Article ID: CBB001221606

Albert Howard and the Mycorrhizal Association (2012)

unapi

Albert Howard worked as an imperial agronomist for the British Government in India. Following his retirement in 1931, he returned to England and embarked on a passionate global campaign to reform agricultural practices. Central to Howard's project was the mycorrhizal association, a symbiotic relationship between plant roots and subterranean fungi, believed to play an important part in plant nutrition. I show that there are a number of close parallels between Howard's work in India and his portrayal of the mycorrhizal association, and argue that Howard used these fungi to naturalise his imperial project. Understood in this way, these mycorrhizal and imperial associations reveal ways that Howard was able to negotiate the boundaries between the local and global, England and India, science and agriculture, institute and village, and soil and plant. In contrast to Thomas Gieryn's work on hybridisation at the cultural boundaries between science and non-science, I concentrate on Howard's use of intermediaries to negotiate and articulate specific boundaries within his imperial project. Arguing that this approach reveals limitations in Gieryn's hybrid framework, I suggest that a focus on Howard's dependence on intermediaries draws attention to the discontinuities between entities, besides the dynamic ways that they might be coupled.

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Description On close parallels between Howard's work in India and his portrayal of the symbiotic relationship between plant roots and subterranean fungi.


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Authors & Contributors
Axelby, Richard
Pinto, Sarah Ann
George, Joppan
Anja Timmermann
Sehrawat, Samiksha
Zeheter, Michael
Concepts
Great Britain, colonies
Colonialism
Agriculture
Botany
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Imperialism
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
Places
India
Great Britain
Calcutta (India)
West Indies
Americas
Central America
Institutions
Botanic Garden (Calcutta, India)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
British East India Company
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