Kranzberg Lecture 2020
James Williams
Humanity, Technology, and Nature: A Recipe for Crises?, pp. 8-28
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983752
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To understand the human/nature relationship, one must look at how people, technology, and nature interact. Because humans come from many cultures and experiences, we have not always understood our relationship to nature in the same way. Nevertheless, we are all part of nature, and our physical beings are comprised of many of the same natural elements and rhythms that make up the world around us. Since the Enlightenment, however, Euro-American rationalism cleaved humans from nature even as they remained conjoined. This Cartesian duality led people to harness their technologies toward exploiting the Earth for their own needs and desires, nature’s agency acting as the only constraint against them. Our voracious appetite for control over nature begat an entirely new epoch, the Anthropocene, and consideration of it in the history of technology requires us to examine how the relationship of humans, technology, and nature has been and will continue to be a recipe for crises for humanity and nature.
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Research Articles
Jeffrey Boadu and Viktor Pál
Continuities of Dependence: Hydropower and Modernisation in Twentieth-Century Ghana, pp. 29-44
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983753
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Scholars argue that Africa’s current energy issues are deeply rooted in Africa’s colonial past and the mismanagement and exploitation of African colonies by its colonial masters. Relatively unknown to the history of technology community, this article explores the water history of Ghana to understand better the political, economic, technological and social factors which contributed to the current problems of energy supply in Ghana and Africa in general. This article especially tackles the responsibility of post-colonial Africa’s elites when it comes to the energy issues of Ghana, and Africa in general.
The first part of this article explores the “Hydro-Dam Scheme,” a scheme initiated under Ghana’s colonial regime between 1920 and 1956 and meant to develop Ghana’s hydropower resources primarily in order to enhance reliable power supply to the country’s aluminium industries. The British colonial administration did not implement a social policy plan along with the implementation of the “Hydro-Dam Scheme” and that deficiency had a decisive impact on the energy modernization and modernization models of colonial Ghana. After this, the article turns to an exploration of the energy development schemes and policies implemented after Ghana gained independence. The article aims to investigate how Ghana’s post-colonial elites changed or did not change the course of hydropower and energy development choices set by the former colonial regime. This links the Ghana case study to global post-colonial histories of resource exploitation and hydropower development as a modernisation experiment. Finally, the article aims to analyze the Ghanian case of disenchantment with the promises of the post-colonial modernisation experiment driven by the country’s new political and economic elites.
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Carina Gliese, Thomas Schuetz, and Katharina Stolz
The Decline And Resurrection Of Industries: The Example Of The Consumer Goods Industry In Germany, pp. 45-75
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983754
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This article discusses the impact of the structural change of the 1970s on companies in the German consumer goods sector. On the basis of an interdisciplinary comparative study, successful and failed strategies with which contemporaries in the consumer electronics and watchmaking industries tried to overcome what was perceived as a crisis are analysed. The article places special focus on investigating the role of innovations in coping with structural change. For this purpose, an innovation-historical approach is followed, making particular use of the concepts of innovation systems and innovation cultures. In addition, the text also looks at the astonishing phenomenon that, after German reunification, companies in the watchmaking industry successfully returned to supposedly obsolete products in the 1990s that had previously put them at a competitive disadvantage.
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Svetlana Usenyuk-Kravchuk, Nikita Klyusov, Sampsa Hyysalo, and Viktor Klimenko
Depending on Users: the Case of Over-snow Motorised Transport in Russia, pp. 76-102
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983755
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This article examines the history of aerosledges – a Russian-invented class of over-snow motorised transport vehicles. It looks at the use of existing industrial capacities in the automotive and aviation industry to create motorised sliding vehicles to generate mobility over vast Russian snow landscapes. This resulted in a series of novel designs of aerosledges and the adoption of principles from aviation and automobility as well as components produced in large quantities for these industries. Aerosledges are used in conditions and locales where little ordinary servicing and maintenance are available. This placed much demand on the users of motorised sliders to be not only drivers and navigators in remote or military terrains but equally on-site mechanics and repairmen.
The article argues that Russian motorised sliding transport would not have prospered if it was not for the “user infrastructuring” of diagnostic and repair skills. Therefore, it looks at the aggregated input of the aerosledge sector of technology towards developing technological literacy and the diagnostic and repair skills necessary to keep the technology working in severe environmental conditions. The article investigates the bricolage way of building in these vehicles as a deliberate design strategy that in turn shapes user infrastructure. The article illustrates the historical narrative with selected examples of aerosledge design and concludes with practical lessons for the still relevant challenge of developing good vehicles for the diverse and harsh conditions of Russian roadlessness.
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Alexia Sofia Papazafeiropoulou
‘Eve at the steering wheel’: Female representations in Greek motoring magazines from the 1950s to the 1980s, pp. 103-130
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983756
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The massive production and consumption of automobiles have made Car Culture a universal culture. At the same time, the growing number of female drivers has connected automobility with what appears to be women’s emancipation in the public discourse. However, this article argues that Car Culture has masculine connotations, even in a period when the automobiles’ use by women drivers was taken for granted. In doing so, it examines the representations of women in Greek motoring magazines from the 1950s to the 1970s. The analysis of these magazines contributes to the understanding of how gender roles were reconstructed in relation to the automobiles’ use within the context of postwar consumption culture.
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Tomáš Gecko
How the Prague School of Japanese Scholars Benefited from Technology Transfer, pp. 131-147
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983757
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The Prague School of Japanese Scholars provided scientific infrastructure for the transfer of technologies from Japan to Czechoslovakia. This article aims to show the structural foundations on which Jaroslav Průšek (1906–80) and Vlasta Hilská (1909–68) built up the Prague School in post-war Czechoslovakia, and to interpret the founding myth associated with this process. It considers the scientific school to be a structure of influence that interacted with those in power in Czechoslovakia. By serving as a conduit for science and technology from Japan, the School both legitimised itself and influenced Czechoslovak science in the 1950s and 1960s. However, when the School lost its influence over the Czechoslovak scientific community due to a post 1968 generational change, it could no longer pragmatically utilize the demand for Japanese technology to advance its interests.
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Research in Brief
Sheila Palomares
Marsá Reinforced Concrete Beams and their Application in Spanish Agricultural Industrial Architecture, pp. 148-162
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983758
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Agustín Marsá Prat registered several patents between 1941 and 1956. These included a patent for a reinforced concrete roof-beam that he designed with the intention of replacing expensive iron beams which were so difficult to purchase at the time.
His concrete beams were proposed as a low-cost, lightweight reinforced concrete structural system, which required little skilled labour and had a striking aesthetic effect. Known today as “Marsá” truss beams or as reinforced concrete truss beams with braces, they were commonly used in industrial buildings related to the agri-food sector.
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Petter Wulff
The Climate Legacy of Svante Arrhenius, pp. 163-169
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983759
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There are two sides to Svante Arrhenius’s legacy with regard to climate change. He is known for having calculated the thermal effect of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over a hundred years ago. In that capacity, he can be said to be one of the founders of today’s climate science. But Arrhenius is also remembered for an equation that bears his name that specifies how the rates of chemical reactions depend on temperature. The equation does not seem to be a part of mainstream climate science, but it has been taken up by some non-mainstream representatives to emphasize the role of degassing from the oceans. The equation, in their view, proves that human activities only account for about half the increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide, the rest coming from the oceans. Thus Arrhenius has been used both to construct today’s mainstream climate theory and to underpin the critique against that theory. The dominant upholder of the mainstream theory, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and its opponents should recognise that there is a broader view of what Arrhenius can contribute to climate science.
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Biography
Mircea O. Popoviciu
Aurel Barglazan Founder of the Timisoara Hydraulic Machinery School, pp. 170-179
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983760
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Aurel Bărglăzan was one of the most brilliant intellectuals of Romania. He began his career with his graduation from the Polytechnic University of Timișoara in 1928. Subsequently, he worked there as an assistant professor and got a Doctoral Degree for his work: “the Hydraulic Transformer: Theoretic and Experimental Study.” As a result of his great professional performance and his leadership qualities, he became Dean of the University’s Electro Mechanics School (1944-48) and afterwards of the Mechanic School (1948-60). In 1955, he was elected corresponding member of the Romanian Academy. From the beginning of his career, he believed that mastering modern theories (verified in the laboratory) must not be a scientist’s final purpose, but was only the first step towards high-level technical achievements. Applying this conviction, he helped realize numerous industrial objectives: the Bărglăzan pump for blast furnaces (1942), the development of Pelton and Francis turbines for the Crainicel Hydroelectric Power Plant (1948-50), and the creation of Kaplan turbines for the Targu Mures Hydroelectric Power Plant (1952). Ultimately, he founded the University’s Hydraulic Machinery School.
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Book Reviews
Atte Arffman
Review of Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, edited by Tim Soens, Dieter Schott, Michael Toyka-Seid and Bert De Munck, pp. 180-182
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983761
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Mariia Koskina
Review of Environmentalism under Authoritarian Regimes: Myth, Propaganda, Reality, edited by Stephen Brain and Viktor Pál, pp. 182-185
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983762
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Jaroslav Švelch
Review of Minor Platforms in Videogame History by Benjamin Nicoll, pp. 186-188
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983763
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Inna Häkkinen
Review of Energy Culture: Art and Theory on Oil and Beyond, edited by Imre Szeman and Jeff Diamanti, pp. 188-190
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983764
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Matúš Mišík
Review of The Energy of Russia: Hydrocarbon Culture and Climate Change by Veli-Pekka Tynkkynen, pp. 190-192
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26983765
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