This article, “Artificial Apple Production in Fraiburgo, Brazil, 1958–1989,” by Jó Klanovicz explores connections between the “domestication” of apples in Southern Brazil, the polemic on contaminated apples in 1989, and the reactions of the apple industry to the news published in the press on the use of pesticides in Brazilian orchards.
Powerless Science? looks at complex historical, social, and political dynamics, made up of public controversies, environmental and health crises, economic interests, and political responses, and demonstrates how and to what extent scientific knowledge about toxicants has been caught between scientific, economic, and political imperatives.
The multinational, agricultural biotechnology corporation Monsanto developed the first widely used genetically modified crop with the introduction of the “Roundup Ready” soybean.
Silent Spring describes the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, and is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.
Carson’s Silent Spring: A Reader’s Guide provides an in-depth analysis and contextualization of Silent Spring. It also surveys the lasting impact the text has had on the environmentalist movement in the last fifty years.
Discovered as an insecticide by Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller in 1939, DDT is used to fight typhus and malaria during WWII; it is approved for public insecticide use by the FDA in 1945.
Raising Resistance tells the story of Paraguay’s small-scale farmers resistance against genetic soy enterprises.
The film follows the trial of Nicaraguan banana farmers against the Dole company.
This issue of RCC Perspectives takes a sweeping look at encounters with and legacies of the book, examining the global impact of Silent Spring over its half century of existence and considering the ways in which Rachel Carson’s ecological worldview equips us to understand and confront current and future challenges to our planet.
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This essay is adapted from a lecture given by Rachel Carson Center director Christof Mauch at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) of LMU Munich, as a prelude to a series of public lectures and colloquia held by the Carson Center.
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