Review of The Enculturated Gene

Anthropologist Duana Fullwiley’s 2011 monograph The Enculturated Gene serves as an ethnography of sickle-cell anemia in modern Senegal. As the first ethnographical text to treat genetic disease in Africa (xxi), this text attempts to not only draw attention to this this issue in the context of postcolonialism and scientific practices within Senegal, but also to establish that for people suffering from sickle-cell, both the acts of people “making do” with their illness and attempting to construct it as a mild condition rather than a debilitating disease, actually creates a socio-scientific reality, where science and society actively negotiate over shared space (12-13). Further, she makes the argument that genetic disease is a fruitful area of study in the global South because, unlike make other illnesses, especially infectious disease, genetic diseases are still very difficult and expensive to treat in the global North, where there are a good deal more money and resources (36).

In a brief historical overview, Fullwiley shows how scientists determined that in 1984, there existed a less severe strain of sickle-cell anemia, which was common in Senegal. The perception that there was some sort of biological exceptionalism to Senegal led residents to a series of social and cultural practices that allowed them to cope with the disease on far better terms than doctors initially anticipated. In fact, Fullwiley suggests that many of the ways that American doctors would treat sickle-cell, by treating it as a far more serious condition, would possibly be unacceptable in Senegal. For example, since this disease is difficult at best to treat in the West as well, and its therapies include side effects such as cancer, hair loss, severe pain, and even infertility (36-37), besides costing a great deal more than the Senegalese health system can support. In Senegal, the standard treatment for sickle cell anemia involves a regime of folic acid and Tylenol, for those who can afford it, though many live normal healthy lives even without treatment. However, local people also optimistically use traditional drugs as well and the fagara plant (91) has been used quite effectively to increase the fetal hemoglobin in the bloodstreams of the afflicted. Her text suggests that the study of sickle-cell anemia must be complicated and cannot divorce relationships between science, family times, health policy, gene, or even plants in order to fully understand genetic diseases.

Though my knowledge of ethnography is limited, Fullwiley’s texts fits within the historiography of medicine, as well as work in science studies. Historian of medicine Keith Wailoo, who she cites extensively, has also written about the ways that ideas of race and politics intersect in genetic diseases in the United States. However, Wailoo’s texts are clearly histories, and do not use the type of embedded research and other ethnographical tools on which Fullwiley prides herself. Additionally, she is making a claim that understanding history, particularly the colonial history and subsequent health systems of Senegal are vital to understanding the way that science its practiced today, a claim which places her work into the larger field of Science Studies. 

Review of Impossible Engineering

Chandra Mukerji’s Impossible Engineering

Chandra Mukerji’s 2009 monograph Impossible Engineering: Technology and Territoriality on the Canal du Midi[1] narrates the mid-late seventeenth century construction of the Canal du Midi, a feat of engineering that connected the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Exploring several aspects of its creation ranging from the logistical problems with a project of that scale to the politics which alternately drove and threatened its completion, Mukerji addresses how the interaction of technological knowledge interacted with state affairs to produce an enormous hydraulics endeavor which soon became a symbol for the power of Louis XIV and France. Using correspondence of major figures, financial records, maps and even her own contemporary photographs, Mukerji demonstrates not only how the canal was completed through the collective knowledge of the many people involved, but also how its completion exemplified the absolutism that logistical power gave to leaders.

                Mukerji’s title Impossible Engineering refers to the “superhuman” accomplishment of the functioning canal which by the contemporary standards of hydraulics and elevation should never have been built. Though the standard narrative of the Canal du Midi credits solely the heroism and lone genius of the tax-farmer Pierre Paul Riquet who knew the region of Languedoc intimately, she offers much evidence to discredit this thesis. First, while she acknowledges the importance of Riquet to the project, especially his financial and political connections, she explains that his background was not in engineering. In order to show the slow but gradual progress that allowed for continued support from the monarchy, Riquet depended on a bevy of expert contributors. Though he did employ the expertise of military engineers and other formally educated contractors, he also relied on the labor of artisans and peasants throughout the region. She particularly credits the role of peasant women from the Midi-Pyrenees who used a complicated system of canals and locks for their own domestic water supply and who Riquet employed in large numbers to contribute labor to the canal. Though slightly counterfactual, her analysis shows that the canal was only built due to the combined knowledge of a large group of otherwise different individuals and through the trial and error that such a varied array of knowledge allowed. Related to this idea of collective knowledge, Mukerji dedicates much of her book to the idea that the Canal was reminisant of a “New Rome” in France. Not only did the court of Louis XIV frequently use rhetoric to describe France as a modern Rome, most engineers were educated with the works of Vitruvious and other Roman engineers when they went to work on the Canal. Additionally, the hydraulics practices of the peasants and artisans operating in Languedoc unknowingly consisted of Roman engineering passed down over generations.

                Though her discussion of collective knowledge was extremely significant, her last chapter exploring the role that the canal played in the logistical power of the monarchy was far more interesting. She explains how, though his work constructing the canal, Riquet actually transferred power from the nobles to the king. The king, by placing trust in the efforts of an entrepreneur with no pedigree but the ability to harness the talents of vast amounts of people, created a pseudo merit based technocrat, loyal only to the crown. Riquet, who used his authority to commandeer land from the nobles for use in a project of the king, assisted in undermining the power of the nobles and giving more absolutist power to the monarchy. Additionally, the canal represented a significant instance when a monarch was able to wield not only strategic power, power over people, but also logistical power, power over nature. This is important pragmatically since it allowed the state better trade routes and in theory, strategic military advantage. However, this is also important symbolically since it literally took some of nature’s power and placed it into the hands of the king. Finally, while the canal took some power away from nature, Mukerji demonstrates the importance of non-human actors in historical developments. The nature of the water, stones and terrain of southeast France actually changed the course of the canal and had large political impacts since error on the canal resulted in political fallout.

                Mukerji’s book is an extremely interesting and well-written account of a remarkable episode in history. She successfully argues that an impossible canal was built only by the collective knowledge of a large community and that such a canal had important political implications. Additionally, her prolific use of correspondence within the text humanizes the creation of the Canal du Midi and reminds readers that major achievements in architecture and engineering were neither inevitable nor built by superhuman but are instead the result of people and knowledge interacting together in new ways. It is an important book for French, technological and environmental historians.

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[1] Mukerji, Chandra. 2009. Impossible engineering: technology and territoriality on the Canal du Midi. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press

Review of Solnit's A Paradise Built in Hell

In her 2009 monograph A Paradise Built in Hell, journalist Rebecca Solnit analyzes the effect that disasters have played on communities affected by massive tragedy. She contends that in times of crisis, survivors usually respond in one of two ways. In the case of most communities, people are generally altruistic, “urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them,” without the interference of authority figures or the use of money. However, in all these communities, there are elites, usually wealthy and white who panic and commit atrocities believing “that others will behave savagely and that they themselves are taking defensive measures against barbarism.”[1] Largely limiting herself to events in the twentieth century North America, Solnit uses a variety of disasters ranging from earthquakes to terrorism to illustrate these reactions. Beginning with the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, she gives examples of the city uniting to share food and shelter and generally maintaining good spirits. This contrasts with the reaction of wealthier elites as well as those in positions of military leadership who looted, accidently exacerbated the Great Fire, and even shot innocent civilians. She next analyzes the 1917 Halifax explosion, showing how civilians organized rescue efforts seeming to personify Kropotkin’s evolutionary theory of mutual aid. She then jumps forward almost seventy years to the Mexico City Earthquake in 1985. This disaster, which killed far more people than any other tragedy in this volume, resulted in citywide movements to assist refugees with housing and provisions. However, simultaneously, industrialists left their workers to their deaths and used soldiers to salvage their equipment instead. This resulted in a large-scale rejection of the apparent corruption in the government and ultimately, the crumbling of the Industrial Revolutionary Party. She next discusses the apolitical altruism which arose all over the country in the aftermath of 9/11. She argues that the city was drawn by a need to help their neighbors, even making symbolic gestures like giving blood or playing music when their services were rejected at ground-zero. Finally, she concludes with Hurricane Katrina, and contrasts the owners of small vessels who rescued people from their homes with the vigilantes in Uptown who shot strangers fearing a riot.

Solnit addresses two ideas of nature in her book. First, she addresses the havoc that the natural world, such as earthquakes and hurricanes can wreck on human populations. Even more prevalently however, she addresses the concept of human nature within the context of disasters. Using a great deal of sociological evidence, she suggests that in a crisis, people react calmly and with overwhelming altruism. She gives countless examples of people who risked their own lives or sacrificed their property to aid their neighbors. Even more puzzling, she gives many instances of individuals who reminisced fondly over the time immediately after the disaster, due to the community spirit and sense of togetherness. She also discusses the phenomena of “elite panic,” where when the government is in disarray, elites and those with a semblance authority panic and takes extreme measures to maintain what they think is law and order. That often includes endangering the lives of lower income populations. Beyond this, it is apparent that Solnit views natural disasters to be one of the quasi-objects characteristic of Bruno Latour. She shows how though a disaster like an earthquake may alter a natural landscape, it mainly affects human populations and structures. Further, death rates and injuries are exacerbated or even caused by human activity. Disasters like the Halifax Explosion, 9/11 and the Chernobyl meltdown are caused explicitly by human actions where the deaths caused by earthquakes and hurricanes usually come from shoddy construction, gas leaks and overzealous city officials. Natural disasters, therefore, are human disasters.

Solnit’s text is interesting for many reasons. She offers a unique perspective and comprehensive analysis of a variety of historical events that have already been studied in depth. However, there are several problems with her text. For example, she offers no clear or consistent definition of disaster or crisis, and simply equates the political act of 9/11 to the San Francisco Earthquake in 1906. This is somewhat problematic as all of the events that she compares happened within separate and distinct economic, political, social and environmental situations.  For example, the racial unrest between whites and blacks during Hurricane Katrina is vastly different from the Protestant-Catholic tensions in 1917 Halifax and the anti-Japanese sentiment during the SF Earthquake. Additionally, by limiting herself to North America, she is examining a (relatively) homogenous area of the world. Finally, some of her analysis is misleading. She suggests that the government only acts as an intrusion and an unwelcome distraction at best in the post-disaster communities, giving little note of the organized efforts of the municipal government during 9/11, and the disease prevention efforts of the army during the San Francisco Earthquake.  Additionally, during Hurricane Katrina, most of the problems came from the lack of government response, not unwelcome intrusions. However, her analysis is an interesting and welcome contribution to the field of disaster studies and the history of the environment.

               

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[1]Solnit, Rebecca. 2009. A paradise built in hell: the extraordinary communities that arise in disasters. New York: Viking. p. 2

Critique of Penna's The Human Footprint

In his 2010 monograph The Human Footprint, environmental historian Anthony Penna argues that the environment and world history cannot be understood without a billion-year scope. Combining the growing fields of both environmental and world history, he synthesizes the entire history of the earth in about three hundred pages. The first two chapters are entirely pre-historical and address the formation of the modern earth and the evolution of humanoids, ending with the dominance of homo-sapiens.  The remaining chapters are arranged thematically and address the following: Food production, population fluctuation, urbanization, mining/manufacturing, industrialization, trade, energy, and climate. Within each chapter, Penna explains how humans and the environment have interacted historically beginning in the pre-ancient world and ending very close to present-day. He ends his text with a reflective commentary on how “no species has changed the natural world as significantly as Homo sapiens”[1] mainly for the worse.

            Penna’s text fits, as it is largely a historical synthesis, fits within a large body of both world and environmental histories. He draws largely on the environmental work of J.R. McNeill, Vaclav Smil, and Alfred Crosby, the economic studies of T.H. Breen and K.N. Chaudhuri, and even the technological histories of David Nye and Lewis Mumford just to name a few. In his essay “World History and Environmental History,”[2] Kenneth Pomeranz also demonstrates how the study of environmental history can complement the field of world history. While asserting that historical research is generally conducted along regional lines, Pomeranz contends that the environment, which does not recognize political and cultural boundaries, is an ideal lens for examining history from a global perspective. Additionally, since some version of imperialism, state-making, developmentalism and resistance are universal to environmental history over very large periods of time, it allows historians to make very large scale comparisons in their studies. By examining world history through an environmental lens, “reinforce[ing] the still-contested point that the modern world was not simply born in Europe,”[3] scholars are able to examine historical consequences in an extremely far reaching manner, from pre-historical times up to current problems with global inequalities. This is clear in The Human Web as Penna tries to give equal historical importance to issues like ancient mining practices and coal pollution from the nineteenth century.

Penna’s integration of the study of technology with that of the environment is a tactic similar to that of Sarah Pritchard in Confluence, her 2010 book that examines the history of the Rhone River, though there are some major differences. In her book she assumes that not only does the natural world have an agency, but, like in the case of Bruno Latour’s “quasi-objects,” there is no real way to divide the study of nature from the study of humans. Though many historical actors and historians alike have attempted to separate nature from technology, she shows that they are necessarily linked. But in her environmental history she integrates the history of technological systems, “artifacts, practices, people, institutions, and ecologies.”[4] She brands this sort of study to be envirotechincal analysis. The systems that envirotechnical studies analyze encompass not only everything that would traditionally fit within the realm of environmental history, but also all of the social, cultural and political dimensions of the history of technology. By creating this field, she makes clear a concept that many previous historians have implied: the indivisible link between technology and the environments where they are used. Though Penna also makes many of these connections, after his second chapter, he makes distinction between human society and nature as separate entities that are frequently at odds. This could be due to his age. Though Penna was clearly a pioneer in the field, in the generation of world environmental historians like Stephen Pyne, Carolyn Merchant, and Alfred Crosby, later generations of environmental historians such as William Cronon, J.R. McNeill, along with Pritchard start to consider humans as a part of nature that cannot be analyzed independently and really cannot ever be at odds with each other. In fact, they question previous ideas that there even has been a “natural balance” in the environment that could have been interrupted by people.

            This brings up another issue in Penna’s text. Penna’s first two chapters act as a way to show how geological events such as the formation of the Himalayas impacted the long-term climate conditions in the area and therefore the eventual human land use there. The chapters were reminiscent of a high school environmental science textbook. Though they were very interesting, I am not sure that they really contributed to his text. The events that he narrates occurred so long before the existence of people that it is unclear whether or not they contributed to events in human history. Additionally, these chapters assume that historians must accept current science in order to understand history. This is problematic for any historian of science. Almost every scientific paradigm from the past has been disproved and it stands to reason that many of the current scientific paradigms are also culturally and socially determined and do not necessarily represent any objective truth. It also forces a lot of speculation about ‘what could have happened’ in the past without knowing what actually did. This section is especially problematic due to Penna’s stylistic choices. His grammar is especially poor and the quotations from his sources are awkwardly situated within the paragraphs. This gives the impression that he is unclear about the science that he is citing. It also means that the reader is far less efficient and invests more reading time than necessary to understand the content. Another issue with The Human Footprint and environmental histories generally is the fact that they often contain a lot of presentism. The study of environmental history, which became widely popular in the late 1980s, emerged alongside the environmentalist history. This leads to the problem of taking modern concerns and transporting them into the past where they did not really exist. On this note, it can lead historians, like Penna does, into adopting a moral or political stance in their work. Though it does essentially negate any pretense of an objective history, this is not necessarily negative. In fact, it can also make the study of history relevant to many more people and applicable to many of today’s political and social issues. A final issue with Penna’s text is also his attitude of environmental determinism. Penna is not the only historian who engages in environmental determinism[5] but since he begins his narrative so early in earth’s history, it is especially clear in his book. It suggests that there is some measure of inevitability in history; if people are from an environmentally suitable place, they will be economically successful. Of course, this is almost a tautology. In the words of Eric Hobsbawn: “what happened was inevitable because nothing else happened.”[6]

One unique aspect of Penna’s book is his large discussion about the environment in urban history. Though some historians such as Martin Melosi, and Joel Tarr and Clay McShane have recently examined the history of urban environments coming from a history of technology perspective, traditionally, environmental historians have ignored the urban landscape, possibly due to a perception that once urbanized, a landscape no longer has any value as an environmental space.[7] The main ways that historians have embarked on this sort of environmental history is through the examination of waste management, disease control, and the role of animals in history. Penna engages with these topics, explaining the role of both infectious and environmental disease in chapters four, six, seven, and nine; waste management in three, five, six, and seven; and animals in four, five, seven, and nine. He also engages in the growing field of energy history. This was explored at length by Alfred Crosby in Children of the Sun, who basically argues that the history of humanity has been driven by the search for more energy.[8] Though he does explore the use of animal muscle power in industrialization, he does not examine the role of animals as energy storage units. Sam White in particular has shown the value of pigs as energy depositories for excess calories that could be harvested in times of energy shortages. Asian pigs in particular were such valuable resources that they managed to spread all over the world and replace nearly all other varieties of pig. [9]

The Human Footprint certainly offers many ways that one could examine the environment and world history. However, I am not sure that he contributes much new to the field as he only synthesizes the work of others. Of course it is perfectly possible to write an original argument based on the research of others like McNeill and McNeill did in The Human Web, but since Penna’s text lacks any specific narrative other than that people and their environments impact each other. Additionally, large macro-histories present many problems particularly in overgeneralization and even threaten to venture on superficial and essentialist versions of history. This is not necessarily completely negative. The Human Footprint has the capacity to introduce concepts of “big history” and environmental world history to a lay audience or a low-level college classroom, readers who would be unlikely to appreciate a more serious academic work. As such, despite some problem areas, this text could easily have a valuable function for designing a course on the environment and world history.

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[1] Penna, Anthony N. The Human Footprint: A Global Environmental History. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

[2] Pomeranz, Kenneth “World History and Environmental History,”[2] in Burke, Edmund, and Kenneth Pomeranz. The environment and world history. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. p. 3-32

[3] Ibid 8

[4] Pritchard, Sara B. Confluence: the nature of technology and the remaking of the Rhône. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011. p. 19

[5] See Jared Diamond, William McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples

[6] Hobspawn, Eric “Marx and History” New Left Review I/143 (January 1987): 39-50 p. 43

[7] Di Chiro, Giovanna “Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environmental and Social Justice” Cronon, William. 1996. Uncommon ground: rethinking the human place in nature. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

[8] Crosby, Alfred W. Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006.

[9] Sam White, “From Globalized Pig Breeds to Capitalist Pigs: A Study in Animal Cultures and Evolutionary History,” Environmental History 16 (January 2011): 94–120.

Review of Brian Ogilvie’s The Science of Describing

Brian Ogilvie’s 2006 macro-historical monograph The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe¸[1] charts the history of naturalism through four generations of naturalists from the late fifteenth through the early seventeenth century. He begins by explaining that through integrating the traditions of medical humanism, Aristotelian philosophy, and natural philosophy, Renaissance naturalists formed a new discipline dedicated to discovering and describing plants and animals. Through examining evidence culled from published herbals, woodcuts, drawings, correspondence, travel journals and garden plans, Ogilvie successfully outlines the evolution of the practice of natural history through the Renaissance and Early Modern Europe.

In his first chapter, Ogilvie sets the framework for Renaissance natural history. He describes the various geographical settings for naturalists, particularly urban centers in Western and Central Europe,[2] scholarly communal relationships between naturalists,[3] and the preeminence of botany over zoology in the study of nature.[4] For this reason, Ogilvie says he will focus the remainder of his book on botanical studies.[5] Ogilvie begins his narrative in the late fifteenth century when naturalists concentrated their studies on the ancient and medieval understandings of nature.[6] Through studying ancient writers, medical humanists used the methods and accounts of Pliny, Galen, and especially Dioscorides to justify their studies and frame their pursuit of medical knowledge through studying plants.[7] In the mid-sixteenth century, the second generation of Renaissance naturalists drifted towards a different goal. Due to the massive influx of new plants from abroad, they recognized that the ancients had limited access to plant diversity and sought to create their own catalogues of every possible plant[8] through stockpiling massive collections of dried and fresh plant in curiosity cabinets, botanical gardens and herbariums.[9] Finally the third generation moved toward a different approach of studying nature. Facing collections of thousands of new plant species, these naturalists worked on taxonomically classifying the knowledge that their predecessors had had accumulated.[10]

Ogilvie’s analysis focuses not only on the evolution of the practitioners of natural history from medical humanists to phytograpers to cataloguers between 1490-1590, but also gives some account of who specifically was studying natural history and how they contributed to the larger discipline. He emphasized that no one individual could accumulate such knowledge on their own. In fact, frequently when collecting in the field, the naturalist was accompanied by a team; sculptors, apothecaries, medical students, and painters.[11] Additionally they frequently used the testimony of gardeners, midwives, apothecaries, and peasants for their studies, though these individuals based on their professions, were not part of the scholarly community of naturalists.[12] Furthermore, naturalists were expected to freely share their knowledge and specimens and did so through vast correspondence. This has strong implications for the ways in which knowledge was shared and understood in the Renaissance. By imagining an international community of naturalists that opposed the hierarchy and commerciality of the general society, “unsullied by either servitude or filthy lucre,”[13] natural history was constructed as a liberal art that could be purely and objectively knowledge based.

Ogilvie’s work is comparable to much of the vast literature on botany and the scientific art history in Early Modern Europe. In their book Wonders and the Order of Nature, Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park deliberate the subject of wonder in the integration of art and nature in early modern Europe between 1150-1750 AD. Most of the images that they discuss involve artists using their work as a vehicle to fuse the "wonders of art and the wonders of nature."[14] They describe many botanical paintings that were intended to bring nature to the viewer, similar to Ogilvie’s discussion of naturalists using images to further spread their knowledge. Additionally, in her article “Ad vivum, near het leven, from the life”[15] Claudia Swan's analyzes the claims of "ad Vivum" and "ad Naturam" in botanical books and discusses the evolution of this terminology as it applied to nature illustrations. She also suggests that botanical illustrations that were part of curiosity cabinets would allow viewers to see subjects that instead of being present, when unavailable "were collected by proxy…and deemed capable of standing in for an otherwise unavailable or impermanent specimen."[16] Her article corresponds with many of Ogilvie’s points on how plants were drawn in various herbals, with both fruits and flowers intact. Finally, Daston and Galison’s Objectivity[17], published after The Science of Describing, brings further depth to the topic of untainted studies of botany and bring truth to nature through botanical studies. However, though there are several parallels between this book and others in the same field, since it offers a unique look at natural history in the Renaissance by providing background and charting the evolution of how natural history changed over a century.

Beginning with the humanists in the fifteenth century and ending with the systematic cataloguers in the early seventeenth century, Brian Ogilvie successfully demonstrates the changing progression of natural history over four generations of Early Modern naturalists. He also addresses unique qualities of the botanical community and the invention of new methodology for addressing this knowledge. His book also fits very well within the field of the Early Modern natural history and is an essential read for those interested in Early Modern Science, Early Modern Art, and intellectual history.

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[1] Ogilvie, Brian W. The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Print.

[2] Ibid p. 63

[3] Ibid p. 54

[4] Ibid p. 49

[5] Ibid

[6] Ibid p. 87

[7] Ibid p. 138

[8] Ibid p. 139

[9] Ibid p. 175

[10] Ibid p. 209

[11] Ibid p. 70

[12] Ibid. 55

[13] Ibid 58

[14] Daston, Lorraine, and Katharine Park. Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750. New York: Zone Books, 1998. Print p. 206

[15] Swan, Claudia “Advivum, near het leven, from the life: Considerations on a Mode of Representation” Word and Image 11 (Oct-Dec 1995)

[16] Ibid 369

[17] Daston, Lorraine, and Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books, 2007. Print