Missing the mark: a response to Bray and Hahn

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Notes

1. Bray and Hahn, “The Goddess Technology is a Polyglot”; and Schatzberg, Technology.

2. Oldenziel, “Gender and the Meanings of Technology”; Oldenziel, Making Technology Masculine; Marx, “The Idea of ‘Technology’ and Postmodern Pessimism”; and Marx, “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.”

3. Schatzberg, Technology.

4. Goldstone, Why Europe?

5. On the links between imperialism and fascism, the classic work remains Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. Hahn’s own work is a good example of a global approach to the Industrial Revolution; see Hahn, Technology in the Industrial Revolution.

6. Hobson, “Explaining the Rise of the West.”

7. For example, Mauss, Techniques, Technology and Civilisation; Febvre, “Réflexions sur l’histoire des techniques”; Leroi-Gourhan, Milieu et techniques; and Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects.

8. van Riessen, Filosofie en Techniek; Frison, “Per una teoria sociologica della tecnologia”; and Nikiforova, “The Concept of Technology and the Russian Cultural Research Tradition.”

9. Schatzberg, Technology, chaps. 9–13.

10. Costin, “Introduction.”

11. King, “The Social Role of Intellectuals”; Gramsci also argues that intellectuals exist within subaltern social groups, and that these “organic” intellectuals have the potential to generate new ideologies that advance the interests of subordinate groups. However, most elite scholars (Gramsci’s “traditional” intellectuals) serve the interests of the dominant social strata. This is certainly the case for the academics, especially elite academics, who are overwhelming funded by the capitalist state and capitalist philanthropy. I’m not implying a vulgar Marxism here; academics have some autonomy within the interstices of academic structures. However, this autonomy is limited, as demonstrated by recent political restrictions on academics. Dreiling and García-Caro, “Editors’ Introduction: Memory Laws or Gag Laws?”; and For an overview of theories about intellectuals, see Kurzman and Owens, “The Sociology of Intellectuals.”

12. On fusion of horizons, see Gadamer, Truth and Method.

13. Mandelbaum, “The History of Ideas.”

14. Lovejoy, as quoted in Mandelbaum, 39.

15. Veit-Brause, “A Note on Begriffsgeschichte.”

16. For example, the magisterial nine-volume work by Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe.

17. Schauz and Kaldewey, “Diskursanalyse und Historische Semantik in der Wissenschaftsforschung.”

18. Schauz, “Wissenschaftsgeschichte und das Revival der Begriffsgeschichte.”

19. Schauz, “What Is Basic Research?”; Kaldewey and Schauz, Basic and Applied Research; Bud, “‘Applied Science’ in Nineteenth-Century Britain”; Godin, Narratives of Innovation; Phillips, Acolytes of Nature; and Carnino, L’invention de la science.

20. The literature on ideology is vast. My favorite overview is Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture.

21. This is certainly the case in actor-network theory. Yet ANT seems immune to criticism. Both David Bloor and Simon Schaffer produced devastating critiques of the “theory” in the 1990s, which did little to stop its spread. Bloor, “Anti-Latour”; and Schaffer, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Bruno Latour.”

22. Daston, “Science Studies and the History of Science.”

23. This critique of academic writing is based on Billig, Learn to Write Badly.

24. On the relationship between fact and theory in history, see chap 1 in Carr, What Is History?

25. For example, Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877–1920.

26. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship.

27. Schatzberg, Technology, 77–80.

28. Ko, The Social Life of Inkstones, 5.

29. Moore, Constructing East Asia, 6, 66.

30. Schatzberg, Technology, chaps. 7, 10.

31. Ibid., 207.

32. Moore, Constructing East Asia, 66.

33. Ibid., 69.

34. Schatzberg, Technology, 106–7.

35. Moore, Constructing East Asia, 79–89.

36. See the rich but misleading account by Herf, Reactionary Modernism.

37. For an example from Africa, see Grace, “Ufundi and Tekinolojia in Independent Tanzania.”

38. Schäfer and Valeriani, “Technology is Global.”

39. Spivak, “Can The Subaltern Speak.”

40. Brunner, “Epistemic Violence.”

41. Examples include Russian historians who deny the existence of a Ukrainian nation, or lawmakers in multiple American states who have passed laws to prevent schools from teaching the truth about America’s racist past. Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom; and Dreiling and García-Caro, “Editors’ Introduction: Memory Laws or Gag Laws?”

42. The Hundred Flowers Movement refers to a brief period from 1956 to 1957 when the Chinese Communist Party allowed diverse opinions to be expressed. The Great Leap Forward was a disastrous CCP campaign of forced industrialization from 1958 through 1962. MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, 51–56; and Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine.