Biocultural Empire
New Histories of Imperial Lifeworlds
Samantha Frost editor Professor Antoinette Burton editor Renisa Mawani editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published:12th Dec '24
£85.00
Supplier delay - available to order, but may take longer than usual.
This collection critically examines the idea of human supremacy in British imperial history. Biocultural Empire reimagines empire through biological and cultural processes.
The concept of human supremacy has long influenced the narratives surrounding modern British imperial history. In Biocultural Empire, a compelling collection of essays, this foundational assumption is scrutinized, offering fresh perspectives on how we understand the histories of empire. The contributors delve into the intricate interplay of biocultural, chemical, and cultural processes that shape our histories, rather than attributing these dynamics solely to human actions imposed upon various landscapes, fauna, and biomes.
The collection emphasizes the fluid boundaries between human and nonhuman realms, suggesting that these worlds are not fixed but rather open to mutual transformation. By foregrounding interspecies interactions, Biocultural Empire invites readers to reconsider the nature of imperial power, experience, and knowledge as a complex remix of 'nature' and 'culture'. This approach challenges imperial historians to adopt an interpretative framework that recognizes the inseparability of the imperial subject from its social and ecological contexts.
Through this biocultural lens, the essays reveal the persistence of human-centric biases within Western liberal thought, which have historically underpinned imperial endeavors. Biocultural Empire represents a significant intervention in British imperial history, proposing an anti-colonial method that seeks to reshape our understanding of empire and its legacies. The ebook editions of this collection are available as open access, reflecting a commitment to making this vital discourse accessible to a broader audience.
This provocative collection takes imperial history where it has seldom been before, re-imagining empire as a consequence of biocultural processes. Compelling essays illustrate this approach whether through keratin, chromosomes, whales, plants, water, mud and more. An essential guide for doing radical imperial history in the age of the Anthropocene. * Isabel Hofmeyr, Professor Emeritus, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa *
The essays in this diverse and imaginatively assembled collection reconceptualize the history of the British empire by firmly contextualizing it within the organic and inorganic environments that always influenced the direction and impact of imperial activities and often constrained them. * Harriet Ritvo, Professor of History Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA *
Biocultural Empire is an important collection that finally brings together two of the most significant intellectual trends of the last years: the move beyond the biology/society binary, embodied by Frost’s work, and anti-colonial empire histories. It is this kind of collective and multidisciplinary work that we need to document the scale and depth of harm done by unjust structures and racialized violence in the Anthropocene, from cells to empires, in human and more-than-human worlds. * Maurizio Meloni, Associate Professor of Sociology, Deakin University, Australia *
ISBN: 9781350451056
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
240 pages