Technology in World History: Cultures of Constraint and Innovation, Emulation, and Technology Transfers
Introduction: Approaching Technology
The approaches by social scientists and historians to the important theme of cultural constraints on technological innovation and creativity have been varied and highly problematic. Many analyses of innovation focus on its inducement through entirely noncultural, or seemingly acultural, processes (Binswanger & Ruttan, 1978). Here the focus has mostly been on economically induced technological innovation, normally operating through a change in relative-factor prices or demand. Thus, historians have discovered stasis in early Chinese technologies due to a rising man/ land ratio (Chao, 1986). So also Ahmad's induced-innovation hypothesis suggests that a decline in wages relative to land prices, say, would encourage [End Page 108] technical progress that was biased in land-saving and labor-using directions through the multitudinous agency of profit-seeking individuals operating with good information in competitive market conditions, and much effort has gone into econometric testing of such theorizing (Ahmad, 1966). Historians of technology frequently come across such relations, although often extended to incorporate bias toward or away from certain priced materials or skills components—persistent technicians will spend much ingenuity in substituting alloys or other metals or materials for copper or zinc that is rising in price. The need to exploit a potential asset at low cost might induce a search for new techniques, as in the cyanide process for gold extraction from tailings in the late nineteenth century (Inkster & Todd, 1988). But such inducements seem to refer principally to switches within an existing technological or production system. In historical situations where such markets, agency, and information may not be assumed away, and where much of the analytical problem lies with the manner in which knowledge develops and is brought to bear on production in some places and times (and not in other places or times), such analyses become less interesting and useful. Markets are themselves institutions with real cultural histories, and where markets are weak, then a variety of cultural factors may intrude on the manner in which sensible private or public agents take up or entirely eschew technological innovation.
Cultural factors also loom the larger when we, as working historians, are forced to consider the whole range of Schumpeterian-style innovation, beyond mere product or machine/process innovations. This is partly because cultures might retard technological innovation though at the same time may induce innovations in organizations, markets, and other aspects of technological change in the wider, Schumpeterian sense. We must therefore be prepared to at least consider the historical force of cultures of innovation in areas other than the strictly technological, for innovations in institutions (for instance), may have as great an impact on economic growth and productivity as any shiny new machine (North, 2005).
Culture and All That
Famously, Raymond Williams warned that the term "culture" is among the most "complicated words in the English language" (Williams, 1983, p. 88). It seems that such scare quotes remain appropriate. But it seems as apparent, that if we are to examine the relations between culture and technological change, then we need some limiting and working definition of the more doubtful of the two key terms. This is because any attempt at [End Page 109] persuading historians of the material world that physical outcomes might be decisively and measurably determined by cultural elements peculiar to particular civilizations, nations, institutions, or sites will encounter intellectual resistance. If such persuasions utilize terms that are clearly superinclusive, then they are that much more easily faulted. If we are not to confuse past culture with past life itself, then we must risk some charges of reductionism in favor of the greater certainty of a more outright dismissal.
Much of the observed behavior that is attributed to such terms as "values," "attitudes," and "culture" is historically channelled and perceived through the workings of specific institutions. Although the field is a very large one, we might summarize...
