His path to researching and writing Faunal Connections reveals both the influence of geopolitics in shaping environmental ideas and the capacity for scientists to benefit from strategic funding opportunities while contributing little of strategic value. Conceived and executed in the context of the Cold War, Lindroth’s project benefited from governmental and institutional support that sought to promote transatlantic scientific cooperation and northern research. Through this work, he identified the ballast of sailing ships as a primary vector of insect introduction to the Americas, argued for the importance of recurring introductions of breeding pairs in successful colonization, and demonstrated the importance of examining a broad range of species introductions, not just those that directly mattered to human history. It was the culmination of a multi-year investigation begun in 1949 that had seen the Swedish ecologist and entomologist collect insects in Newfoundland, compare his findings with other North American and European regions, and trace the origins of introduced insects to various sites in southwestern England. In his Faunal Connections between Europe and North America (1957), a landmark study of ecological introductions from Europe to North America that prefigured Alfred Crosby’s Columbian Exchange by three decades, Carl Lindroth sought to explain the distribution of fauna and particularly insects across the North Atlantic. Along the way, this volume urges us to rethink certain fundamental points about how we should understand-and thus study-the Cold War itself. With this in mind, the present volume concentrates on three main lines of investigation: exploring important factors that enabled transnational movements and exchanges in the social sciences during the Cold War analyzing how transnationalism shaped social science work in various Cold War-inflected contexts and exploring how transnational across different Cold War settings inspired debate over fundamental questions concerning the nature and meaning of the social sciences. Adopting a transnationalism lens brings into focus movements, exchanges, and interactions that have often received at best marginal consideration. Recent historiographical developments suggest the need for close attention to transnational dimensions of Cold War social science. As a global phenomenon, the Cold War had a profound influence on international relations, society, culture, and the sciences, including the social sciences.
0 kommentar(er)
