Doctoral Dissertation Research: A History of Muscle-Powered Transportation Infrastructure Planning and the Broader Political Economy

该奖项支持技术史上的博士论文研究项目，重点关注肌肉动力交通和交通技术基础设施的政治经济学。该项目包括档案研究和口述历史访谈。历史数据有望阐明社会技术政策和实践。这项研究的结果将通过研讨会和学术会议引起从事科学和技术研究和基础设施研究等不同学科的同事的兴趣，并将纳入大学课程，并通过公开讲座向更广泛的受众介绍。博士论文研究员将花五个月的时间在三个县进行研究，采访当地人并查阅档案。该研究将对所收集的文本、视觉和人种学数据进行三角测量，以揭示有关交通基础设施规划和交通技术更广泛的政治经济学的见解。该项目将通过将行动者网络理论纳入社会政治背景来利用理论见解，以便与批判性地反思技术政治的学术传统进行接触，该传统认为，嵌入人机关系中的技术政治并非跨越时间和空间的普遍性，而是必须在其政治，社会和环境系统中进行检查。通过以这种方式采用行动者网络理论框架，该项目将调查交通技术在社会政治技术系统中的用户和其他行动者之间培养的多层次、多向关系。在这样做的过程中，它通过在更广泛的背景下重新定义参与者和网络来扩展ANT的理论框架。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a doctoral dissertation research project in the history of technology that focuses on muscle-powered transportation and the political economy of transportation technology infrastructure. The project involves archival research and oral history interviews. The historical data promises to illuminate socio-technological policies and practices. The results of this study will be of interest to colleagues working on various disciplines including Science and Technology Studies and Infrastructure Studies through workshops and academic conferences, and they will be incorporated into university courses and presented to broader audiences through public lectures. The doctoral dissertation researcher will spend five months conducting research in three counties interviewing locals and consulting archives. The research will triangulate the textual, visual and ethnographical data collected to bring to light insights concerning transportation infrastructure planning and the broader political economy of transportation technology. The project will use the theoretical insights by incorporating actor-network theory into the socio-political context in order to engage with a scholarly tradition that critically reflects on the politics of technology, which holds that the politics of technology embedded in man-machine relations is not universal across time and space, but must be examined in its political, social, and environmental system. By employing a framework of actor-network theory in this way, the project will investigate the multi-layered, multi-directional relations that transportation technologies foster between users and other actors in the socio-politico-technological system. In so doing, it expands the theoretical framework of ANT by reconceptualizing the actors and the network in a broader context.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.