Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547923000078
Aaron Benanav, Lori Flores
In recent years, the question of what labor—and which laborers—will be deemed obsolete in the near future has hung over our heads and even manifested in the motions and routines of our daily lives. When we use the self-checkout lanes in stores, engage with ATM or banking kiosks, and silently order food on touch-screen machines or smartphones, we might wonder what happened to the people who used to work those jobs. Customer service call center workers are being noticeably replaced by chat-bots. Taxi and truck drivers are frequently warned about the advent of selfdriving vehicles. In fields, orchards, and vineyards, experiments to replace farmworkers with drones or robot pickers and planters are tentative but ongoing. Alex Rivera’s 2008 sci-fi film Sleep Dealer, in which growers use robots in the US while workers in Mexico manipulate the robots’ motions, plays on the fantasy of employing migrant labor while making migration itself obsolete. While it might feel particularly pronounced now, worker obsolescence is not a contemporary phenomenon; history reveals many episodes of workers losing their jobs to technological and economic “modernization” from the early 19th century onwards. In fact, the intensity of job churn, or of new occupations coming into existence as older occupations disappear, was likely faster in past eras of technological change as compared to the present. Agricultural work evaporated with the coming of threshers and harvesters; typesetters and newspaper printers were automated out of existence; elevator and switchboard operators faded away; and longshoremen’s working rhythms changed dramatically with global containerization. The pieces in this special issue cover different geographical areas and time periods and bring together many different research fields. These articles feature histories of technology, of labor and workplace struggles, of the global economy, of neoliberalism, of unions and their adaptation to changing conditions, of immigration, and of racism both in work and among workers. The articles feature a mixture of methods, too: archival, interview-based, literary analysis, and so on.
{"title":"Special Issue on Workers and Obsolescence","authors":"Aaron Benanav, Lori Flores","doi":"10.1017/S0147547923000078","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547923000078","url":null,"abstract":"In recent years, the question of what labor—and which laborers—will be deemed obsolete in the near future has hung over our heads and even manifested in the motions and routines of our daily lives. When we use the self-checkout lanes in stores, engage with ATM or banking kiosks, and silently order food on touch-screen machines or smartphones, we might wonder what happened to the people who used to work those jobs. Customer service call center workers are being noticeably replaced by chat-bots. Taxi and truck drivers are frequently warned about the advent of selfdriving vehicles. In fields, orchards, and vineyards, experiments to replace farmworkers with drones or robot pickers and planters are tentative but ongoing. Alex Rivera’s 2008 sci-fi film Sleep Dealer, in which growers use robots in the US while workers in Mexico manipulate the robots’ motions, plays on the fantasy of employing migrant labor while making migration itself obsolete. While it might feel particularly pronounced now, worker obsolescence is not a contemporary phenomenon; history reveals many episodes of workers losing their jobs to technological and economic “modernization” from the early 19th century onwards. In fact, the intensity of job churn, or of new occupations coming into existence as older occupations disappear, was likely faster in past eras of technological change as compared to the present. Agricultural work evaporated with the coming of threshers and harvesters; typesetters and newspaper printers were automated out of existence; elevator and switchboard operators faded away; and longshoremen’s working rhythms changed dramatically with global containerization. The pieces in this special issue cover different geographical areas and time periods and bring together many different research fields. These articles feature histories of technology, of labor and workplace struggles, of the global economy, of neoliberalism, of unions and their adaptation to changing conditions, of immigration, and of racism both in work and among workers. The articles feature a mixture of methods, too: archival, interview-based, literary analysis, and so on.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"102 1","pages":"1 - 6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56988131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547922000230
Terrell James Orr
Abstract This paper explores an obsolescence of labor that did not take place. In the 1960s, Florida's citrus growers appeared poised to accompany farmers across the South in pursuing a strategy of agricultural modernization that would mechanize their harvesting labor, rendering obsolete the thirty thousand Black and white farmworkers who harvested the orange crop. Their efforts were coordinated by the Florida Citrus Commission's Harvesting Research and Development Committee (HRDC), a rotating group of growers, trade association representatives, researchers, and engineers, who were confident that mechanization was within their grasp. But two decades later, every Florida orange was harvested by hand and HRDC's funding had been gutted. Why did growers think that mechanizing harvesting labor was both necessary and imminent? And then why, within only two decades, did they make such an about-face, largely abandoning the project of mechanization? The answer, I argue, lies in the particularities of the citrus industry's experience of globalization. At the level of capital, Florida's growers were caught flat-footed by competition from the nascent citrus industry of the State of São Paulo, Brazil; and at the level of labor, immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti swelled the ranks of available workers. The narrative moves between Florida and São Paulo, examining the efforts of growers to control, monitor, and replace farmworkers, and farmworkers’ response, with the efforts and commentary of the HRDC providing the unifying thread. The argument is shown to bear on (1) the historiography of the South's agricultural modernization and (2) the historiography of the South's globalization (the “Nuevo South”), showing that it is necessary to join these two rarely connected historiographies to understand Florida's citrus industry, whose mechanization efforts spanned the 1960s histories of agricultural modernization and the 1980s histories of globalization.
摘要:本文探讨了未发生的劳动过时现象。在20世纪60年代，佛罗里达的柑橘种植者似乎准备与整个南方的农民一起推行农业现代化战略，使他们的收获劳动机械化，使收割橙子的3万名黑人和白人农场工人过时。他们的努力得到了佛罗里达柑橘委员会收获研究与发展委员会(HRDC)的协调，该委员会是一个由种植者、行业协会代表、研究人员和工程师组成的轮流小组，他们相信机械化在他们的掌握之中。但二十年后，佛罗里达的每一个橙子都是手工采摘的，HRDC的资金也被掏腰包了。为什么种植者认为机械化收割劳动既是必要的，也是迫在眉睫的?那么，为什么在短短二十年的时间里，他们做出了这样的转变，基本上放弃了机械化项目?我认为，答案在于柑橘产业全球化经历的特殊性。在资本层面，佛罗里达州的种植者被来自巴西圣保罗州(State of o Paulo)新兴柑橘产业的竞争打了个措手不及;在劳动力方面，来自墨西哥、危地马拉和海地的移民扩大了可用工人的队伍。故事在佛罗里达州和圣保罗之间展开，考察了种植者控制、监督和取代农场工人的努力，以及农场工人的反应，HRDC的努力和评论提供了统一的线索。这一论点涉及(1)南方农业现代化史学和(2)南方全球化史学(“新南方”)，表明有必要将这两种很少联系的史学结合起来，以了解佛罗里达州的柑橘产业，其机械化努力跨越了20世纪60年代的农业现代化史和20世纪80年代的全球化史。
{"title":"Mechanical Harvesting, Globalization, and the Fate of Citrus Farmworkers in Florida and São Paulo, 1965–1985","authors":"Terrell James Orr","doi":"10.1017/S0147547922000230","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547922000230","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This paper explores an obsolescence of labor that did not take place. In the 1960s, Florida's citrus growers appeared poised to accompany farmers across the South in pursuing a strategy of agricultural modernization that would mechanize their harvesting labor, rendering obsolete the thirty thousand Black and white farmworkers who harvested the orange crop. Their efforts were coordinated by the Florida Citrus Commission's Harvesting Research and Development Committee (HRDC), a rotating group of growers, trade association representatives, researchers, and engineers, who were confident that mechanization was within their grasp. But two decades later, every Florida orange was harvested by hand and HRDC's funding had been gutted. Why did growers think that mechanizing harvesting labor was both necessary and imminent? And then why, within only two decades, did they make such an about-face, largely abandoning the project of mechanization? The answer, I argue, lies in the particularities of the citrus industry's experience of globalization. At the level of capital, Florida's growers were caught flat-footed by competition from the nascent citrus industry of the State of São Paulo, Brazil; and at the level of labor, immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and Haiti swelled the ranks of available workers. The narrative moves between Florida and São Paulo, examining the efforts of growers to control, monitor, and replace farmworkers, and farmworkers’ response, with the efforts and commentary of the HRDC providing the unifying thread. The argument is shown to bear on (1) the historiography of the South's agricultural modernization and (2) the historiography of the South's globalization (the “Nuevo South”), showing that it is necessary to join these two rarely connected historiographies to understand Florida's citrus industry, whose mechanization efforts spanned the 1960s histories of agricultural modernization and the 1980s histories of globalization.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"102 1","pages":"76 - 93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56987309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0147547922000138
{"title":"ILW volume 101 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0147547922000138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0147547922000138","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"101 1","pages":"f1 - f5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56987289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s0147547923000054
{"title":"ILW volume 102 Cover and Front matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s0147547923000054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0147547923000054","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"102 1","pages":"f1 - f5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56987563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547922000096
Shennette Garrett-Scott
By early 1863, Harriet Jacobs had long mastered reading people. Even before she could extend a hand to the stone-faced Julia Wilbur, she caught a flash of resentment in Wilbur's eyes. Jacobs decided against a handshake. “Miss Wilbur, I am Harriet Jacobs. Do you remember me?” she asked. Wilbur did remember Jacobs. In fact, Wilbur had not taken her eyes off of the immaculately but modestly dressed African American woman from the moment Jacobs stepped into the converted barracks that now served as a school for freedwomen and girls. Wilbur first met Jacobs in 1849 in Rochester, New York, when Wilbur was a teacher and the secretary of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Then, Jacobs was a self-emancipated, former slave operating an antislavery reading room in the city. Yet, on this unseasonably warm evening of January 14, 1863, in a converted barracks in the District of Columbia, the wheels of fortune had indeed turned. Wilbur made no effort to hide her anger as Jacobs explained that the New York Friends had decided to make Jacobs head matron of the freedwomen's school—the school Wilbur had opened and run almost single-handedly for three months.
{"title":"Domesticating Racial Capitalism: Freedwomen in U.S. Industrial Sewing Schools, 1862–1872—An Opening Foray","authors":"Shennette Garrett-Scott","doi":"10.1017/S0147547922000096","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547922000096","url":null,"abstract":"By early 1863, Harriet Jacobs had long mastered reading people. Even before she could extend a hand to the stone-faced Julia Wilbur, she caught a flash of resentment in Wilbur's eyes. Jacobs decided against a handshake. “Miss Wilbur, I am Harriet Jacobs. Do you remember me?” she asked. Wilbur did remember Jacobs. In fact, Wilbur had not taken her eyes off of the immaculately but modestly dressed African American woman from the moment Jacobs stepped into the converted barracks that now served as a school for freedwomen and girls. Wilbur first met Jacobs in 1849 in Rochester, New York, when Wilbur was a teacher and the secretary of the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. Then, Jacobs was a self-emancipated, former slave operating an antislavery reading room in the city. Yet, on this unseasonably warm evening of January 14, 1863, in a converted barracks in the District of Columbia, the wheels of fortune had indeed turned. Wilbur made no effort to hide her anger as Jacobs explained that the New York Friends had decided to make Jacobs head matron of the freedwomen's school—the school Wilbur had opened and run almost single-handedly for three months.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"101 1","pages":"10 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56987021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1017/s014754792200014x
{"title":"ILW volume 101 Cover and Back matter","authors":"","doi":"10.1017/s014754792200014x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s014754792200014x","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"101 1","pages":"b1 - b3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"56987740","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-12-10DOI: 10.1017/S0147547921000077
M. S. Morgana
Abstract This article navigates ruptures and transformations in the processes of resistance performed by Iranian workers between two key events of the history of contemporary Iran: the 1979 Revolution and the 2009 Green Movement. It explores how labor activism emerged in the Islamic Republic, and illustrates how it managed to survive. Drawing from the concepts of resistance, collective awareness and counter-conduct as its theoretical basis – between Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault – the article details the changing strategies that workers adopted over time and space to cope with the absence of trade unions, monitoring activities, and repression in the workplace. It demonstrates that workers' agency was never fully blocked by the Islamic Republic. However, it tests the limits imposed by the social context to discourage activism, beyond state coercive measures and policies.
{"title":"Trajectories of Resistance and Shifting Forms of Workers’ Activism in Iran","authors":"M. S. Morgana","doi":"10.1017/S0147547921000077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547921000077","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article navigates ruptures and transformations in the processes of resistance performed by Iranian workers between two key events of the history of contemporary Iran: the 1979 Revolution and the 2009 Green Movement. It explores how labor activism emerged in the Islamic Republic, and illustrates how it managed to survive. Drawing from the concepts of resistance, collective awareness and counter-conduct as its theoretical basis – between Antonio Gramsci and Michel Foucault – the article details the changing strategies that workers adopted over time and space to cope with the absence of trade unions, monitoring activities, and repression in the workplace. It demonstrates that workers' agency was never fully blocked by the Islamic Republic. However, it tests the limits imposed by the social context to discourage activism, beyond state coercive measures and policies.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"101 1","pages":"164 - 183"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45463800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-11-08DOI: 10.1017/S014754790000329X
Jenna Lauter, Sarah Ortlip-Sommers
These remarks by our editors opened and closed the Are You There Law? It’s Me, Menstruation Symposium Conference on April 9 and 10 of this year. Amidst the global pandemic, participants gathered virtually on Zoom for two days of engaging presentations by our Symposium authors and vibrant discussions among scholars, practitioners, and students alike.
{"title":"Editors' Remarks","authors":"Jenna Lauter, Sarah Ortlip-Sommers","doi":"10.1017/S014754790000329X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S014754790000329X","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 \u0000 \u0000These remarks by our editors opened and closed the Are You There Law? It’s Me, Menstruation Symposium Conference on April 9 and 10 of this year. Amidst the global pandemic, participants gathered virtually on Zoom for two days of engaging presentations by our Symposium authors and vibrant discussions among scholars, practitioners, and students alike. \u0000 \u0000 \u0000","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"33 1","pages":"1 - 2"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S014754790000329X","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43417385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-01DOI: 10.1017/S0147547920000149
S. Schaupp
Abstract In November 1918, the labor movement of Bavaria, Germany, overthrew the monarchist government and, in April 1919, proclaimed a Bavarian Council Republic (BCR). This article analyzes the revolution and its defeat through the lens of class composition theory, thereby suggesting some revisions to the latter. The technical composition of the Bavarian working class fostered the concept of self-management, which lay at the heart of the councils as the organizational form of the revolution. However, it also nurtured authoritarian potentials, which were more in line with-counter revolutionary positions. The article suggests that class composition theory must be expanded by the notion of social composition, taking into account struggles over reproduction and consumption: Inflation, unemployment, food shortages, and disease led to a crisis in material reproduction, which in turn led large parts of the unemployed and of the women's movement to become radical revolutionaries. The article argues to conceptualize technical and social class composition to be in a dialectical relationship with political composition. It thus emphasizes the role of ideologies of anti-Semitism and anti-feminism, both within the counter-revolution and the revolution itself. While the combination of different struggles for emancipation contributed to the early successes of the revolution, their ideological division was as an important factor in its defeat.
{"title":"De-centering the Revolution: Class Composition in the Making and Defeat of the Bavarian Council Republic","authors":"S. Schaupp","doi":"10.1017/S0147547920000149","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547920000149","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In November 1918, the labor movement of Bavaria, Germany, overthrew the monarchist government and, in April 1919, proclaimed a Bavarian Council Republic (BCR). This article analyzes the revolution and its defeat through the lens of class composition theory, thereby suggesting some revisions to the latter. The technical composition of the Bavarian working class fostered the concept of self-management, which lay at the heart of the councils as the organizational form of the revolution. However, it also nurtured authoritarian potentials, which were more in line with-counter revolutionary positions. The article suggests that class composition theory must be expanded by the notion of social composition, taking into account struggles over reproduction and consumption: Inflation, unemployment, food shortages, and disease led to a crisis in material reproduction, which in turn led large parts of the unemployed and of the women's movement to become radical revolutionaries. The article argues to conceptualize technical and social class composition to be in a dialectical relationship with political composition. It thus emphasizes the role of ideologies of anti-Semitism and anti-feminism, both within the counter-revolution and the revolution itself. While the combination of different struggles for emancipation contributed to the early successes of the revolution, their ideological division was as an important factor in its defeat.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"100 1","pages":"1 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44127087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-02-22DOI: 10.1017/S0147547920000198
D. Pendergrass, Troy Vettese
Edward Jenner took the long view. His 1798 treatise on vaccination, which reported a revolutionary new method of preventing smallpox, opened with a medical philosophy of history rather than a description of symptoms or a review of existing treatments. “The deviation of Man from the state in which he was originally placed by Nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of Diseases,” he explained. By this he meant that infectious disease ultimately resulted from human and animal intermingling since the agricultural revolution, an insight anthropologists and epidemiologists have since confirmed. The majority of human pathogens are ultimately zoonoses, originating not at the dawn of the human species but in the relatively recent past. Measles likely evolved from the bovine disease rinderpest seven thousand years ago. Influenza may have started about forty-five hundred years ago with the domestication of waterfowl. Jenner's own specialty, smallpox, probably originated four thousand years ago in eastern Africa when a gerbil virus jumped to the newly domesticated camel and then to humans. The New World's Indigenous nations cultivated countless crops but practiced little animal husbandry, allowing them to live relatively free of disease before 1492. European conquest succeeded in a large part thanks to the invaders’ pathogenic armory of measles, typhus, tuberculosis, and smallpox, which decimated Indigenous populations by 90 percent over the succeeding centuries.
{"title":"The Humanization of Nature and Half-Earth Socialism","authors":"D. Pendergrass, Troy Vettese","doi":"10.1017/S0147547920000198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0147547920000198","url":null,"abstract":"Edward Jenner took the long view. His 1798 treatise on vaccination, which reported a revolutionary new method of preventing smallpox, opened with a medical philosophy of history rather than a description of symptoms or a review of existing treatments. “The deviation of Man from the state in which he was originally placed by Nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of Diseases,” he explained. By this he meant that infectious disease ultimately resulted from human and animal intermingling since the agricultural revolution, an insight anthropologists and epidemiologists have since confirmed. The majority of human pathogens are ultimately zoonoses, originating not at the dawn of the human species but in the relatively recent past. Measles likely evolved from the bovine disease rinderpest seven thousand years ago. Influenza may have started about forty-five hundred years ago with the domestication of waterfowl. Jenner's own specialty, smallpox, probably originated four thousand years ago in eastern Africa when a gerbil virus jumped to the newly domesticated camel and then to humans. The New World's Indigenous nations cultivated countless crops but practiced little animal husbandry, allowing them to live relatively free of disease before 1492. European conquest succeeded in a large part thanks to the invaders’ pathogenic armory of measles, typhus, tuberculosis, and smallpox, which decimated Indigenous populations by 90 percent over the succeeding centuries.","PeriodicalId":14353,"journal":{"name":"International Labor and Working-Class History","volume":"99 1","pages":"15 - 23"},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0147547920000198","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43617766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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