Doctoral Dissertation Research in the History of Technology

这个项目着眼于技术与其社会和文化背景之间的关系，通过研究关于露营车辆和休闲露营的观念和态度的变化如何塑造娱乐车辆技术。人们对美国社会是如何用休闲露营来应对这种文化热潮的，知之甚少。初步研究表明，美国最早的休闲汽车技术是作为上层阶级个人的社会需求和文化欲望的表达而发展起来的。但随着中产阶级消费者使用各种休闲车来满足他们的自动露营需求，这种情况发生了变化。该项目以休闲车的历史和演变为例，测试并说明了技术变革和社会价值观之间关系的动态模型，该模型认为，技术变革是对特定的社会和文化价值观的回应，而不是在人们几乎无法控制的情况下充当社会变革的催化剂。问题从想知道技术进化的某个时刻是什么时候发生的，变成了问，第一，是什么社会价值观和思想促使了一项技术的选择，第二，什么新的价值观和思想可能促使了从一种技术向另一种技术的转变。在美国野营车技术的具体案例中，可能促使1930年后主要使用的那些技术取代了自动帐篷、营地拖车和早期使用的自动改装的观念发生了变化，这些观念被归入了短语“休闲车”。实际上，关于什么是休闲车的想法在1930年后发生了巨大变化，首先是在个人用途与使用它们的更大社会和文化背景之间的关系上，其次是在日常娱乐车技术方面。

This project looks at the relationship between technology and its social and cultural context by examining the ways in which changing ideas and attitudes about camp vehicles and leisure camping shaped recreational vehicle technology. Little is known about the ways in which American society framed its technologies to respond to the cultural craze with recreational camping. Preliminary research indicates that the earliest forms of recreational vehicle technologies in the United States evolved as an expression of the social needs and cultural desires of upper class individuals.. But this changed as middle class consumers used a variety of recreational vehicles to fulfill their autocamping needs. Using the history and evolution of recreational vehicles as a case example, the project tests as well as illustrates a dynamic model of the relationship between technological change and social values which argues that technological change occurs in response to specific sets of social and cultural values, rather than serving as a catalyst of social changes in the face of which people have little or no control. The question shifts from wondering when a moment in technological evolution occurred, to asking, first, what social values and ideas prompted the selection of a technology, and second, what new values and ideas may have then prompted the shift from one technology to another. In the specific case of American camp vehicle technology, the changing ideas that may have prompted the replacement of auto-tents, camp-trailers and auto-conversions of earlier use with those technologies primarily in use after 1930, are ones subsumed under the phrase `recreational vehicles.` Indeed, the ideas about what constituted a recreational vehicle changed dramatically after 1930, bringing with them an equally dramatic rearrangement first in the relationship between individual uses and the larger social and cultural context in which they were used, and, second, in the everyday recreational vehicle technologies.