Matz, Brendan A. (Author)
Between 1860 and 1914, the breeding of animals for meat, milk, wool, and work underwent significant changes in the United States and Germany. New organizational forms, record-keeping methods, and strategies of improvement were adopted, and some progressive agriculturalists called for the direct application of biological theories to animal production. Through the analysis of archival sources, agricultural and scientific journals, breeders' handbooks, animal registries, and government reports, this dissertation explores the interplay between the craft practices and knowledge associated with the business of livestock breeding and the scientific study of heredity in both countries. Cross-national comparison over time reveals that German breeders exhibited greater receptivity to scientific theory than their American counterparts and were less concerned with protecting their intellectual property in living organisms. This dissertation argues that these differences can be explained through an examination of the traditions of higher education and the activities of the state in the respective national contexts. The comparison also points to similarities between the two cases that suggest that animal breeding, and agricultural improvement more generally, was an international phenomenon involving the widespread exchange of ideas and practices. Working from these points of convergence, this dissertation argues that craft laid the foundations for and contributed to the development of biological theories of animal heredity and that the use of science in practice involved ongoing mutual exchange between practical breeders and academics. It also argues that evolving market and economic circumstances, including a felt need to protect intellectual property in living organisms in the absence of patents, brought animal breeding in step with a broader transition to modernity exemplified by standardization, precise measurement, statistical thinking, and objectivity. This study has implications for the discipline of the history of science more generally. Its findings suggest that the borderlands between craft and science offer intriguing and largely unexplored terrain for scholars. The production of knowledge within practical contexts can be seen in a wide variety of historical settings and across scientific disciplines and epistemic frames of reference. Examining these individual cases and comparing them cross-nationally can provide significant insights into the history of knowledge production and its place in the wider culture. In addition to bringing the field into conversation with broader national and transnational narratives, these kinds of projects bring important institutions, ideas, and historical actors into view that have hitherto escaped our attention.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 73/05, Nov 2012. Proquest Document ID: 922283644.
Chapter
Kevles, Daniel J.;
(2011)
New Blood, New Fruits: Protections for Breeders and Originators, 1789--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB001221559/)
Article
Theunissen, Bert;
(2008)
Breeding without Mendelism: Theory and Practice of Dairy Cattle Breeding in the Netherlands, 1900--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB000850681/)
Article
Bennett, Lyn;
Abbott, Scott;
(2014)
Barbed and Dangerous: Constructing the Meaning of Barbed Wire in Late Nineteenth-Century America
(/isis/citation/CBB001421775/)
Article
Calvert, Scout;
(2013)
Certified Angus, Certified Patriot: Breeding, Bodies, and Pedigree Practices
(/isis/citation/CBB001320575/)
Article
García-Sancho, Miguel;
(2015)
Animal Breeding in the Age of Biotechnology: The Investigative Pathway behind the Cloning of Dolly the Sheep
(/isis/citation/CBB001510361/)
Book
Margaret E. Derry;
(2022)
Made to Order: The Designing of Animals
(/isis/citation/CBB211502361/)
Chapter
Saraiva, Tiago;
(2013)
The Production and Circulation of Standardized Karakul Sheep and Frontier Settlement in the Empires of Hitler, Mussolini, and Salazar
(/isis/citation/CBB001420345/)
Article
Woods, Abigail;
(2009)
“Partnership” in Action: Contagious Abortion and the Governance of Livestock Disease in Britain, 1885--1921
(/isis/citation/CBB000932245/)
Book
Holland, Peter;
(2013)
Home in the Howling Wilderness: Settlers and the Environment in Southern New Zealand
(/isis/citation/CBB001422258/)
Article
Matz, Brendan;
(2011)
Crossing, Grading, and Keeping Pure: Animal Breeding and Exchange around 1860
(/isis/citation/CBB001210121/)
Article
Tom Brooking;
(2019)
“Yeotopia” Found … But? The Yeoman Ideal that Underpinned New Zealand Agricultural Practice into the Early Twenty-First Century, with American and Australian Comparisons
(/isis/citation/CBB390264948/)
Book
Ron Broglio;
(2017)
Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life in British Romanticism
(/isis/citation/CBB999620896/)
Article
Theunissen, Bert;
(2008)
Een mooie koe is een goede koe. Wetenschappers en practici over de Nederlandse rundveefokkerij, 1900--1950
(/isis/citation/CBB000950343/)
Article
Xiao, Aimin;
(2007)
The Technique of Controlling Sheep-Breeding Time by China's Ancient Northern Nomadic Nationality
(/isis/citation/CBB000933474/)
Article
Brantz, Dorothee;
(2011)
“Risky Business”: Disease, Disaster and the Unintended Consequences of Epizootics in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century France and Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001231336/)
Article
Gabriel N Rosenberg;
(2020)
No Scrubs: Livestock Breeding, Eugenics, and the State in the Early Twentieth-Century United States
(/isis/citation/CBB623496500/)
Article
Margaret Derry;
(2023)
Purity: Its Role in Livestock Breeding and Eugenics, 1880–1920
(/isis/citation/CBB590212225/)
Article
Elina, Olga;
Heim, Susanne;
Roll-Hansen, Nils;
(2005)
Plant Breeding on the Front: Imperialism, War, and Exploitation
(/isis/citation/CBB000610603/)
Article
Berry, Dominic;
(2014)
The Plant Breeding Industry after Pure Line Theory: Lessons from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany
(/isis/citation/CBB001420118/)
Book
Kathryn Cornell Dolan;
(2021)
Cattle Country: Livestock in the Cultural Imagination
(/isis/citation/CBB886330079/)
Be the first to comment!