Toxic Histories

Poison and Pollution in Modern India

AvDavid Arnold

Inbunden, Engelska, 2016

Del i serien Science in History

496 kr

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Beskrivning

Toxic Histories combines social, scientific, medical and environmental history to demonstrate the critical importance of poison and pollution to colonial governance, scientific authority and public anxiety in India between the 1830s and 1950s. Against the background of India's 'poison culture' and periodic 'poison panics', David Arnold considers why many familiar substances came to be regarded under colonialism as dangerous poisons. As well as the criminal uses of poison, Toxic Histories shows how European and Indian scientists were instrumental in creating a distinctive system of forensic toxicology and medical jurisprudence designed for Indian needs and conditions, and how local, as well as universal, poison knowledge could serve constructive scientific and medical purposes. Arnold reflects on how the 'fear of a poisoned world' spilt over into concerns about contamination and pollution, giving ideas of toxicity a wider social and political significance that has continued into India's postcolonial era.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2016-02-15
Mått:158 x 235 x 17 mm
Vikt:490 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Serie:Science in History
Antal sidor:250
Förlag:Cambridge University Press
ISBN:9781107126978

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Mer om författaren

David Arnold is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Warwick, and previously taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, the University of Lancaster, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. A founder member of the Subaltern Studies group, he has been a visiting professor in Chicago and Zurich, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. His published work includes Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India; Science, Technology and Medicine in Colonial India; Gandhi; The Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800–1856, and Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India's Modernity.

Recensioner i media

'In this meticulous toxicological assay of British India, David Arnold challenges us to rethink how we draw boundaries between the therapeutic and the poisonous, between purity and danger, and between European and Indigenous. Colonialism is refigured as the governance of poisons - and modernity turns into the titrating of toxicities. A revealing forensic study of poison as substance and metaphor under colonial rule, Toxic Histories also shows us how - and why - toxicity became a concept intrinsic to India's modernity. Thus Arnold traces the sad genealogy of our poisoned world.' Warwick Anderson, University of Sydney

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction: poison traces; 1. The social life of poisons; 2. The imperial pharmakon; 3. Panics and scares; 4. Toxic evidence; 5. Intimate histories; 6. Embracing toxicity; 7. Polluted places, poisoned lives; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Agustí Nieto-Galan

Häftad

360 kr