In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term “green revolution”
to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease
hunger around the world—and forestall the spread of more “red,”
or socialist, revolutions. Yet in China, where modernization and
scientific progress could not be divorced from politics, green and red
revolutions proceeded side by side. In Red
Revolution, Green Revolution, Sigrid Schmalzer explores the
intersection of politics and agriculture in socialist China through
the diverse experiences of scientists, peasants, state agents, and
“educated youth.” The environmental costs of chemical-intensive
agriculture and the human costs of emphasizing increasing production
over equitable distribution of food and labor have been felt as
strongly in China as anywhere—and yet, as Schmalzer shows, Mao-era
challenges to technocracy laid important groundwork for today’s
sustainability and food justice movements. This history of
“scientific farming” in China offers us a unique opportunity not
only to explore the consequences of modern agricultural technologies
but also to engage in a necessary rethinking of fundamental
assumptions about science and society.
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Scientific Farming in Socialist China
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780226330297
Publisert
2018
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
University of Chicago Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter