Indigenous Knowledge and Material Histories - The Example of Rubber

"This Element deals with stories told about substances and ways to analyse them through an Environmental Humanities perspective. It then takes up rubber as an example and its many stories"--

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. The rhetorical and literary tradition of stories of stuff; 3. Research on the history of individual materials; 4. Substances and materials; 5. Histories; 6. Rubber; 7. Rubber histories and the representation of Indigenous peoples of South and Central America; 8. Indigenous knowledge; 9. Indigenous rubber products; 10. Problems of untreated rubber; 11. The place of Indigenous knowledge in the history of rubber; 12. Rubber and Rubbish: tire dumps and microrubber.

Summary

This Element deals with stories told about substances and ways to analyse them through an Environmental Humanitie's perspective. It then takes up rubber as an example and its many stories. It is shown that the common notions of rubber history, which assume that rubber only became a useful material through a miraculous operation called vulcanization, that is attributed to the US-American Charles Goodyear, are false. In contrast, it is shown that rubber and many important rubber products are inventions of Indigenous peoples of South America, made durable by a process that can be called organic vulcanization. It is with that invention, that the story of rubber starts. Without it, rubber would not exist, neither in the Americas nor elsewhere. Finally, it is shown that Indigenous rubber products also offer some ecological advantages over industrially manufactured ones.

Product details

• Authors: Jens Soentgen, Jens (Augsburg University) Soentgen, Soentgen Jens
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.06.2024
• EAN: 9781009517089
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0951708-9
• No. of pages: 75
• Series: Elements in Environmental Humanities
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; Fiction: special features, LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, Indigenous Peoples, Literary theory, National liberation & independence, post-colonialism, Narrative theme: Environmental issues / the natural world, Decolonisation and postcolonial studies, Plastics & polymers technology, Plastics and polymers