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New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold, new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organisms and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, biological, social, and cultural. Timothy J. LeCain combines cutting-edge theory and detailed empirical analysis to explain the extraordinary late-nineteenth century convergence between the United States and Japan at the pivotal moment when both were emerging as global superpowers. Illustrating the power of a deeply material social and cultural history, The Matter of History argues that three powerful things - cattle, silkworms, and copper - helped to drive these previously diverse nations towards a global 'Great Convergence'.
. Brings together neo-materialist thinking from a wide variety of disciplines
. Proposes a bold new theory of history that emphasizes the many ways that humans are deeply embedded in a material world
. Provides a detailed, empirically driven application of the neo-materialist theory and method with a detailed comparative study
1. Fellow travelers: the non-human things that make us human
2. We never left Eden: the religious and secular marginalization of matter
3. Natural born humans: a neo-materialist theory and method of history
4. The longhorn: the animal intelligence behind American open range ranching
5. The silkworm: the innovative insects behind Japanese modernization
6. The copper atom: conductivity and the great convergence of Japan and the West
7. The matter of humans: beyond the Anthropocene and towards a new humanism.
Description
New insights into the microbiome, epigenetics, and cognition are radically challenging our very idea of what it means to be 'human', while an explosion of neo-materialist thinking in the humanities has fostered a renewed appreciation of the formative powers of a dynamic material environment. The Matter of History brings these scientific and humanistic ideas together to develop a bold, new post-anthropocentric understanding of the past, one that reveals how powerful organisms and things help to create humans in all their dimensions, biological, social, and cultural. Timothy J. LeCain combines cutting-edge theory and detailed empirical analysis to explain the extraordinary late-nineteenth century convergence between the United States and Japan at the pivotal moment when both were emerging as global superpowers. Illustrating the power of a deeply material social and cultural history, The Matter of History argues that three powerful things - cattle, silkworms, and copper - helped to drive these previously diverse nations towards a global 'Great Convergence'.
. Brings together neo-materialist thinking from a wide variety of disciplines
. Proposes a bold new theory of history that emphasizes the many ways that humans are deeply embedded in a material world
. Provides a detailed, empirically driven application of the neo-materialist theory and method with a detailed comparative study