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