually unmade the early successes of preservation set in place by the nascent “nature state” in the regime’s early years. Despite this conflict, conservationists succeeded in preserving the ibex. Hardenberg positions this success within the broader history of science, conservation, and tourism in fascist Italy and the Alpine region, creating a comprehensive historical background and comparative reference to ongoing debates about the role of nature conservation in general and in relation to the state and its agencies.

About the Author

Wilko Graf von Hardenberg is a senior research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and co-editor of The Nature State: Rethinking the History of Conservation.