Technology and Culture最新文献

{"title":"European Objects: The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization by Brice Laurent (review)","authors":"Yaman Kouli","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926357","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>European Objects: The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization</em> by Brice Laurent <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Yaman Kouli (bio) </li> </ul> <em>European Objects: The Troubled Dreams of Harmonization</em> By Brice Laurent. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2022. Pp. 280. <p>European regulation can be the source of much laughter. Be it the size of cucumbers, the form of bananas, or the General Data Protection Regulation, virtually everybody has a story to tell on the tediousness of European regulation. Ironically, however, there is a good argument to be made that European harmonization works well, even if it is not perfect. In his translated habilitation (and second book), <em>European Objects</em>, Brice Laurent takes on the task to better understand what the obstacles of the \"troubled dreams of harmonization\" were. The main focus of this publication is on \"disentanglement,\" i.e., the reduction of differences of objects within the European Union in order to make them transferable across the entire single market.</p> <p>In general, the book shows that what sounds trite in theory turns out to be a complicated endeavor in practice. Laurent argues that there are two different \"dreams of harmonization\" (p. 16). The first covers disentanglement, which is the idea that goods can circulate freely on the European market. The second refers to the expectation that goods can be described scientifically, objectively, and therefore via a universal language. As Laurent shows, this is not easy. In his analysis, the author looks at different cases. One of them concerns agricultural, \"local\" products like Greek feta and <em>prosciutto di Parma</em>. Another case is energy. EU member-states have distinct energy supplies. Nonetheless, \"that the many physical, economic, and legal ties in which energy is caught make this objective challenging has not transformed the expectation\" (p. 74). This in turn affects the goals to reduce CO2 emissions, since liberalization potentially stands in the way of individual national support of green-energy production (p. 76).</p> <p>Without actually saying it, the author argues that on more than one occasion, the European Union—in fact the European Commission or the European Council—has tried to create harmonized markets where it is not possible. Countries with distinct national energy regimes created—to name one example—a collection of fragmented markets for green certificates (instead of one single market; p. 84). In the rest of the book, the author adds further examples to virtually make the same point. Genetically modified organisms (p. 98), hazardous chemicals (p. 125), and thresholds to govern the European environment (p. 142), banking system (p. 165), and nuclear plants (p. 171) are further telling examples.</p> <p>While Laurent's analysis is plausible and clearly structured, it is doubtful whether that is also true for the conclusions he draws. His central argument is that Eur","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande by David Stiller (review)","authors":"Amahia Mallea","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926344","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926344","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande</em> by David Stiller <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amahia Mallea (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West: First in Line for the Rio Grande</em> By David Stiller. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2021. Pp. 188. <p>The focus of <em>Water and Agriculture in Colorado and the American West</em> is the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. The valley is bounded by the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the seasonal snowmelt forms the upper Rio Grande River, which greens this intensely irrigated valley.</p> <p>The Colorado Doctrine of water law that developed in the mid-nineteenth century, first with mining and then with agriculture, became the prior appropriation water law that now governs this valley and the U.S. West. The law is often summarized as \"first in time, first in right,\" and it allows water to be controlled by private interests, despite being a valuable public resource.</p> <p>Environmental historian David Stiller's perspective on water is shaped by his personal experience as an \"irrigator\"—an identity differentiated from a landowner and conveying a more specific set of challenges than \"farmer.\" Stiller seeks to build empathy for the irrigator and to enumerate the insecurities faced by rural agricultural communities dependent on overpromised water resources in a time of drought, population growth, and climate change. Stiller doesn't sugarcoat the economic and environmental challenges; he acknowledges that the San Luis Valley, like the arid West, has a mismatch between expectations and reality that is historically rooted.</p> <p>Adding to the history of western water and land use—like Donald Worster's classic <em>Rivers of Empire</em> (1992)—this monograph draws attention to the Rio Grande, instead of the oft-discussed Colorado River. Although the back-of-the-book summary highlights the Indigenous Utes and the Hispanos (Spanish settlers in the 1850s who used community-based irrigation called acequias), the author does not say much about the process of dispossession. The text is focused on the Anglo-American farmers who arrived after the U.S. Civil War and who continue to dominate the valley today. More attention to the legacy, culture, and management of acequias would have further differentiated the Rio Grande and presented historical alternatives for organizing and operating water systems.</p> <p>Stiller connects irrigation technologies to resource exploitation that harmed communities. Four main canals were in place by the 1880s, initiating the first era of unsustainable development in the San Luis Valley. This canal-building boom and \"bonanza farming\" (p. 37) left the Rio Grande dry <strong>[End Page 722]</strong> for downstream users in New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. Earthen dams upstream, and the Elephant Butte Dam downstream, sought to ","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media by John Durham Peters (review)","authors":"Timothy H. B. Stoneman","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926351","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media</em> by John Durham Peters <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Timothy H. B. Stoneman (bio) </li> </ul> <em>The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media</em> By John Durham Peters. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Pp. 416. <p>John Durham Peters's <em>The Marvelous Clouds</em> provides an entrée into media and an invaluable field guide for the contemporary state of media studies. Peters details a historical shift in the dominant conception of media. Traditionally, our idea of media was linked with the nineteenth-century telegraph and the human sending of signals/messages. In the twentieth century, the term became synonymous with mass media (TV, cinema, newspapers, magazines). Yet the advent of digital media in the early twenty-first century has marked a profound shift \"from mass media to cultural techniques,\" while planetary-level climate change poses new questions and challenges about our relationship with the natural environment as an instrumentalized medium (p. 325).</p> <p>In response to radical contemporary changes, Peters proposes revising our conception of media in two principal ways: by linking media studies with ontology and encompassing nonhuman species as well as nature itself in its most elemental forms. Media \"was connected to nature long before it was connected to technology\" (p. 46). For the author, \"at the dawn of the Anthropocene we need an elemental philosophy of media,\" in large part because the \"ship\" of our natural environment is sinking (p. 104).</p> <p>Peters organizes the six main chapters of his work to differentiate the main human and nonhuman protagonists in their elementary media domains. In chapter 2, he explores aquatic media, probing how the sea acts as a liquid environment that resists permanent shaping for cetaceans and that demands \"radical dependence on technics\" by humans (ships). In chapter 3, Peters addresses fire, \"our most radical environmental shaper,\" which allows humans to dwell on land and provides the \"precondition for almost all human-made media.\" The following two chapters focus on twin functions of sky media: timekeeping, or <em>chronos</em> (duration), through \"punctual or fractal sky media\" (towers, bells, weather, clouds) and cyclical and linear sky media (clocks and calendars), and <em>kairos</em> (opportunity), which entails the observation of weather and seasons. Chapter 6 addresses the earth and inscription media, which provide the \"matrix of all other human media\" and encompass bodily infrastructures (such as skulls, teeth, feet, and faces), as well as writing, the inscription media par excellence. Chapter 7 addresses dematerialized media, including cloud infrastructure and internet search; following other authors, Peters here links Google with God. Although he keys his analysis to elemental media, Peters concludes his study in \"The Sabbath of Meani","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926364","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Le acque agitate della patria: L'industrializzazione del Piave (1882–1966) [The troubled waters of the homeland: The industrialization of the Piave River (1882–1966)] by Giacomo Bonan (review)","authors":"Marco Bertilorenzi","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926345","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Le acque agitate della patria: L'industrializzazione del Piave (1882–1966) [The troubled waters of the homeland: The industrialization of the Piave River (1882–1966)]</em> by Giacomo Bonan <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Marco Bertilorenzi (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Le acque agitate della patria: L'industrializzazione del Piave (1882–1966) [The troubled waters of the homeland: The industrialization of the Piave River (1882–1966)]</em> By Giacomo Bonan. Rome: Viella, 2020. Pp. 182. <p>In his compelling book <em>Le acque agitate della patria</em>, Giacomo Bonan recounts the historical process of the industrialization of the Piave River, which flows from the Dolomite Alps down to the Adriatic Sea. The Piave Valley became one of the most developed hydropower-generation regions in Europe, with dozens of power stations, artificial lakes, pipes and channels, dams, and barrages, which were progressively built between the late nineteenth century and the early 1960s. The Vajont Dam is perhaps one of the best-known technological structures in the area, both because it is a true feat of engineering (standing at a height of 860 feet, it is still the highest dam in Europe) and because of the tragedy that originated from a landslide that flooded the Vajont Valley on October 9, 1963, causing the death of about 2,000 people. The Vajont is only a part of the complex system of integrated water infrastructures created in order to exploit the natural resources of the region by public and private actors seeking to promote the \"integrated\" development of the region. According to Bonan, business interests, technocracies, and technological dreams underpinned the industrialization of the river with some consistency, despite the institutional changes that occurred during the course of Italian history: the liberal monarchy before World War I, fascism in the interwar period, and the democratic republic after-ward. During the second half of the 1960s, the hydropower development of the region was brought to an end, leaving a territory deeply transformed by this \"integral\" industrialization, and Italy switched to other energy sources, such as oil and gas.</p> <p>Against this backdrop, the historian of technology could well be interested in underscoring the dynamics that, thanks to opportunities opened by innovations of the electric age, led to a radical transformation of an extensive region. By adopting from the works of Sara Pritchard the concept of \"environmental system\" to describe the Piave River, Bonan offers a multilevel analysis of the industrialization of the area, exploring the complex nexus that existed between different actors involved in the exploitation of a huge water infrastructure like the Piave River. Such analysis shows how the environment, technology, and economy are linked: from being a river used for wood transportation and irrigation in the past, the Piave gradually underwent new economic and technol","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"193 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Words and Power: Computers, Language, and U.S. Cold War Values by Bernadette Longo (review)","authors":"Kendall Giles","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926355","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926355","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Words and Power: Computers, Language, and U.S. Cold War Values</em> by Bernadette Longo <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Kendall Giles (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Words and Power: Computers, Language, and U.S. Cold War Values</em> By Bernadette Longo. Cham: Springer, 2021. Pp. x + 143. <p>In a world grappling with the role of the human worker amid computer automation, \"self-driving\" cars, and generative AI, and with technology's elite jockeying over existential risks of AI on the one hand and the dire need to accelerate AI development on the other, in a moment of reflexiveness we might wonder just how we got here. Though there is much more to that story, Bernadette Longo in <em>Words and Power</em> provides a solid foundation, building on her research in writing <em>Edmund Berkeley and the Social Responsibility of Computer Professionals</em> (2015). Instead of a central character and place framing found in a history like George Dyson's <em>Turing's Cathedral</em> (2012), Longo foregrounds words and their importance in the development of a standard, shared terminology to support the growth of early computer development in serving military strategies during the Cold War. Words are also central to her previous books, including <em>Spurious Coin</em> (2000) and, coauthored with David Kmiec, <em>The IEEE Guide to Writing in the Engineering and Technical Fields</em> (2017). Longo is interested in the humanistic study of computer history, and so, as part of Springer's History of Computing series, in <em>Words and Power</em> she provides an externalist and contextual lens, highlighting groups of people working in various institutions and social contexts and showing technological development not as inevitable but contingent. Each of the eight chapters is structured like a standalone academic journal article, with chapter title, abstract, text with embedded citations, and bibliography.</p> <p>Longo argues that the motivation for computing standards derived from early computing device development during World War II. That work was done in isolated labs, resulting in differing computing device designs based on orthogonal technologies, from analog components, servomechanisms, and relays to designs such as John von Neumann's electronic, stored-program <strong>[End Page 742]</strong> architecture. While von Neumann's design eventually became the standard that we still use today, in the 1940s there was no common understanding of what a computer was even supposed to do. In fact, during that time period the original computers were humans, usually female, who performed numeric calculations with calculators, pencils, and paper to support the war effort. But the information needs of the war, such as the creation of ballistic firing tables, quickly overwhelmed the abilities of those human computers, so attention turned to developing more powerful mechanical versions.</p> <p>Once the war ended, tensions with Russia","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"La ciudad en movimiento: Estudios históricos sobre transporte colectivo y movilidad en Santiago de Chile, siglos XIX y XX [The city on the move: Historical studies on public transport and mobility in Santiago de Chile, nineteenth and twentieth centuries] ed. by Simón Castillo and Marcelo Mardones (review)","authors":"Rodrigo Booth","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926321","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926321","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>La ciudad en movimiento: Estudios históricos sobre transporte colectivo y movilidad en Santiago de Chile, siglos XIX y XX [The city on the move: Historical studies on public transport and mobility in Santiago de Chile, nineteenth and twentieth centuries]</em> ed. by Simón Castillo and Marcelo Mardones <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Rodrigo Booth (bio) </li> </ul> <em>La ciudad en movimiento: Estudios históricos sobre transporte colectivo y movilidad en Santiago de Chile, siglos XIX y XX [The city on the move: Historical studies on public transport and mobility in Santiago de Chile, nineteenth and twentieth centuries]</em> Edited by Simón Castillo and Marcelo Mardones. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado, 2021. Pp. 282. <p>The circulation of people, goods, ideas, information, and energy has conditioned the modern urban experience and has defined the use of time among its inhabitants and their spatial location in the city. We can understand the modern city as a system of transportation and mobility networks. Its historical study allows us to delve into the relationship between technology and social change. This is one of the objectives of the book <em>La ciudad en movimiento</em>, edited by historians Simón Castillo and Marcelo Mardones.</p> <p>The accelerated metropolitanization experienced by Latin American cities generated many frictions in the urban experience that have not yet been resolved. In the period of study covered by this book—that is, between 1860 and 1970—the population of Santiago grew from 115,000 inhabitants to more than 3 million, becoming one of the largest Latin American metropolises by the end of the twentieth century. The urban area, which was walkable in the mid-nineteenth century, required mechanized transportation at the beginning of the following century. In the last third of the twentieth century, it was necessary to use a lot of time and resources, combining means, to cover it completely. The urban segregation of Santiago is related to the difficult access to transportation. This book sets out to study how the introduction of successive transportation and mobility technologies sought, possibly unsuccessfully, to respond to these conflicts in the capital of Chile.</p> <p>The editors of this book, together with Waldo Vila, author of one of its chapters, have been studying the history of urban transportation in the main Chilean cities for several years. Their approach has focused on the perspective <strong>[End Page 675]</strong> of urban social history, from which they have analyzed the visual history of public transportation in Valparaíso and Santiago, the establishment of the first state-owned public transportation company in the 1940s, the role of workers in technological companies, and the conflicts between means of mobility that have coexisted with difficulty in Chilean cities, such as the railroad or the electric tramway with pedestr","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"161 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939230","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal by Noémi Tousignant (review)","authors":"Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926341","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal</em> by Noémi Tousignant <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Akwasi Kwarteng Amoako-Gyampah (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal</em> By Noémi Tousignant. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. 224. <p>Grounded in ethnographic research and using history as a heuristic device, Noémi Tousignant in <em>Edges of Exposure</em> provides a riveting and stimulating account of efforts at doing public interest toxicological science in postcolonial Senegal. She recounts both the history of attempts at creating public facilities needed to monitor toxins and the modest efforts by scientists at three public institutions in Senegal at different periods to analyze the impact of toxins on human life. Tousignant's central concern seems to be examining the imbrications of the political and economic conditions of postcolonial Senegal in shaping and conditioning the practice of toxicological science and the regulation of toxins. In doing so, Tousignant directs attention to questions regarding capacity, future imaginaries, and possibilities in the doing and the undoing of toxicological science. She thus presents capacity as a dynamic concept that is relational, rhythmic, and cadenced by the fluctuating postcolonial visions of Senegal. Tousignant skillfully weaves the complexities involved in doing toxicological science in Senegal with the lived experiences and narratives of toxicological scientists, including Europeans and Africans, to unpack capacity and its corollaries; that is, \"scientific virtue, the advancement of knowledge and careers and public <strong>[End Page 716]</strong> service protection\" (p. 20). She demonstrates how the rhythms of capacity, punctuated by shifting hopes and constrained by limited resources, illumine both the loss and capacity of \"good science.\"</p> <p>Tracing the historical evolution of toxicological research in Senegal from the 1960s to the 1980s, Tousignant demonstrates the imprint of French neocolonial ties as exemplified through the period called <em>la coopération</em>, after Senegal's independence. She tells the story of progressive deterioration and wreckage of leftover laboratory equipment, nonfunctioning or stagnant machines, and the lack of some laboratory materials (ch. 1). Following the life stories of individual scientists, she recounts the living memories of those who worked in the lab, their feelings of nostalgia, and their ambitions for advancement (ch. 2). After 1980 and until 2000, toxicologists at the Université Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD)—despite many efforts at effectively regulating toxins—succeeded only in pursuing a regulatory fiction rather than effectively regulating poisons. Reminiscing on leftover and often aged equipment and leveraging their individual networks, locally and internationally, Senegalese toxic","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"132 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Con los pies en el surco: Instituciones estatales y actores de la ciencia agropecuaria en La Pampa (1958–1983) [With feet in the furrow: State institutions and actors of agricultural science in La Pampa (1958–1983)] by Federico Martocci (review)","authors":"María Cecilia Zuleta","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926323","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926323","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Con los pies en el surco: Instituciones estatales y actores de la ciencia agropecuaria en La Pampa (1958–1983) [With feet in the furrow: State institutions and actors of agricultural science in La Pampa (1958–1983)]</em> by Federico Martocci <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> María Cecilia Zuleta (bio) </li> </ul> <em>Con los pies en el surco: Instituciones estatales y actores de la ciencia agropecuaria en La Pampa (1958–1983) [With feet in the furrow: State institutions and actors of agricultural science in La Pampa (1958–1983)]</em> By Federico Martocci. Buenos Aires: Prometeo, 2021. Pp. 277. <p><em>Con los pies en el surco</em>, which originated as Federico Martocci's Ph.D. dissertation, is a refreshing contribution that successfully intersects the history of science and technology, environmental history, and agricultural history. This investigation breaks new ground by focusing on the Dry Pampas, an ecoregion of temperate plains <em>(llanura pampeana</em>) much less studied than the Humid Pampas. These biomes coexist in the Southern Cone's center plains, at the River Plate basin.</p> <p>In the mid-twentieth century, an environmental and productive crisis occurred in the Dry Pampas, caused by water stress and the wind erosion of soils and native flora. In response to these crises, during the Cold War a singular state-based socio-techno-scientific landscape was constructed in the province of La Pampa. Three well-documented chapters explain in chronological and analytical sequence the genesis of the seedbeds of public agricultural science and innovation during political instability and military dictatorships, precisely while the \"Green Revolution\" was expanding across the Global South.</p> <p>Three principal analytical axes run through this book. The first concerns forming a cluster of new institutions that accompanied the fodder-livestock expansion in new lands on the west side of La Pampa. The Anguil Experiment Station (Estación Experimental de Anguil), with the new University of La Pampa and a bunch of local agronomic stations, joined efforts to pioneer this regional network for human intervention in arid and semiarid environments. Martocci's book demonstrates that, in this part of the Southern Cone during the Cold War, local agricultural science flourished in state-funded public institutions, rather than on resources from philanthropic nongovernmental agencies or international cooperation agreements.</p> <p>The second axis carefully sheds light on the core of agricultural innovation produced in situ in La Pampa's plains. Martocci demonstrates the diverse interactions developed between state agencies, agriculture scientists and technicians, and local agricultural entrepreneurs and cattle ranchers, resulting in a complex process of two-way agricultural knowledge hybridization, <strong>[End Page 679]</strong> produced in laboratories and grounded in practice. As a result, biological inn","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"119 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140939539","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"L'invention de la technologie: Une histoire intellectuelle avec André Leroi-Gourhan [The invention of technology: An intellectual history with André Leroi-Gourhan] by Nathan Schlanger (review)","authors":"Philippe Soulier","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926358","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>L'invention de la technologie: Une histoire intellectuelle avec André Leroi-Gourhan [The invention of technology: An intellectual history with André Leroi-Gourhan]</em> by Nathan Schlanger <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Philippe Soulier (bio) </li> </ul> <em>L'invention de la technologie: Une histoire intellectuelle avec André Leroi-Gourhan [The invention of technology: An intellectual history with André Leroi-Gourhan]</em> By Nathan Schlanger. Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2023. Pp. 460. <p>This book lives up to its subtitle. Throughout its seven chapters, the author follows the sequence of Leroi-Gourhan's positions, particularly on technology. André Leroi-Gourhan was a twentieth-century anthropologist, archaeologist, paleontologist, zoologist, prehistorian, historian of art, and technologist. Throughout his life, Leroi-Gourhan tried to address and then clarify what new aspects he intended to bring to the concept of technology. In fact, from his earliest writings in the 1930s, Leroi-Gourhan illustrated technology abundantly, while announcing that he could assert his positions as much on the basis of his manual experience as an archeologist as on his proposals for a system based on the logic of material constraints.</p> <p>What's more, he wanted his ideas to be backed up by strictly \"objective\" observations, so that the lessons he drew from them could have the character of \"real fact,\" giving them a \"universal\" dimension. He subsequently adopted this intellectual stance in his other research (notably in archaeology and the history of Paleolithic art). For Leroi-Gourhan, understanding the foundations and methods of the technology used by a human group was the basis of any understanding of populations, past or present.</p> <p>Far from being a straight line, Leroi-Gourhan's intellectual career was often meandering, particularly in light of his professional circumstances and field experiences. He sometimes developed his arguments in correspondence (positive or negative) with other thinkers on technology. However, apart from a few researchers who served as references at the start of his career (in particular his teacher Marcel Mauss), he most often moved forward without explicit reference to the thoughts and theories of his contemporaries.</p> <p>And therein lies the major interest of Nathan Schlanger's book. While the author, himself a specialist in Mauss's work, follows Leroi-Gourhan's thought chronologically, each of the successive chapters delves deeper into Leroi-Gourhan's key ideas, which are then developed more thematically. In this way, not only does he succeed in unraveling many of Leroi-Gourhan's sometimes circuitous paths, he also supports his account with an abundance of references, both past and present, to Leroi-Gourhan (including by Simondon, Ellul, and Lévi-Strauss, for example). These references are sometimes suggested by Leroi-Gourhan himself in his development","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926124","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy ed. by Abigail Harrison Moore and R. W. Sandwell (review)","authors":"Tijana Rupčić","doi":"10.1353/tech.2024.a926346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2024.a926346","url":null,"abstract":"<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy</em> ed. by Abigail Harrison Moore and R. W. Sandwell <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Tijana Rupčić (bio) </li> </ul> <em>In a New Light: Histories of Women and Energy</em> Edited by Abigail Harrison Moore and R. W. Sandwell. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021. Pp. 216. <p>Abigail Harrison Moore and R. W. Sandwell's edited volume, <em>In a New Light</em>, is a recent attempt to approach the enduring gender imbalance in narratives about the history of energy and reclaim it from the embrace of the male-dominated sphere of influence. The authors argue that the absence of women from historical accounts of energy history is mostly due to the overarching foundation in approaching the studies of energy history from a male point of view, as well as the sources that researchers tend to focus on. This volume delves into the significance of women in the historical context of energy, with specific emphasis on decision-making in the usage of new energy sources, ranging from candlelight usage in British households during the nineteenth century to the process of electrifying <strong>[End Page 725]</strong> rural Scottish homes in the latter half of the twentieth century. Ranging from exploration of the changing social, economic, and gender dynamics of women in various fields—including candle lighting, electrical energy technology implementation, decorating services, and technical expertise—the contributors call attention to women as intermediaries between emerging energy technologies and the domestic sphere.</p> <p>Consequently, the authors of this collection analyze the process of transformation of energy through the lens of educators, designers of interiors, housewives, and other women whose daily routines are centered around the consumption of household energy. The authors seek to extend the discussion and offer new methods. For example, Sorcha O'Brien utilizes oral histories that she and other researchers gathered from elderly women in rural Ireland, specifically those in their seventies and eighties. O'Brien documents the recollections of women who consumed energy, capturing their sentiments of longing for the bread that was traditionally baked over turf fires before the advent of modern stoves. However, these memories also include less pleasant recollections of hand-washing clothes. Furthermore, the authors locate a variety of relevant historical sources and point out varied perspectives on the context, timing, and justification for energy decisions from the female perspective. This volume shows a range of archives, official documents, online resources, print media, and interviews that historians can use to incorporate marginalized perspectives into the narratives of energy history. For example, Karen Sayer brings to the stage the women who acquired, ignited, and cared for the candlelight, thereby emphasizing the changing social, econom","PeriodicalId":49446,"journal":{"name":"Technology and Culture","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140926125","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}