Humphreys, Andrea | Australia

Andrea Humphreys is a doctoral candidate in German history in the School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics at The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Her dissertation, entitled “Nie wieder Krieg! The uses of history in the foreign policy of the German Greens,” discusses the influence of the German experience of National Socialism, the Second World War and the Holocaust on the foreign policy of the German Greens from 1980 to 2000. She has published articles on Green foreign policy and German nuclear power policy, and lectured and tutored in a wide variety of subjects including European history and German history. Her research interests include international Green and environmental politics, particularly the politics of energy, waste and food.

Project at IAS-STS: The politics of sustainable transport and the German Left: 1973-2006

This project investigates transformations in the discourses of the German Left (focusing on the Social Democratic Party and the West German Greens (later Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) on sustainable transport, from the 1973 OPEC oil embargo to today. The aims of this research are on the one hand to show how much the two parties have changed since the 1970s, and on the other to illustrate some of the political and cultural opportunities and obstacles for sustainable transport in Germany.

The project will compare the urban transport discourses of the SPD to those of the Greens and their precursors in the environmental movement, noting a large degree of convergence between the two, particularly since the first federal red-green coalition was formed. These developments in Green and Social Democratic transport discourses are explained in terms of ideological reorientation within the parties and electoral competition between them. Viewed broadly, transformations in Green ideology as it relates to transport will be discussed in terms of the Greens’ move from radicalism towards reformism, while Social Democratic ideological reorientation will be explained in terms of tension between traditionalists and postmaterialists in the party. Specifically, in order to explain changes in transport policy the project will discuss the two parties’ changing attitudes towards industrial capitalism, technology, progress and modernity, and towards the (perceived) conflict between economic growth and environmental protection.

I am also keen to discover what impact the Greens have had on sustainable transport in Germany. Here the answer will be grounded in a discussion of the peculiarities of the automobile as a form of technology in general and of German car culture in particular.