Amedeo Policante
![Fotografia do Amedeo Policante](https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Amedeo-Policante_web.jpg)
History of Science, Technology, and Environment
Contact:
policante@fcsh.unl.pt
Biography
Amedeo Policante is an historian and critical theorist at NOVA University Lisbon. His writings interrogate the nexus of extraction, exploitation and expropriation that fuels the contemporary world market. He is the author of three recent books: “Mutant Ecologies: Manufacturing Life in the Age of Genomic Capital” (Pluto Press, 2022), a critical cartography of the shifting landscapes of capital accumulation conjured by recent developments in genomic science, genome editing and the biotech industry; “The Pirate Myth: Genealogies of an Imperial Concept” (Routledge, 2016) focusing on the entangled histories of imperialism, ocean stewardship and logistical security since the eighteenth century; and “I Nuovi Mercenari: Mercato Mondiale e Privatizzazione della Guerra” (Ombre Corte, 2014) investigating the history of the security industry in Europe since the second half of the nineteenth century. He has also published several articles and book chapters on the political thought of Karl Marx and Michel Foucault; as well as an ethnography of political protests and their visual representation. These works have been disseminating via traditional means such as academic journals, magazines and newspapers; and alternative means such as ‘The Pirate Camp’, a collaborative artistic project featured at the 54th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale.
Research fields
- Contemporary history
- History of science and technology
- Ocean politics and history
- Critical theory
Selected publications
- Borg, Erica & Amedeo Policante. Mutant Ecologies. Manufacturing Life in the Age of Genomic Capital. London: Pluto Press, 2022. [link]
- Policante, Amedeo. “Ursine wars: alpine imaginaries and animal genealogies in the Trentino region,” Anima Loci (2021): https://animaloci.org/ursine-wars-alpine-imaginaries-and-animal-genealogies/. [link]
- Policante, Amedeo. The Pirate Myth: Genealogies of an Imperial Concept. London: Routledge, 2015. [link]
- Policante, Amedeo. I Nuovi Mercenari: Mercato Mondiale e Privatizzazione della Guerra. Verona: Ombre Corte, 2012.
Main projects
- Individual project “Networking the Ocean: Entangled Histories and Geographies of the Submarines Cable Network as a Global Critical Infrastructure” — Hosted by the IHC and funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (2021.03779.CEECIND). 2022-2028
- Postdoctoral researcher at the project “Biodiversity of Anthropocene Oceans: Networks, Flows and Systems Approaches for Boundary Crossing Research” — Coordinated by Kimberley Peters (Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity) and funded by the Helmholtz-Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity and the Alfred Wegener Institute – Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI).
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Events
julho, 2024
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![Illustrative banner for the lecture “Rice: ersatz, cultural artifact, object of knowledge, unruly crop”. With Lavinia Maddaluno, from Università Ca’ Foscari , IHC Visting Scholar 2024. The poster includes a photo of Lavinia Maddaluno.](https://ihc.fcsh.unl.pt/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/2024-07-16_Lavinia-Maddaluno_1200x500.jpg)
Detalhes do Evento
Lecture with IHC’s 2024 Visiting Scholar Lavinia Maddaluno, on the socio-economic, cultural, scientific, technological, and medical responses to the expansion of rice cultivation in northern Italy.
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Detalhes do Evento
Lecture with IHC’s 2024 Visiting Scholar Lavinia Maddaluno, on the socio-economic, cultural, scientific, technological, and medical responses to the expansion of rice cultivation in northern Italy.
Rice: ersatz, cultural artifact, object of knowledge, unruly crop
A dietary mainstay in non-European societies and a cornerstone of dishes like Northern Italian risotto, rice has diverse culinary significance. However, the timing of its introduction to Northern Italy remains unclear. Examining this event offers insights into the process of integrating new crops into both diet and cultural imagination. This talk is about the socio-economic, cultural, scientific, technological, and medical responses to the expansion of rice cultivation in northern Italy between the sixteenth and the eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Bringing together the history of knowledge and environmental history, in this talk I will reflect on how rice was appropriated by several actors, and on how these appropriations were intertwined with perceptions and constructions of the landscape and material environment. By interlacing narratives of rice cultivation and of the landscapes rice forms, alongside discussions of infrastructural development and knowledge systems, I will also delineate the progression of interactions between humans and their environments, as well as the evolution of water management practices, scientific advancements, medical understandings, and political-economic ideologies across different historical periods. Additionally, the talk will highlight how resources were conceptualized in the early modern period, reconnecting to contemporary debates on the Anthropocene and on the agency of non-humans.
About IHC’s 2024 Visiting Scholar:
Lavinia Maddaluno is Assistant Professor in early modern history at the Department of Humanities at Ca’ Foscari, Venice, working on David Gentilcore’s ERC project The Water Cultures of Italy 1500-1900. She is a historian of science interested in exploring the nexus between humans, nature and economy in early modern Europe. Lavinia has just completed her first monograph Science and political Economy in Enlightenment Milan (1760-1805), forthcoming with the Voltaire Foundation in autumn 2024. She is currently editing a book on rice in the Mediterranean with Rachele Scuro and a special issue on Water Knowledge with Giacomo Savani and Davide Martino. Lavinia has held multiple fellowships since the end of her PhD (Cambridge UK, 2018), from a Rome Fellowship at the British School at Rome, to a Max Weber Fellowship at the EUI and a joint Warburg/I Tatti Fellowship in the History of Science. More recently, she has been Fellow at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and the Fondazione Einaudi, working on a new project on rice-related knowledge networks between France and Italy in the Enlightenment.
Attendance is free.
Tempo
(Terça-feira) 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Organizador
Institute of Contemporary History — NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanitiescomunicacao.ihc@fcsh.unl.pt Avenida de Berna, 26C - 1069-061 Lisbon
News
Third IHC Summer School in Évora
Jul 15, 2024
The IHC Summer School will return to the University of Évora for its third edition
Lavinia Maddaluno is IHC’s 2024 Visiting Scholar
Jul 11, 2024
The historian of science will be the fourth IHC Visiting Scholar
Quintino Lopes visits Salvador, Bahia
Jul 9, 2024
Quintino Lopes visited the building that housed the former Phonetics Laboratory of the Federal University of Bahia
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