Technology and Risk in Industrializing America, 1750-1980

这是一个支持一年休假研究的提案。这是为了完成一本关于美国历史上的技术和风险的书。该项目使用八个案例研究来解决“工业化如何改变美国人在日常生活中思考和处理身体风险的方式？”PI打算完成关于工业化前风险、20世纪早期枪支和枪支文化以及二战后产品设计和责任的章节。另外五章关于避雷针、铁路、工厂、安全运动和游乐园的研究基本完成。该项目的研究方法包括从社会历史、技术史、物质文化研究和法律史等领域的公认实践中汲取的技术。工作计划要求为每一拟议的章节提出单独的研究问题和原始材料。工业革命前的一章使用了殖民时期的报纸，如《宾夕法尼亚公报》、信件和日记、济贫院和医院的记录，以及其他来源来回答以下问题：18世纪和19世纪初的美国人面临什么样的风险？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？关于枪支的那一章还使用了报纸和杂志，以及广告、公司记录和商业昙花一现。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所有权和使用？美国人是如何管理枪支风险的，无论是个人还是集体？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，消费者联盟和消费者产品安全委员会的论文，以及各种工程书籍和期刊。对美国历史上的风险没有广泛的研究。关于风险的社会理论文献中广泛使用历史论点，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、城市火灾和其他一些主题的文章，但没有人解释过这些单独的故事是如何融入一个更大的历史进程的。这本书将有助于桥的社会理论和历史方法的风险，也将增加一个急需的技术研究视角的风险文献。在历史技术领域，这项研究代表了一种问题驱动的方法，超越了对个别技术本身的研究。它还实现了关于生产和消费之间的关系以及各种各样的技术行动者的代理的新见解。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。因为这本书是关于一组共同的经验，它可能会吸引更多的读者，他们想要了解自己与技术的互动。对这些听众来说，它传递的信息是，我们目前处理风险的方式有一段历史，是特定人类选择和价值观的产物，而不仅仅是某种模糊形式的决定论。

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.