The Automobile, Telephone, Radio and Electric Light and Power in the Rural United States

美国农村的汽车、电话、无线电和电力

• 批准号: 9321180
• 负责人: Ronald Kline
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Cornell University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1994
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1994-07-01 至 1996-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9321180&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Automobile; Telephone; Radio; Electric; Light

9321180 Kline A common view of the impact of technology on society is one of technological determinism: society must embrace new technologies as they come along. Historians of technology have long rejected this simplistic view. Societies not only accept or reject new technologies, but may also radically change the technologies that they are presented with in order to adapt them to their own purposes. Rural people, for example, not only used the Model T Ford as urbanites did for transportation but also adapted it to their own culture. They converted it to use as produce trucks, they used it to pull plows, and they even jacked up the rear wheel to power washing machines (before electric washing machines became readily available). The transfer of several "modern" technologies to the countryside enabled a sweeping transformation of American rural life in the 20th century. Dr. Kline is studying the interactions between urban "agents of modernity" and rural people in transferring a cluster of four major technologies to the American farm from about 1900 to 1960: the automobile, the telephone, the radio, and electric light and power. Of particular interest for Dr. Kline is the efforts of farm men and women to resist, adapt , and construct their own version of these artifacts and systems to meet rural ways of life, instead of passively accepting the products of these supposedly "modernizing" forces. In this respect, this project is part of an emerging research program in the history of technology that is shifting the field's traditional focus from the "producers" of technology, such as inventors, engineers, and managers, to the consumers and users of technology. Yet Dr. Kline is striking a balance in this project between these two approaches by investigating both producers and consumers--"agents of modernity" and rural people--in the hope of creating a broadly based social history of technology that addresses the themes of technology transfer, modernity and gender. ***

9321180克莱恩关于技术对社会的影响的一个普遍观点是技术决定论：当新技术出现时，社会必须接受它们。技术历史学家长期以来一直反对这种过于简单化的观点。社会不仅接受或拒绝新技术，而且还可能从根本上改变呈现给他们的技术，以便使它们适应自己的目的。例如，农村人不仅像城市人一样使用T型福特汽车作为交通工具，而且还让它适应自己的文化。他们把它改装成了生产车，他们用它来拉犁，他们甚至用千斤顶抬起后轮为洗衣机提供动力(在电动洗衣机变得容易得到之前)。几项“现代”技术转移到农村，使美国农村生活在20世纪发生了彻底的变化。克莱恩博士正在研究大约从1900年到1960年期间，在向美国农场转移四项主要技术的过程中，城市“现代性代理人”和农村人之间的互动：汽车、电话、收音机、电灯和电力。克莱恩博士特别感兴趣的是，农民男女努力抵制、适应和构建他们自己版本的这些人工制品和系统，以适应农村生活方式，而不是被动地接受这些所谓的“现代化”力量的产品。在这方面，这个项目是技术史上一个新兴研究计划的一部分，该计划正在将该领域的传统重点从技术的“生产者”，如发明家、工程师和管理者，转移到技术的消费者和使用者。然而，克莱恩博士通过调查生产者和消费者--“现代性的代理人”和农村人--在这两种方法之间找到了平衡，希望创造一部基础广泛的技术社会史，探讨技术转让、现代性和性别等主题。***