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First the Seed spotlights the history of plant breeding and shows how efforts to control the seed have shaped the emergence of the agricultural biotechnology industry. This second edition of a classic work in the political economy of science includes an extensive, new chapter updating the analysis to include the most recent developments in the struggle over the direction of crop genetic engineering. 1988 Cloth, 1990 Paperback, Cambridge University Press Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Agricultural History Society Winner of the Robert K. Merton Award of the American Sociological Association
This history of the scientific and commercial lines of plant development in the United States traces the transformation of the seed from a public good produced and reproduced by farmers into a commodity controlled by businesses and corporations divorced from the uses of their product.
Updated edition: “A balanced economic, social, political, and technological history of rural America . . . A splendid book, rich with detail.” —Agricultural History Review Through most of its history, America has been a rural nation, largely made up of farmers. David B. Danbom’s Born in the Country was the first—and is still the only—general history of rural America. Ranging from pre-Columbian times to the enormous changes of the twentieth century, the book masterfully integrates agricultural, technological, and economic themes with new questions about the American experience. Danbom employs the stories of particular farm families to illustrate the experiences of rural people. Th...
A poet and farmer aims to preserve ecological integrity through a discussion of the history, lore and importance of seeds through the ages, as important now to human sustenance as ever before, particularly in the face of the spreading use of GMOs.
We all need food to survive, and forty percent of the worlds population relies on agriculture for their livelihood. Yet control over food is concentrated in relatively few hands. Turmoil in the world food economy over the past decade - including the food price crisis, intensification of land grabs, and clashes over rules governing global food trade - has highlighted both the volatility and vulnerability inherent in the way we currently organize this vital sector. At the same time, contrasting extremes of both undernourishment and overnourishment affect a significant proportion of humanity. There is also growing awareness of the serious ecological consequences that stem from industrial models...
Intellectual property law has been interacting with nature for over two centuries. Despite this long history, this relationship has largely been ignored. Intellectual Property and the Design of Nature fills this gap by bringing together scholars from different disciplines to examine the important role that nature plays in intellectual property law. Based on the idea that many contemporary issues require a better understanding of these historical interactions, the book reflects on the ways intellectual property law has engaged with and understood nature in the past. The varied contributions show how the relationship between nature and intellectual property law is often more complex, permeable, and porous than is commonly recognized. Intellectual Property and the Design of Nature demonstrates the complex and changing role that nature has played in the history of intellectual property law. Each of the chapters casts a new light on these connections. A compelling read for everyone interested in exploring new perspectives in the field of intellectual property.
Earthcare: Readings and Cases in Environmental Ethics presents a diverse collection of writings from a variety of authors on environmental ethics, environmental science, and the environmental movement overall. Exploring a broad range of world views, religions and philosophies, David W. Clowney and Patricia Mosto bring together insightful thoughts on the ethical issues arising in various areas of environmental concern.
A Companion to the History of American Science offers a collection of essays that give an authoritative overview of the most recent scholarship on the history of American science. Covers topics including astronomy, agriculture, chemistry, eugenics, Big Science, military technology, and more Features contributions by the most accomplished scholars in the field of science history Covers pivotal events in U.S. history that shaped the development of science and science policy such as WWII, the Cold War, and the Women’s Rights movement
In recent years Canadians have become more and more concerned about the origins of their food and the environmental impacts of pesticides in agriculture. What is less well known is that pesticide corporations such as Monsanto and DuPont have bought their way into the seed industry and are taking control of what was once the exclusive domain of farmers. In Good Crop/Bad Crop, Devlin Kuyek deftly examines the economic and environmental background of the modern seed trade from a Canadian perspective. Historically seeds were viewed more as public goods than as commodities, and plant breeding objectives were widely shared by scientists, governments, and farmers. Now that approach is changing; seeds have become increasingly commodified, and plant breeding has become subject to corporate priorities. Farmers and citizens in Canada, Kuyek points out, need to heed the hard-won lessons from the developing world, where farmers greatly damaged by the much-heralded approaches of the Green Revolution are now taking steps to reclaim control over seed supplies, food security, and their futures.
Histories of Technology, the Environment and Modern Britain brings together historians with a wide range of interests to take a uniquely wide-lens view of how technology and the environment have been intimately and irreversibly entangled in Britain over the last 300 years. It combines, for the first time, two perspectives with much to say about Britain since the industrial revolution: the history of technology and environmental history. Technologies are modified environments, just as nature is to varying extents engineered. Furthermore, technologies and our living and non-living environment are both predominant material forms of organisation – and self-organisation – that surround and make us. Both have changed over time, in intersecting ways. Technologies discussed in the collection include bulldozers, submarine cables, automobiles, flood barriers, medical devices, museum displays and biotechnologies. Environments investigated include bogs, cities, farms, places of natural beauty and pollution, land and sea. The book explores this diversity but also offers an integrated framework for understanding these intersections.