Insect Histories of East Asia opens with stark statistical evidence underscoring insects’ vital importance in human life. While the honeybee has become a poster child for habitat loss in the current age of extinction, the introduction further acknowledges that insects have generally not been appealing subjects for close examination, either in life or in scholarship. This collected volume therefore aims to redress the imbalanced attention paid to such “minifauna” and to encourage animal studies scholars to integrate the insect world into their future work.
The choice of an East Asian context was dictated by the editors’ specialism, but this context could also have added a powerful incentive and urgency to the volume. In the wake of COVID-19, East Asian animal relations have been scrutinized and politicized without adequate historical context. An exploration of what is lacking when we ignore East Asia in animal studies, or of the present assumptions that...