This article explores the social biographies of sea cucumbers and whales' teeth, challenging a prevalent tendency among scholars to endow objects with abstract essences. It focuses on encounters of value in which the meanings of material possessions fluctuated across cultural and ethnic boundaries. Such moments of contradiction and coalescence had profound environmental and social consequences and suggest new ways that environmental historians might understand the roles of cultural arbitrage and expropriation in the making of the world system. To illustrate these crucial issues, this article discusses the experiences of David Whippy and William Cary, two Nantucket castaways in nineteenth-century Fiji, and it investigates long-term connections that emerged among Nantucket, Fiji, and the broader ecosystems and cultures of the Pacific Ocean region during the 1800s. Both men were involved in the export of sea cucumbers (genus Holothuria) from Fiji to China and the importation of sperm whales' teeth to Fiji from various parts of the Pacific. The histories of these two commodities offer potent testimonials about cultural and ecological changes during the nineteenth century.
...More
Book
Auricchio, Laura;
Cook, Elizabeth Heckendorn;
Pacini, Giulia;
(2012)
Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature, 1660--1830
(/isis/citation/CBB001420322/)
Book
Barnard, Timothy P.;
(2014)
Nature Contained: Environmental Histories of Singapore
(/isis/citation/CBB001422376/)
Book
Burnett, D. Graham;
(2007)
Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature
(/isis/citation/CBB000850687/)
Book
Nicole Boivin;
Rémy Crassard;
Michael Petraglia;
(2017)
Human Dispersal and Species Movement: From Prehistory to the Present
(/isis/citation/CBB387991036/)
Article
R. L. France;
(2018)
Illustration of an 1857 “Sea-Serpent” Sighting Re-Interpreted as an Early Depiction of Cetacean Entanglement in Maritime Debris
(/isis/citation/CBB817395622/)
Book
Jakobina K. Arch;
Paul S. Sutter;
(2018)
Bringing Whales Ashore: Oceans and the Environment of Early Modern Japan
(/isis/citation/CBB119390015/)
Article
Jones, Ryan Tucker;
(2013)
Running into Whales: The History of the North Pacific from below the Waves
(/isis/citation/CBB001212531/)
Article
Robby Zidny;
Jesper Sjöström;
Ingo Eilks;
(2020)
A Multi-Perspective Reflection on How Indigenous Knowledge and Related Ideas Can Improve Science Education for Sustainability
(/isis/citation/CBB482191701/)
Article
Beisaw, April M.;
(2012)
Environmental History of the Susquehanna Valley around the Time of European Contact
(/isis/citation/CBB001200341/)
Article
Kushner, David J.;
Rassweiler, Andrew;
McLaughlin, John P.;
Lafferty, Kevin D.;
(2013)
A Multi-Decade Time Series of Kelp Forest Community Structure at the California Channel Islands
(/isis/citation/CBB001421428/)
Article
Araral, Eduardo;
(2013)
What Makes Socio-Ecological Systems Robust? An Institutional Analysis of the 2,000 Year-Old Ifugao Society
(/isis/citation/CBB001421937/)
Book
Florence Bretelle-Establet;
Marie Gaille;
Mehrnaz Katouzian-Safadi;
(2019)
Making Sense of Health, Disease, and the Environment in Cross-Cultural History: The Arabic-Islamic World, China, Europe, and North America
(/isis/citation/CBB064731069/)
Book
Querner, Hans;
Jahn, Ilse;
(2003)
Christoph Gottfried Jacobi und die Süßwasserpolypen des Abraham Trembley. Dorothea Kuhn zum 80. Geburtstag
(/isis/citation/CBB000530264/)
Book
Giráldez, Arturo;
(2015)
The Age of Trade: Manila Galleons and the Dawn of the Global Economy
(/isis/citation/CBB001422147/)
Book
Miguel Suárez Bosa;
(2014)
Atlantic Ports and the First Globalisation c. 1850-1930
(/isis/citation/CBB663886764/)
Book
Law, Robin;
Suzanne, Schwarz;
Silke, Strickrodt;
(2013)
Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa
(/isis/citation/CBB001422242/)
Book
Campbell, Gwyn;
Stanziani, Alessando;
(2013)
Bonded Labour and Debt in the Indian Ocean World
(/isis/citation/CBB001421572/)
Book
Aslanian, Sebouh David;
(2011)
From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa
(/isis/citation/CBB001421565/)
Book
Swindell, Ken;
Jeng, Alieu;
(2006)
Migrants, Credit and Climate: The Gambian Groundnut Trade, 1834--1934
(/isis/citation/CBB001422392/)
Article
Hellyer, Robert;
(2013)
The West, the East, and the Insular Middle: Trading Systems, Demand, and Labour in the Integration of the Pacific, 1750--1875
(/isis/citation/CBB001421539/)
Be the first to comment!