Kranzberg Lecture by Mikael Hard

Between Globalization Narratives and Microhistories of Technology


Mikael Hård. Picture: Project Global-HoT

Mikael Hård has been the Project Leader: A Global History of Technology, 1850 – 2000 (GLOBAL-HOT) in 2017-2022;
2014-2018 Co-director of the graduate program “Urban Infrastructures in Transition: The Case of African Cities” at Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany, funded by the Hans-Böckler Foundation; 2008-2013 Co-editor of NTM – Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin; 2007-2010 Member of the Scientific Board of the ESF Eurocores programme “Inventing Europe”; 2006-2016 Co-director of the DFG Graduate Program “Topology of Technology”; 2001-2003 Director of the DFG Graduate Program “Technology and Society”; Since 1998 Professor of History of Technology at Darmstadt University of Technology
1994-1998 Professor of History of Technology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
1992-1994 Associate Professor for Human Technology (STS) at Gothenburg University, Sweden; 1991-1992 Research Assistant at the Berlin Center for Social Science Research (WZB); 1989-1990 Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS), Uppsala, Schweden; 1988 PhD, Gothenburg University, Sweden; 1984 MA, Princeton University.

Recently he published Microhistories of Technology. Making the World. Palgrave Macmillan check the flyer Open Access: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-22813-1. He has been reviewing for the following journals: Technology and Culture, ICON, NTM, Contemporary European History, Technikgeschichte, Journal of Design History, History and Technology, Science, Technology, & Human Values, as well as The Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, and for the following organisations: German Research Foundation (DFG), Germany; Alexander-von-Humboldt-Foundation,Germany; National Science Foundation (NSF),USA; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF),Switzerland; Austrian Council for Research, Austria; Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO), Belgium; Swedish National Agency for Higher Education (HSV), Sweden; Research Council of Norway (RCN), Norway.


abstract

Cash crops often play a paradigmatic role in the history of globalization and dependency. The global standardization of products, the global diffusion of manufacturing methods, and the global spread of capitalist economies—including the infamous slave trade—are standard narratives.

In his Kranzerg Lecture, Mikael Hård unravels the limitations of such story lines in the history of technology. Telling the history of sugar cultivation, refining, and consumption in Northern India, Hård emphasizes the appropriateness of age-old crop varieties and production methods, the persistence of entrenched socio-economic relations, and the peculiarities of regional cultural factors. Despite attempts by British and Indian elites to introduce capital-intensive machinery and sugarcanes from other parts of the world, established methods mostly prevailed. The Indian sugar market remained largely independent from global developments.

Together with other case studies from the Global South, the Indian microhistory is meant to illustrate the continuing need for the discipline to write histories from below. Our understanding of local processes and independent developments is not advanced enough for us to start crafting analyses of global interdependencies.


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