Biotic borders : transpacific plant and insect migration and the rise of anti-Asian racism in America, 1890-1950 / Jeannie N. Shinozuka.
| Author/creator |
Shinozuka, Jeannie Natsuko author. |
| Format | Book and Print |
| Publication Info | Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2022. |
| Copyright Notice | ©2022 |
| Description | 306 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm |
| Subject(s) |
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| 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 PQN -- 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. |
| Abstract | "This timely book 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"-- Provided by publisher. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| LCCN | 2021038781 |
| ISBN | 9780226817293 hardcover |
| ISBN | 0226817296 hardcover |
| ISBN | 9780226817330 paperback |
| ISBN | 0226817334 paperback |
| ISBN | electronic book |
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