IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 14

This is not to say that the presence
of these two themes in the liberal
democratic American system of the
twenty-first century is itself evidence
of emerging fascism. Rather, Saraiva
illuminates the way that scientists
and their findings serve to promote
institutional ends, and in turn are
shaped by those ends, using three
fascist regimes as case studies in
this effect. Saraiva's account details
how institutional ends and scientific
processes can be symbiotic, and how
science can serve the oppressor.
One of the striking absences in
Fascist Pigs that would secure this
kind of account is the variance of
the scientific institutional response
to fascist regimes. Most if not all of
the scientists Saraiva mentions were
clearly complicit in the regime in
some way, but this complicity is not
all of a kind. In Chapter 4, for example, head of Race and Settlement
Office Richard Darré was not only
complicit in the promotion of pigs
as techno-scientific organisms in
the Reich, but was an active part of
their policies geared towards German

ethnic purity. The Italian scientists
that participated in the "Battle of the
Wheat," aimed at ensuring independence from foreign imports of the
crop on the other hand, seem more
opportunistic than "true believers."
At one point, Saraiva describes the
censure of Aurélio Quintanilha by
the Salazar regime, and his later
return to the regime through its colonial cotton projects, but this is a rare
illustration of scientific persecution
in the book.
This is a significant gap that I
hope, in future works, Saraiva re solves. One of the contemporary
founding myths of modern science
is that unrestricted research promotes
(appropriate) human values, while
central control of science not only - to
paraphrase Ken Adler, whose review
of Fascist Pigs lines its dust jackets - deforms scientific know-how,
but fails to promote values. This
myth is built from, inter alia, German
eugenics, a combination of "bad science and bad policy," and the terror
brought about by Trofim Lysenko in
Soviet biology. Saraiva's work dem-

onstrates, rather, how otherwise
promising techno-science served
fascist regimes in both domestic and
international oppression. While we
know that nuclear physics' nationalization in the Cold War superpowers,
and biology's in the clandestine Soviet bioweapons program of the twentieth century, can see good science
put to problematic purpose, Fascist
Pigs offers an altogether more subtle
reading of the relationship between
techno'science and oppression.
Fascist Pigs offers more questions of science and politics than
it answers, but in a style reminiscent of the opening book of a saga.
This is an accessible and important
book that I would recommend for
students of science, technology, and
society as well as political science,
and to philosophers of science
and historians.

Reviewer Information
Nicholas G. Evans is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University
of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Katina Michael Receives
SSIT Brian M. O'Connell
Distinguished Service Award

IEEE Technology and Society
Magazine Editor-in-Chief
Katina Michael was presented
with SSIT's highest award for
service on August 10, 2017,
by SSIT Past-President Greg
Adamson, at ISTAS '17 in Sydney
Australia. For full article and
details please see ieeessit.org.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2745420
Date of publication: 7 September 2017

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SEPTEMBER 2017

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