The Human, The Animal and the Prehistory of COVID-19
#MMPMID34191879
Sivasundaram S
Past Present
2020[Nov]; 249
(1
): 295-316
PMID34191879
show ga
In Asia, pangolins have generated a rich set of indigenous oral traditions. These
contrast with the often confused, or failed, colonial and Western scientific
practices of classifying, domesticating and collecting the pangolin. More
recently this long-standing encounter between the pangolin and human has shifted
into exponential killing. The pangolin has become the mammal which is most
trafficked by humans. This trade has been a global one, a fact that is important
to remember given the racist ideas and inequalities that have been highlighted
through the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The changing relationship
between the pangolin and the human in modern history is used here as a window
onto the interlinked histories of the pandemic and environmental crisis, both of
which arose partly from human encroachment into biodiverse and forested areas,
including pangolin habitats. The phases of the pangolin-human relationship can be
read for the preconditions of these interlinked crises that face the planet and
its historians in 2020. It is vital that historians respond confidently and fully
to causation at the interspecies frontier without using the pandemic to mount
theoretically naive 'compare and contrast' exercises with past disease events to
provide lessons for the present. A post-pandemic historiography will surely be
interdisciplinary, with critical, philosophical and collaborative engagement with
scientists.
free
free
free
