Biotic borders transpacific plant and insect migration and the rise of anti-Asian racism in America, 1890-1950 Jeannie N. Shinozuka

Object Details

Notes: purchased from the NMAH Library Endowment; Elecresource
Contents: Introduction: Plant and insect immigrants -- San José scale : contested origins at the turn of the century -- Early yellow peril vs. western menace : chestnut blight, citrus canker, and PQN₃₇ -- Liable insects at the US-Mexico border -- Contagious yellow peril : diseased bodies and the threat of little brown men -- Pestilence in paradise : invasives in Hawai'i -- Japanese beetle menace : discovery of the beetle -- Infiltrating perils : a race against ownership, contamination, and miscegenation -- Yellow peril no more? National and naturalized enemies during World War II -- Conclusion: Toward a multi(horti)cultural global society
Summary: Reveals how the increase in traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" beginning in the late nineteenth century, when mass quantities of nursery stock and other agricultural products were shipped from large, corporate nurseries in Japan to meet the growing demand for exotics in the United States. Jeannie Shinozuka marshals extensive research to explain how the categories of "native" and "invasive" defined groups as bio-invasions that must be regulated-or somehow annihilated-during a period of American empire-building. Shinozuka shows how the modern fixation on foreign species provided a linguistic and conceptual arsenal for anti-immigration movements that gained ground in the early twentieth century. Xenophobia fed concerns about biodiversity, and in turn facilitated the implementation of plant quarantine measures while also valuing, and devaluing, certain species over others. The emergence and rise of economic entomology and plant pathology alongside public health and anti-immigration movements was not merely coincidental. Ultimately, what this book unearths is that the inhumane and unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II cannot, and should not, be disentangled from this longer history

Data Source: Smithsonian Libraries

Date: 2022

Call number: QH353 .S543 2022 (Internet)

author: Shinozuka, Jeannie Natsuko

Restrictions & Rights: 1-user

Type: Electronic resources

Physical description: 1 online resource (306 pages) illustrations

Place: United States; États-Unis

Topic: Introduced organisms--Social aspects; Racism against Asians; Espèces introduites--Aspect social; SOCIAL SCIENCE--General

Record ID: siris_sil_1162027

Usage: CC0