Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime

Engineers and the Making of the Francoist Regime
Author: Lino Camprubi
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2014-05-02
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0262323230

How engineers and agricultural scientists became key actors in Franco's regime and Spain's forced modernization. In this book, Lino Camprubí argues that science and technology were at the very center of the building of Franco's Spain. Previous histories of early Francoist science and technology have described scientists and engineers as working “under” Francoism, subject to censorship and bound by politically mandated research agendas. Camprubí offers a different perspective, considering instead scientists' and engineers' active roles in producing those political mandates. Many scientists and engineers had been exiled, imprisoned, or executed by the regime. Camprubí argues that those who remained made concrete the mission of “redemption” that Franco had invented for himself. This gave them the opportunity to become key actors—and mid-level decision makers—within the regime. Camprubí describes a series of projects across Spain undertaken by the civil engineers and agricultural scientists who placed themselves at the center of their country's forced modernization. These include a coal silo, built in 1953, viewed as an embodiment of Spain's industrialized landscape; links between laboratories, architects, and the national Catholic church (and between technology and authoritarian control); vertically organized rice production and research on genetics; river management and the contested meanings of self-sufficiency; and the circulation of construction standards by mobile laboratories as an engine for European integration. Separately, each chapter offers a fascinating microhistory that illustrates the coevolution of Francoist science, technology, and politics. Taken together, they reveal networks of people, institutions, knowledge, artifacts, and technological systems woven together to form a new state.

The Politics of Chemistry

The Politics of Chemistry
Author: Agustí Nieto-Galan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 311
Release: 2019-08-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108482430

Agust Nieto-Galan argues that chemistry in the twentieth century was deeply and profoundly political. Far from existing in a distinct public sphere, chemical knowledge was applied in ways that created strong links with industrial and military projects, and national rivalries and international endeavours, that materially shaped the living conditions of millions of citizens. It is within this framework that Nieto-Galan analyses how Spanish chemists became powerful ideological agents in different political contexts, from liberal to dictatorial regimes, throughout the century. He unveils chemists' position of power in Spain, their place in international scientific networks, and their engagement in fierce ideological battles in an age of extremes. Shared discourses between chemistry and liberalism, war, totalitarianism, religion, and diplomacy, he argues, led to advancements in both fields.

Engineering Trouble: US–Chinese Experiences of Professional Discontent, 1905–1945

Engineering Trouble: US–Chinese Experiences of Professional Discontent, 1905–1945
Author: Thorben Pelzer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2023-07-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004549552

In the early twentieth century, the first large batch of Chinese civil engineers had graduated from the USA, and together with their American senior colleagues returned to China. They were enthusiastic about reconstructing the young republic by building new railways, highways, and canals, but what the engineers experienced in China, including mismanaged railways, useless highways, and silted canals, did not always meet their expectations and ideals. In this book, Thorben Pelzer makes the stories of these Chinese and American engineers come to life through exploring previously unpublished letters, rare images, maps, and a rich biographical dataset. He argues that the experiences of these engineers include a myriad of contradictions, disillusionment, and discontent, keeping the engineering profession in a constant flux of searching for its meaning and its place in Republican China.

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering

The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering
Author: Diane P. Michelfelder
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 793
Release: 2020-12-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351996568

Engineering has always been a part of human life but has only recently become the subject matter of systematic philosophical inquiry. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering presents the state-of-the-art of this field and lays a foundation for shaping future conversations within it. With a broad scholarly scope and 55 chapters contributed by both established experts and fresh voices in the field, the Handbook provides valuable insights into this dynamic and fast-growing field. The volume focuses on central issues and debates, established themes, and new developments in: Foundational perspectives Engineering reasoning Ontology Engineering design processes Engineering activities and methods Values in engineering Responsibilities in engineering practice Reimagining engineering The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering will be of value for both students and active researchers in philosophy of engineering and in cognate fields (philosophy of technology, philosophy of design). It is also intended for engineers working both inside and outside of academia who would like to gain a more fundamental understanding of their particular professional field. The increasing development of new technologies, such as autonomous vehicles, and new interdisciplinary fields, such as human-computer interaction, calls not only for philosophical inquiry but also for engineers and philosophers to work in collaboration with one another. At the same time, the demands on engineers to respond to the challenges of world health, climate change, poverty, and other so-called "wicked problems" have also been on the rise. These factors, together with the fact that a host of questions concerning the processes by which technologies are developed have arisen, make the current Handbook a timely and valuable publication.

Science, Culture and National Identity in Francoist Spain, 1939–1959

Science, Culture and National Identity in Francoist Spain, 1939–1959
Author: Marició Janué i Miret
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 431
Release: 2021-04-24
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030586464

This book examines the role that science and culture held as instruments of nationalization policies during the first phase of the Franco regime in Spain. It considers the reciprocal relationship between political legitimacy and developments in science and culture, and explores the ‘nationalization’ efforts in Spain in the 1940s and 1950s, via the complex process of transmitting narratives of national identity, through ideas, representations and homogenizing practices. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the volume features insights into how scientific and cultural language and symbols were used to formulate national identity, through institutions, resource distribution and specific national policies. Split into five parts, the collection considers policies in the Francoist ‘New State’, the role of women in these debates, and perspectives on the nationalization and internationalization efforts that made use of scientific and cultural spheres. Chapters also feature insights into cinema, literature, cultural diplomacy, mathematics and technology in debates on Catalonia, the Nuclear Energy Board, the Spanish National Research Council, and how scientific tools in Spain in this era fed into wider geopolitics with America and onto the UNESCO stage.

A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies

A Companion to Spanish Environmental Cultural Studies
Author: Luis I. Prádanos
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2023-01-17
Genre:
ISBN: 1855663694

An exploration of how writers, artists, and filmmakers expose the costs and contest the assumptions of the Capitalocene era that guides readers through the rapidly developing field of Spanish environmental cultural studies. From the scars left by Franco's dams and mines to the toxic waste dumped in Equatorial Guinea, from the cruelty of the modern pork industry to the ravages of mass tourism in the Balearic Islands, this book delves into the power relations, material practices and social imaginaries underpinning the global economic system to uncover its unaffordable human and non-human costs. Guiding the reader through the rapidly emerging field of Spanish environmental cultural studies, with chapters on such topics as extractivism, animal studies, food studies, ecofeminism, decoloniality, critical race studies, tourism, and waste studies, an international team of US and European scholars show how Spanish writers, artists, and filmmakers have illuminated and contested the growth-oriented and neo-colonialist assumptions of the current Capitalocene era. Focussed on Spain, the volume also provides models for exploring the socioecological implications of cultural manifestations in other parts of the world.

Engineering Rules

Engineering Rules
Author: JoAnne Yates
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 439
Release: 2021-03-30
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1421440032

The first global history of voluntary consensus standard setting. Finalist, Hagley Prize in Business History, The Hagley Museum and Library / The Business History Conference Private, voluntary standards shape almost everything we use, from screw threads to shipping containers to e-readers. They have been critical to every major change in the world economy for more than a century, including the rise of global manufacturing and the ubiquity of the internet. In Engineering Rules, JoAnne Yates and Craig N. Murphy trace the standard-setting system's evolution through time, revealing a process with an astonishingly pervasive, if rarely noticed, impact on all of our lives. This type of standard setting was established in the 1880s, when engineers aimed to prove their status as professionals by creating useful standards that would be widely adopted by manufacturers while satisfying corporate customers. Yates and Murphy explain how these engineers' processes provided a timely way to set desirable standards that would have taken much longer to emerge from the market and that governments were rarely willing to set. By the 1920s, the standardizers began to think of themselves as critical to global prosperity and world peace. After World War II, standardizers transcended Cold War divisions to create standards that made the global economy possible. Finally, Yates and Murphy reveal how, since 1990, a new generation of standardizers has focused on supporting the internet and web while applying the same standard-setting process to regulate the potential social and environmental harms of the increasingly global economy. Drawing on archival materials from three continents, Yates and Murphy describe the positive ideals that sparked the standardization movement, the ways its leaders tried to realize those ideals, and the challenges the movement faces today. Engineering Rules is a riveting global history of the people, processes, and organizations that created and maintain this nearly invisible infrastructure of today's economy, which is just as important as the state or the global market.

Dam Internationalism

Dam Internationalism
Author: Vincent Lagendijk
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2024-07-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1350367893

During the 20th century dam-building became a truly global endeavour. Built around the world, they generated networks of actors, institutions and companies embedded in globally circulating technological knowledge and discourses of modernization and development. This volume takes a global approach to the history of dams, exploring the complex power relations and internationalist entanglements that shaped them. Shedding new light on the globalization of technology and international power struggles that defined the 20th century, Dam Internationalism shows that dams are artefacts in their own right and have created new and revisionist histories that urge us to rethink classic narratives. From international cooperation, to the importance of the Cold War and the capitalist/socialist divide, the success of western technology, the prominence of the United States, the alleged impotence of people affected by dams, and the uniformity of infrastructure. Each chapter showcases a different case study from Europe, Asia, Africa, North and South America to show that dams enabled marginalized countries and actors to articulate themselves and pursue their own political and socio-economic goals in a century dominated by the Global North.

Watering the Revolution

Watering the Revolution
Author: Mikael D. Wolfe
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2017-06-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822373068

In Watering the Revolution Mikael D. Wolfe transforms our understanding of Mexican agrarian reform through an environmental and technological history of water management in the emblematic Laguna region. Drawing on extensive archival research in Mexico and the United States, Wolfe shows how during the long Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) engineers’ distribution of water paradoxically undermined land distribution. In so doing, he highlights the intrinsic tension engineers faced between the urgent need for water conservation and the imperative for development during the contentious modernization of the Laguna's existing flood irrigation method into one regulated by high dams, concrete-lined canals, and motorized groundwater pumps. This tension generally resolved in favor of development, which unintentionally diminished and contaminated the water supply while deepening existing rural social inequalities by dividing people into water haves and have-nots, regardless of their access to land. By uncovering the varied motivations behind the Mexican government’s decision to use invasive and damaging technologies despite knowing they were ecologically unsustainable, Wolfe tells a cautionary tale of the long-term consequences of short-sighted development policies.