Article ID: CBB369638636

Mold’s Dominion: Science, Empire, and Capitalism in a Globalizing World (2021)

unapi

Today, Jōkichi Takamine and Albert Calmette are known for their contribution to the history of medicine. Yet their early careers centered not on medicine, but on biotechnology, and on parallel projects to bring a food processing technology used across Asia to new audiences around the world. In the end, they both succeeded, but in very different ways. Takamine would make his fortune with “Taka-Diastase,” a patent digestive aid once popular around the world; Calmette would help develop the “Amylo Process” of industrial brewing and distilling used as the basis of exploitative alcohol monopolies in colonial Indochina and Formosa. Understanding how a single technology could take on two radically different forms provides a unique opportunity to explore entanglements of science, empire, and capitalism in a globalizing world. Empires and capitalist enterprises combined to send mold along pathways that both reflected and transcended imperial boundaries. And as it traveled, mold was remade by—and in turn helped to remake—the political economies it encountered. Today, when the products of mold technologies are part of our daily lives, it’s tempting to see globalization in terms of seamless, uniform, and seemingly inevitable outcomes. This paper focuses attention instead on alternative paths, contingent and deeply inequitable processes, and the way science, empire, and capitalism produced the modern world.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB369638636/

Similar Citations

Article Flavio D'Abramo; Sybille Neumeyer; (2020)
A Historical and Political Epistemology of Microbes (/isis/citation/CBB158989443/)

Article Matthew Holmes; (2020)
Houseflies and Fungi: The Promise of an Early Twentieth-Century Biotechnology (/isis/citation/CBB156717395/)

Article Miguel García-Sancho; James Lowe; Gil Viry; Rhodri Leng; Mark Wong; Niki Vermeulen; (2022)
Yeast Sequencing: “Network” Genomics and Institutional Bridges (/isis/citation/CBB219354754/)

Article Singh, Nand Lal; Ramprasad, ; Mishra, P. K.; Shukla, S. K.; Kumar, Jitendra; Singh, Ramvijay; (2010)
Alcoholic Fermentation Techniques in Early Indian Tradition (/isis/citation/CBB001024272/)

Book James (James Andrew) McHugh; (2021)
An Unholy Brew: Alcohol in Indian History and Religions (/isis/citation/CBB169064274/)

Article James McHugh; (2020)
Sīdhu (Śīdhu): The Sugar Cane “Wine” of Ancient and Early Medieval India (/isis/citation/CBB544396048/)

Chapter Yifang Fang; Xiaoyuan Jiang; (2021)
Liquor Making and Folk Customs in Ancient China (/isis/citation/CBB690573498/)

Article García-Hernández, Maria Luisa; Estrella Martínez-Rodrigo; Juan Salvador Victoria Mas; (2016)
Empresas biotecnológicas y divulgación de la ciencia. El caso de las pymes biotecnológicas asentadas en parques biotecnológicos de Andalucía (/isis/citation/CBB168466083/)

Book Hughes, Sally Smith; (2011)
Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech (/isis/citation/CBB001221219/)

Book Needham, Joseph; Huang, H. T.; (2000)
Biology and Biological Technology. Volume 6, Part 5, Fermentations and Food Science (/isis/citation/CBB000100242/)

Article Gelfert, Axel; (2013)
Before Biopolis: Representations of the Biotechnology Discourse in Singapore (/isis/citation/CBB001253170/)

Article Bud, Robert; (2010)
From Applied Microbiology to Biotechnology: Science, Medicine and Industrial Renewal (/isis/citation/CBB001022750/)

Article Adams, Martin R.; (2017)
The Birth of Modern Industrial Microbiology: The Acetone–Butanol Fermentation (/isis/citation/CBB803744469/)

Book Ton van Helvoort; Eric Berkers; Mila Davids; (2017)
Biotechnologie: van wetenschap naar winkelschap revisited: een historische analyse van de Biotech bij multinational Unilever (/isis/citation/CBB491047684/)

Article Ladisch, Michael; (Fall 2004)
The Role of Bioprocess Engineering in Biotechnology (/isis/citation/CBB797536569/)

Book Jasanoff, Sheila; (2005)
Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States (/isis/citation/CBB000641621/)

Authors & Contributors
McHugh, James
Gil Viry
Estrella Martínez-Rodrigo
Yifang Fang
Neumeyer, Sybille
Ladisch, Michael
Concepts
Biotechnology
Biotechnology industry
Fermentation
Alcohol
Fungi
Science and politics
Time Periods
20th century, late
Ancient
20th century, early
19th century
Medieval
20th century
Places
India
Great Britain
United States
Europe
Yangtze River
Yellow River (China)
Institutions
Basel. Universität
Royal Society of London
Comments

Be the first to comment!

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

Log in or register to comment