Safer than in the USA? The Reception of <i>Silent Spring</i> in France and the Difficulties in Achieving European Regulations on Pesticides, 1962

Safer than in the USA? The Reception of Silent Spring in France and the Difficulties in Achieving European Regulations on Pesticides, 1962–1976

Published:2024-06-08 Issue:2 Volume:17 Page:348-377
ISSN:1973-3739
Container-title:Global Environment
language:en
Short-container-title:Global Environment

Author:

Merrer Bleuen¹,Dedieu François²,Pessis Céline³,Bonneuil Christophe⁴

Affiliation:

1. Bleuen Merrer is a high school teacher in history. She completed a Master’s thesis on ‘La réception de l’ouvrage de Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, en France’ (The reception of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in France) in 2022 at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, supervised by Christophe Bonneuil. Email:

2. Francois Dedieu is a sociologist at the National Institute of Agricultural Research and the Environment (INRAE). His research seeks to understand what public does not do in environmental matters. After studying the management of major crises (1990 Storms and COVID-19), his research has focused on the social production of ignorance in the public control of pesticides. Currently, he is developing a research programme which seeks to understand, based on the case of plastic pollution, how it is possible...

3. Céline Pessis is an associate professor at AgroParisTech. She is conducting research in environmental history of alternative agriculture in twentieth-century France. She is interested in the knowledge and technologies of agricultural modernization and how these are challenged by peasant movements, environmental limits and dissident scientists. More broadly, her work sheds light on various forms of socio-ecological conflict in France since 1945. She co-edited Une autre histoire des ‘Trente...

4. Christophe Bonneuil is a Senior researcher in environmental history, history of science and science studies at the Centre de Recherches Historiques (CNRS and EHESS, Paris). His research explores the co-evolution of ways of knowing and ways of governing nature and the Earth. He has published many articles and several books, including a global environmental history of the Anthropocene (The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us, Verso, 2016, with J-B. Fressoz). He has co-edited books...

Abstract

From having been a net food importer before World War Two, France rapidly became a leading European agricultural producer and the world’s second largest agricultural exporter – a model fueled by extensive use of pesticides. How, then, was the French reception of Rachel Carson’s work on the association of pesticides with health issues and environmental damage? This article constructed a corpus of 288 publications debating Silent Spring from 1962 to 1975 to map the trajectory of the controversy. We also mobilise rich archives collections to document how key actors and institutions endeavoured to control the fire sparked by Printemps silencieux and slow down the progress of new Europe-wide regulations. Lastly, we illuminate how, by 1969–1976, export imperatives and associated market-harmonisation concerns were factors as important as environment and health concerns for explaining the ban of a few molecules and the first 1976 EEC Directive regulating residues levels. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

Publisher

Liverpool University Press