Entomology, Ecology and Agriculture: The Making of Scientific Careers in North America, 1885-1985 (review)

In recent years, there has been a spate of dissertations written about scientists’ and engineers’ efforts to study, control, reduce, introduce, or kill insects. Connor Sorenson’s Brethren of the Net (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995) considers the earliest community of American entomologists, focusing on the nineteenth century. Richard Sawyer’s To Make a Spotless Orange (Ames: University of Iowa Press, 1996) uses the California orange industry as a springboard into his discussion of biological control more generally. Palladino’s book also uses the Californians, but here as a counterpoint to alternative entomological principles and approaches to pests, particularly a program based in Canada. All three books offer a welcome corrective to the general view that agricultural science and technology developed historically as a world apart from “mainstream” science and technology. Indeed, Sawyer and Palladino especially demonstrate quite vividly how inextricably connected biological theory was to entomological practice. Even when the theory or the practical issues were not taken very seriously by one group or another, the issues did form the conceptual horizon or reference point for practices and beliefs.

Palladino’s main concern is to explore the role of ecological theory in changing views of pest control among a group of Canadian entomologists and a group of American entomologists in Riverside, California. With the specter of DDT’s introduction, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Palladino seeks to understand how the insecticide crisis was shaped by both academic and agricultural exigencies. Focusing on a debate in the late 1950s between these two groups, Palladino deftly elaborates how their institutional differences shaped the conceptual differences. The American entomologists, located in the state agricultural experiment stations, were committed to serving their primary clientele, farmers, by helping farmers get rid of insects in any way possible. At the citrus experiment station in Riverside, California, this commitment led in the late 1880s to the discovery and importation of the Vedalia beetle to control cottony cushion scale, a pest that threatened the entire citrus industry. The spectacular success of this biological control program led the entomologists to continue such work, even though no other predator introductions were nearly as effective in eradicating pests. Unfortunately, this commitment to agriculture also made the citrus entomologists unable to fight the growing popularity of chemical insecticides such as DDT. The development of integrated pest management in the late 1950s itself followed a trajectory of initial popularity and subsequent mixed reviews, as virtually all earlier approaches had done. The Canadian situation as typified at the Dominion Parasite Laboratory in Belleville, Ontario, differed from the Californian situation largely because the Canadian entomologists were isolated both geographically and conceptually from the agricultural population. Where the U.S. institutional bias was toward farmers, the Canadian institutional bias was toward scientific research. The Canadians were much more inclined to study pests within a biological or an ecological frame, with little regard for immediate agricultural results. Accordingly, the Canadians were more sensitive to the demands of theoretical considerations within entomological practice.

Entymology, Ecology, and Agriculture is of real interest to historians of technology working at the intersection of life science, material culture, and industrialization. While Palladino does not discuss machines as such, his analysis is rooted in a systems approach that relies upon multiple actors, multiple agendas, and multiple resources for its explanatory power. His discussion of the relationships between predators and prey, and entomologists’ attempts to intersect this relationship with chemicals, is especially provocative. Certainly the book would be even stronger if Palladino had included an examination of the chemical industry and its interests in the growing popularity of insecticides, as well as its influence on federal and state entomologists. A consideration of the material agents of pest control also would have been interesting. For example, how and why did the development of engineering equipment dovetail with the emergence of pesticides? Under whose guidance did this occur, and who made it possible...