The Garden in the Machine: The Adaptation of Canine Biotechnology and Human Society

University Of Virginia Main Campus, Charlottesville VA

Investigators

Abstract

SES 0220764 The Garden in the Machine: The Adaptation of Canine Biotechnology and Human Society Edmund Russell, University of Virginia We have long thought about the relationship between technology and nature as "the machine in the garden," which focuses our attention on ways that technology intrudes into nature. This project reverses our framework by focusing on the garden in the machine (more accurately, the organism in the artifact), or ways that technology emerges from nature. Organisms shaped to serve human ends, such as domesticates, became one form of biotechnology. Analyzing the workings of this process can help us understand the past, present, and future of biotechnology. This project uses the history of dogs in the 19th and 20th centuries in the United States and United Kingdom as a case study. Dogs were the first domesticated species, make the impact of breeding easily visible, have done a wide variety of jobs (with companionship becoming an ever more important source of employment), and are important to many people -- a fact that increases interest in the products of this research. This study analyzes several factors important in shaping canine biotechnology: economics, class, gender, institutions, culture, gambling, breeding, and national differences. We like to think that we have been in control of dog evolution, but dogs have also shaped us. To understand the coevolution of humans and dogs, this project introduces a new field to history called evolutionary history. This field pairs strengths of history of technology, environmental history, history of science, and evolutionary biology to gain a fuller understanding of the coevolution of humans and other species than we could obtain from one field alone. One of evolutionary history's strengths is focusing on cultural as well as genetic evolution. This project relies on standard historical methods, including research in libraries, archives, and museums. It will produce conference papers, articles, and a book.