Segmentation of Issues as Process of Invisibilization: The Case of Pesticides

Date: April 25, 2016

Time: 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.

Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Event Type: Open to the Public

Fee: Free

RSVP Online: No Registration Required

Since the last third of the 19th century, toxic chemicals—now generically classified as “pesticides”—used in agriculture (in crop protection, animal breeding, forestry, various industries, public health, and homes to fight insects, and to control various pathogens, weeds, and rodents) have been the object of recurring controversies. Since that time their environmental and health effects have been denounced in various ways, leading to many national and international regulations. Yet, to paraphrase the words of a French epidemiologist, although the fact that pesticides may be hazardous has been recognized for a long time, the hazards and risks they actually pose remain for most of them either largely unrecognized, not well known, or not known at all. The talk will explore two French historical cases to show how strong processes of segmentation of issues at work in medical and scientific research, regulation, and activism have led to equally strong processes of selection of issues that are worth considering and, as a result, of the long-term invisibilization of many of the multifaced problems that pesticides may cause. I will first examine the beginning of the 20th-century French controversy over the use of arsenical compounds in crop protection that led to the first important nationwide pesticides regulation. I will then deal with the 1950s controversies over the development of uses of synthetic pesticides and the failed attempt to develop a new research field on “toxic substances used in agriculture.” Finally, I will quickly assess the current partial visibilization process of the health effects of pesticides at work in France.

Nathalie Jas is a historian and an STS scholar. She is senior research fellow at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) where she leads an interdisciplinary team studying risks in agriculture and agri-food industries. Her research focuses on the government of toxic-related issues. She has recently coedited (with Soraya Boudia) two books on this topic: Toxicants, Health and Regulation (Pickering and Chatto, 2013 & 2016) and Powerless Science? Science and Politics in a Toxic World (Berghahn, 2014 & 2016).

Brown Bag Lectures (BBLs) are a series of weekly informal talks on the history of chemistry or related subjects, including the history and social studies of science, technology, and medicine. Based on original research (sometimes still in progress), these talks are given by local scholars for an audience of CHF staff and fellows and interested members of the public.

For more information, please call 215.873.8289 or e-mail bbl@chemheritage.org.