Cows and capitalism: humans,animals and machines in West German barns, 1950–80

ABSTRACT

From the beginning of the 1950s, milking machines increasingly replaced former agricultural workers in West German stables who now preferred better-paid jobs in the industrial sector. The investment necessary for the milking machines led to new ideas about economic thinking and production-optimization, which changed the interplay among human, animal and technology. Within less than two decades, cattle farming in the Federal Republic of Germany changed from an animal-lacking, devastated economic branch of manual labour to a mechanized profit-oriented industry, which produced more than was demanded. This essay challenges the prevailing historical interpretation in which the industrialization of farming has been described as one of the last stages of capitalism’s penetration of society. Central aspects of capitalism remained unfulfilled: there was neither a free market nor individual autonomy of entrepreneurs, and wage labour literally vanished within the barns. A close-up view of the practices at the place of action reveals an arbitrary mixture of efficiency and care that made the industrialization of animal farming differ from the traditional narrative of capitalistic expansion. When animals are the resources to be utilized, capitalist economic activity reaches its limits at the point where the animals’ vital processes begin to malfunction. By bringing together human-animal studies with economic history, this article offers new insights into the role of animals as living beings in history as well as into the expansion of capitalism in an economic sector that continued to operate according to its own rules.     

The story of a Chinese map

Sommaire

De même que le nom de “CASSINI” est intimement lié à l'établissement et à la publication, entre 1750 et 1815 de la “Carte géométrique de la France au 1/86 400”, un autre patronyme, moins connu peut‐être, celui de “NAUDIN”, brille d'un éclat particulier pour tout ce qui touche à la cartographie française de 1688 à 1746.

Le but de cet article est précisément de faire connaître à ceux qui s'intéressent à la cartographie ancienne, ce que fut, en la situant dans son cadre historique, l'oeuvre de cette remarquable famille de géographes: “les NAUDINS”.     

Wahnsinnige Bilder – Zu einer medialen Wissensgeschichte des Psychischen um 1900

Mental Images: Towards a Media History of the Psyche around 1900. Presupposing that visual practices are inherent to the social constitution of knowledge, this article suggests juxtaposing photographs and films produced in a psychiatric environment to popular films run in theaters around 1900, thus identifying cinema’s particular “Denkstil” (Fleck). Rejecting science’s dominating paradigm of visual objectivity (Daston/Galison), the visual apparatus [dispositif] of early cinema facilitates subjective experience of unreason and irrationality and thus initiates a different epistemological approach to knowledge as self-knowledge of a modern, self-reflexive subject. This is particularly evident in early cinema’s depiction of the psyche, which does not solely focus on the physical manifestation of the ‘mad’, ‘insane’ body, but also visualizes the subject’s inner life: technical means like montage, multiple exposure or stop motion can be employed to illustrate subjective visions, fantasies or dreams. Thus, the invisible mind becomes visible as the “unthinkable within thinking” (Deleuze), while the subject is invited to participate in cinema’s “gay science” (Nietzsche).     

Hedonic pricing analysis of the influence of urban green spaces onto residential prices: the case of Leipzig,Germany

In the light of global urbanization and biodiversity loss, ecosystem services provided by urban green spaces (UGS) are becoming increasingly important, not least as a recovery and recreation opportunity for citizens. The valuation of UGS is significant for urban planners, who make decisions on the creation or removal of UGS. We analysed the influence of UGS on residential property prices in Leipzig, Germany, by applying a hedonic pricing analysis. This analysis complements the existing literature by considering both sale and rental prices for flats and houses; moreover, the shape of UGS is taken into account explicitly; finally, it is the first study in Germany to analyse UGS in hedonic studies to such an extent. The results demonstrate that the size of the nearest UGS has a stronger impact on prices compared to the distance from it. With respect to shape, we found that the simpler the UGS shape, the higher the prices. Although we find an impact of UGS on prices, the impact is smaller than that of other characteristics. The proposed valuation approach and obtained results inform urban planners regarding the design of new UGS and raise awareness about potential intended and unintended economic and social effects.     

Did Harrington’s cats catch Harvey’s chick? Vitalistic imagery in early modern republican political theory

In an early modern context, ‘vitalistic’ natural philosophies had been associated with antiauthoritarian political theories. Whilst mechanical philosophy has been characterized as amenable to (or even, sometimes, inspired by) conservative politics on account of the structural analogies between passive and inert particles that can only be organized by externally imposed strict mechanical laws on the one hand, and similarly passive citizens, on the other, vitalism understood as a monistic, dynamic materialism purportedly implicated alternative modes of agency and organization. This alternative model incorporated inherently active, self-organizing agents allegedly capable of bringing about higher structures in a bottom-up fashion both in the natural and in political realm. In this paper, I focus on James Harrington’s appropriation of William Harvey’s physiology and examine whether the republican philosopher actually made use of the political potential said to be inherent in vitalistic discourse. I intend to show that Harrington, rather than boldly capitalizing on vitalism’s decentralizing and democratic potential, adapts his physiological imagery to his wider set of ideas concerning human nature and moral psychology underpinning his politics. Simple analogy between vitalism and antiauthoritarianism is then lost in Harrington’s writings, pointing to a more complex relationship between early modern natural and political philosophy.