Chacko, Xan Sarah (Author)
Biagioli, Mario (Advisor)
University of California, Davis
Biagioli, Mario
Physical Details: 267 pp.
Language: English
Based on two years of ethnographic and archival research in the UK, Norway, USA, and India, this dissertation studies the rise of seed banking in the twentieth-century as a social, political, and technoscientific practice against the backdrop of changes in environmental policy, intellectual property law, and scientific knowledge. There is consensus that seeds are critical to the future of the planet; however, the methods that decide which ones are stored, how they are stored, and how they are defined are often contradictory. At the same time, all seed banking projects have been profoundly involved with state and industry interests, not just the protection of plants for the future. If seeds are crucial to our survival, then choices made by scientists in seed banks have material and political consequences. I study how the processes are political to the scientists, as well as to other actors involved in the seed banking. By studying the history of seed banking and the contemporary practices espoused by scientists involved in the moving, making, and saving of seeds, I show how seed banking gained favour due to a particular confluence of international regulations and organisations that were responding to changes in colonial structures of control, the new concept of `biodiversity,' and the growth of the agribusiness industry. Comparing the techniques that are used to analyse, measure, and codify the characteristics of a seed, this dissertation follows the life-cycle of bankable seeds from collection to storage and investigates every element of the seed bank, including what they collect, who they serve, what they do with the seeds, and how they derive value for the seeds. I examine how science makes seeds into coherent objects that can be collectively understood, stabilised, acted upon, and translated across different knowledge practices, and the kinds of collaboration developed among different professionals through the science of seeds as a shared object of knowledge. Understanding these differences in the practices of seed banking sheds light on changes in plant science, the law around the movement and acquisition of biological materials for science and industry, and technologies of visualisation. This project provides a powerful local window on a global problem by bringing together (and interrogating the tensions between) the human responses to the profound fears of ecological disasters, and crises in food security and intellectual property (IP).
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Marte Qvenild;
(2008)
Svalbard Global Seed Vault: A 'Noah's Ark' for the World's Seeds
(/isis/citation/CBB511149333/)
Article
Biddle, Justin B.;
(2014)
Can Patents Prohibit Research? On the Social Epistemology of Patenting and Licensing in Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001320767/)
Article
Charnley, Berris;
(2013)
Seeds Without Patents: Science and Morality in British Plant Breeding in the Long Nineteenth-Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001320687/)
Book
Berman, Elizabeth Popp;
(2012)
Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine
(/isis/citation/CBB001201809/)
Article
Peder Roberts;
Eric Paglia;
(December 2016)
Science as national belonging: The construction of Svalbard as a Norwegian space
(/isis/citation/CBB595838984/)
Book
Martini, Edwin A.;
(2012)
Agent Orange: History, Science, and the Politics of Uncertainty
(/isis/citation/CBB001320939/)
Article
Rentetzi, Maria;
(2008)
The U.S. Radium Industry: Industrial In-house Research and the Commercialization of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB000932239/)
Article
Redman, Lydia;
(2011)
Knowledge Is Power? Victorian and Edwardian Employers and the Rhetoric of Expertise
(/isis/citation/CBB001211693/)
Book
McNeill, John R.;
Unger, Corinna R.;
(2010)
Environmental Histories of the Cold War
(/isis/citation/CBB001034124/)
Book
Rajala, Richard A.;
(1998)
Clearcutting the Pacific Rain Forest: Production, Science, and Regulation
(/isis/citation/CBB000111923/)
Book
Joerges, Bernward;
Shinn, Terry;
(2001)
Instrumentation between Science, State and Industry
(/isis/citation/CBB000100247/)
Chapter
Whitley, Richard;
(2010)
The Impact of Governance Changes on Authority and Innovation in Public Science Systems
(/isis/citation/CBB001420855/)
Article
Kari Tove Elvbakken;
Annette Lykknes;
(2016)
Relationships between Academia, State and Industry in the Field of Food and Nutrition: The Norwegian Chemist Sigval Schmidt-Nielsen (1877–1956) and His Professional Roles, 1900–1950
(/isis/citation/CBB805347930/)
Article
Damodaran, Vinita;
(2013)
Gender, Race and Science in Twentieth-Century India: E. K. Janaki Ammal and the History of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB001420229/)
Book
Courtney Fullilove;
(2017)
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB998599024/)
Article
Saha, Madhumita;
(2013)
Food for Soil, Food for People: Research on Food Crops, Fertilizers, and the Making of “Modern” Indian Agriculture
(/isis/citation/CBB001253139/)
Book
Keiner, Christine;
(2009)
The Oyster Question: Scientists, Watermen, and the Maryland Chesapeake Bay since 1880
(/isis/citation/CBB001022370/)
Book
McGrath, Patrick J.;
(2002)
Scientists, Business, and the State, 1890--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB000201727/)
Article
Linstrum, Erik;
(2012)
The Politics of Psychology in the British Empire, 1898--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001200330/)
Chapter
Short, Brian;
(2012)
The Social Impact of State Control of Agriculture in Britain 1939--55
(/isis/citation/CBB001201986/)
Be the first to comment!