Article ID: CBB382786456

Listing Butterflies: Economic and Epistemic Logistics of Commodification, 1880s–1910s (2024)

unapi

Conventionally, specimen dealers’ business publications have not been discussed in the same light as their academic writing. The present study, however, examines the catalogs of butterfly specimens issued by the company Dr. O. Staudinger & A. Bang-Haas to elucidate the latent dynamics that shaped intellectual discourse and commercial ventures. By the end of the nineteenth century, the pricing by Staudinger & Bang-Haas was widely accepted as the benchmark within the German entomological community. The company’s exclusive control over the entomological market had two outcomes. First, the establishment of standard prices facilitated the global circulation of specimens by providing a convenient tool to assess the marketability of butterflies. It convinced entrepreneurs in faraway regions of the prospects of collecting for the transnational supply chain of natural history. This was the case for Meiji Japan (1868–1912), where the business opportunity presented by the price margins between Japan and Europe lured ambitious local entrepreneurs into the trade. Second, Staudinger’s price lists effectively conjured epistemic authority from his market position. The company’s catalogs and the dealer’s academic publications, sharing the same readership, worked in tandem to create a school in systematics. The absence of a unified system of classification, the proliferation of taxonomic novelties, the heavy selling of specimens collected from far and wide, all worked in favor of the catalogs. Their readers put the company’s commercial prints on a par with Staudinger’s academic publications, enabling him to sustain his epistemic authority through his privileged access to this alternative channel of communication.

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Article Tahani Nadim; Mareike Vennen; Ina Heumann; Filippo Bertoni (2024) Logistical Natures: Trade, Traffics, and Transformations in Natural History Collecting. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 125-134). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB382786456/

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Authors & Contributors
Bloch, D.
Grouw, H. Van
Bay, Alexander R.
Birkhead, Tim R.
Daszkiewicz, P.
Fein, Julia
Journals
Archives of Natural History
Historia Scientiarum: International Journal of the History of Science Society of Japan
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
化学史研究 [Kagakushi kenkyū; Journal of the Japanese Society for the History of Chemistry]
科学史研究 Kagakusi Kenkyu (History of Science)
Osiris: A Research Journal Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Publishers
Columbia University
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
University of California Press
University of Rochester Press
University of Toronto Press
Concepts
Natural history
Specimens
Collectors and collecting
Birds
Museums
Extinction (biology)
People
Hirohito, Emperor of Japan
Kelsall, Conrad
Mueller, Ferdinand, Baron von
Rothschild, Lionel Walter
Wagener, Gottfried Wilhelm
Naumann, Johann Friedrich
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
Meiji period (Japan, 1868-1910)
20th century
17th century
18th century
Places
Japan
Germany
Siberia (Russia)
England
Queensland (Australia)
Institutions
Linnean Society of London
Zoological Society of London
Maison Verreaux
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