School of Social and Political Science

Description

Enzymes and Emulsifiers in the Metabolism of Mass Production

Much concern has been expressed lately in the medical and popular press about the ultra-processing of foods as a health risk.  That is, it is the process (high heat, molecular-level alteration) that matters, as much as the substance itself.  Where calories or salt content or pesticide residues might have been of concern before, now there is process itself to worry about as well.  Yet debates about the health implications of processing are mired in frames of toxicity and dietary risk ill-suited to grasping how and why such conditions have become pervasive environments for contemporary life.  Here I will argue that it is impossible to comprehend the transformation of food without understanding a more general remaking of emollience, smoothness, and miscibility in industrialized societies between 1950 and 2000.   Moreover, any actionable concept of metabolic disorder in the present must include consideration of the metabolic reordering of the immediate past, as enzymes, fats and other pieces of living things were pulled apart, reconstituted, and re-articulated with synthetic chemistry in new sequences of material transformation.  Part of a larger project to document the industrialization of metabolism and its planetary and bodily aftermath, this talk works through an empirical archive of mid-to-late twentieth century industrial trade magazines to demonstrate how enzymes and emulsifiers became processing agents, simultaneously mass-produced commodities in their own right, and enablers of the augmented volumes and velocities of continuous process manufacturing.   

Hannah Landecker (https://socgen.ucla.edu/people/hannah-landecker/) is a historian and sociologist of the modern life sciences after 1850. Professor Landecker studies  concepts and technologies in microbiology, metabolism, and cell biology, with a focus on biotechnology and the use of living cells and processes for industrial and pharmaceutical production. Professor Landecker's collaborative work with life scientists is focused on methodological innovation, using the tools and insights of history and sociology to ask different kinds of biological questions, and vice-versa, bringing biological insights to the framing of historical questions.

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