Review of Jeff Alexander's Pandora's Locks

In his 2009 monograph Pandora’s Locks, journalist Jeff Alexander analyzes the effect of the opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway on the ecosystem of the Great Lakes.[1] He argues that while this project, which began in 1959, allowed the northern US and southern Canada to shipping powers and therefore greatly aided the economics of the region, it also caused irreparable and costly damage to the ecosystems of the lakes and their surrounding landscapes. In fact, he argues that the tide of invasive species that have been rapidly trickling into the lakes amounts to an environmental disaster well beyond a large oil spill. After all, chemicals can be cleaned up where it is virtually impossible to eradicate healthy invaders without massive collateral damage to the native organisms. Alexander begins his story with the opening of the Erie Canal, initially opening in 1825. This was only the first in a series of projects which sought to open this region up to economic activities. As the ships moved westward they slowly carried foreign invaders from around the world like zebra and quagga mussels, lampreys, Asiatic carp and alefish. Additionally, salmon was intentionally introduced into the region, to replace the dying trout for commercial fishers, but they too suffered from lack of resources. Additionally, the filtering effect of the mussels cleared the water in many areas which resulted in algae blooms and even more damage to the fish and bird populations. It also resulted in the spread of many diseases such as botulism and E.coli in the animal populations but which also pose a great risks to human populations. Throughout the text, Alexander demonstrates times when active measures could have reduced or prevented this damage, but due to cost, lack of foresight and lack of organization meant that this never happened. He addresses the fact that these measures are complicated by the global scope of the problems and the need for international cooperation. Additionally, it is difficult for many to recognize the lakes as unhealthy when the water is so clear and clean looking.

            For Alexander, it is clear that the Great Lakes are examples of Latour’s “quasi-objects,” or hybrids of nature and society. This is especially the case since for Latour, quasi-objects have been rapidly multiplying in more recent history and for Alexander, the human impact on the lakes has been growing exponentially in recent decades. His argument about the exponential damage that humans are inflicting on the lakes also reflects Rebecca Solnit’s claim that disasters have been growing in size and scale in recent history. Like Stephen Pyne in his history of fire, he links environmental to social order. When the environment of the lake suffers, the people living near it suffer also. This hybridization of the history of water with the history of technology has been a growing field in the last decade. In his recent paper on water history, Pete Soppelsa fits Sarah Pritchard’s Confluence and Chandra Mukerji’s Impossible Engineering within the larger context of natural agents in human history. This demonstrates that Alexander’s text is extremely timely and fits theoretically and content-wise with modern historiography. His style is also reminiscent of Joy Parr’s Sensing Changes. Also a North American history, Parr interviewed many people affected by environmental changes in various regions of Canada since the 1950’s. Like Parr, he grew extremely close to his subjects and makes an impassioned plea for the livelihoods of the scientists, fishermen and residents who rely on the lakes every day.

            Alexander’s book is very interesting for many reasons. First, as a journalist, he presents a well-written and comprehensive account of the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway. He also makes the issue relevant for those not living in the Great Lakes region. For example, he notes two Californian scientists who drowned trying to clear quagga mussels from the sanitation system as these mussels from the Caspian Sea continue to move west. He also uses an excellent variety of sources ranging from personal interview to scientific journals, to government archives which makes for very rich evidence. His style while extremely clear and readable does occasionally tread on the alarmist. Though his point is clear that the St. Lawrence Seaway is an ecological and essentially human disaster, occasionally he adds unnecessary sensationalism. For example, early in the text he discusses Marilyn Bell’s swim across Lake Ontario. He mainly focuses on Bell’s almost crippling fear of lampreys which she overcame to finish her swim. He creates a visual of vampiric lampreys attacking her as she swam, only revealing at the end of narrative that the parasitic fish cannot puncture human flesh. Additionally, his work implies that the Great Lakes had a single and stable ecosystem until the start of the nineteenth century, when studies in ecology suggest that environments do not have a single stable balance and never really have. However, this is still an excellent and interesting book which highlights many aspects of actor-network theory in modern history.

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[1] Alexander, Jeff. 2009. Pandora's locks: the opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway. East Lansing, Mich: Michigan State University Press.

McShane and Tarr’s The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century

In Clay McShane and Joel Tarr’s 2007 monograph The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century,[1] the authors explore the role that horses played in Eastern and Southern American cities. Though they acknowledge the uniqueness of horses, whose domestic and social nature made them fit for a variety of purposes, they claim that the nineteenth century primarily viewed horses as a mechanized and economic tool for city life. Meant as an overview to show the crucial position that horsepower played in city life, McShane and Tarr demonstrate how, over the course of the this period, the presence of horses dominated cities and from breeding until body disposal, were vital to the American economy.

            As an environmental history, this book works particularly well. It definitely shows how interactions, accommodations and negotiations with an animal shaped city life rather than like previous histories, allowing readers to assume that horses were merely passive. As non-human actors, the readers see that horses and mules frequently determine how much they will work, what they will do, and how they were active consumers of human goods and services. They also show that how disease, when of the equine variety, can massively disrupt economic markets. They also demonstrate how non-living agents, like climate, impact what kind of work can be done and what sort of tools will thrive or fail in that environment. However, as an environmental history it is not particularly analytical and in many ways the thesis is very obvious-natural actors like horses are important to human history.

More interesting are McShane and Tarr’s claims that their text is a history of technology. In many ways they succeed. They show how beginning with breeding, many horses are created in artificial hybrids, albeit with a poor understanding of genetics, to be from birth the strongest and most aesthetically pleasing possible. They also show that the production of horses became a major export for the United States, like any other industrial good. They illustrate how fueling, maintenance, and storage of horses (nutrition, health and stabling) were a significant investment for owners who in turn expected to be compensated with output. Likewise, the prevalence of urban horses gave thousands of jobs to city dwellers who worked as farriers, veterinarians, and producers of horse related goods like bridles and feed. They also claim that much like a metal scrap yard, even the waste and bodies parts of dead horses were picked up by enterprising individuals and sold as horsemeat and fertilizer among other things. Their discussion of how horses were used in transportation and in powering machines, leading literally to the term ‘horsepower’ also shows that horses served a technological function. In their conclusion, they even compare the prevalence of courses to cars, the major technological transport of today.

However, much of their book while well-written and extremely interesting does much to discredit their own thesis. They show horses to be very individualistic, whose work output could not be generally quantified since each was different. They also gave examples of drivers such as carters and teamsters who held beauty pageants and decked their steeds in ribbons, recognizing the ‘kindred’ nature that they shared with horses. The growth of veterinary science and the ASPCA also seem to contradict claims that horses were merely seen as machinery. Though likely nineteenth century urbanities recognized that the best way for work output was with healthy animals who were treated well, there were no similar resources for machines. Additionally, though they offer a disclaimer, they do not address the function that horses held in Western cities where smaller human populations and more open space made the role of horses in some cities vastly different than the East Coast.

Though this is an excellent book that succeeds in demonstrating the importance of horses to city life, it does have some failings. As an environmental or economic history, showing how horses directly contributed to American industry, it works extremely well. Additionally, they make several very convincing claims addressing horses as machine-like technological tools. However, based just on the evidence that they present, this seems to be a slight over simplification. Horses, while viewed as economic tools, whose strength was applied in technological ways, were never totally mechanized. This begs a series of questions. Do all non-human agents manipulated by humans fit under the category of technology? Additionally, was it necessary to attempt to categorize horses as machines for them to be convincing technological resources?

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[1] McShane, Clay, and Joel A. Tarr. The Horse in the City: Living Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Print.