Osiris, Volume 33: Science and Capitalism: Entangled Histories

by Lukas Rieppel (Editor), William Deringer (Editor), Eugenia Lean (Editor)

Overview

The historical relationship between science and capitalism has long stood as a central question in science studies, at least since its foundations in the 1930s. Taking inspiration from the recent surge of scholarly interest in the “history of capitalism,” as well as from renewed attention to political economy by historians of science and technology, this Osiris volume revisits this classic quandary, foregrounding the entanglements between these two powerful and unruly historical forces and tracing the diverse ways they mutually shaped each other. Key attention is paid to the practices of knowledge work that enable both scientific and capitalistic action and to the diversity of global sites and circuits in which science/capitalism have been performed. The assembled papers excavate an array of tangled nodes at the science/capitalism nexus, spanning from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first, from Nevada to Central Asia to Japan, from microbiology to industrial psychology to public health.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226602325
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press Journals
Publication date:	11/21/2018
Series:	Osiris , #33
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lukas Rieppel is the David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University.

William Deringer is the Leo Marx Career Development Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eugenia Lean is associate professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments iv

Introduction

Introduction: The Entangled Histories of Science and Capitalism Lucas Rieppel Eugenia Lean William Deringer 1

Sciences and Economies in the Scientific Revolution: Concepts, Materials, and Commensurable Fragments Harold J. Cook 25

Entangled Infrastructures

Feeding Desire: Generative Environments, Meat Markets, and the Management of Sheep Intercourse in Great Britain, 1700-1750 Emily Pawley 47

Sugar Machines and the Fragile Infrastructure of Commodities in the Nineteenth Century David Singerman 63

Starting up Biology in China: Performances of Life at BGI Hallam Stevens 85

Entangled Calculations

Compound Interest Corrected: The Imaginative Mathematics of the Financial Future in Early Modern England William Deringer 109

Proving Future Profit: Business Plans as Demonstration Devices Martin Giraudeau 130

Lies, Damned Lies, and (Bourgeois) Statistics: Ascertaining Social Fact in Midcentury China and the Soviet Union Arunabh Ghosh 149

Entangled Ontologies

The Microbial Production of Expertise in Meiji Japan Victoria Lee 171

"Safe Driving Depends on the Man at the Wheel": Psychologists and the Subject of Auto Safety, 1920-55 Lee Vinsel 191

Comstock Capitalism: The Law, the Lode, and the Science Paul Lucier 210

Organizing the Marketplace Lukas Rieppel 232

"Scientific Crude" for Currency: Prospecting for Specimens in Stalin's Siberia Julia Fein 253

Entangled Circuits

Making the Chinese Copycat: Trademarks and Recipes in Early Twentieth-Century Global Science and Capitalism Eugenia Lean 271

Microbiology and the Imperatives of Capital in International Agro-Biodiversity Preservation Courtney Fullilove 294

Smoke Ring: From American Tobacco to Japanese Data Sarah Milov 319

Notes on Contributors 340

Index 342