Moving Crops and the Scales of History by Francesca Bray et al (review)

IF 0.8 3区 哲学 Q2 HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Technology and Culture Pub Date : 2024-07-19 DOI:10.1353/tech.2024.a933105
Harro Maat
{"title":"Moving Crops and the Scales of History by Francesca Bray et al (review)","authors":"Harro Maat","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a933105","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Moving Crops and the Scales of History</em> by Francesca Bray et al <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Harro Maat (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Moving Crops and the Scales of History</em><br/> By Francesca Bray, Barbara Hahn, John Bosco Lourdusamy, and Tiago Saraiva. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 352. <p>Four renowned historians of technology have delivered a wonderful and inspiring collection of crop histories. The book is important for more than just that. While the heart of <em>Moving Crops</em> is historic, stringing together a wealth of cases from different parts of the world, its central purpose is conceptual and historiographic: to demonstrate that much of the existing global history of crops, materials, and technology more generally is distorted.</p> <p>Indeed, crops are the central topic to present a new approach to material artifacts and commodities that, as the authors put it, are the stuff of rooted global history. The choice for crops is for a purpose. Inspired by the French Annales school historians focusing on landscapes, the authors present the cropscape as the leading concept.</p> <p>The methodological depth of the cropscape is convincingly explained, which is not to suggest the reader has to plow through abstract elaborations. A major reason the book is such a great read is the way critique, method, and principles are grafted onto concrete cases, presented as “riffs,” underlining the lively and entertaining style by which the crop stories are told. The introduction chapter needs only a handful of pages to set the stage for the first of these stories, portraying the centrality of crops in the transformation of the Cuban landscape and society through the works of two Cuban writers.</p> <p>At this point the authors add an important critique. Most histories involving Cuba and crops almost inevitably give prominence to Sidney Mintz. He’s not called on stage for the opening riff, where Cuban writers perform with equal verve. This is a returning pattern in the book and brings less familiar authors and unexpected twists to the crop stories. Blended with renowned Western scholars—Mintz is sampled at various other points—the aim is to be global in the use of sources.</p> <p>Neither crops nor historical periodization structure the book. The first chapter, “Times,” opens with a riff on date palms that dismisses straightforward historical chronology in clear terms. The movements of date trees, in both ancient Arab and recent American settings, defy a progressive historical narrative. Other riffs, on tobacco, rice, and cocoa, illuminate the intricate connections between crops and surrounding social-material structures in terms of seasonality, growth duration, and maturation. A final riff on millets connects history to current and future projections.</p> <p>In chapters 2 and 3, the playful yet profound comments on analytical categories target understandings of “Places” and “Sizes.” In the opening riff of chapter 2, the authors explain how the tulip became an iconic Dutch flower <strong>[End Page 998]</strong> through capitalism, colonialism, and cunning marketeers. Historians have reiterated the tulip story in those terms, overlooking the fact that in Turkey, where tulips originate, the crop has a similar history of iconizing and capitalizing. The riff on yams is a brilliant tale of how a crop’s place in society reinforces cultural symbols of groups and families within near and not-so-near places. The yam story, like some of the other riffs in chapter 2, combines well with chapter 3, “Sizes,” dissecting the scales at which crops are grown.</p> <p>At this point in the book the lineup includes key actors other than cultivated plants or humans. Pigs complete the riff on yams and chapter 3 ends with a beautiful riff on water, showing how (muddy) fields require water to be cultivated with similar care as a crop. The plasticity of the cropscape notion is further worked out in chapter 4, “Actants,” and chapter 5, “Compositions.” The lineup for the riffs in these chapters consists of tropical crops like rubber and cinchona, as well as the elephant and boll weevil. As collectives, different crops become a synergetic cropscape. A central critique of these two chapters, about the deceptive idea of agriculture as technological control by humans over nature, is perhaps familiar for historians of technology. Yet the way <em>Moving Crops</em> entwines cases and arguments is refreshingly perceptive...</p> </p>","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"48 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Technology and Culture","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a933105","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HISTORY & PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

Reviewed by:

  • Moving Crops and the Scales of History by Francesca Bray et al
  • Harro Maat (bio)
Moving Crops and the Scales of History
By Francesca Bray, Barbara Hahn, John Bosco Lourdusamy, and Tiago Saraiva. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023. Pp. 352.

Four renowned historians of technology have delivered a wonderful and inspiring collection of crop histories. The book is important for more than just that. While the heart of Moving Crops is historic, stringing together a wealth of cases from different parts of the world, its central purpose is conceptual and historiographic: to demonstrate that much of the existing global history of crops, materials, and technology more generally is distorted.

Indeed, crops are the central topic to present a new approach to material artifacts and commodities that, as the authors put it, are the stuff of rooted global history. The choice for crops is for a purpose. Inspired by the French Annales school historians focusing on landscapes, the authors present the cropscape as the leading concept.

The methodological depth of the cropscape is convincingly explained, which is not to suggest the reader has to plow through abstract elaborations. A major reason the book is such a great read is the way critique, method, and principles are grafted onto concrete cases, presented as “riffs,” underlining the lively and entertaining style by which the crop stories are told. The introduction chapter needs only a handful of pages to set the stage for the first of these stories, portraying the centrality of crops in the transformation of the Cuban landscape and society through the works of two Cuban writers.

At this point the authors add an important critique. Most histories involving Cuba and crops almost inevitably give prominence to Sidney Mintz. He’s not called on stage for the opening riff, where Cuban writers perform with equal verve. This is a returning pattern in the book and brings less familiar authors and unexpected twists to the crop stories. Blended with renowned Western scholars—Mintz is sampled at various other points—the aim is to be global in the use of sources.

Neither crops nor historical periodization structure the book. The first chapter, “Times,” opens with a riff on date palms that dismisses straightforward historical chronology in clear terms. The movements of date trees, in both ancient Arab and recent American settings, defy a progressive historical narrative. Other riffs, on tobacco, rice, and cocoa, illuminate the intricate connections between crops and surrounding social-material structures in terms of seasonality, growth duration, and maturation. A final riff on millets connects history to current and future projections.

In chapters 2 and 3, the playful yet profound comments on analytical categories target understandings of “Places” and “Sizes.” In the opening riff of chapter 2, the authors explain how the tulip became an iconic Dutch flower [End Page 998] through capitalism, colonialism, and cunning marketeers. Historians have reiterated the tulip story in those terms, overlooking the fact that in Turkey, where tulips originate, the crop has a similar history of iconizing and capitalizing. The riff on yams is a brilliant tale of how a crop’s place in society reinforces cultural symbols of groups and families within near and not-so-near places. The yam story, like some of the other riffs in chapter 2, combines well with chapter 3, “Sizes,” dissecting the scales at which crops are grown.

At this point in the book the lineup includes key actors other than cultivated plants or humans. Pigs complete the riff on yams and chapter 3 ends with a beautiful riff on water, showing how (muddy) fields require water to be cultivated with similar care as a crop. The plasticity of the cropscape notion is further worked out in chapter 4, “Actants,” and chapter 5, “Compositions.” The lineup for the riffs in these chapters consists of tropical crops like rubber and cinchona, as well as the elephant and boll weevil. As collectives, different crops become a synergetic cropscape. A central critique of these two chapters, about the deceptive idea of agriculture as technological control by humans over nature, is perhaps familiar for historians of technology. Yet the way Moving Crops entwines cases and arguments is refreshingly perceptive...

查看原文
分享 分享
微信好友 朋友圈 QQ好友 复制链接
本刊更多论文
弗朗西斯卡-布雷(Francesca Bray)等人撰写的《移动作物与历史的尺度》(评论
评论者 弗朗西斯卡-布雷等著的《移动作物与历史的尺度》 Harro Maat (bio) 《移动作物与历史的尺度》,弗朗西斯卡-布雷、芭芭拉-哈恩、约翰-博斯科-卢杜萨米和蒂亚戈-萨拉瓦著。纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2023 年。页码352.四位知名的技术史学家为我们带来了一本精彩而又鼓舞人心的作物史作品集。本书的重要意义远不止于此。虽然《移动的农作物》的核心是历史性的,它将世界各地的大量案例串联在一起,但其核心目的是概念性和史学性的:证明现有的农作物、材料和技术的全球历史大多是扭曲的。事实上,农作物是本书的核心主题,它提出了一种研究物质人工制品和商品的新方法,正如作者所说,它们是根深蒂固的全球历史的素材。选择农作物是有目的的。受法国年鉴学派历史学家关注景观的启发,作者提出了作物景观这一主导概念。作者对农作物景观的方法论深度进行了令人信服的解释,但这并不意味着读者必须进行抽象的阐述。该书之所以如此精彩,一个重要原因是作者将批判、方法和原则嫁接到具体案例中,以 "膛线 "的形式呈现,突出了作物故事生动有趣的风格。导言一章只用了寥寥几页纸,就为第一个故事做好了铺垫,通过两位古巴作家的作品,描绘了作物在古巴景观和社会变革中的核心作用。在这一点上,作者提出了一个重要的批评。大多数涉及古巴和农作物的历史几乎都不可避免地突出了西德尼-明茨。而在开篇,他却没有被叫上台,而古巴作家们却以同样的激情在台上表演。这是本书的一个回归模式,为作物故事带来了人们不太熟悉的作家和意想不到的转折。该书融合了西方知名学者的研究成果--明茨也在其他多处进行了采样--目的是在资料来源的使用上具有全球性。农作物和历史时期的划分都不是本书的结构。第一章 "时代 "以关于枣树的论述开篇,明确否定了直截了当的历史年表。无论是在古代阿拉伯还是近代美国,椰枣树的移动都违背了渐进的历史叙事。其他关于烟草、水稻和可可的短篇小说则从季节性、生长期和成熟期等方面揭示了农作物与周围社会物质结构之间错综复杂的联系。最后一篇关于黍的文章将历史与当前和未来的预测联系在一起。在第 2 章和第 3 章中,针对 "地点 "和 "规模 "的理解,对分析类别进行了俏皮而深刻的评论。在第 2 章的开头,作者解释了郁金香是如何通过资本主义、殖民主义和狡猾的营销者成为荷兰的标志性花卉 [第 998 页结束]。历史学家用这些术语重申了郁金香的故事,却忽略了在郁金香的原产地土耳其,郁金香作物也有着类似的偶像化和资本化的历史。关于山药的故事是一个精彩的故事,它讲述了一种作物在社会中的地位如何强化了近处和远处的群体和家庭的文化符号。山药的故事与第 2 章中的其他故事一样,与第 3 章 "大小 "很好地结合在一起,后者剖析了农作物的种植规模。在这一章中,除了种植植物或人类之外,还有其他重要角色。猪完成了对山药的改写,而第 3 章则以对水的优美改写结束,展示了(泥泞的)田地如何像作物一样需要水的精心耕作。作物景观概念的可塑性在第 4 章 "行动者 "和第 5 章 "构成 "中得到了进一步阐述。这两章中的抒情诗由橡胶、金鸡纳树等热带作物以及大象和棉铃虫组成。作为一个集体,不同的作物成为一个协同的作物景观。这两章的核心观点是,农业是人类对自然的技术控制,这种观点具有欺骗性,也许技术史学家对此并不陌生。然而,《移动的农作物》将案例和论点交织在一起的方式令人耳目一新,具有敏锐的洞察力...
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 去求助
来源期刊
Technology and Culture
Technology and Culture 社会科学-科学史与科学哲学
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
14.30%
发文量
225
审稿时长
>12 weeks
期刊介绍: Technology and Culture, the preeminent journal of the history of technology, draws on scholarship in diverse disciplines to publish insightful pieces intended for general readers as well as specialists. Subscribers include scientists, engineers, anthropologists, sociologists, economists, museum curators, archivists, scholars, librarians, educators, historians, and many others. In addition to scholarly essays, each issue features 30-40 book reviews and reviews of new museum exhibitions. To illuminate important debates and draw attention to specific topics, the journal occasionally publishes thematic issues. Technology and Culture is the official journal of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).
期刊最新文献
Hollywood's Embassies: How Movie Theaters Projected American Power Around the Globe by Ross Melnick (review) Communications in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire: A Critical History by Burçe Çelik (review) Media Ruins: Cambodian Postwar Media Reconstruction and the Geopolitics of Technology by Margaret Jack (review) Collective Wisdom: Collecting in the Early Modern Academy ed. by Anna Marie Roos and Vera Keller (review) Scientific Advice to the Nineteenth-Century British State by Roland Jackson (review)
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
现在去查看 取消
×
提示
确定
0
微信
客服QQ
Book学术公众号 扫码关注我们
反馈
×
意见反馈
请填写您的意见或建议
请填写您的手机或邮箱
已复制链接
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
×
扫码分享
扫码分享
Book学术官方微信
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术
文献互助 智能选刊 最新文献 互助须知 联系我们:info@booksci.cn
Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。
Copyright © 2023 Book学术 All rights reserved.
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号 京ICP备2023020795号-1