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SUMMARY:Cocoon cultures: the (dis)entangling of silk and biology in Japan 
 - Lisa Onaga (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science)
DTSTART:20240509T143000Z
DTEND:20240509T160000Z
UID:TALK216004@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lewis Bremner
DESCRIPTION:Sericultural practices in Japan underwent a scientization proc
 ess during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Within this conte
 xt\, nineteenth-century silk cocoon cultivators endeavoured to control ind
 oor climates to better direct insect development\; they also formed new st
 rategies to prevent the spread of disease from one generation to the next.
  As sericulture gained popularity\, various political\, economic\, and sci
 entific interests converged as experts\, bureaucrats\, and industry leader
 s confronted a need to organize a multiplying number of cocoon-spinners st
 rains. I trace how sericulturists and scientists sought to 'improve' cocoo
 ns used to manufacture silk threads\, and relatedly\, how they made practi
 cal use of cocoon spinners' hereditary information discerned through scien
 tific breeding experiments. I focus upon the cultivation of cocoons to sho
 w how efforts to coax greater uniformity among these objects had been espe
 cially encouraged by government and industry and led to standardizing prac
 tices and national sericultural infrastructure. This analytic perspective 
 anchored to the cocoon additionally clarifies how improvement activities h
 elped spur research opportunities for university-based genetic researchers
  distanced from industry. Scientific interest in mutations of these metamo
 rphosing insects during the 1920s and 1930s became dually oriented toward 
 a growing international field of genetics and Japanese sericulture. Subseq
 uently\, efforts to raise awareness about the need for organizing\, exchan
 ging\, and preserving the genetic matter and information contained in muta
 nts paved a new path that invited scientists to view cocoon-spinners as a 
 resource for biological research.
LOCATION:Large Lecture Theatre\, Department of Plant Sciences\, Downing Si
 te
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