Technology and Risk in Industrializing America, 1750-1980

这是一项支持一年休假研究的提议。它将完成一本关于美国历史上的技术和风险的书。该项目使用了八个案例研究来解决这个问题：“工业化如何改变了美国人在日常生活中思考和处理身体风险的方式？”PI计划完成关于前工业风险、20世纪初的枪支和枪支文化、产品设计和二战后责任的章节。另外五章关于避雷针、铁路、工厂、安全运动和游乐场的研究已基本完成。该项目的研究方法涉及从社会史、技术史、物质文化研究和法律史领域的公认实践中提取的技术。工作计划要求为每个拟议的章节单独提出研究问题和原始材料。前工业时代的章节使用殖民时期的报纸，如《宾夕法尼亚公报》、信件和日记、救济院和医院的记录，以及其他来源来回答这样的问题：18世纪和19世纪初的美国人面临着什么样的风险？他们是如何管理这些风险的？关于宗教、道德和个人责任的观念在这些选择中扮演了什么角色？关于枪支的章节还使用了报纸和杂志，以及广告、公司记录和商业星历。研究问题包括：城市化、文化变化和新的制造技术如何影响枪支的拥有和使用？美国人是如何单独和集体管理枪支风险的？最后一章探讨了20世纪50年代至80年代消费主义运动和法律责任对产品设计和营销的影响。它利用已出版的法律文献、消费者联盟和消费品安全委员会的文件，以及各种工程书籍和期刊。在美国历史上，没有关于风险的广泛研究。历史论据在有关风险的社会理论文献中被广泛使用，但这些研究几乎没有关于过去的实际内容。美国历史学家写过关于工作场所安全、汽车、铁路、城市火灾和一些其他主题的文章，但没有人解释这些个别故事是如何整合到一个更大的历史过程中的。这本书将有助于弥合社会理论和历史方法对风险的影响，也将为风险文献增加一个急需的技术研究视角。在历史技术领域，这项研究代表了一种问题驱动的方法，它超越了为了个别技术本身而进行的研究。它还对生产和消费之间的关系以及各种技术行为者的代理问题提出了新的见解。每个人都有过技术风险的经历：车祸，被刀割伤，登上飞机前的恐惧感。因为这本书是关于一系列共同的经历，它可能会吸引更多的读者，他们希望了解自己与技术的互动。对于在座的听众来说，信息是我们目前处理风险的方式是有历史的，是特定人类选择和价值观的产物，而不仅仅是某种模糊的决定论形式。

This is a proposal to support one year of sabbatical research. It is to complete a book about technology and risk in American history. The project uses eight case studies to address the question "how did industrialization change the ways Americans have thought about and dealt with physical risk in their everyday lives?" The PI intends to complete chapters on pre-industrial risk, early 20th-century guns and gun culture, and product design and liability after World War II. Research for five other chapters on lightning rods, railroads, factories, the safety movement, and amusement parks is mostly complete. The project's research methodology involves techniques drawn from accepted practices in the fields of social history, history of technology, material culture studies, and legal history. The work plan calls for separate research questions and source materials for each proposed chapter. The pre-industrial chapter uses colonial newspapers such as the Pennsylvania Gazette, letters and diaries, records of almhouses and hospitals, and other sources to answer questions such as: what kinds of risks did 18th- and early 19th-century Americans confront? How did they manage those risks? What roles did ideas about religion, morality, and personal responsibility play in those choices? The chapter on guns also uses newspapers and magazines, as well as advertising, company records, and business ephemera. Research questions include: how did urbanization, cultural change, and new manufacturing techniques influence the ownership and use of guns? How did Americans manage gun risk, individually and collectively? The final chapter explores the effects of consumerist movements and legal liability on product design and marketing between the 1950s and 1980. It utilizes published legal literature, the papers of the Consumers Union and the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and a variety of engineering books and journals. No broad study of risk in American history exists in print. Historical arguments are widely used in the social theory literature about risk, but these studies contain little actual content about the past. American historians have written about workplace safety, automobiles, railroads, urban fires, and a smattering of other topics, but no one has explained how these individual stories fit together into a larger historical process. This book will help bridge the social theory and history approaches to risk and will also add a much-needed technology studies perspective to the risk literature. In the field of history technology, this study represents a problem-driven approach that transcends studies of individual technologies for their own sake. It also implements new insights about the relationship between production and consumption and the agency of a wide variety of technological actors. Everyone has had experiences with technological risk: a car accident, a cut from a knife, the feeling of fear before stepping onto an airplane. Because this book is about a common set of experiences, it may attract a broader readership which wants to understand their own interactions with technology. For this audience, the message is that our current ways of handling risk have a history and are the product of specific human choices and values, not just some vague form of determinism.