Indigenous Knowledge and Material Histories: The Example of Rubber (Elements in Environmental Humanities) - Softcover

Soentgen, Jens

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009442724 ISBN 13: 9781009442725

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2024

Synopsis

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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• ISBN 10: 1009442724
• ISBN 13: 9781009442725
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 76