Main entry:

LeCain, Timothy J., 1960- author.

Title & Author:

The matter of history : how things create the past / Timothy J. LeCain, Montana State University.

Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2017.
©2017

Description:

xix, 346 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Series:

Studies in Environment and History

Notes:
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Fellow travelers : the nonhuman things that make us human -- We never left Eden : the religious and secular marginalization of matter -- Natural-born humans : a neo-materialist theory and method of history -- The longhorn : the animal intelligence behind American open-range ranching -- The silkworm : the innovative insects behind Japanese modernization -- The copper atom : conductivity and the great convergence of Japan and the West -- The matter of humans : beyond the Anthropocene and toward a new humanism.
Library copy: selected for the Multidisciplinary Research Project on "Architecture and/for the Environment", 2017-2019, developed by the CCA with the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Summary:

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."

ISBN:

9781107134171 (hardback)
110713417X (hardback)
9781107592704 (paperback)
1107592704 (paperback)
9781108294829

Subject:

Human ecology History.
Material culture.
Globalization History.
Culture matérielle.
Mondialisation Histoire.
material culture (discipline)
Globalization
Human ecology
Geschichtstheorie
Materialismus
Geschichte
Materialität

Form/genre:

History

Added entries:

Studies in environment and history.

Holdings:

Location: Library main 301018
Call No.: BIB 247242
Status: Available