{"title":"Outsourcing the Postal Service: Reconceptualizing the State through Geospatial Digital History","authors":"R. O'Dell","doi":"10.1017/S153778142100061X","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Cameron Blevins has crafted a shining masterpiece of interdisciplinary scholarship with Paper Trails: The U.S. Post and the Making of the American West. Blevins contributes a broad reassessment of the state’s role, structure, and reach by leveraging traditional archival research and innovative geospatial digital history methods to study the rapid proliferation of postal services in the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century AmericanWest. However, Blevins’s brilliance lies in his expert balance of broad, sweeping analysis and detailed social history. Paper Trails is not just a story about data and state functions but also a chronicle about ordinary people whose lives were impacted by accessibility to the largest-scale postal service in the world. Blevins illustrates how the U.S. Postal Service facilitated the flow of personal messages, commerce, news, andmoney through the vast expanses of the western United States while also aiding the destructive colonization of Native American lands as the “underlying spatial circuitry of westward expansion” (3). Blevins successfully argues that the triumph of an accessible federal postal service in a rapidly expanding American frontier was not due to a rigidly centralized bureaucracy but rather the postal system’s decentralized flexibility. Blevins argues that postal decentralization, characterized by an agency model of public-private partnerships, local agents, and contractors, enabled the rapid development of postal services essential to the nation’s periphery through outsourced employees, transportation, and postal facilities. Throughout Paper Trails, Blevins effectually examines overarching historical themes surrounding the unique nature of the American postal system and the functions of the agencymodel of administration to effectively bolster his argument for the importance of a dynamic “Gossamer Network” postal system defined by intersectionality that blurred public and private spheres (1). Blevins structures his chapters thematically. He employs maps, charts, and captivatingly written narratives to illustrate his data, examine broad","PeriodicalId":43534,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S153778142100061X","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Cameron Blevins has crafted a shining masterpiece of interdisciplinary scholarship with Paper Trails: The U.S. Post and the Making of the American West. Blevins contributes a broad reassessment of the state’s role, structure, and reach by leveraging traditional archival research and innovative geospatial digital history methods to study the rapid proliferation of postal services in the late nineteenthand early twentieth-century AmericanWest. However, Blevins’s brilliance lies in his expert balance of broad, sweeping analysis and detailed social history. Paper Trails is not just a story about data and state functions but also a chronicle about ordinary people whose lives were impacted by accessibility to the largest-scale postal service in the world. Blevins illustrates how the U.S. Postal Service facilitated the flow of personal messages, commerce, news, andmoney through the vast expanses of the western United States while also aiding the destructive colonization of Native American lands as the “underlying spatial circuitry of westward expansion” (3). Blevins successfully argues that the triumph of an accessible federal postal service in a rapidly expanding American frontier was not due to a rigidly centralized bureaucracy but rather the postal system’s decentralized flexibility. Blevins argues that postal decentralization, characterized by an agency model of public-private partnerships, local agents, and contractors, enabled the rapid development of postal services essential to the nation’s periphery through outsourced employees, transportation, and postal facilities. Throughout Paper Trails, Blevins effectually examines overarching historical themes surrounding the unique nature of the American postal system and the functions of the agencymodel of administration to effectively bolster his argument for the importance of a dynamic “Gossamer Network” postal system defined by intersectionality that blurred public and private spheres (1). Blevins structures his chapters thematically. He employs maps, charts, and captivatingly written narratives to illustrate his data, examine broad
卡梅隆·布莱文斯(Cameron Blevins)的《纸迹:美国邮报与美国西部的形成》(Paper Trails: The U.S. Post and The Making of American West)是跨学科学术的杰作。布莱文斯通过利用传统的档案研究和创新的地理空间数字历史方法来研究19世纪末和20世纪初美国西部邮政服务的快速扩散,对国家的角色、结构和范围进行了广泛的重新评估。然而,布莱文斯的杰出之处在于他对广泛、全面的分析和详细的社会历史的专业平衡。《纸迹》不仅是一个关于数据和国家职能的故事,也是一个关于普通人生活受到世界上最大的邮政服务影响的编年史。布莱文斯举例说明了美国邮政服务是如何促进个人信息、商业、新闻、(3)布莱文斯成功地论证了无障碍的联邦邮政服务在迅速扩张的美国边疆取得的胜利,不是由于一个严格的中央集权的官僚机构,而是由于邮政系统分散的灵活性。布莱文斯认为,以公私合作伙伴关系、地方代理和承包商的代理模式为特征的邮政权力下放,通过外包雇员、运输和邮政设施,使邮政服务得以迅速发展,这对国家的外围地区至关重要。在《纸迹》中,布莱文斯有效地考察了围绕美国邮政系统的独特性和行政机构模式的功能的总体历史主题,以有效地支持他关于动态的“游丝网络”邮政系统的重要性的论点,该邮政系统是由模糊公共和私人领域的交叉性定义的(1)。布莱文斯按主题组织了他的章节。他使用地图、图表和引人入胜的文字叙述来说明他的数据,并进行广泛的研究