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Article ID: CBB001221606

Albert Howard and the Mycorrhizal Association (2012)

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 43
Pages: 225--231
Publication date: 2012
Language: English

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Agriculture Great Britain, colonies Colonialism Hybridization Fungi Botany 20th century, early India Great Britain Howard, Albert, Sir

Albert Howard worked as an imperial agronomist for the British Government in India. Following his retirement in 1931, he returned to England and embarked on a passionate global campaign to reform agricultural practices. Central to Howard's project was the mycorrhizal association, a symbiotic relationship between plant roots and subterranean fungi, believed to play an important part in plant nutrition. I show that there are a number of close parallels between Howard's work in India and his portrayal of the mycorrhizal association, and argue that Howard used these fungi to naturalise his imperial project. Understood in this way, these mycorrhizal and imperial associations reveal ways that Howard was able to negotiate the boundaries between the local and global, England and India, science and agriculture, institute and village, and soil and plant. In contrast to Thomas Gieryn's work on hybridisation at the cultural boundaries between science and non-science, I concentrate on Howard's use of intermediaries to negotiate and articulate specific boundaries within his imperial project. Arguing that this approach reveals limitations in Gieryn's hybrid framework, I suggest that a focus on Howard's dependence on intermediaries draws attention to the discontinuities between entities, besides the dynamic ways that they might be coupled.

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Description On close parallels between Howard's work in India and his portrayal of the symbiotic relationship between plant roots and subterranean fungi.

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