Microhistories Of Technology

In this open access book, Mikael Hård tells a story of how people around the world challenged the production techniques and products brought by globalization. Retaining their autonomy and freedom, creative individuals selectively adopted or rejected modern gadgets, tools, and machines. In standard historical narratives, globalization is portrayed as an unstoppable force that flattens all obstacles in its path. Modern technology is also seen as inexorable: in the nineteenth century, steamships, telegraph lines, and Gatling guns are said to have paved the way for colonialism and other forms of dominating people and societies. Later, shipping containers and computer networks purportedly pulled the planet deeper into a maelstrom of capitalism. Hård discusses instances that push back against these narratives. For example, in Soviet times, inhabitants of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, preferred to remain in—and expand—their own mud-brick houses rather than move into prefabricated, concrete residential buildings. Similarly, nineteenth-century Sumatran carpenters ignored the saws brought to them by missionaries—and chose to chop down trees with their arch-bladed adzes. And people in colonial India successfully competed with capitalist-run Caribbean sugar plantations, continuing to produce their own muscovado and sell it to local consumers. This book invites readers to view the history of technology and material culture through the lens of diversity. Based on research funded by the European Research Council and conducted in the Global South, Microhistories of Technology: Making the World shows that the spread of modern technologies did not erase artisanal production methods and traditional tools.

Writing studies has been dominated throughout its history by grand narratives of the discipline, but in this volume Bruce McComiskey begins to explore microhistory as a way to understand, enrich, and complicate how the field relates to its past. Microhistory investigates the dialectical interaction of social history and cultural history, enabling historians to examine uncommon sites, objects, and agents of historical significance overlooked by social history and restricted to local effects by cultural history. This approach to historical scholarship is ideally suited for exploring the complexities of a discipline like composition. Through an introduction and eleven chapters, McComiskey and his contributors—including major figures in the historical research of writing studies, such as Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Kelly Ritter, and Neal Lerner—develop focused narratives of particular significant moments or themes in disciplinary history. They introduce microhistorical methodologies and illustrate their application and value for composition historians, contributing to the complexity and adding momentum to the emerging trend within writing studies toward a richer reading of the field’s past and future. Scholars and historians of both composition and rhetoric will appreciate the fresh perspectives on institutional and disciplinary histories and larger issues of rhetorical agency and engagement enacted in writing classrooms that are found in Microhistories of Composition. Other contributors include Cheryl E. Ball, Suzanne Bordelon, Jacob Craig, Matt Davis, Douglas Eyman, Brian Gogan, David Gold, Christine Martorana, Bruce McComiskey, Josh Mehler, Annie S. Mendenhall, Kendra Mitchell, Antony N. Ricks, David Stock, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Bret Zawilski, and James T. Zebroski.

History of technology, it is the history of how humans developed various tools and techniques. It is strongly related with history of humanity since humans are invented almost every invention let it be a tool, technology or foundation of some natural resources. Before continuing to history of technology, it is important to understand what technology actually is. Technology refers to set of multiple methods in order t perform a particular task. It can be as simple as a language or stone tool and also as complex as genetic engineering and information technology emerging since late 80s. Technology enables to acquire new knowledge that is applied to emerge and create new things. In one way or other, it also helps in many scientific endeavors helped mankind to reach / travel to places that were considered impossible to reach once. It also involves the study of nature with superb details which could be never possible without the use of multiple scientific instruments.

The West German novel, radio play, and television series, Through the Night (Am grünen Strand der Spree, 1955-1960), which depicts the mass shootings of Jews in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II, has been gradually regaining popularity in recent years. Originally circulated in post-war West Germany, the cultural memories of the holocaust embedded within this multi-medium construction present different forms of historical conceptualization. Using numerous archival sources, Microhistories of Memory brings forward three comprehensive case studies on the impact, actors, and materiality of accounts surrounding questions of circulation of cultural memory, audience reception, production, and popularity of Through the Night in its different mediums since its first appearance.

"Microhistory" is defined as "a study or account of the history of a very specific subject." Books classified as "microhistory" have explored the origins and effects of everything from cod to the pencil, bananas to zero. This book similarly samples the stories behind the ideas and inventions that made the modern world. Rather than focus an entire book on one topic, however, MicroHistory ranges widely from the secret history of bacon to the invention of plastic, from soap to sunglasses, time zones to refrigerators. These are the stories of how the things we take for granted came to be.Many of the inventors and creators in these pages will be familiar names-Galileo, Fahrenheit, Nobel, Fulton, Otis-although you may not know the twists and turns behind their discoveries. None of these famous people worked in a vacuum, moreover, and you will see how many lesser-known steps preceded their leaps forward. Such breakthroughs also have less-celebrated ripple effects, and the book explores how innovations large and small affected our culture and daily lives.Other "microhistories" told in these pages focus on names you may never have heard of-innovators ignored by "macrohistory," or lost to the sweep of time: the French traitor who gave us neon signs, the ancient librarian who popularized punctuation, the former office boy who linked America and Europe by cable, the son of slaves who developed the traffic light, the inventor of the "devil's rope" that tamed the West. Still other stories have no single hero or heroine, but rather reflect the slow and often jittery march of progress that led to modern weddings, swimming pools, underwear, fire extinguishers and so much else we see or use every day.Mistakes were made along the way. Predictions about the future often proved humorously awry. Early prisons sought penance at the expense of rehabilitation. Explosives and rifles continue to take a human toll. Soft drinks and cigarettes, variously promoted as boons to health, turned out to be banes. And despite the countless claims that apocalypse was just around the corner, we're still here.Exploring these histories up close, however, gives us the chance to learn from the pitfalls of progress. Seeing the breakthroughs that genuinely moved humanity forward, whether by famous inventors or unknown ancients, can shed light on how to better create our own futures. The result might be putting a human on Mars or just better bacon, new vaccines or simply toilets that don't run.Ultimately, the "micro" of history is in the eye of the beholder. If you want to build a skyscraper, an elevator turns out to be pretty important. If you just want to catch a fish, however, a better rod and reel seems mighty important, too. Even this book would not exist without some of the inventions chronicled here-from the QWERTY keyboard on which it was typed to the modern successor to mail-order catalogs on which you ordered it.Thinking small, it turns out, can sometimes lead to big things. Read on to see how.

This is the story of Margarida de Portu, a medieval French woman accused of poisoning her husband to death. Through the depositions and accusations made in court, the reader learns not only about Margarida herself, but also about medieval women, female agency, kin networks, solidarity, sex, sickness, medicine, and law. Unlike most histories, this compelling book does not remove the author from the analysis. Rather, it lays bare the working method of the historian, helping the reader learn how historians "do" history and discover the rewards and pitfalls of working with primary sources. The book opens with a chapter on microhistory as a genre, explaining its strengths, weaknesses, and inherent risks. It then tells the narrative of Margarida's criminal trial, including chapters on the civil suits, appeal, and Margarida's eventual fate. A map of late medieval Manosque is provided, as well as an example of a court notary's rough copy, a notarial act, a sample folio of a criminal inquest record. A timeline of Margarida?s life, list of characters, and two family trees provide useful information on key people in the story.

From quantum physics and genetics to psychology and the social sciences, from the development of atomic weapons to the growing mass media of film and radio, the early 20th century was a period of intense scientific and technological change. Modernism, Science, and Technology surveys the scientific contexts of writers from H.G. Wells and Gertrude Stein to James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and the ways in modernist writers responded to these paradigm shifts. Introducing key concepts from science studies and their implications for the study of modernist literature, the book includes chapters covering the physical sciences, mathematics, life sciences, social sciences and 'pseudosciences'. Including a timeline of key developments and guides to further reading, this is an essential guide to students and researchers studying the topic at all levels.