[Sci-tech-public] Modern Times, Rural Places Seminar: December 2, 2005

[Margo Collett]

Modern Times, Rural Places:
Seminar Series at MIT


SANEMORI'S REVENGE:  Insect Technologies, Eco-System Accidents, and 
Environmental Toxicity in Japan

Brett L. Walker
Associate Professor of History, Montana State University - Bozeman

Brett Walker historicizes organisms such as silkworms by demonstrating how 
Japanese desires regarding silk type and quality, Buddhist conceptions of 
transmigration and reincarnation, and chemical pesticides and pollution can 
shape evolution as well as environmental catastrophes and public health 
issues. He argues that many of Japan's agrarian environmental problems, 
from poisoned paddy lands to the disfigured fetuses of farmers, can be seen 
as "system accidents," because the rice paddies and other agricultural 
landscapes insects inhabit --both hungry pests and desirable bugs --are 
complex hybridized ecologies.  And every time people put a morsel of food 
into their mouths, from shiny sushi rice to crispy fried chicken, they 
reify their organic interface with this and a variety of other hybridized 
social and ecological systems.



Friday, December 2, 2005
2:30 to 4:30 pm
Building E51 Room 095

Sponsored by MIT's History Faculty and the Program in Science, Technology, 
and Society
For more information or to be put on the mailing list, please contact Margo 
Collett at <mailto:mcollet at mit.edu>mcollett at mit.edu

For location visit http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/sci-tech-public/attachments/20051123/4b54667d/attachment.htm