Social Critics and Dissident Experts: Postwar Critiques of Technology

SES 00-80392-Eric Schatzberg(威斯康星大学麦迪逊分校)《社会批评家和持不同政见者专家：战后技术批判》该奖支持对二战后技术批判的一项重大研究的第一阶段，这项研究将探索这些批评的知识来源及其实际后果。在20世纪60年代和70年代，这些批评以运动的形式成为强大的社会力量，这些运动试图重塑占主导地位的技术秩序，最重要的是消费者和环境运动。这个项目试图了解这些运动在20世纪50年代的社会和文化格局中的起源。20世纪60年代的历史学家几乎没有解释为什么批评技术的运动在经历了这么多年的强烈技术热情后突然出现。这个项目将从20世纪50年代开始的两个无定形群体中寻求解释。第一组包括社会批评家，也就是公共知识分子，他们培养了关于战后技术从大科学到郊区的各个方面的批判性话语。这些社会批评者包括像诺伯特·维纳这样的著名科学家，像威廉·H·怀特这样的公共知识分子，以及像万斯·帕卡德这样的记者。第二个群体来自科学界本身，以“持不同政见的专家”的形式出现，他们对战后的关键技术提出质疑。这些人是在大学实验室和政府部门工作的男男女女，他们在那里进行研究并撰写技术报告，为拉尔夫·纳德的汽车安全运动和雷切尔·卡森对滥用杀虫剂的批评提供了必要的证据。社会批评家和持不同政见者专家共同为20世纪60年代和70年代的运动奠定了基础。这个项目将对20世纪50年代的社会批评者进行思想史，以及对持不同政见者专家的起源和动机的研究。然后，该项目将把这两个群体与20世纪60年代初批评技术的最重要的社会运动联系起来，即由拉尔夫·纳德推动的复兴的消费者运动和由雷切尔·卡森启发的新环境运动。这两个运动遵循着相似的道路；每个运动的灵感都来自于严重依赖科学和工程研究的开创性揭露。这个项目还将审查对科学和技术研究具有重要意义的两个方法论问题。第一个问题涉及文化在塑造技术变革中的作用，这是国际社会在这一主题上早期工作的延伸，第二个问题涉及理论与实践之间的关系，强调实验室外的实践。

SES 00-80392 - Eric Schatzberg (University of Wisconsin - Madison) "Social Critics and Dissendent Experts: Postwar Critiques of Technology"This award supports first stage in a major study of post-World-War-II critiques of technology, a study that will explore both the intellectual origins of these critiques and their practical consequences. In the 1960s and 1970s, these critiques became potent social forces in the form of movements that sought to reshape the dominant technological order, most importantly the consumer and environmental movements. This project seeks to understand the origins of these movements in the social and cultural landscape of the 1950s.Historians of the 1960s have done little to explain why movements critical of technology emerged suddenly after so many years of intense technological enthusiasm. This project will seek an explanation in two amorphous groups from the 1950s. The first group comprises social critics, that is, public intellectuals who fostered critical discourse about aspects of postwar technology from big science to suburbia. These social critics included prominent scientists like Norbert Wiener, public intellectuals like William H. Whyte, and journalists like Vance Packard. The second group emerged from the scientific community itself in the form of "dissident experts" who raised doubts about key postwar technologies. These were the men and women who worked in university laboratories and government bureaus, where they conducted research and authored technical reports that provided the essential evidence needed by Ralph Nader's movement for auto safety and Rachel Carson's critique of pesticide misuse. Together, the social critics and dissident experts laid the groundwork for the movements of the 1960s and 1970s.This project will undertake an intellectual history of the social critics of the 1950s, along with a study of the origins and motivations of the dissident experts. The project will then connect these two groups with the most significant social movements critical of technology in the early 1960s, namely the resurgent consumer movement promoted by Ralph Nader and the new environmental movement inspired by Rachel Carson. These two movements followed similar paths; each inspired by a path-breaking expose that relied heavily on scientific and engineering research.This project will also examine two methodological issues of importance to science and technology studies. The first issue concerns the role of culture in shaping technological change, extending the PI's earlier work on this topic, and the second involves the relationship between theory and practice, stressing practices outside the laboratory.