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Book Review
| Industrializing Organisms: Introducing Evolutionary History. Edited by Susan R. Schrepfer and Philip Scranton. Hagley Perspectives on Business and Culture, Volume 5. New York: Routledge, 2004. ix+ 275 pp. Illustrations, notes, list of contributors, index. Cloth $90.00, paper $24.95.
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| Beginning with the domestication of the wolf, the manufacture of animals and plants is among the oldest human enterprises. Of course, that is a dramatic way of putting it, but the conversion of wild grains and pulses into crops, and of wild ungulates into flocks and herds—that is, the development of agriculture– underlies the many and various elaborations of human culture that have emerged in the last ten (or so) millennia. Some of these small but significant creative acts have been retroactively recognized by modern taxonomists, when they use a distinctive species name to differentiate the domesticated derivative from its parent, even if interbreeding between the two species remains possible–thus the wolf is called Canis lupus and the dog is called Canis familiaris. With most crop and livestock species, domestication was only the first and largest step in a process that ultimately led to strains or varieties or races or breeds (the number of alternative terms is more revealing than are most attempts to define or distinguish them) adapted to a range of habitats and functions. As a result, for example, the species Bos taurus (cattle) now comprehends both small hardy animals and animals that reach enormous size in settings of livestock luxury, both animals whose forte is meat production and animals designed for the dairy. The wild cabbage of Europe (Brassica oleracea) has similarly given rise to cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, and kale. |
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