Volume 26 issue 1 (2021)

In Qing China, the driving force of initiating technical education in the crisis-ridden age after 1840 was national defense. A large body of existing literature addresses the issues of “science” or “knowledge” in late nineteenth-century China, but neglects to ask how technology entered Chinese intellectual discourses and became a legitimate field in the educational system. This article addresses how literati-scholars, missionaries, and often overlooked official-industrialists, articulated their thoughts toward technology or arts in Chinese culture, through deepened contextualized and conceptualized analysis of historical works. It argues and demonstrates that it was the intellectual concept of arts (yi)—most remarkably, the hitherto neglected overarching term yixue [study/science of art] including both technology and science— that characterized late Qing scholarly debates. Indigenous art-related terms allowed Confucian scholars (including sinologists) to build up an intellectual space for an “imagined” technology, while defending China’s own cultural tradition.

In this article we present a comparative, cross-cultural study analyzing the context of the first women engineers in Colombia, Mexico, and Portugal. We aimed to identify the local characteristics that distinguish them and those they had in common, that transcend geographical barriers. To do so, we looked at three aspects of their lives: broader social and academic context (on the level of the community), family environment and work practice. In so doing, we identify patterns that fit with the concept of gender norms: systematic barriers to women’s access to spaces traditionally considered masculine, such as engineering, and even to access to higher education in general. Changes in the political orientation of governments set the stage for changing the opportunities for women engineers in the early decades of the twentieth century.

This article offers a new research agenda for the material history of infrastructure. Building on a revised cultural history of technology and new materialism, it suggests that materiality is a powerful analytical lens for researching infrastructure. In doing so, infrastructure is understood in a broad sense to include artefacts like bridges, water mains, and internet cables. The agency of material infrastructure is central to this piece. As the article argues, viewing infrastructure as a “material assemblage” highlights its various relational interactions with humans and non-humans. This adds to ongoing efforts to decentralize human agency. Two sections devoted to these complex and fluid relationships outline possible research approaches. In particular, spill overs from the histories of knowledge and power to the history of material infrastructure provide directions for future research. Taken as a whole, this article proposes that materiality is central to any understanding of infrastructure and concludes with a set of questions for further research.

The present article analyses Deller’s artwork, The Battle of Orgreave (2001), as an aggravation of the special aesthetic qualities of riot control technology at the intersection of emotion (fear, horror) and politics. The article describes a history of riot control technology that takes place against the background of a crisis. Concepts such as security and the defence of social order have been the subject of reinterpretation since the 1960s. Central to understanding the negotiation of these terms is the concept of “policing the crisis,” which was developed at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, a research centre at the University of Birmingham, England, in the late 1970s. The article brings together findings from different disciplines and discusses the state institution of the police as the result of a liberal discourse. Part of this reinterpretation of the police shows that the agendas of riot control passed from the military to the police in the long nineteenth century. Riot control technology itself (e.g. tear gas) became a signifier of protests in the twentieth century. By starting with an artwork, the article asks specifically how riot control technology diffuses into the cultural sphere (music videos, art, etc.) and what influences there are on both the political and technological levels.

As a part of the research field concerning the transfer of European knowledge to the Russian Empire, this paper concentrates on the transfer of technical knowledge. It describes the introduction and application of a reinforced concrete construction method developed around 1886 by the French bricklayer and construction site supervisor François Hennebique. The Hennebique system was promoted by his worldwide professional network, including in the Russian Empire. Paul de Monicourt, a French engineer, was the main figure associated with the promotion of this method throughout the Russian Empire. He established his first office in south-western Ekaterinoslav specialized in industrial buildings and bridges. After sharing his construction and calculation methods with the engineers of Russian Railways, he lost his monopoly hold on bridge construction in the Russian Empire. Moving his focus to the north, he established an additional office in Saint Petersburg, where he began to work in dome construction. In 1905, de Monicourt began a partnership with a local construction company. His involvement in this partnership makes it difficult to trace his later activity and individual achievements since this company took over the spread of Hennebique system in the Russian Empire.

Innovation is a significant stimulus for the development of many countries in the world. Because of its economic impact, the introduction of new technologies is crucial to understand. One source of new technologies was the competition between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States of America in the second half of the twentieth-century. The desire to ensure parity with the West in the field of nuclear weapons led the leadership of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to improve existing weapons, introduce new models, and create new space technologies. Stanislav Koniukhov, an outstanding scientist and designer, made a great contribution to the formation and development of a new missile-space industry in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in particular the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Under his leadership, a large amount of fundamental and applied research was carried out in this field. After the Cold War, he was a General director of Yuzhnoye SDO. He was a Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Academician of the (National) Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and a Hero of Ukraine.