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.
Author(s): Mikael Hård
Series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 299
City: Cham
Preface
Acknowledgments
Book Abstract
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Introduction: Honing Local Techniques in a Globalized World
Coexistence and Culture
Reclaiming the Term Technology
Protagonists and Sources
Part I: Nineteenth-Century Ways of Life
Chapter 2: Building Missionary Stations in Southeast Asia: Nias Islanders Deploy Adzes
Pioneers and “Martyrs”
Building Styles Intersect
Preparing the Site, Beginning to Build
Working Together
Information Exchange
Appropriating Local Foods
Chapter 3: Communicating and Trading in West Africa: Talking Drums and Pack Animals
Talking Drums as a “Technology”
The Talking Drum as Tradition
The Drum as Artifact
Large Technological Systems in Colonized Spaces
Transportation Networks in West Africa
Trade and Commerce
Manufacturing Textiles, Searching for Gold
Cultivating the Land
The Technological Landscape, Revisited
Chapter 4: Withstanding Globalization in Northern India: Farmers Make Sugar for Local Consumption
A Familiar History of Sugar
An Alternative History of Sugar
The Improvement Discourse
Piecemeal Change
Factory Sugar
Intermediate Technology
Part II: Twentieth-Century Improvisations
Chapter 5: Accessing Electricity in East Africa: Dar es Salaam Dwellers Pursue Power
Who Gets Electricity?
When Electricity Signaled Power
Power Disputes: The Electricity Department Versus Customers
Electricity Provision: To Privatize or Keep Public
Colonies and the Myth of “Development”
Access to Electricity as an “Amenity”
Chapter 6: Creating “Creole” Cuisine in Latin America: Home Cooks Reinvent Batánes
The Making of “Creole” Traditions
Eclectic Cooking
National or Criollo Desserts
The Modern Kitchen
Promoting Modern Cooking
Latin America and the Multicultural Kitchen
Part III: Postwar Innovations
Chapter 7: Earning a Living in Urban Africa: Maintaining the “Native Beer” Economy
The Stereotype of the “Slum”
Redefining the “Slum”
Ndururu as a Flexible Settlement
Making and Selling Pombe and Chang’aa
Another Contested Commodity: Meat
The Shift from Cooperative to Company Status
The Paradox of the “Uncontrolled Settlement”
“Self-help” and “Site-and-Services”
The Paradox of the “Transitional Urban Sector”
From Informal to Flexible Settlements
Chapter 8: Confronting Menstruation in East Asia: Koreans Create Self-made Solutions
Industrialization and the Taboo of Menstruation
A US-Style Consumer Culture in South Korea?
Techniques for Self-made Sanitary Pads
Mass-Produced Pads: A Hard Sell
Freedom to Consume
Resisting “The American Empire”
Chapter 9: Doing It Yourself in Central Asia: Uzbeks Build Adobe Houses
State Power and Beyond
The Persistence of the Neighborhood Community
Construction Materials and Climate in Central Asia
Between Hashar and Subbotnik
Repair and Maintenance
Doing It Together: Cooperation and Collectivity
Making the Comfortable Home
The “Private Initiative” for Home Improvement
Chapter 10: Conclusion: Challenging Globalizing Technologies
Symmetry and Heterogeneity
Globalization Revisited
Bibliography
Archives
Interviews
Sources and Literature
Index
