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The Human, The Animal and the Prehistory of COVID-19.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Sivasundaram, Sujit 

Abstract

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.

Description

Keywords

4303 Historical Studies, 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology, Coronaviruses Disparities and At-Risk Populations, Emerging Infectious Diseases, Infectious Diseases, Coronaviruses

Journal Title

Past Present

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0031-2746
1477-464X

Volume Title

249

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

Rights

All rights reserved