Inventing the Indigenous Hardback: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe

Cooper

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521870879 ISBN 13: 9780521870870

Verlag: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Drawing on cultural, social and environmental history, and histories of science and medicine, this book shows how, amidst a growing reaction against exotic imports - whether medieval spices like cinnamon or new American arrivals like chocolate and tobacco - early modern Europeans began to take inventory of their own 'indigenous' natural worlds.

Críticas:

Review of the hardback: 'Cooper has produced a succinct and judicious study that contributes much to our understanding of the development of natural history and environmentalism in Europe. It is a powerful reminder of how patriotism and suspicions about the global economy of the day created a movement to study indigenous expressions of nature. But it also shows how such attempts, when entered into dialogue with studies of the larger natural world, led to the appropriation and silencing of the knowledge of local people. It deserves to be widely read.' Harold J. Cook, University College London

Review of the hardback: 'Finally a book that explains the rich cultural history of the "indigenous." Cooper's book is smart, highly readable, and a treasure trove of information for understanding how Early Modern Europeans viewed nature in their own backyard.' Londa Schiebinger, Stanford University

Review of the hardback: 'Inventing the Indigenous is well researched and Copper's chapter cross space and time in an attempt to trace the development and significance of local floras to the communities that developed them ...The themes explored in the book are relevant for a breadth of disciplines beyond the history if science, dealing with themes of defining local difference and divergent cultural views of the expanding world in an age of exploration and discovery.' Journal of Archaeological Science

Review of the hardback: '...engaging...well-written...' The Society for the History of Natural History

Review of the hardback: 'Cooper's excellent book brings to life the European side of the 'quarrel between the 'indigenous' and the 'exotic'' and shows how productive it was for the study of nature in the early modern period.' Journal of Central European History

Biografía del autor:

Alix Cooper is Assistant Professor of History at Stony Brook University, where she teaches early modern European history and the histories of science, medicine, and the environment.