Zhang Jiuchen. Di zhi xue yu Minguo she hui: 1916–1950 [Geology and Society: A Study in ChineseNational Geological Survey] .Di zhi xue yu Minguo she hui: 1916–1950 [Geology and Society: A Study in Chinese NationalGeological Survey]. (Zhongguo jin xian dai ke xue ji shu shi yan jiu cong shu.) by Zhang JiuchenReview by: Reviewed by Grace Y.   ShenIsis, Vol. 99, No. 3 (September 2008), pp. 634-635Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/593257 .

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Tina Gianquitto. “Good Observers of Na-ture”: American Women and the Scientific Studyof the Natural World, 1820–1885. xii � 216pp., figs., bibl., index. Athens: University ofGeorgia Press, 2007. $19.95 (paper).

Tina Gianquitto draws on both historical and lit-erary traditions to produce an in-depth analysis offour women’s writings as they use “the naturalworld as a platform for discussing issues of do-mesticity, education, morality, and the nation” (p.1). As “good observers of nature,” Almira Phelps(1793–1884), Margaret Fuller (1810–1850), Su-san Fenimore Cooper (1813–1894), and MaryTreat (1830–1893) were influenced in their ap-proaches to science by Linnaeus, Goethe, vonHumboldt, and Darwin, respectively. Gianquittosets out to prove that each woman was “quitewilling to grapple with the interpretative shiftsthese scientific advances” represented (p. 2).Within this framework, she asserts that womenscience writers’ thoughts and ideas were influ-enced not only by the available scientific explana-tions for their natural observations, but also by theattitudes of the American nation toward the naturalworld, the writing and publication options open towomen, and the moral and domestic roles consid-ered appropriate for women between 1820 and1885.

In her chapter on Phelps, Gianquitto arguesthat although Phelps was a proponent of partic-ipatory education for women and promoted theirhands-on science education, she was influencedby the natural theology tradition and by thesocial and cultural emphasis on women’s re-sponsibilities in the domestic sphere. Her anal-ysis of Phelps’s Familiar Lectures on Botany(1860) demonstrates how Phelps reconciles “thecompeting strains of theology and science, arti-ficial and natural classification systems, and sen-timental and scientific language” (p. 55). Gian-quitto argues that Phelps encourages a scientificeducation for women because it will enhance theintellectual life of women, improve the moraland domestic lives of Americans, and contributeto the growth of the nation.

At times, Gianquitto’s textual analysis is a bitlengthy. She might have done well to providesome subheading breaks throughout each of herfour chapters to guide the reader through the anal-ysis. Nevertheless, her treatment of these women’sworks is insightful and intricate as she weaves thevarious parts into a convincing whole.

The one real shortcoming of this volume isthat Gianquitto doesn’t fully reconcile the dis-connect between these women’s science writ-ings, in which they hold up various femininevirtues and the centrality of the home for

women, and the fact that they do not seem to beliving out these feminine ideals themselves. In-stead, the women in Gianquitto’s study travel,observe, experiment, write, and publish, behav-ior at odds with the lifestyle they advocate forAmerican women in their works. Gianquitto ad-dresses this issue quite well with respect toTreat’s life and work, posing the question,“Could Treat be both the domestic lady and theaccomplished scientist?” (p. 142). Raising thisissue does not distract Gianquitto from her mainpurpose, which is to analyze Treat’s texts; in-stead, it enables her to present a more completepicture of Treat’s own personal struggle to bal-ance her desires to be considered a professionaland to maintain her respected status as a woman.Gianquitto could have recognized and reflectedon this contradiction for the other women at morelength. Instead, she comments briefly on this pointin the chapter on Treat, where she points out thatthe role of “informed, moral, scientific, and self-sacrificing mother” was “only an ideal, which fewof these women . . . seemed to achieve” (p. 152).

Overall, though, Gianquitto should be com-mended for filling a missing link in the historiog-raphy of nineteenth-century American women andscience. She both provides a sweeping, historicallycontextualized view of women’s science writing inthis period and, at the same time, presents a carefuland detailed textual analysis of the written worksof four specific, yet representative, women. Sheopens the door for further investigation in this veinby making mention of a number of other Ameri-can women science writers of the times as pointsof reference and comparison, leaving the readerwanting to learn more about the interrelationshipbetween the lives of these women, natural history,gender, morality, and the developing nation.

SUZANNE LE-MAY SHEFFIELD

Zhang Jiuchen. Di zhi xue yu Minguo she hui:1916–1950 [Geology and Society: A Study inChinese National Geological Survey]. (Zhong-guo jin xian dai ke xue ji shu shi yan jiu congshu.) 286 pp., bibl., index. Jinan: Shandong jiaoyu chu ban she [Shandong Education Press],2005. 33 (paper).

Geologists were the first group of practicing scientistsin China to establish a truly modern yet assertivelylocal research community. Throughout China’s Re-publican period (1912–1949), geology not only ledthe pack in institution building, scientific productiv-ity, and international standing; its leading lights werealso influential figures in domestic politics, society,and culture. No organization exemplified this dyna-mism better than the Geological Survey of China,

634 BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 99 : 3 (2008)

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and although a huge body of commemorative litera-ture has already developed to preserve its memory,the survey richly deserves the consideration it re-ceives in Zhang Jiuchen’s ambitious new bookDizhixue yu minguo shehui: 1916–1950 [Geologyand Society: A Study in Chinese National GeologicalSurvey].

The volume begins by setting up an interplaybetween the values embedded in geological re-search as it entered China and the influence ofshifting historical circumstances on the devel-opment of Chinese geology from the late Qingdynasty to the early People’s Republic. This isfollowed by an organizational history of theGeological Survey from its nominal beginningin 1913 to its dissolution in 1950. Zhang thenanalyzes the survey’s operational structures andtheir effect on its evolving research orientations.Chapter 4 traces the personal influence of thesurvey’s charismatic founders and the subse-quent rise of a new leadership after the 1930s.This examination highlights the personal dimen-sion of the Geological Survey and builds neatlyinto the sociological discussion of the surveypresented in the next chapter. Zhang closes herstudy with an assessment of the survey’s impacton the wider geological community in China.

In contrast to Wang Yangzhi’s narrowly in-stitutional history, Zhongguo dizhi diaochasuoshi [History of the Geological Survey of China(1996)], Zhang makes an explicit effort to un-derstand the co-constitutive relationship be-tween the survey as an organ of geological re-search and the social context of the republicanperiod. She does this by marshaling an impres-sive array of primary and secondary sources,and her painstaking scholarship is the greatstrength of this volume. By selecting gems fromthe actor’s histories, memoirs, and Festschriftenthat have flooded the Chinese popular and aca-demic press, and corroborating them with bothnewly available archival sources and personallycollected oral histories, Zhang has produced asynthetic work that warrants the attention of allhistorians interested in the emergence of Chi-nese modernity.

It is a shame that the organization of the bookdoes not highlight the significance of Zhang’sachievement more clearly. The topical chapterseach span the Geological Survey’s entire historyand offer a cumulative series of longitudinalstudies rather than a thematically cohesive nar-rative. This structure also makes it difficult tosee how the practices analyzed in the book relateto the notions of the sociology of scientificknowledge and postmodernism alluded to in thebook’s somewhat unwieldy introduction; cul-tural history would have been a more accessible

model. The text rewards closer inspection, how-ever, and each of its layers adds to the overallpicture of the Geological Survey as a vibrantand indispensable part of China’s scientific de-velopment.

The author provides well-chosen charts andillustrations throughout the text, and the volumefeatures extremely useful back matter, includingbasic information on all known survey mem-bers, excerpts from interviews with former sur-vey members, a wide-ranging bibliography, anda topical index. References would benefit fromspecific page citations and would be more con-venient if numbered continuously within eachchapter. There are also a few notable errors inthe footnotes, but these slight issues in no wayreduce this book’s contribution to our under-standing of a pathbreaking scientific institution,and I hope it will soon be made available inEnglish.

GRACE Y. SHEN

Richard C. Keller. Colonial Madness: Psychi-atry in French North Africa. xi � 294 pp., bibl.,index. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2007. $25 (paper).

The history of psychiatry’s most iconic snap-shot, Phillipe Pinel’s “throwing off of thechains” of the mad during the French Revolu-tion, never really happened. This mythologicalmoment, ushering in an enlightened age of“moral treatment,” has rarely figured into mod-ern histories of psychiatry until now, with thepublication of Richard C. Keller’s ColonialMadness: Psychiatry in French North Africa.This is a meticulous study that should be ofinterest to French and African historians alike. Ittells the story of the intellectual and ideologicalfervor that underpinned the profession of psy-chiatry in the Maghreb—its zeal for reform adramatic French–North African reenactment ofPinel’s finest fictional moment.

Colonial Madness focuses on the Hopital Psy-chiatrique de Blida-Joinville in Algeria. Foundedin the 1920s, within three decades “Blida Hospi-tal” housed more than two thousand patients. Inscale alone, Blida stands out as unique amongcolonial asylums across Africa—a number ofwhich have been the subject of recent institutionalhistories. However, Keller’s real innovation is toillustrate the genuinely profound impact on Frenchmedical thinking—an intellectual transfer thatmost other studies have only hinted at. Similar toother colonial “psychiatries,” the burgeoning pro-fession in North Africa subscribed to the colonial“civilizing mission.” However, the ambition be-

BOOK REVIEWS—ISIS, 99 : 3 (2008) 635

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