Abstract This article examines pigs and pig raising in rural China during the Maoist period (1949–76). It provides an overall picture of how the state promoted swine keeping and how pigs were cared for, fed, and bred under the collective political economy. The pigs’ diet, the use of swine feces, and breeding practices were determined in alignment with the state's priority of ensuring primitive socialist accumulation—maximizing the extraction of value from the countryside, channeling it to the industrial and urban sectors, and compelling grassroots communes to “self-reliantly” subsist at the minimum level. Rural pigs in Mao-era China were therefore required to occupy densely populated collective pigsties, consume potentially unpalatable and less nutritious native greens, excrete increasingly, and mate with foreign breeds. The daily labor and lives of swine caretakers and breeders were influenced by these demands placed on the nonhuman population. Pigs and those who attended to them in communal pigpens reflected the ideals and limitations of Maoism.

Essay| February 01 2024 Decolonization and Self-Reflection: Teaching the Korean History of Science in South Korea Jongsik Christian Yi Jongsik Christian Yi Pohang University of Science and Technology jongsikyi@postech.ac.kr Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar jongsikyi@postech.ac.kr Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences (2024) 54 (1): 121–124. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2024.54.1.121 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jongsik Christian Yi; Decolonization and Self-Reflection: Teaching the Korean History of Science in South Korea. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 1 February 2024; 54 (1): 121–124. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2024.54.1.121 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentHistorical Studies in the Natural Sciences Search Pohang, a coastal city in the southeastern Korean peninsula, is known as Korea's "Steel Capital." In 1970, the state-owned Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO) established what was then the world's largest steel mill. As the steel industry expanded, POSCO strengthened its research and development sector and in 1986 founded Pohang University of Science and Technology (Postech), thought to have been modeled upon the California Institute of Technology. Expected to become a Korean Caltech that would produce future Nobel laureates, Postech quickly grew into one of South Korea's most prestigious institutions of higher education. After completing my doctorate in the history of science at Harvard in 2022, I accepted a position teaching the history of science and Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Postech. Preparing one of my first undergraduate courses, "History of Science and Technology in Twentieth-Century Korea," proved challenging. The specific pairing of science with modern Korea struck... You do not currently have access to this content.