IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 13

interacted strongly with the larger
political context, producing and securing a fascist regime through the use
of technoscience.
Chapters 3 and 4 offer a novel
depiction of the Nazi state's preoccupation with genetic purity, through
the lens of potatoes and pigs. Saraiva
notes that the infamous "Blut und
Boden" ("Blood and Soil") of the
Nazi regime that celebrated German
heredity and relation to their territory
was intimately linked to the literal and
metaphorical products of the soil,
namely potatoes and pigs. Potatoes
held similar attraction to Germany
as wheat to Italy and Portugal - as
a means of food security, held to be
a deciding factor in German losses
in World War One. Stable potato
supplies also promised a plentiful
resource for growing the key source
of German protein, pigs. Throughout, the technological innovation that
allowed for the development of these
agricultural products was also used to
justify the expansion of the Nazi state.
The second section, "Empire," fo cuses on the relationship between
fascist techno-science and the imperial ambitions of each regime. In
Chapter 5, Saraiva uses the growth
of coffee, rubber, and cotton crops
in the colonies of Italy, Germany, and
Portugal respectively. By "colony" in
Germany's case, Saraiva presents an
engaging reinterpretation of the occupied territories on the Eastern front
through the lens of colonial theory. In
each case, the picture sketched is that
of the molding of crops and places in
the image of the empire, a process
Saraiva describes "the most brutal
face" of the fascist regimes.
Chapter 6 concludes the body of
the book with a focus on the breeding
of Karakul sheep by each regime. The
focus on Karakul sheep, a source of
valuable furs prized by the regime's
elites, is a unifying element for the
three nations and their ambitions.
Importantly, Saraiva characterizes
SEPTEMBER 2017

the dual nature of the Karakul as
animal model and industrial organism. The Karakul's reproduction was
industrialized to increase profits
from its production, but in doing so
it served as a scientific model organism for better understanding heredity and breeding in other animals.
This dual nature, Saraiva argues,
cemented the relationship between
the science and the state.

Broader Contexts,
Darker Lessons
Fascist Pigs provides an engaging
look into the development of fascist
science from a novel perspective - that
of agriculture. Readers may already be
familiar with, for example, the relationships between modern physics and
the Nazis, or between Nazi medicine
and their eugenics programs. They
will nonetheless benefit from the fresh
insight of Saraiva's account, which
importantly provides a two-way connection between techno-scientific
advances and their embeddedness in
broader political contexts.
It is this broader context that is perhaps most striking. Despite current
strains of nationalism emerging in
liberal democracies, Saraiva's interpretation of fascist techno- science
paints a much broader context for the
interaction between scientific inquiry
and political change. Throughout,
I was struck by way that concepts
such as food security and resource
independence motivated techno-scientific mobilization, which in turned
informed those securitized policies.
Savaira's account of the "Battle of
Wheat," for example, holds a dark
mirror to the "wars" on drugs, HIV/
AIDS, or terror that have dotted the
post-war liberal west. While modern
narratives may place less emphasis
on nationalist myths than in fascist
regimes, they are all framed in terms
of utilizing techno-scientific innovations as a means to solve complex
social and political problems.
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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

It is, moreover, the synthesis of
nationalist priorities with scientific
advances described in Saraiva's
work that informs and sustains the
fascist worldview. Saraiva notes that
the Reich Food Estate (R NS) was
"designed to relieve the farmer of the
uncertainties of a capitalist market
economy so he could serve his nation
better both as food producer and
culture bearer." The central problem
here was uncertainty in food production produced by market economies
utilizing allegedly inferior crops. The
use of techno-science to create "pure"
German lines of crops that were
linked to German soil, promulgated
by the Reich, would guarantee German security while also promoting
the worldview of the German people's
prior connection to their land.
These ideas were not coupled
together in the United States, to call
on just one example, as they were in
Germany. Rather they are two interrelated strands of the modern American experience. The farmer as culture
bearer, on the one hand, develops
and promotes the myth of the "true"
American that has been politicized in
recent years as the alleged ultimate
victim of neoliberal and globalizing
policies enacted by political elites. At
the same time, American academia
and capital have championed the
idea of techno-scientific organisms in
the form of genetically modified (GM)
crops as integral to food security strategies, and securing farmers economically through higher crop yields.
Concerns persist, however, over
market capture by existing firms
promoting the use of GM crops. This
could exacerbate, rather than reduce
global economic stratification within
and beyond the agricultural sector.
In this way, existing techno-scientific
solutions to pressing social issues
bootstrap onto existing political
institutions - solving problems, but
only within the confines of an existing ideology.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017