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The Nightcrawlers : A Story of Worms, Cows, and Cash in the Underground Bait Industry.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Steckley, Joshua.
- Series:
- Critical Environments: Nature, Science, and Politics Series
- Critical Environments: Nature, Science, and Politics Series ; v.17
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Fishing bait industry--Canada.
- Fishing bait industry.
- Baitworms--Economic aspects--Canada.
- Baitworms.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (280 pages)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Berkeley : University of California Press, 2025.
- System Details:
- Mode of access: World Wide Web.
- Summary:
- How does a banal earthworm become a valuable commodity? Lumbricus terrestris, otherwise known as the Canadian nightcrawler, is the most popular live bait used by recreational anglers throughout the world. Each year, as many as seven hundred million worms are handpicked from Ontario farmland for the bait market, earning the region the undisputed title of worm capital of the world. The Nightcrawlers goes deep into the empirical underground to see how capital confronts a diverse cast of human and nonhuman characters: stubborn worms, wealthy dairy farmers and their precious cow manure, immigrant pickers laboring at night, and worm wholesalers who undercut each other through tax fraud and money laundering. This eccentric tale of worms, cows, and cash reveals the inherent contradictions in capitalism's attempts to commodify the living world--including the soil organisms that are inches beneath our feet.
- Contents:
- Prologue : bags full of cash
- Introduction : worm traps and worm queens
- From a "plebeian bait" to the "Canadian nightcrawler"
- Following the worm
- Cash cropping worms
- Underground capital
- The worm-picking labor process
- Unexpected "freedoms"
- How a bait assemblage falls apart
- Conclusion : "closing the file on this subject forever."
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.
- ISBN:
- 0-520-41371-7
- OCLC:
- 1515461752
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