Technological Symmetry and Hybrid Environments at the Ashio and Anaconda Copper Mines

Ashio 和 Anaconda 铜矿的技术对称性和混合环境

• 批准号: 0646644
• 负责人: Brett Walker
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Montana State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2007
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2007-09-01 至 2011-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0646644&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Technological; Symmetry; Hybrid; Environments; Ashio

IntroductionIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the two countries that would soon emerge as the most dynamic economies in the world -- Japan and the United States -- erected the edifices of their increasingly science and technology driven societies on the backs of two remote copper mines: the Ashio in Tochigi Prefecture and the Anaconda in Montana. Although located in very different cultural, social, and political environments, the Ashio and Anaconda copper mines followed strikingly similar paths of technological growth and development. Both mines epitomized the high-modernist engineering ethos of legibility, rationalization, and efficiency. The mines also resulted in devastating environmental damages that were closely associated with changing technologies. Vast amounts of previously isolated heavy metals and other potential toxins were brought to the surface where they caused severe problems for farmers, ranchers, and everyday citizens, and difficult challenges for engineers trying to control these complex systems.Intellectual MeritThe project's overarching research goal is to compare the different ways Japanese and Americans reacted to the arrival of modern technological landscapes. Both Japanese silkworm farmers and Montana cattle ranchers witnessed the environmental effects of copper smelting through changes in their animals and crops, organisms that might be seen as bio-indicators in a complex organic machine. How did the role of these bio-indicators differ between an Asian Buddhist society and a Western Christian one? To what degree did farmers and miners, both engaged in engineering the environment, create and deploy forms of knowledge to justify their economic activities? What do these questions say about the future of global mining? The Ashio and Anaconda sites offer a rare opportunity for a truly international and cross-cultural research project to answer these questions. The Investigators will examine the culturally and socially determined constructions of and reactions to engineered spaces, industrial technology, and their environmental and social fallout.Broader ImpactsThe Investigators will draw on innovative methodological approaches influenced by recent histories of technology and the environment. These include the concept of "enviro-technical" hybridization, which breaks down traditional divisions between human and natural systems. In this light, the Investigators will study silkworms and cattle as biologically engineered indicators in complex ecosystems, analyze mining industries as creators of "natural" environments, and view farmers as engineers of the landscape. Further, the Investigators propose to analyze the Japanese and Montana mines in terms of new geographical concepts of verticality that closely link subsurface and surface environments in a contiguous industrial metabolism. To these ends, part of this project will be to create a web-based industrial archaeological catalog of both sites. This project will generate innovative insights into global environmental, technological, and cultural change that will be of interest to both historians and policy makers. Results of the project will be disseminated in several forms: a co-authored monograph on the subject and a website that includes industrial archaeology and maps. The project will also provide funds to three graduate students to support research and training.

简介 在 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初，日本和美国这两个即将成为世界上最具活力的经济体的国家，在两个偏远的铜矿（栃木县的足生矿和蒙大拿州的阿纳康达矿）的背上，建立了日益由科技驱动的社会大厦。尽管位于截然不同的文化、社会和政治环境中，足尾铜矿和阿纳康达铜矿却遵循着惊人相似的技术增长和发展道路。两个矿山都体现了易读性、合理性和效率的高度现代主义工程精神。这些地雷还造成了毁灭性的环境破坏，这与不断变化的技术密切相关。大量以前分离的重金属和其他潜在毒素被带到地表，给农民、牧场主和普通公民带来了严重的问题，也给试图控制这些复杂系统的工程师带来了艰巨的挑战。智力价值该项目的总体研究目标是比较日本和美国人对现代技术景观到来的不同反应方式。日本蚕农和蒙大拿州牧场主都通过动物和农作物的变化见证了铜冶炼对环境的影响，这些有机体可能被视为复杂有机机器中的生物指标。这些生物指标的作用在亚洲佛教社会和西方基督教社会之间有何不同？从事环境工程的农民和矿工在多大程度上创造并运用了知识形式来证明其经济活动的合理性？这些问题对全球矿业的未来有何启示？ Ashio 和 Anaconda 遗址为真正的国际和跨文化研究项目提供了一个难得的机会来回答这些问题。调查人员将研究工程空间、工业技术及其环境和社会影响的文化和社会决定的构造和反应。更广泛的影响调查人员将利用受近期技术和环境历史影响的创新方法。其中包括“环境技术”杂交的概念，它打破了人类与自然系统之间的传统划分。有鉴于此，研究人员将把蚕和牛作为复杂生态系统中的生物工程指标来研究，将采矿业作为“自然”环境的创造者进行分析，并将农民视为景观的工程师。此外，研究人员建议根据垂直性的新地理概念来分析日本和蒙大拿州的矿山，垂直性将连续的工业新陈代谢中的地下和地表环境紧密联系起来。为此，该项目的一部分将是为这两个地点创建一个基于网络的工业考古目录。该项目将对全球环境、技术和文化变革产生创新见解，这将引起历史学家和政策制定者的兴趣。该项目的成果将以多种形式传播：关于该主题的共同撰写的专着以及包含工业考古学和地图的网站。该项目还将为三名研究生提供资金，以支持研究和培训。