'Dreamers with Shovels': Science and Technology in the New Deal Political Imagination

Jessica Wang，加州大学洛杉矶分校该项目通过一系列以传记为基础的历史案例研究，研究了科学技术在美国新政时期政治思想和政治行动中的作用。在科学和技术研究中，许多技术官僚政治思想的观察者强调了其霸权主义、工具主义和非民主的特征。然而，近年来，学者们已经认识到，尽管这种方法对理解技术社会的本质做出了很大贡献，但它需要加以修订和充实。对新政的研究提供了一个重要的机会，可以重新考虑普遍存在的假设，并仔细审视技术官僚政治作为一套信念和实践的复杂本质。这项研究集中在三个主要主题上——规划、电气化和国家建设——并讨论了在新政时期科学技术如何影响这些领域的政策制定。规划部分阐述了雷克斯福德·盖伊·图格威尔、弗雷德里克·德拉诺、韦斯利·c·米切尔和查尔斯·e·梅里亚姆是如何将技术官僚主义思想转化为行动的。随着电气化的发展，研究转向了技术本身，并调查了田纳西流域管理局和农村电气化管理局内部关于技术与人类价值观之间的适当关系以及技术发展的适当政治结构的冲突。关于国家建设的讨论考察了杰罗姆。弗兰克和威廉M.雷瑟尔森利用科学思想使新政国家合法化，并为其通过20世纪30年代新的行政机构扩大国家权力辩护。项目的最后一部分探讨了亨利·华莱士和大卫·李林塔尔的战后经历，考察了冷战造成的技术官僚政治的转变，并探讨了冷战工具主义如何取代了新政的技术官僚自由主义。通过研究新政主义者如何将科学技术理解为政治资源，该项目有助于STS内部关于技术批评意识形态的本质及其政治后果的新一轮辩论。新政揭示了技术官僚政治背后的全部复杂性。一些新政派采纳了关于知识本质的主观主义信念，一些人在他们的技术进步版本中引入了怀旧的、农业的维度，大多数人认真对待专家与民主社会之间存在问题的关系，并在技术官僚政治能否与民主价值观相一致的问题上进行斗争。新政派思想和经验的多样性表明，技术官僚政治的形象是天真的实证主义者，致力于对技术进步坚定不移的信仰，并过于愿意将民主价值观置于对专业知识的崇拜之下，这需要改进和重新评估。该项目将加强STS目前的努力，重新定位专业知识与民主之间的关系，并探索科学和技术作为政治思想和实践形式的全部意义。

Project AbstractSES Proposal 0135333"Dreamers with Shovels:" Science and Technology in the New Deal Political Imagination Jessica Wang, University of California, Los AngelesThe project investigates, through a series of biographically-based historical case studies,the role of science and technology in political thought and action during the New Deal period inthe United States. Within science and technology studies, many observers of technocraticpolitical thought have emphasized its hegemonic, instrumentalist, and undemocratic character.In recent years, however, scholars have recognized that while this approach has contributed muchtoward understanding the nature of technological society, it needs to be revised and augmented.A study of the New Deal provides an important opportunity to reconsider prevailing assumptionsand scrutinize the complex nature of technocratic politics as a set of beliefs and practices.The study centers on three main subjects -- planning, electrification, and state-building -- anddiscusses how science and technology affected policymaking in each of these areas during theNew Deal years. The section on planning illuminates how Rexford Guy Tugwell, Frederic A.Delano, Wesley C. Mitchell, and Charles E. Merriam sought to translate technocratic ideologyinto action. With electrification, the study turns to technology itself and investigates the conflictswithin the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Rural Electrification Administration over theproper relationship between technology and human values, and the appropriate politicalstructures for technological development. The discussion of state-building examines how JeromeN. Frank and William M. Leiserson used ideas about science to legitimize the New Deal stateand justify its expansion of state power via the new administrative agencies of the 1930s. Thefinal part of the project probes the postwar experiences of Henry A. Wallace and David E.Lilienthal, examines the transformation of technocratic politics wrought by the cold war, andexplores how cold war instrumentalism replaced the technocratic liberalism of the New Deal.By examining how the New Dealers understood science and technology as a resource forpolitics, the project contributes to a renewed debate within STS over the nature of technocraticideology and its political ramifications. The New Deal reveals the full complexity behindtechnocratic politics. Some of the New Dealers adopted subjectivist beliefs about the nature ofknowledge, some brought a nostalgic, agrarian dimension to their version of technologicalprogress, and most took seriously the problematic relationship between experts and democraticsociety and struggled over the question of whether technocratic politics could be made consistentwith democratic values. The diverse range of thought and experience among the New Dealerssuggests that an image of technocratic politics as naively positivist, dedicated to an unwaveringfaith in technological progress, and overly willing to subordinate democratic values to a cult ofexpertise requires refinement and reevaluation. The project will reinforce STS's current effortsto readdress the relationship between expertise and democracy and explore the full meaning ofscience and technology as forms of political thought and practice.