Industrializing organisms : introducing evolutionary history / edited by Susan R. Schrepfer and Philip Scranton.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Scranton, Philip.

Schrepfer, Susan R.

Series:

Hagley perspectives on business and culture ; 5.

Hagley perspectives on business and culture ; v. 5

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Agricultural biotechnology.

Agricultural biotechnology--Environmental aspects.

Transgenic organisms.

Agricultural innovations.

Physical Description:

ix, 275 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2004.

Summary:

Evolution has evolved into a booming industry. As humans continue to use technology to reshape for their needs everything from wheat to cows to chickens, the evolution of these organisms is no longer merely a matter of natural selection, but something far more artificial ... and profitable. Bringing us to the threshold of the new field of evolutionary history, Industrializing Organisms explores the implications of mankind's direct intervention into evolutionary dynamics for both convenience and profit -- from the creation of "turbo-cows" and "war horses" in the nineteenth century to the manufacturing of "green gold" and the "chicken of tomorrow" today.

Contents:

Introduction: The Garden in the Machine: Toward an Evolutionary History of Technology / Edmund Russell 1

Part I Plants, Profits, Politics, and Power

"For Profit and Pleasure": Peter Henderson and the Commercialization of Horticulture in Nineteenth-Century America / Susan Warren Lanman 19

Biological Innovation in American Wheat Production: Science, Policy, and Environmental Adaptation / Alan L. Olmstead, Paul W. Rhode 43

Creating an Industrial Plant: The Biotechnology of Sugar Production in Cuba / Mark J. Smith 85

Manufacturing Green Gold: Industrial Tree Improvement and the Power of Heredity in the Postwar United States / William Body, Scott Prudham 107

Part II Animals, Aggression, Arrogance, and Analysis

War Horses: Equine Technology in the American Civil War / Ann N. Greene 143

Turbo-Cows: Producing a Competitive Animal in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries / Barbara Orland 167

Canine Technologies, Model Patients: The Historical Production of Hemophiliac Dogs in American Biomedicine / Stephen Pemberton 191

Making the Chicken of Tomorrow: Reworking Poultry as Commodities and as Creatures, 1945-1990 / Roger Horowitz 215

Hogs, Antibiotics, and the Industrial Environments of Postwar Agriculture / Mark R. Finlay 237.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

041594547X

0415945488

OCLC:

52341627