ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Environmental Lives of Things: Science and Technology, Environmental History, and Material Culture

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

Histories of science and environmental histories have often been entangled. From studies of scientific fieldwork and the development of environment-based scientific disciplines, to the uses of scientific expertise in agriculture or environmental extraction, historians from these two fields are frequently in productive dialogue, or engaged in research that incorporates both areas. This panel asks: what can we learn when we bring material culture into the conversation?

The four panelists here each engage with objects in their own work, and use material culture-based methodologies to examine how questions of scientific and technological expertise, logistics, and practice have had environmental consequences through material things. In particular, in a nod to the notion of the “social lives of things” popularized by anthropologist ​​Arjun Appadurai, these papers focus on objects not just at points of extraction (e.g., ‘raw’ materials), but primarily as consumer goods; examining issues of literal and figurative human consumption. We ask who benefits from these consumer goods, and interrogate narratives of ever-improving technological processes, whether in manufacturing, mining, food preservation, or the efficient use of fossil fuels. We also reflect on how our four historical case studies can speak to our present moment of globalization, anthropogenic climate change, and environmental degradation caused by our reliance on a profusion of stuff.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Nuala Caomhanach, New York University/American Museum of Natural History

Individual Presentations

• Metal Materialisms: A Transnational Perspective on Vanadium, Consumption, and Material Culture - Rocío Gomez, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Frozen Favourites: Accidental Cryopreservation and ‘Object Shrines’ in Extreme Expeditions - Vanessa Heggie, University of Birmingham

• “Unshrinkable, Unsplinterable and Practically Indestructible”: Plywood Crates, Scientific Transport, and Colonial Commerce - Sarah Pickman, Independent scholar

• Fragile Modernity? Utility Poles in the Modern Landscapes of East Asia - Boumsoung Kim, Tokyo University of Science

Session Organizers

• Sarah Pickman, Independent scholar

• Rocío Gomez, Virginia Commonwealth University