Horses at Work

Technology and Culture, 2015

2009c Review: Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America, Ann Norton Greene. The Journal of American History, (December), pp. 838-839.

This dissertation charts the creation and the use of the working horse in urban areas. Historical and contemporary studies of the working horse are combined to establish how these animals were bred, cared for, and housed in order to be the optimum machine. A typology for the Working Horse Stable is created, and what can be inferred from the architecture about horse care is carefully unpicked. Multiple case studies are introduced, dealt with in the order; Listed Buildings, Conservation Areas, and Local Listings. What these examples can deduce about the current state of conservation of Working Horse Stables is then discussed, and a vision for the future of this building type is offered.

European Journal of Social Theory

In this article, we ask why is it that sociology has been slow to take up the animal challenge, and ask what would happen if it did. We argue that sociology’s fraught relationship with biology, its assumptions about human exceptionalism and its emergence in the context of industrialization and urbanization are key to understanding its lack of attention to animals and contribute to a limited conceptualization of society. This can be remedied by viewing non-human animals as involuntarily embedded in social relationships, a move which involves a redefinition of the social and of what it means to be human; a revision of notions of agency, subjectivity and reflexivity; and a rejection of the speciesism and anthropocentrism on which sociology is based. Finally, the article contends that a full understanding of society is not possible if we continue to direct the sociology gaze only at humans.

Technology and Culture, 2013

This paper explores the history of attempts to apply x-ray radiation as a tool of plant breeding through a case study of a short-lived research program at the General Electric Research Laboratory in the 1930s. As I show, the goal of this program was to turn the appearance of genetic variation into an efficient, predictable process—in other words, it was an effort to create a precision tool for altering genes. I further argue that in the context of the industrial research laboratory, as opposed to other sites where the use of radiation in plant breeding was explored, researchers sought in particular to align the processes of biological innovation with those of mechanical and industrial innovation. The account provides a new perspective on the history of agro-biotechnologies in an industrial context as well as on the intersecting histories of biological and other technological development.

Massachusetts Historical Society Environmental History Seminar (3/14/2017) This paper challenges current understandings of the development of late industrial capitalism in America. Some historians conceive of late industrialization as the process whereby muscle, water, and wind power were replaced by fossil fuels as the primary motive power for production, thus increasing the efficiency and scale of economies. My research challenges whether the transition to economies based on fossil fuels was a necessary characteristic of late industrialization. This paper argues that as rural America industrialized, the built environment and the bodies of workers and animals became parts of nature, and these natural forces were mobilized to increase the scale and efficiency of production. My findings support the recent work of Jason W. Moore, who argues that the only real necessity for the development of capitalism, and perhaps even industrialization, was the separation of nature from society, mixed with a willingness on the part of society to exploit nature for the endless accumulation of capital. To explain rural industrialization, I use the example of the logging industry in the American Northeast, which, for several reasons, remained relatively technologically stagnant as an industry from about 1850 to 1950, while remaining competitive in an increasingly globalized and industrialized market. The paper is divided into three parts. The first demonstrates how woodsmen used simple machines, muscle power, water, and cold weather to increase the speed and efficiency of the labor process in the woods to reach industrial levels of production. The second explains the fuel that was used to make this industrial transition possible, namely, easily digestible, calorie-dense food along with animal fodder. The last section of this paper will explain what industrialization in the Northern Forest reveals about both the character of late industrial capitalism in America and Moore's concept of Cheap Nature.

Winner of the 2017 Wayne D. Rasmussen Award for best article on agricultural history; appeared in Environmental History 2016

Nursing history review : official journal of the American Association for the History of Nursing, 2016