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Itineraries of Expertise
Itineraries of Expertise contends that experts and expertise played fundamental roles in the Latin American Cold War. While traditional Cold War histories of the region have examined diplomatic, intelligence, and military operations and more recent studies have probed the cultural dimensions of the conflict, the experts who constitute the focus of this volume escaped these categories. Although they often portrayed themselves as removed from politics, their work contributed to the key geopolitical agendas of the day. The paths traveled by the experts in this volume not only traversed Latin America and connected Latin America to the Global North, they also stretch traditional chronologies of the Latin American Cold War to show how local experts in the early twentieth century laid the foundation for post–World War II development projects, and how Cold War knowledge of science, technology, and the environment continues to impact our world today. These essays unite environmental history and the history of science and technology to argue for the importance of expertise in the Latin American Cold War.
Histories of Solitude
By combining chronological coverage, analytical breadth, and interdisciplinary approaches, these two volumes—Histories of Solitude and Histories of Perplexity—study the histories of Colombia over the last two centuries as illustrations of the histories of democracy across the Americas. The volumes bring together over 40 scholars based in Colombia, the United States, England, and Canada working in various disciplines to discuss how a country that has been consistently presented as a rarity in Latin America provides critical examples to re-examine major historical problems: republicanism and liberalism; export economies and agrarian modernization; populism and cultural politics of state fo...
Cold War Anthropologist
As an archaeologist, anthropologist, scholar, educator, and program evaluator for the U.S. State Department during the early Cold War era, Dr. Isabel T. Kelly’s (1906–1983) career presents a distinctive vantage point on the evolving landscape of U.S. foreign policy, Mexican rural welfare initiatives, and the discipline of anthropology. Her trajectory illuminates a shift toward pragmatic, culturally sensitive approaches in technical assistance programs for Mexico’s rural areas, departing from traditional U.S.-centric developmental paradigms. Kelly’s transition from a prominent archaeologist to a key figure in applied anthropology is meticulously chronicled, unveiling her pivotal role ...
The Subject of Revolution
From television to travel bans, geopolitics to popular dance, The Subject of Revolution explores how knowledge about the 1959 Cuban Revolution was produced and how the Revolution in turn shaped new worldviews. Drawing on sources from over twenty archives as well as film, music, theater, and material culture, this book traces the consolidation of the Revolution over two decades in the interface between political and popular culture. The "subject of Revolution," it proposes, should be understood as the evolving synthesis of the imaginaries constructed by its many "subjects," including revolutionary leaders, activists, academics, and ordinary people within and beyond the island's borders. The book reopens some of the questions that have long animated debates about Cuba, from the relationship between populace and leadership to the archive and its limits, while foregrounding the construction of popular understandings. It argues that the politicization of everyday life was an inescapable effect of the revolutionary process as well as the catalyst for new ways of knowing and being.
Making the Green Revolution
In November 2017, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary at its headquarters outside Palmira, Colombia. As an important research center of the so-called Green Revolution in agricultural science and technologies, CIAT emphasizes its contributions to sustainability, food security, gender equity, inclusive markets, and resilient, climate-smart agriculture. Yet these terms hardly describe the Cauca Valley where CIAT is physically located, a place that has been transformed into an industrial monoculture of sugarcane where thirteen Colombian corporations oversee the vast majority of this valley's famously fertile soil. This exemplifies the para...
On Our Own Terms
During the Cold War, U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, economics, and society grew in scope and complexity, with diplomatic legacies evident in today's hemispheric policies. Development became a key form of intervention as government officials and experts from the United States and Latin America believed that development could foster hemispheric solidarity and security. In parts of Latin America, its implementation was especially intricate because recipients of these programs were diverse Indigenous peoples with their own politics, economics, and cultures. Contrary to project planners' expectations, Indigenous beneficiaries were not passive recipients but actively engaged with de...
The Taste of Nostalgia
"In recent years, Peruvian food has become of interest to tourists drawn to the inventive ways in which the incredibly ecologically diverse country has been a locus for chefs to experiment with the many foodstuffs and to draw on Indigenous knowledge and cultural histories. However, the simpler, everyday cooking of Peru is rarely the focus of media about Peru. In this manuscript Amy Cox Hall illustrates this history for readers who want to expand their understanding of the complex culinary histories of Peru"--
Endangered Maize
"Many people worry that we're losing genetic diversity in the foods we eat. Over the past century, crop varieties standardized for industrial agriculture have increasingly dominated farm fields. Concerned about what this transition means for the future of food, scientists, farmers, and eaters have sought to protect crop plants they consider endangered. They have organized high-tech genebanks and heritage seed swaps. They have combed fields for ancient landraces and sought farmers growing Indigenous varieties. Behind this widespread concern for the loss of plant diversity lies another extinction narrative about the survival of farmers themselves, a story that is often obscured by urgent calls...
Frontier Science
Between 1945 and 1970, Canada’s Department of National Defence sponsored scientific research into the myriad challenges of military operations in cold regions. To understand and overcome the impediments of the country’s cold climate, scientists studied cold-weather acclimatization, hypothermia, frostbite, and psychological morale for soldiers assigned to active duty in northern Canada. Frontier Science investigates the history of military science in northern Canada during this period of the Cold War, highlighting the consequences of government-funded research for humans and nature alike. The book reveals how under the guise of “environmental protection” research, the Canadian militar...
American Tropics
Biodiversity has been a key concept in international conservation since the 1980s, yet historians have paid little attention to its origins. Uncovering its roots in tropical fieldwork and the southward expansion of U.S. empire at the turn of the twentieth century, Megan Raby details how ecologists took advantage of growing U.S. landholdings in the circum-Caribbean by establishing permanent field stations for long-term, basic tropical research. From these outposts of U.S. science, a growing community of American "tropical biologists" developed both the key scientific concepts and the values embedded in the modern discourse of biodiversity. Considering U.S. biological fieldwork from the era of the Spanish-American War through the anticolonial movements of the 1960s and 1970s, this study combines the history of science, environmental history, and the history of U.S.–Caribbean and Latin American relations. In doing so, Raby sheds new light on the origins of contemporary scientific and environmentalist thought and brings to the forefront a surprisingly neglected history of twentieth-century U.S. science and empire.
