Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780262535021
- eISBN:
- 9780262345859
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262535021.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
The tsetse fly is a pan-African insect that bites an infective forest animal and ingests blood filled with invisible parasites, which it carries and transmits into cattle and people as it bites them, ...
More
The tsetse fly is a pan-African insect that bites an infective forest animal and ingests blood filled with invisible parasites, which it carries and transmits into cattle and people as it bites them, leading to n'gana (animal trypanosomiasis) and sleeping sickness. This book examines how the presence of the tsetse fly turned the forests of Zimbabwe and southern Africa into an open laboratory where African knowledge formed the basis of colonial tsetse control policies. The book traces the pestiferous work that an indefatigable, mobile insect does through its movements, and the work done by humans to control it. The book restores the central role not just of African labor but of African intellect in the production of knowledge about the tsetse fly. It describes how European colonizers built on and beyond this knowledge toward destructive and toxic methods, including cutting down entire forests, forced “prophylactic” resettlement, massive destruction of wild animals, and extensive spraying of organochlorine pesticides. Throughout, the book uses African terms to describe the African experience, taking vernacular concepts as starting points in writing a narrative of ruzivo (knowledge) rather than viewing Africa through foreign keywords.Less
The tsetse fly is a pan-African insect that bites an infective forest animal and ingests blood filled with invisible parasites, which it carries and transmits into cattle and people as it bites them, leading to n'gana (animal trypanosomiasis) and sleeping sickness. This book examines how the presence of the tsetse fly turned the forests of Zimbabwe and southern Africa into an open laboratory where African knowledge formed the basis of colonial tsetse control policies. The book traces the pestiferous work that an indefatigable, mobile insect does through its movements, and the work done by humans to control it. The book restores the central role not just of African labor but of African intellect in the production of knowledge about the tsetse fly. It describes how European colonizers built on and beyond this knowledge toward destructive and toxic methods, including cutting down entire forests, forced “prophylactic” resettlement, massive destruction of wild animals, and extensive spraying of organochlorine pesticides. Throughout, the book uses African terms to describe the African experience, taking vernacular concepts as starting points in writing a narrative of ruzivo (knowledge) rather than viewing Africa through foreign keywords.
James E. Fraser
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748612314
- eISBN:
- 9780748672158
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748612314.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Medieval History
Beginning in 542, as the Byzantine Roman eyewitness Procopius observed, ‘there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to annihilation’. In approximately 550, according to Irish ...
More
Beginning in 542, as the Byzantine Roman eyewitness Procopius observed, ‘there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to annihilation’. In approximately 550, according to Irish chronicles, the pestilential terror claimed Ciarán, the young abbot of Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon in Offaly, a monastery he had founded in the previous year. In the year of Ciarán's death the young St Columba, some five years younger than the stricken abbot, was studying the scriptures in Ireland. His name, according to later tradition, was Crimthann. In the pestilential 540s, Crimthann studied in Leinster, as well as under the moral theologian Uinniau. Over a span of thirty-four years Columba founded a number of monasteries in voluntary exile. Adomnán calls him ‘father and founder of monasteries’. One of these foundations lay on the little Hebridean island of Í, known today as Iona.Less
Beginning in 542, as the Byzantine Roman eyewitness Procopius observed, ‘there was a pestilence, by which the whole human race came near to annihilation’. In approximately 550, according to Irish chronicles, the pestilential terror claimed Ciarán, the young abbot of Clonmacnoise on the River Shannon in Offaly, a monastery he had founded in the previous year. In the year of Ciarán's death the young St Columba, some five years younger than the stricken abbot, was studying the scriptures in Ireland. His name, according to later tradition, was Crimthann. In the pestilential 540s, Crimthann studied in Leinster, as well as under the moral theologian Uinniau. Over a span of thirty-four years Columba founded a number of monasteries in voluntary exile. Adomnán calls him ‘father and founder of monasteries’. One of these foundations lay on the little Hebridean island of Í, known today as Iona.
Hunter H. Gardner
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- August 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198796428
- eISBN:
- 9780191837708
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198796428.003.0002
- Subject:
- Classical Studies, Literary Studies: Classical, Early, and Medieval
Accounts of pestilence in the historical record help us understand those assumptions about the effects of disease that inform both the creation of the plague narrative and its reception among Roman ...
More
Accounts of pestilence in the historical record help us understand those assumptions about the effects of disease that inform both the creation of the plague narrative and its reception among Roman audiences. Chapter 2 examines Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita in order to suggest that the historical experience and representation of plague in Rome was infused with resonance of civil strife by the Augustan period. Livy refines his source material to address a body politic in need of healing and thus sharpens the correlation between contagium and civil discord (discordia), especially in early episodes recounting the struggle of the orders. The historian’s narratives of contagion draw partly from the language of medical writers, but equally from a historiographic tradition that correlated a diseased body with a diseased body politic. Accounts of plague allow Livy to reflect on distinctions among members of different orders, especially the patres/patricii (highest class of citizens) and plebs (lowest class of citizens). The remedies enacted to combat plague, in forms of both cultural and political innovations, prove alternatingly salubrious and detrimental to the body politic. Livy recognizes, however, that, as a challenge to the people equivalent to strife within and war abroad, pestilentia could have a positive impact on the development of Roman hegemony and prompt coalescence among a divided citizenry.Less
Accounts of pestilence in the historical record help us understand those assumptions about the effects of disease that inform both the creation of the plague narrative and its reception among Roman audiences. Chapter 2 examines Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita in order to suggest that the historical experience and representation of plague in Rome was infused with resonance of civil strife by the Augustan period. Livy refines his source material to address a body politic in need of healing and thus sharpens the correlation between contagium and civil discord (discordia), especially in early episodes recounting the struggle of the orders. The historian’s narratives of contagion draw partly from the language of medical writers, but equally from a historiographic tradition that correlated a diseased body with a diseased body politic. Accounts of plague allow Livy to reflect on distinctions among members of different orders, especially the patres/patricii (highest class of citizens) and plebs (lowest class of citizens). The remedies enacted to combat plague, in forms of both cultural and political innovations, prove alternatingly salubrious and detrimental to the body politic. Livy recognizes, however, that, as a challenge to the people equivalent to strife within and war abroad, pestilentia could have a positive impact on the development of Roman hegemony and prompt coalescence among a divided citizenry.
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819660
- eISBN:
- 9780191859984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819660.003.0025
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Social History
The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book’s investigation of the hypothesis that epidemics which were mysterious and without known cures were the most likely to provoke hatred, blame, and ...
More
The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book’s investigation of the hypothesis that epidemics which were mysterious and without known cures were the most likely to provoke hatred, blame, and violence towards ‘the other’ and the disease’s victims. These assumptions are based on a handful of examples, such as the Black Death, cholera riots of the 1830s, and the US experience of AIDS. In a brief survey of the book’s descriptions of epidemics across time, the conclusion highlights several key insights into their socio-psychological consequences, which are richer than the dominant hypothesis would lead us to expect. Epidemics could possess the power to negate class, race, ethnic, and religious differences by spurring compassion and self-sacrifice. Despite the laboratory revolution, collective violence provoked by disease appears overwhelmingly to have been a modern phenomenon but has never constituted the general rule.Less
The conclusion summarizes the findings of the book’s investigation of the hypothesis that epidemics which were mysterious and without known cures were the most likely to provoke hatred, blame, and violence towards ‘the other’ and the disease’s victims. These assumptions are based on a handful of examples, such as the Black Death, cholera riots of the 1830s, and the US experience of AIDS. In a brief survey of the book’s descriptions of epidemics across time, the conclusion highlights several key insights into their socio-psychological consequences, which are richer than the dominant hypothesis would lead us to expect. Epidemics could possess the power to negate class, race, ethnic, and religious differences by spurring compassion and self-sacrifice. Despite the laboratory revolution, collective violence provoked by disease appears overwhelmingly to have been a modern phenomenon but has never constituted the general rule.
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819660
- eISBN:
- 9780191859984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819660.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Social History
This chapter refutes present claims that epidemics in antiquity led to blame of the ‘other’. By assembling contemporary descriptions, explanations, and consequences of ancient epidemics, this chapter ...
More
This chapter refutes present claims that epidemics in antiquity led to blame of the ‘other’. By assembling contemporary descriptions, explanations, and consequences of ancient epidemics, this chapter overturns a second commonplace about ancient epidemics: that contemporaries understood them within a moral universe, in which plagues arose from the evil deeds of individuals usually within the political sphere, such as betrayals, unjust wars, violations of peace, and breaches of justice, and as a consequence, the gods punished communities with epidemic disease. Such explanations, however, clustered in undatable, mythological time. Instead, classical authors explained the majority of epidemics solely by natural phenomenon—climate, famine, bad food and unaccustomed diets, vapours from unburied corpses, polluted rivers, etc. These explanations did not cast blame on anyone, including the enemies of the afflicted, who may have created the preconditions that brought about these plagues.Less
This chapter refutes present claims that epidemics in antiquity led to blame of the ‘other’. By assembling contemporary descriptions, explanations, and consequences of ancient epidemics, this chapter overturns a second commonplace about ancient epidemics: that contemporaries understood them within a moral universe, in which plagues arose from the evil deeds of individuals usually within the political sphere, such as betrayals, unjust wars, violations of peace, and breaches of justice, and as a consequence, the gods punished communities with epidemic disease. Such explanations, however, clustered in undatable, mythological time. Instead, classical authors explained the majority of epidemics solely by natural phenomenon—climate, famine, bad food and unaccustomed diets, vapours from unburied corpses, polluted rivers, etc. These explanations did not cast blame on anyone, including the enemies of the afflicted, who may have created the preconditions that brought about these plagues.
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr.
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198819660
- eISBN:
- 9780191859984
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198819660.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, Social History
This chapter begins with human and animal sacrifices to appease the gods during pestilence, but shows that such acts were extremely rare and, when they occurred, quickly disappeared or changed form ...
More
This chapter begins with human and animal sacrifices to appease the gods during pestilence, but shows that such acts were extremely rare and, when they occurred, quickly disappeared or changed form often to animal sacrifice. It investigates the scapegoat in ancient epidemics, showing the concept as far removed from present-day notions. The ancient one was often a volunteer, exemplary of self-sacrifice for the greater good of the community. Instead of being outcasts, foreigners, or despised minorities (for whom we reserve the term today), in antiquity, almost without exception, they were the elites. More emphatically, from literary and historical descriptions of the fifth century BCE to the sixth CE Justinianic Plague, the chapter charts societal reactions to epidemics, finding that they spawned acts of altruism, public holidays, and self-sacrifice. Instead of blaming or inflicting violence on ‘others’, epidemics were forces for unity, healing rifts between classes, factions, and regions at war.Less
This chapter begins with human and animal sacrifices to appease the gods during pestilence, but shows that such acts were extremely rare and, when they occurred, quickly disappeared or changed form often to animal sacrifice. It investigates the scapegoat in ancient epidemics, showing the concept as far removed from present-day notions. The ancient one was often a volunteer, exemplary of self-sacrifice for the greater good of the community. Instead of being outcasts, foreigners, or despised minorities (for whom we reserve the term today), in antiquity, almost without exception, they were the elites. More emphatically, from literary and historical descriptions of the fifth century BCE to the sixth CE Justinianic Plague, the chapter charts societal reactions to epidemics, finding that they spawned acts of altruism, public holidays, and self-sacrifice. Instead of blaming or inflicting violence on ‘others’, epidemics were forces for unity, healing rifts between classes, factions, and regions at war.
Jane Griffiths
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- March 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199654512
- eISBN:
- 9780191789434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654512.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature
This chapter focuses on William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and William Bullein’s Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence, arguing that their glossing reflects both the contemporary controversy over the ...
More
This chapter focuses on William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and William Bullein’s Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence, arguing that their glossing reflects both the contemporary controversy over the translation, printing, and glossing of the Bible, and a wider curiosity about the impact of print on what a text means. It shows that, although both works reflect Protestant insistence on the plain word of God as sole spiritual authority, their glosses do not simply underwrite the Reformist message of their works, but instead call into question the assumption that the printed word has an authority distinct from that of its contents. Provoking their readers into independent interpretation, they bear witness to the development of diverting glossing as an identifiable genre, characterized by studied unpredictability and play.Less
This chapter focuses on William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat and William Bullein’s Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence, arguing that their glossing reflects both the contemporary controversy over the translation, printing, and glossing of the Bible, and a wider curiosity about the impact of print on what a text means. It shows that, although both works reflect Protestant insistence on the plain word of God as sole spiritual authority, their glosses do not simply underwrite the Reformist message of their works, but instead call into question the assumption that the printed word has an authority distinct from that of its contents. Provoking their readers into independent interpretation, they bear witness to the development of diverting glossing as an identifiable genre, characterized by studied unpredictability and play.
