IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB168578111

Postcolonial Ecologies of Parasite and Host: Making Parasitism Cosmopolitan (2016)

Anderson, Warwick H. (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 49
Issue: 2
Pages: 241-259

DOI: 10.1007/s10739-015-9407-6

URI: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10739-015-9407-6

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Parasitology Population ecology Epidemiology Great Britain, colonies Animal ecology Colonialism Disease ecology Infectious diseases Ecology Australia Burnet, Frank Macfarlane Smith, Theobald

The interest of F. Macfarlane Burnet in host–parasite interactions grew through the 1920s and 1930s, culminating in his book, Biological Aspects of Infectious Disease (1940), often regarded as the founding text of disease ecology. Our knowledge of the influences on Burnet’s ecological thinking is still incomplete. Burnet later attributed much of his conceptual development to his reading of British theoretical biology, especially the work of Julian Huxley and Charles Elton, and regretted he did not study Theobald Smith’s Parasitism and Disease (1934) until after he had formulated his ideas. Scholars also have adduced Burnet’s fascination with natural history and the clinical and public health demands on his research effort, among other influences. I want to consider here additional contributions to Burnet’s ecological thinking, focusing on his intellectual milieu, placing his research in a settler society with exceptional expertise in environmental studies and pest management. In part, an ‘‘ecological turn’’ in Australian science in the 1930s, derived to a degree from British colonial scientific investments, shaped Burnet’s conceptual development. This raises the question of whether we might characterize, in postcolonial fashion, disease ecology, and other studies of parasitism, as successful settler colonial or dominion science.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB168578111/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Mark Honigsbaum; (2015)
‘Tipping the Balance’: Karl Friedrich Meyer, Latent Infections, and the Birth of Modern Ideas of Disease Ecology (/isis/citation/CBB970150711/)

Article Tilley, Helen; (2004)
Ecologies of Complexity: Tropical Environments, African Trypanosomiasis, and the Science of Disease Control Strategies in British Colonial Africa, 1900-1940 (/isis/citation/CBB000750318/)

Book Peter Dowling; (2021)
Fatal Contact: How Epidemics Nearly Wiped Out Australia’s First Peoples (/isis/citation/CBB723225615/)

Article Warwick Anderson; James Dunk; (2022)
Planetary Health Histories: Toward New Ecologies of Epidemiology? (/isis/citation/CBB429865745/)

Book Gwyn Campbell; Eva-Maria Knoll; (2020)
Disease Dispersion and Impact in the Indian Ocean World (/isis/citation/CBB762784175/)

Article Pierre-Olivier Méthot; (2019)
‘Birth, Life, and Death of Infectious Diseases’: Charles Nicolle (1866–1936) and the Invention of Medical Ecology in France (/isis/citation/CBB823504808/)

Article Philippe Huneman; (2019)
How the Modern Synthesis Came to Ecology (/isis/citation/CBB692195212/)

Article Warwick Anderson; (2017)
Nowhere to Run, Rabbit: The Cold-War Calculus of Disease Ecology (/isis/citation/CBB593910187/)

Article Alcalá Ferráez, Carlos; (2012)
De miasmas a mosquitos: el pensamiento médico sobre la fiebre amarilla en Yucatán, 1890--1920 (/isis/citation/CBB001420572/)

Article Anderson, Warwick; (2004)
Natural Histories of Infectious Disease: Ecological Vision in Twentieth-Century Biomedical Science (/isis/citation/CBB000750319/)

Book Bradley Smith; (2015)
The Dingo Debate: Origins, Behaviour and Conservation (/isis/citation/CBB149361936/)

Book Silva, Cristobal; (2011)
Miraculous Plagues: An Epidemiology of Early New England Narrative (/isis/citation/CBB001250139/)

Article Haynes, Douglas Melvin; (1999)
The Social Production of Metropolitan Expertise in Tropical Diseases: The Imperial State, Colonial Service and the Tropical Diseases Research Fund (/isis/citation/CBB000340239/)

Article Cameron-Smith, Alexander; (2013)
Race, Medicine, and Colonial Rule in the Mandated Territory of New Guinea (/isis/citation/CBB001213544/)

Article Méthot, Pierre-Olivier; (2012)
Why do Parasites Harm Their Host? On the Origin and Legacy of Theobald Smith's “Law of Declining Virulence”---1900--1980 (/isis/citation/CBB001251833/)

Book Debjani Bhattacharyya; (2018)
Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (/isis/citation/CBB311086106/)

Chapter Sinha, Arvind; (2010)
Implantation of Commercial Crops: Cochineal Culture and the Regional Ecology in the Eighteenth Century Coromandel (/isis/citation/CBB001500555/)

Article Emily O'Gorman; James Beattie; Matthew Henry; (2016)
Histories of Climate, Science, and Colonization in Australia and New Zealand, 1800–1945 (/isis/citation/CBB574597140/)

Article Toby Raeburn; Kayla Sale; Paul Saunders; Aunty Kerrie Doyle; (2022)
Aboriginal Australian mental health during the first 100 years of colonization, 1788–1888: a historical review of nineteenth-century documents (/isis/citation/CBB437532103/)

Article Beattie, James; (2012)
Imperial Landscapes of Health: Place, Plants, and People between India and Australia, 1800s--1900s (/isis/citation/CBB001200714/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}