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The Air Cure Town: Commodifying Mountain Air in Alpine Central Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 July 2012

Alison F. Frank
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

Does air have value? In the first volume of Capital, Marx suggested it did not: “A thing can be a use-value, without having value,” he explained. “This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c.” Because it has no value, understood by Marx in this context to mean labor value, air cannot be a commodity: “Commodities come into the world in the shape of use-values, articles, or goods, such as iron, linen, corn, &c. This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something two fold, both object of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value.” Marx's materialist focus on human labor and industrial production made it hard for him to imagine air as a commodity—at least when he published the first volume of Capital in 1867.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2012

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References

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16 Spengler himself relied on monthly reports of the “meteorologische Commission der Schweiz” to support his claims for Davos's favored climate. Spengler, Die Landschaft Davos, 13–15.

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18 In Japan, the equivalent work was done by the geographer Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927). In his 1894 book, Nihon fûkeiron (On Japanese Landscape), Shiga wrote, “Once you have experienced the sublime qualities of mountains; once you have awakened to their magnificent splendor; once you have taken a deep breath of the alpine air, so fresh that it seems to cleanse your lungs; once you have allowed your thoughts to fall still and become immersed in the lonely quiet there—then your mind will become like those of the gods and sages, and you will experience firsthand the glow of divine wisdom.” Cited in Wigen, Kären, “Discovering the Japanese Alps: Meiji Mountaineering and the Quest for Geographical Enlightenment,” Journal of Japanese Studies 31, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 13Google Scholar.

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21 This has changed dramatically since World War II. Trekking and backcountry tourism are now so popular that even locations as remote as Mt. Everest suffer from tourist-induced degradation. Byers, Alton C. and Banskota, Kamal, “Environmental Impacts of Backcountry Tourism on Three Sides of Everest,” in World Heritage Twenty Years Later, ed. Thorsell, J. W. and Sawyer, Jacqueline (Gland, Switzerland: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, 1992), 105113Google Scholar.

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25 For the sake of brevity, the lands and provinces represented in Parliament, or the Austrian half of Austria-Hungary, will be referred to here as the Austrian Empire (to distinguish it from the Republic of Austria). In the context of this paper, the concomitant blurring of the distinction between the pre-Ausgleich Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary is acceptable.

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46 “Eine Blitzwallfahrt nach Maria Zell,” Lambach, May 17, 1907, newspaper clipping (the title of the newspaper is unfortunately not included), with marginalia in Othmar Wonisch's hand. Stiftsarchiv Sankt Lambrecht, St. Lambrecht, Austria, unlabeled carton: Mariazell. Note: this quotation proved difficult to translate. “Pfefferland” was used idiomatically to indicate a place far, far away—but it was also a play on Cayenne, the capital of French Guyana, where France maintained a penal colony from the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century.

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63 Meyer-Ahrens, “Balneologische Spaziergänge,” x.

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65 “Diese behagliche, erquickende Luft bewährt sich Allen und gesonders Brustleidenden als heilsam.” Staffler, Johann Jakob, Das deutsche Tirol und Vorarlberg, topographisch, mit geschichtlichen Bemerkungen, vol. 2 (Innsbruck: Felician Rauch, 1847), 618Google Scholar. Staffler notes that Meran had 219 houses and 2,440 residents, 626.

66 Kurort Meran, 43–44.

67 Ibid., 45–51. In the 1820s, Meran had 2,400 residents. Abram, Kurhaus Meran, 7.

68 Abram, Kurhaus Meran, 9.

69 Kurort Meran, 42; Baedeker, Karl (Firm), Südbaiern, Tirol und Salzburg. Österreich, Steiermark, Kärnten, Krain und Küstenland. Handbuch für Reisende, 23rd ed. (Leipzig: Verlag von Karl Baedeker, 1888), 277, 93Google Scholar. Why hoteliers would boast of ozone-rich air is something of a mystery. Experiments in 1851, 1854, and 1863 showed that ozone adversely affected breathing, caused chest pains, irritated mucous membranes, and killed small animals (including mice and rabbits) exposed to ozonized air for one hour. Rubin, Mordecai, “The History of Ozone: The Schönbein Period, 1839–1868,” Bulletin of Historical Chemistry 26, no. 1 (2001): 48Google Scholar.

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71 Ibid., 93.

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78 Ibid., 49.

79 Blackbourn, “Fashionable Spa Towns,” 12.