Rats, stress and the built environment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8082250 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Edmund Ramsden (University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 123-147 |
| Publication date | 2012-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of the Human Sciences (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-6951 • E-ISSN: 1461-720X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0952695112471005 |
| OpenAlex | W2331394491 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 43 |
From 1942 to 1952, a programme took place at Johns Hopkins to devise new methods of controlling Baltimore’s rat population. This article focuses on three individuals closely connected to this project at various stages of its development: psycho-biologist Curt Richter, animal ecologist David E. Davis, and ecologist and psychologist John B. Calhoun. For all three, the challenges of controlling rat numbers highlighted the significance of stress – a homeostatic mechanism critical to the survival of the animal. This was a process that was analyzed and manipulated by (re)introducing the wild rat into the laboratory. Here the rat not only contributed to new methods of rodent control, but offered new possibilities for the control and improvement of humankind. Yet it was not just the animal, but the physical structure of the laboratory that came to model the world outside. Through examining the experimental systems of the three scientists, this article will trace a series of transgressions between laboratory and field, urban and wild, animal and human. The result was that while animals were used to model the behaviour and pathologies of human city dwellers, the laboratory spaces in which they existed came to model the urban environment. We shall also see how differing perspectives on the value and uses of animal models and environments encouraged and reinforced alternative visions as to the role of science in the service of the city
Animal behavior · Biology · Environmental ethics · Human animal · Population · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Vision · Zoology · Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies · Anthropology · Computer Science · Demography · Ecosystem dynamics and resilience · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Philosophy · Ecology
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Biocultural Aspects of Mental Distress
From fighting animals to the biosocial mechanisms of the human mind
Postmodernity and Its Discontents
Landscapes and Labscapes
Nations and Nationalism
Legislators and interpreters
Laboratory Life
The Human Side of Urban Renewal
Intimations of Postmodernity
Regulation of human population in northern France and adjacent lands in the Middle Ages
Rats, man, and the welfare state
Curt Richter
Utopia with no Topos
Sacrifice and the Transformation of the Animal Body into a Scientific Object
What’s so special about model organisms
The American Journal of Human Genetics
The albino rat
The Future of Human Heredity. An Introduction to Eugenics in Modern Society
Epistemic Cultures
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 8 |