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

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

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. ***