Jeudi 1er février 2024. 14h-17h. Museum. 45 rue Buffon, Paris, Grand amphithéâtre d’entomologie (rez-de-chaussée bâtiment d’entomologie). Également à distance : lien de connexion
“Economic Entomology in Plantations, c. 1870-1930s: A Multispecies History of Capitalism”
Invité :
Tomas Bartoletti
Senior Lecturer and SNSF-Ambizione Research Group Leader at the Chair for History of the Modern World of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich.
Abstract: This project explores a paradigmatic case in the connected histories of knowledge, capitalism and the environment between c. 1880 and 1930. During this period, the propagation of pests beyond imperial and state borders challenged the cost-effective exploitation of tropical raw materials. As a response, pest control methods were at the core of the ‘War on Nature’, spreading standardised management of global plantations. A branch of the scientific study of insects, economic entomology, was thus intensively applied to improve land use, becoming a prominent field in global scientific research. The project focuses on the role of European entomologists expanding the economic frontier and profit aspirations through commodification processes in Latin America, East Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Islands. The global circulation of knowledge about pest control has transformed socioecological dynamics in these regions, and also powerfully shaped the model of agricultural production both in tropical lands and in the European context until our times. By reassessing the development of pest control research in the tropical world, this project contributes to highlighting the interlocking of applied entomology and agricultural economics in processes of global territorialization and imperial capitalism.
Cette séance s’intéressera aux insectes – en collections, en élevages – à l’entomologie, aux mondes marchands et à la biosécurité.
Certains insectes sont collectionnés, d’autres – ou les mêmes – sont élevés… La porosité entre collection et élevage est frappante ; les croisements, convergences et contradictions entre l’une et l’autre sont particulièrement remarquables dans le domaine de l’entomologie. Les enjeux balayés sont aussi bien scientifiques, patrimoniaux qu’économiques ou sanitaires…
Les organisateurs
Mélanie Roustan, Serge Reubi, Mathilde Gallay-Keller
Toutes les infos sur le séminaire :