This thesis examines the impact of Social Credit in North America during the Great Depression as a social philosophy and approach to government. By placing Social Credit in the context of interwar social movements for monetary reform, the events in Alberta from 1932 to 1938 are examined from the historical geographic iteration of what I call the Keynesian frontier of monetary macro-economic thought. This thesis shifts attention on this episode of Canadian history towards the lens of monetary neutrality. I argue that the Keynesian frontier was the intellectual environment for a worldwide English- speaking progressive underground which sought to find in macro-economic theory a vision of utopian society where money had no effect on material choices and interpersonal relations. During the 1930s, movements such as Social Credit transformed this underground into a collective effort to integrate the institutional channels of circulation with the mechanics of the modern monetary and fiscal state.

This thesis examines the impact of Social Credit in North America during the Great Depression as a social philosophy and approach to government. By placing Social Credit in the context of interwar social movements for monetary reform, the events in Alberta from 1932 to 1938 are examined from the historical geographic iteration of what I call the Keynesian frontier of monetary macro-economic thought. This thesis shifts attention on this episode of Canadian history towards the lens of monetary neutrality. I argue that the Keynesian frontier was the intellectual environment for a worldwide English- speaking progressive underground which sought to find in macro-economic theory a vision of utopian society where money had no effect on material choices and interpersonal relations. During the 1930s, movements such as Social Credit transformed this underground into a collective effort to integrate the institutional channels of circulation with the mechanics of the modern monetary and fiscal state.

This thesis examines the impact of Social Credit in North America during the Great Depression as a social philosophy and approach to government. By placing Social Credit in the context of interwar social movements for monetary reform, the events in Alberta from 1932 to 1938 are examined from the historical geographic iteration of what I call the Keynesian frontier of monetary macro-economic thought. This thesis shifts attention on this episode of Canadian history towards the lens of monetary neutrality. I argue that the Keynesian frontier was the intellectual environment for a worldwide English- speaking progressive underground which sought to find in macro-economic theory a vision of utopian society where money had no effect on material choices and interpersonal relations. During the 1930s, movements such as Social Credit transformed this underground into a collective effort to integrate the institutional channels of circulation with the mechanics of the modern monetary and fiscal state.

This thesis examines the impact of Social Credit in North America during the Great Depression as a social philosophy and approach to government. By placing Social Credit in the context of interwar social movements for monetary reform, the events in Alberta from 1932 to 1938 are examined from the historical geographic iteration of what I call the Keynesian frontier of monetary macro-economic thought. This thesis shifts attention on this episode of Canadian history towards the lens of monetary neutrality. I argue that the Keynesian frontier was the intellectual environment for a worldwide English- speaking progressive underground which sought to find in macro-economic theory a vision of utopian society where money had no effect on material choices and interpersonal relations. During the 1930s, movements such as Social Credit transformed this underground into a collective effort to integrate the institutional channels of circulation with the mechanics of the modern monetary and fiscal state.

As North American plants took root in Parisian botanical gardens and regularly appeared in scientific texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they retained their connections to networks of ecological and cultural exchange in colonial North America. In this dissertation I study the history of French botany and natural history as it became an Atlantic enterprise during this time, analyzing the production of knowledge about North American flora and the place of this knowledge in larger processes of colonialism and imperial expansion in the French Atlantic World. I focus particular attention on recovering the role of aboriginal peoples in the production of knowledge about colonial environments on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather than integrating aboriginal collectors, chefs and healers into traditional histories of western science, I integrate familiar histories of science into larger histories of cultural contact in an Atlantic World with multiple centres of knowledge production and exchange. This dissertation develops two closely related arguments. First, I argue that French encounters with American environments and Native cultures were inseparable. Jesuit missionaries, for example, called both a plant and a native culture “wild rice,” conflating descriptions of local ecological and morphological features of the Great Lakes plant with accounts of indigenous cultural and moral attributes. Second, “Plants and Peoples” also analyzes the process by which the Paris-based Académie Royale des Sciences expanded its reach into North America and argues that French colonial naturalists drew on a vibrant conversation between diverse colonial and indigenous communities. Yet indigenous participation and the knowledges they provided were progressively effaced over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This research therefore presents both a new understanding of the history of early modern and enlightenment botany and a lens through which to revisit and enrich familiar histories of cultural exchange in colonial North America.

As North American plants took root in Parisian botanical gardens and regularly appeared in scientific texts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they retained their connections to networks of ecological and cultural exchange in colonial North America. In this dissertation I study the history of French botany and natural history as it became an Atlantic enterprise during this time, analyzing the production of knowledge about North American flora and the place of this knowledge in larger processes of colonialism and imperial expansion in the French Atlantic World. I focus particular attention on recovering the role of aboriginal peoples in the production of knowledge about colonial environments on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather than integrating aboriginal collectors, chefs and healers into traditional histories of western science, I integrate familiar histories of science into larger histories of cultural contact in an Atlantic World with multiple centres of knowledge production and exchange. This dissertation develops two closely related arguments. First, I argue that French encounters with American environments and Native cultures were inseparable. Jesuit missionaries, for example, called both a plant and a native culture “wild rice,” conflating descriptions of local ecological and morphological features of the Great Lakes plant with accounts of indigenous cultural and moral attributes. Second, “Plants and Peoples” also analyzes the process by which the Paris-based Académie Royale des Sciences expanded its reach into North America and argues that French colonial naturalists drew on a vibrant conversation between diverse colonial and indigenous communities. Yet indigenous participation and the knowledges they provided were progressively effaced over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This research therefore presents both a new understanding of the history of early modern and enlightenment botany and a lens through which to revisit and enrich familiar histories of cultural exchange in colonial North America.

Following the Second World War, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) teamed up to construct an international Codex Alimentarius (or “food code”) in 1962. Inspired by the work of its European predecessor, the Codex Europaeus, these two UN agencies assembled teams of health professionals, government civil servants, medical and scientific experts to draft food standards. Once ratified, the standards were distributed to governments for voluntary adoption and implementation. By the mid-1990s, the World Trade Organization (WTO) identified the Codex as a key reference point for scientific food standards. The role of science within this highly political and economic organization poses interesting questions about the process of knowledge production and the scientific expertise underpinning the food standards. Standards were constructed and contested according to the Codex twin goals of: (1) protecting public health, and (2) facilitating trade. One recent criticism of Codex is that these two aims are opposed, or that one is given primacy over the other, which results in protectionism. Bearing these themes in mind, in this dissertation I examine the relationship between the scientific and the ‘social’ elements embodied by the Codex food standards since its inception after the Second World War. I argue that these attempts to reach scientific standards represent an example of coproduction– one in which the natural and social orders are produced alongside each other. What follows from this central claim is an attempt to characterize the pre-WTO years of the Codex through a case study approach. The narrative begins with a description of the predecessor regional group the Codex europaeus, and then proceeds to key areas affecting human health: 1) food additives, 2) food hygiene, and 3) pesticides residues.

La libéralisation et la standardisation des marchés ont rendu les économies nationales instables. Les changements paradigmatiques causés par cette situation mènent au remodelage de la définition et du rôle de l’économie politique, affectant des institutions étatiques, dont l’état social et le marché du travail. Ce travail fait ressortir les différences d’interprétation et d’analyses selon les traditions en pensée économique. Le cas de l’Allemagne devient intéressant, puisqu’il y a une tradition de pensée économique particulière avec ses courants de pensée plus sociaux et, selon la théorie de variétés de capitalisme, un capitalisme différent du modèle américain. L’économiste social allemand Wolfgang Streeck soutient d’ailleurs que le capitalisme se dissocie tranquillement de son aspect démocratique alors que d’autres chercheurs n’arrivent pas à cette conclusion. Dans un contexte de libéralisation et de standardisation, ne devrait-il pas y avoir une standardisation des analyses et des courants de pensées économiques, eux-mêmes déterminés selon leur contexte politique et social ? Peut-on conclure que les conclusions de Streeck sont définies par les pensées économiques allemandes traditionnelles ? La recherche lie deux approches : celle économique (comment produire davantage) et celle politique (comment répartir). Cette discipline qu’est l’économie politique vient prendre en compte l’aspect social de l’économie. La méthodologie consiste à faire un portrait de la pensée économique de Streeck et le situer historiquement, nationalement et internationalement afin de démontrer que, malgré la mondialisation, les économies et pensées économiques nationales sont encore pertinentes. / Market liberalisation and standardisation have rendered national economies unstable. The paradigmatic changes caused by the situation have remodeled the definition and role of political economy. They have also affected state institutions, may it be the welfare state and the labour market. This research paper brings forward interpretation and analyses differences according to different traditions of economic thought. Germany’s case becomes interesting since it has a specific tradition of economic thought with its more social perspectives and, according to the varieties of capitalism theory, a very distinct capitalist model compared to the usually more preferred Anglo-Saxon model. The German social economist Wolfgang Streeck arguments that capitalism is slowly separating itself from its democratic aspect whereas other researchers come to other conclusions. In this context of liberalisation and standardisation, should there not be a standardisation of analyses and economic school of thoughts, themselves defined by their political and social context? Is it possible to conclude that Streeck’s conclusions are defined by traditional German economic thought? The research paper links two approaches: the economic approach (how to produce more) and the political one (how to distribute). The discipline of political economy takes the social aspect of economy into consideration. The methodology consists of sketching a portrait of Streeck’s economic thought and situating him historically, nationally and internationally, in order to demonstrate that, even with globalisation, national economies and national economic thought are still highly relevant.

Following the Second World War, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) teamed up to construct an international Codex Alimentarius (or “food code”) in 1962. Inspired by the work of its European predecessor, the Codex Europaeus, these two UN agencies assembled teams of health professionals, government civil servants, medical and scientific experts to draft food standards. Once ratified, the standards were distributed to governments for voluntary adoption and implementation. By the mid-1990s, the World Trade Organization (WTO) identified the Codex as a key reference point for scientific food standards. The role of science within this highly political and economic organization poses interesting questions about the process of knowledge production and the scientific expertise underpinning the food standards. Standards were constructed and contested according to the Codex twin goals of: (1) protecting public health, and (2) facilitating trade. One recent criticism of Codex is that these two aims are opposed, or that one is given primacy over the other, which results in protectionism. Bearing these themes in mind, in this dissertation I examine the relationship between the scientific and the ‘social’ elements embodied by the Codex food standards since its inception after the Second World War. I argue that these attempts to reach scientific standards represent an example of coproduction– one in which the natural and social orders are produced alongside each other. What follows from this central claim is an attempt to characterize the pre-WTO years of the Codex through a case study approach. The narrative begins with a description of the predecessor regional group the Codex europaeus, and then proceeds to key areas affecting human health: 1) food additives, 2) food hygiene, and 3) pesticides residues.

This dissertation presents a study of the scientific practices of the circle of Vygotsky’s closest collaborators and students during the decade of the 1930s-and including the early 1940s (until Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941). The notion of Vygotsky Circle is introduced in this work and is explicitly distinguished from a traditional—yet frequently criticised—notion of “the school of Vygotsky-Leontiev-Luria”. The scientific practices of the Vygotsky Circle are discussed here as the unity of a) social and interpersonal relations, b) the practices of empirical scientific research, and c) discursive practices of the Soviet science—more specifically, the “Stalinist Science” of the 1930s. Thus, this study analyzes the social and interpersonal relations between the members of the Vygotsky Circle and the evolution of this circle in the social context of Soviet science during the decade of 1930s; various practices of empirical scientific research conducted by the members of the Vygotsky Circle were also overviewed. Finally, discursive practices of the Soviet scientific “doublespeak” were discussed and illustrated with several examples borrowed from publications of the time.