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Food, Science, Policy and Regulation in the Twentieth Century: International and Comparative Perspectives (Studies in the Social History of Medicine)
David F. Smith
Manufacturer: Routledge
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ASIN: 0415235324 |
Book Description
A range of important case studies from pasteurization in Britain to the E coli outbreak offers new material for those interested in science policy and the role of expertise in modern political culture. This book examines the twentieth century history of key aspects of this contemporary debate, including the relationship between food and science,the character of food policy, and the role of business in shaping or constraining new policies.
Book Description
American agriculture in the twentieth century has given the world one of its great success stories, a paradigm of productivity and plenty. Yet the story has its dark side, from the plight of the Okies in the 1930s to the farm crisis of the 1980s to today's concerns about low crop prices and the impact of biotechnology. Looking at U.S. farming over the past century, Bruce Gardner searches out explanations for both the remarkable progress and the persistent social problems that have marked the history of American agriculture.
Gardner documents both the economic difficulties that have confronted farmers and the technological and economic transformations that have lifted them from relative poverty to economic parity with the nonfarm population. He provides a detailed analysis of the causes of these trends, with emphasis on the role of government action. He reviews how commodity support programs, driven by interest-group politics, have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to little purpose. Nonetheless, Gardner concludes that by reconciling competing economic interests while fostering productivity growth and economic integration of the farm and nonfarm economies, the overall twentieth-century role of government in American agriculture is fairly viewed as a triumph of democracy.
Book Description
What useful changes has feminism brought to science? Feminists have enjoyed success in their efforts to open many fields to women as participants. But the effects of feminism have not been restricted to altering employment and professional opportunities for women. The essays in this volume explore how feminist theory has had a direct impact on research in the biological and social sciences, in medicine, and in technology, often providing the impetus for fundamentally changing the theoretical underpinnings and practices of such research. In archaeology, evidence of women's hunting activities suggested by spears found in women's graves is no longer dismissed; computer scientists have used feminist epistemologies for rethinking the human-interface problems of our growing reliance on computers. Attention to women's movements often tends to reinforce a presumption that feminism changes institutions through critique-from-without. This volume reveals the potent but not always visible transformations feminism has brought to science, technology, and medicine from within.
Contributors:
Ruth Schwartz Cowan
Linda Marie Fedigan
Scott Gilbert
Evelynn M. Hammonds
Evelyn Fox Keller
Pamela E. Mack
Michael S. Mahoney
Emily Martin
Ruth Oldenziel
Nelly Oudshoorn
Carroll Pursell
Karen Rader
Alison Wylie
Book Description
In this history of American agriculture over the last century, Mr. Hurt shows how farm men and women increasingly looked to the federal government--for technical information, regulation of business practices, and intervention in the agricultural economy. He surveys the major policy changes that helped shape farming both as a business and as a way of life. The best history of twentieth-century American agriculture I've ever read. A fine, fine book. --Peter A. Coclanis
Customer Reviews:
Is There a Future in Farming?.......2005-11-16
In his book, Problems of Plenty: The American Farmer in the Twentieth Century, R. Douglas Hurt explores the issues surrounding farmers' dependency on government subsidies to survive. I like the book because it is organized in an orderly, reader-friendly manner and Hurt also remains neutral while using the history of farming to raise many controversial issues, but he does not cover potential solutions and is lacking important information and data on non-agricultural issues. The book does a great job explaining why farm policy is what it is today.The book was a great source for my class work and helped me to understand how some of the current farming techniques and policies were developed.
An intriguing discussion.......2003-02-08
This survey of the problems of the American farmer in the 20th century exposes how rapid technological and scientific change brought both prosperity and new challenges to the farming community. Problems Of Plenty focuses on farmers' dependence on the federal government, the special challenges of increased productivity, and how the government handled the growing problems of surplus. An intriguing discussion.
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A Green and Permanent Land: Ecology and Agriculture in the Twentieth Century
Randal S. Beeman , and
James A. Pritchard
Manufacturer: University Press Of Kansas
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Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0700610669 |
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Once patronized primarily by the counterculture and the health food establishment, the organic food industry today is a multi-billion-dollar business driven by ever-growing consumer demand for safe food and greater public awareness of ecological issues. Assumed by many to be a recent phenomenon, that industry owes much to agricultural innovations that go back to the Dust Bowl era. This book explores the roots and branches of alternative agricultural ideas in twentieth-century America, showing how ecological thought has challenged and changed agricultural theory, practice, and policy from the 1930s to the present. It introduces us to the people and institutions who forged alternatives to industrialized agriculture through a deep concern for the enduring fertility of the soil, a passionate commitment to human health, and a strong advocacy of economic justice for farmers. Randal Beeman and James Pritchard show that agricultural issues were central to the rise of the environmental movement in the United States. As family farms failed during the Depression, a new kind of agriculture was championed based on the holistic approach taught by the emerging science of ecology. Ecology influenced the "permanent agriculture" movement that advocated such radical concepts as long-term land use planning, comprehensive soil conservation, and organic farming. Then in the 1970s, "sustainable agriculture" combined many of these ideas with new concerns about misguided technology and an over-consumptive culture to preach a more sensible approach to farming. In chronicling the overlooked history of alternative agriculture, A Green and Permanent Land records the significant contributions of individuals like Rex Tugwell, Hugh Bennett, Louis Bromfield, Edward Faulkner, Russell and Kate Lord, Scott and Helen Nearing, Robert Rodale, Wes Jackson, and groups like Friends of the Land and the Practical Farmers of Iowa. And by demonstrating how agriculture also remains central to the public interest-especially in the face of climatic crises, genetically altered crops, and questionable uses of pesticides-this book puts these issues in historical perspective and offers readers considerable food for thought.
Book Description
A half-century ago, the world was trying to heal the wounds of global war. People were rushing to make up for lost time, grasping for material wealth. This was the era of "total electric living," a phrase beamed into living rooms by General Electric spokesman Ronald Reagan. Environmental awareness was barely a gleam in the eye of even Rachel Carson.
And yet, Helen and Scott Nearing were on a totally different path, having left the city for the country, eschewing materialistic society in a quest for the self-sufficiency they deemed "the Good Life." Chelsea Green is pleased to honor their example by publishing a new edition of The Maple Sugar Book, complete with a new section of never-before-published photos of the Nearings working on the sugaring operation, and an essay by Greg Joly relating the story behind the book and placing the Nearings' work in the context of their neighborhood and today's maple industry.
Maple sugaring was an important source of cash for the Nearings, as it continues to be for many New England farmers today. This book is filled with a history of sugaring from Native American to modern times, with practical tips on how to sap trees, process sap, and market syrup. In an age of microchips and software that are obsolete before you can install them, maple sugaring is a process that's stood the test of time. Fifty years after its original publication in 1950, The Maple Sugar Book is as relevant as ever to the homestead or small-scale commercial practitioner.
Customer Reviews:
Neat book.......2004-01-21
This book is a description of way the Nearings earned hard cash to sustain their homesteading project. When they first built their homestead in Vermont in the early 1930s, they thought they might make the cash income for purchasing things they couldn't grow on the farm by selling wood. However, they soon found themselves owners of a sugar maple bush, and the family who had been tapping the sap up until then showed them the ropes of the maple sugaring business. It wasn't long before they discovered that they could earn their annual cash needs during the six week sugaring season, leaving the rest of the year free to grow food, construct farm buildings, and write.
The book starts with a history of sugar making. Then it includes some how-to information (current as of the 1940s). This section includes chapters on maintenance of the sugar bush, equipment for sugaring, sap and weather, making sugar, making syrup, and marketing. The book closes with a section that describes some of the philosophy of the Nearing's homesteading project, especially those aspects related to maple sugaring. And in the end, there are a few recipes for using maple syrup.
Because of Scott Nearing's academic training and experience, the book has an academic flavor, and the chapters on the history of sugaring are quite well documented. The details in the book about sugaring aren't quite sufficient for rank newbies to take off and try to start their own sugaring operation- -if you want to know exact details about constructing a sugar shack or using an evaporator, it would be better to look for a more technical book with a recent publication date. The book's main value is for those who wish to learn more about how the Nearings put their thoughts about cash income and bread labor into action. With that in mind, the book is truly a classic, and well worth reading many times through.
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Regulation and the Revolution in United States Farm Productivity (Studies in Economic History and Policy: USA in the Twentieth Century)
Sally H. Clarke
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521528453 |
Book Description
Since the 1930s, U.S. agriculture has undergone a revolution in productivity. Sally Clarke explains how government activity, from support for research to price supports and farm credit programs, created a climate favorable to rapid gains in productivity. Regulation stabilized prices, introduced new sources of credit, and caused tool manufacturers and private creditors to revise their business strategies. Competitive farmers took advantage of these new conditions to invest in expensive technology and achieve new gains in productivity.
Book Description
The family farm has long been held up as the strength of rural America and the Nation. Much has been written about the virtuous, but sometimes mythical, family enterprise. This book deals with the changes that have taken place on the land that make the family farm of today different from its 1900 predecessor. Technology in agriculture has changed from horses to four-wheel-drive tractors. Today's farmer relies on capital, management, and technology to be successful.
Book Description
From baked beans to apple cider, from clam chowder to pumpkin pie, Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald's culinary history reveals the complex and colorful origins of New England foods and cookery. Featuring hosts of stories and recipes derived from generations of New Englanders of diverse backgrounds, America's Founding Food chronicles the region's cuisine, from the English settlers' first encounter with Indian corn in the early seventeenth century to the nostalgic marketing of New England dishes in the first half of the twentieth century.
Focusing on the traditional foods of the region--including beans, pumpkins, seafood, meats, baked goods, and beverages such as cider and rum--the authors show how New Englanders procured, preserved, and prepared their sustaining dishes. Placing the New England culinary experience in the broader context of British and American history and culture, Stavely and Fitzgerald demonstrate the importance of New England's foods to the formation of American identity, while dispelling some of the myths arising from patriotic sentiment.
At once a sharp assessment and a savory recollection, America's Founding Food sets out the rich story of the American dinner table and provides a new way to appreciate American history.
Customer Reviews:
A New Angle on New England History.......2006-05-27
My New England bookshelf groans under the weight of historical studies focusing on the politics, theology, intellectual life, industry, and notable people of the region. These are all worthy if well-worn subjects. Then there's the New England tourism industry, selling "ye olde" Boston baked beans, clam chowder, and Indian pudding as vaunted, almost sacred, symbols of the region. Here, finally, is a book that explains the connection between the two, taking both the history and the food seriously.
There are many surprises here, for instance that turkeys were often boiled and garnished with oyster sauce when served for special feasts, and that the first English to settle the region grew corn because their wheat crops mostly failed. This is a careful, food-oriented story, with lots of detail on what people ate, and how it was processed and preserved as well as cooked. It's also interesting to learn what average families wanted to eat when they were dining on their daily pottage.
The authors use memoirs, letters, and novels as well as cookbooks to uncover what New Englanders thought about the foods they ate. This is a compelling account and a detailed study, with lots of good stories to leaven the Boston Brown Bread. Whether you're interested in the ways gingerbread recipes changed from the court kitchens of the Middle Ages to the farm kitchens of New England, or in the reasons why a wallflower cuisine like New England cooking became enshrined as American food, there's something here for you.
Cuisine and History.......2006-05-20
Although we know that armies march on their bellies and that the search for food has played a crucial role in building societies, the writing of history has often neglected this important subject. Only recently has food history taken its place alongside more conventional approaches to history-writing. This book is a fine example of the new interest in food history.
What impressed me as I read it was how little I had known before, and how much I was learning about what New Englanders ate throughout the region's history. We've all heard about Boston baked beans and Indian pudding, but I didn't know about the gingerbread that colonial militamen nibbled on muster days. Nor did I know that bear was considered even better eating than venison by the Massachusetts Bay colonists. One nineteenth-century writer asserted that cod fish was to New England what roast beef was to England. What struck me most, however, was how the authors discuss the colonial revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how that period shaped our ideas of "historic" New England. What we think of as New England's historic foods--the "first" Thanksgiving meal, those Boston baked beans--were partly based in fact but were mostly the invention of the colonial revivial.
The ways that people use their traditional foods to represent their culture are described in fascinating detail in America's Founding Food. There's a wealth of detail here, but also a great story about what food meant, from the settlement of New England to the revival of the region as a destination for those interested in America's roots. This is a substantial, thoughtful book.
The Meaning of the Menu.......2006-05-18
Americans still think particular New England foods and menus, like Thanksgiving dinner, Boston Baked Beans, and boiled Maine lobster, are important parts of our American identity. This highly informative book tells us why these and other New England dishes were important to many generations of Americans, and continue to be part of our American heritage.
With wit and erudition, the authors separate fact from fiction through careful analysis of some hoary traditions. Along the way, they left me chuckling over such food-lore gems as the Adams-Jefferson dispute on when to serve pudding and the controversy concerning the "authentic" way to make Rhode Island Jonny cakes, with one side declaring that the other's was "hick feed."
There's something here for just about everyone interested in American history or the history of food. From a discussion of the economic motivation for setting up those quaint New England fishing villages to the environmental implications of animal husbandry (which the English colonists introduced into New England), we learn to think somewhat differently about New England's past. Along the way, we get a glimpse of American home life as it was lived, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, in New England--the houswife who worries that she's too late bottling her plums and the little boy whose mother's "fire-cake" is such a treat. This book makes you feel like you are in those kithcens. Boiling a hundred oysters to make Oyster Ketchup, helping to butcher a 280-pound hog, these New England cooks were really something!
While it is a history and not a cookbook, this book gives both cooks and history buffs the solid information we need to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of New England food lore. It offers a chance to see what New Englanders ate, and why, and most tellingly, what they thought about their food.
A well-told corrective to some common myths.......2006-03-30
This is a fascinating story that uses food to debunk many of the myths about New England that we learned in school. Here you will find the real story behind the English reliance on Indian corn, the origins of chowder, and the ways dishes such as baked beans were used to promote one social group over others. This is history at its best--fun, factual, thoughtful, coherent, and readable.
Only two librarians could write such a boring book on such an interesting subject.......2006-03-29
Yes, a scholarly book, with illustrations. Yawn. If you seek anything more than research and the occasional black and white illustration, look elsewhere. I'm sure the authors are being "celebrated" within their communities, but the hype is just that; hype. The cover of the book is the only colorful, exciting thing about it.
Not that I was expecting a cookbook, but it does not appeal to a wide range of people, and that is a flaw. The authors therefore come across as if they must be glad to be part of such an "elite" group of people who "get it," while the rest of us are simply ignorant.
Also, this is definitely not for the foodies.
Book Description
Sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, a coterie of fire ants came ashore from South American ships docked in Mobile, Alabama. Fanning out across the region, the fire ants invaded the South, damaging crops, harassing game animals, and hindering harvesting methods. Responding to a collective call from southerners to eliminate these invasive pests, the U.S. Department of Agriculture developed a campaign that not only failed to eradicate the fire ants but left a wake of dead wildlife, sickened cattle, and public protest.
With political intrigue, environmental tragedy, and such figures as Rachel Carson and E. O. Wilson, The Fire Ant Wars is a grippingly perceptive tale of changing social attitudes and scientific practices. Tracing the political and scientific eradication campaigns, Joshua Buhs's bracing study uses the saga as a means to consider twentieth-century American concepts of nature and environmental stewardship. In telling the story, Buhs explores how human concepts of nature evolve and how these ideas affect the natural and social worlds.
Spotlighting a particular issue to discuss larger questions of science, public perceptions, and public policy—from pre-environmental awareness to the activist years of the early environmental movement—The Fire Ant Wars will appeal to historians of science, environmentalists, and biologists alike.
Customer Reviews:
A catastrophic mistake.......2005-06-15
Recently, nature has come to be viewed as a sort of plague on humanity. The necessity of no littering signs leads me to the conclusion that a consensus of apathy exists towards nature's well being. Nature, in society's perception, is much closer to the ultimate hassle - debunking any consideration of its credentials as the ultimate caretaker. I believe that much of this disregard comes from environmentalists who fail to recognize man's place in nature. It falls short of the task to say man has a responsibility to nature: man is a part of nature and as such, must be spoken of in these terms. Joshua Blu Buhs, in The Fire Ant Wars, fails to recognize the error of separating man from nature. While his thesis promoting the importance of respect for nature is certainly important, it ultimately fails; a much more conducive thesis for his goals would present a unification of man and nature.
In Blu Buh's thesis, he fails to recognize a distinction between man and nature. On his view, humans must "work with nature...and in the process recreate it" (198). Furthermore, Blu Buhs aligns his view with Aldo Leopold, who see nature as a machine in which "we are tinkers...working on [its] complex machinery" (194). This failing to recognize the importance of placing man, not as conductor of nature, but as subject of nature creates a catastrophic arrangement of power, in which the environment and nature will always be abused. Nature is a self-perpetuating cycle in which man interferes constantly, allowing man to redirect the course of nature. Certainly, though, man cannot change nature: a change would require a violation of basic principles. For example, humans may introduce a new animal to an ecosystem - like the fire ants - which consequentially may lead to a redistribution of species and wildlife, but the basic principles of `survival of the fittest' will remain unaltered. Therefore, man is limited to the role of a subject of nature.
Generally, Blu Buhs' language of argument would go unnoticed, but the repercussions of his view are dire and severe. If man views himself as a separate entity from nature, in a relationship in which he exerts power over it, his struggle for this power will only end in his destruction. Nature is independent of man. A belief in the dependence of nature on man yields conclusions that fail to show respect for nature - the thesis Blu Buhs advocates. A responsibility to nature implies that man must - in a patriarchal sense - atone for nature's inability to cope with man. Absurdly, this seems to require man to live in distinct distance from nature: never interfering, never enjoying. However, an ethic based upon man's subjectivity to nature more fully describes the relationship. In a relationship such as this, man is an entity within nature's confluence; as such, he is subject to the repercussions. This is the general thesis Blu Buhs seems to strive for. In separating man as caretaker of nature, Blu Buhs falls short of attaining a description of this intricate relationship. The argument of the book places the power with nature, but the thesis at the end places the power with man.
Ultimately, while Blu Buhs' thesis is well intentioned, its mistake of delineating man from nature leads to a devastating ideology. If the relationship between man and nature is to be mended, man must realize his place as a subject of nature. Belief that man is nature's custodian only leads to horrible actions; before any discussion of environmental ethics can occur, man must be recognized as a part of nature.
Books:
- Forest Trees (Genome Mapping and Molecular Breeding in Plants) (Genome Mapping and Molecular Breeding in Plants)
- From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's Four Great Books (Voyage of the Beagle, The Origin of Species, The Descent of Man, The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals)
- Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene, Fifth Edition
- Geoenvironmental Engineering: Site Remediation, Waste Containment, and Emerging Waste Management Techonolgies
- Golf Course Irrigation: Environmental Design and Management Practices
- Greener Pasture on Your Side of the Fence: Better Farming Voisin Management-Intensive Grazing (4th Edition)
- Handbook of Soil Analysis: Mineralogical, Organic and Inorganic Methods
- Handy Farm Devices: And How to Make Them
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
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