Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America, 1885-1985Psychology Press, 1996 - 201 pages Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture examines the vastly expanded governmental funding of scientific research and technological development for the institutional and intellectual organisation of life sciences in the twentieth century. It studies the history of natural historical investigations of insects in light of growing institutional organisation of the agricultural sciences in the United States and Canada, exploring how this context has shaped the emergence of economic entomology and ecology - two quite different but related disciplines. This study is facilitated by following economic entomologists' and ecologists' changing ideas about different pest control strategies, chiefly 'chemical', 'biological', and 'integrated' control. The author then follows the efforts of one specific group of entomologists, at the University of California, over three generations from their advocacy of 'biological' controls in the 1930s and 1940s, through their shifting attention to the development of an 'integrated' strategy in the 1950s, to their final establishment of "integrated pest management" in the context of "big biology" during the 1970s. Ultimately, this book is about the lives of scientists in twentieth century science as they have been shaped both by the massive intellectual and institutional structures of science, and by their own will to create something new and more rewarding out of these structures. |
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agricultural experiment stations agricultural research American entomologists argued Association of Economic Belleville biological control Boll Weevil Bulletin Canada Canadian Department Canadian entomologists Carson chemical control chemical insecticides cotton Cottony Cushion Scale crop protection density Department of Agriculture Division of Biological Dominion ecological theory Economic Entomology ecosystems effective ento Entomological Society entomologists in Riverside Entomology in Canada environmental eradication establishment farmers funding gists growers Gutierrez Holling Huffaker important industry insect pests insect populations insect species integrated control integrated pest management International Biological Program interview with Paolo Journal of Economic Levins ment models natural enemies Nicholson Ontario organization Paolo Palladino pest control pest management project Pesticides political practical problems Rachel Carson relationship Riverside and Berkeley Sawyer scientific scientists Silent Spring Smith Society of America Society of Ontario spotless orange strategy systems analysis systems ecology theoretical population ecologists tion Toronto Turnbull United States Department University Press Watt