International Review of Environmental History: Volume 8, Issue 1, 2022

Description

This timely special issue of the International Review of Environmental History focuses on animals and epidemics in modern East Asia. The global pandemic of Covid-19 has forced us to think more deeply about the interrelations between animals, both human and non-human, and epidemics. Moreover, the intense attention on East Asia in this context demands that we study the region in the thematic matrix of health, environment, animals, sociocultural traditions, and geopolitics. This collection comprises two parts. The first part consists of three research articles and an extensive commentary. The articles examine, respectively, rabies and rabid dogs in early twentieth-century China, venomous snakes and tropical medicine in colonial Taiwan, and epidemics and animal rights movements in contemporary China. The second part includes three reflective essays on topics of immediate relevance: animals and health campaigns in Mao-era China; insects, particularly silkworms, in vaccine research; and the dominant but flawed scientific paradigm of emerging zoonotic epidemics. The essays are followed by a broad commentary that provides a global and comparative perspective.