Saraiva, Tiago (Author)
The MIT Press
Publication date: 2016
Language: English
Edition Details: Book Series: Inside Technology
Physical Details: 344 pages
How the breeding of new animals and plants was central to fascist regimes in Italy, Portugal, and Germany and to their imperial expansion.In the fascist regimes of Mussolini's Italy, Salazar's Portugal, and Hitler's Germany, the first mass mobilizations involved wheat engineered to take advantage of chemical fertilizers, potatoes resistant to late blight, and pigs that thrived on national produce. Food independence was an early goal of fascism; indeed, as Tiago Saraiva writes in Fascist Pigs, fascists were obsessed with projects to feed the national body from the national soil. Saraiva shows how such technoscientific organisms as specially bred wheat and pigs became important elements in the institutionalization and expansion of fascist regimes. The pigs, the potatoes, and the wheat embodied fascism. In Nazi Germany, only plants and animals conforming to the new national standards would be allowed to reproduce. Pigs that didn't efficiently convert German-grown potatoes into pork and lard were eliminated.Saraiva describes national campaigns that intertwined the work of geneticists with new state bureaucracies; discusses fascist empires, considering forced labor on coffee, rubber, and cotton in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Eastern Europe; and explores fascist genocides, following Karakul sheep from a laboratory in Germany to Eastern Europe, Libya, Ethiopia, and Angola.Saraiva's highly original account -- the first systematic study of the relation between science and fascism -- argues that the "back to the land" aspect of fascism should be understood as a modernist experiment involving geneticists and their organisms, mass propaganda, overgrown bureaucracy, and violent colonialism.
...MoreEssay Review Brian Tyrrell (2018) Political Animals. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 536-547).
Review Irina Podgorny (2021) Review of "The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic". Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society.
Review Jamie Kreiner (2021) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (pp. 553-565).
Review Richard H. Beyler (2018) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". American Historical Review (pp. 1785-1786).
Review Helen Anne Curry (2017) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 80-84).
Review Gesine Gerhard (January 2019) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Environmental History (pp. 215-217).
Review Keir Waddington (2019) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". British Journal for the History of Science (pp. 376-378).
Review Roberta Biasillo (2017) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (pp. 170-172).
Review Jonathan Harwood (2019) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". HOST: Journal of History of Science and Technology (pp. 119-121).
Review Peter A. Coclanis (October 2017) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Technology and Culture (pp. 1088-1090).
Review Heiko Stoff (2018) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 430-431).
Review Abraham Gibson (2018) Review of "Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism". Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 183-185).
Similar Citations
Article
Saraiva, Tiago;
Wise, M. Norton;
(2010)
Autarky/Autarchy: Genetics, Food Production, and the Building of Fascism
Article
Christopher P. Noble;
(2019)
Leibniz on the Divine Preformation of Souls and Bodies
Article
John Lidwell-Durnin;
(2020)
Cultivating Famine: Data, Experimentation and Food Security, 1795–1848
Article
Dearce, M.;
(2008)
Correspondence of Charles Darwin on James Torbitt's Project to Breed Blight-Resistant Potatoes
Article
Riera Climent, Luis;
Riera Palmero, Juan;
(2007)
Los alimentos americanos en los Extractos de la Bascongada (1768--1793): El Maíz y la Patata
Book
Giuseppe Olmi;
(2022)
Arte e scienza lungo la via Emilia: Storia naturale, illustrazioni e collezioni nell'età moderna
Book
Courtney Fullilove;
(2017)
The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture
Article
Mie S. Dam;
Per T. Sangild;
Mette N. Svendsen;
(2018)
Translational Neonatology Research: Transformative Encounters Across Species and Disciplines
Book
Jamie Kreiner;
(2020)
Legions of Pigs in the Early Medieval West
Book
Fernando Esposito;
(2015)
Fascism, aviation and mythical modernity
Book
Ash, Mitchell G.;
(2010)
Psychoanalyse in totalitären und autoritären Regimes
Article
Cesareo, Roberto;
(2009)
La fisica durante il nazi-fascismo
Article
Epple, Moritz;
Karachalios, Andreas;
Remmert, Volker R.;
(2005)
Aerodynamics and Mathematics in National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy: A Comparison of Research Institutes
Article
Gaspar, Júlia;
Mar Gago, Maria do;
Simões, Ana;
(2009)
Scientific Life under the Portuguese Dictatorial Regime (1929--1954): The Communities of Geneticists and Physicists
Article
Saraiva, Tiago;
(2009)
Laboratories and Landscapes: The Fascist New State and the Colonization of Portugal and Mozambique
Article
Tiago Saraiva;
(2016)
Fascist Modernist Landscapes: Wheat, Dams, Forests, and the Making of the Portuguese New State
Essay Review
Brian Tyrrell;
(2018)
Political Animals
Article
Veronika Settele;
(2020)
Mensch, Tier und Technik: „Doing Technology“ in deutschen Schweineställen und die Veränderung des Verhältnisses zwischen Mensch und Tier seit 1945. (Humans, Animals and Technology: "Doing Technology" in German Pig Houses and the Change in the Relationship between Humans and Animals since 1945)
Article
Curry, Helen Anne;
(2012)
Naturalising the Exotic and Exoticising the Naturalised: Horticulture, Natural History and the Rosy Periwinkle
Article
Charnley, Berris;
(2013)
Seeds Without Patents: Science and Morality in British Plant Breeding in the Long Nineteenth-Century
Be the first to comment!