The Illusory Boundary: Environment and Technology in History

Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Converging Themes in the History of Technology and Environmental History

Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Converging Themes in the History of Technology and Environmental History Hugh S. Gorman and Betsy Mendelsohn The interest that historians have shown in how technologies shape human interactions with natural systems has increased significantly over the last several decades. Before about 1980 those interested in technological change generally viewed society’s ability to manipulate and shape environments as important, but they rarely paid much attention to that manipulation or, for that matter, to more subtle interactions between society, technology, and nature. Similarly, historians writing about society’s interactions with and perceptions of nature recognized the power of technology to alter environments and experiences, but few saw any need to examine technological change in any detail. By the 1990s, however, a number of historians were explicitly asking questions about technologies that altered interactions between humans and their environments. In 1998 Je√rey Stine and Joel Tarr examined this trend in their essay ‘‘At the Intersections of Histories: Technology and the Environment ,’’ which appeared in Technology and Culture, the journal of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT).∞ To capture this growing body of historical work, Stine and Tarr examined publications in six categories: textbooks , cities and the environment, public health and occupational health and safety, industry and manufacturing, natural resources, and environmental policy and politics. In their ninety-six footnotes they referenced several hundred publications, some from the 1970s and earlier but most written in the 1980s and 1990s. Historical research at the intersection of technology and the environment has continued to grow since Stine and Tarr published their essay, which is no surprise. With ecological systems throughout the world intimately linked by global markets, managing our interactions with these systems, interactions 266 | Hugh S. Gorman and Betsy Mendelsohn that are often shaped by complex technologies, is more important than ever. And historians, by examining past choices and the consequences of those choices, can help to reveal patterns and connections that might otherwise go unnoticed. Where, though, does this line of research fit relative to the traditional questions asked by historians of technology or environmental historians ? To what extent does this growing body of work suggest a break from those historical traditions? To address these questions, we first place the research summarized by Stine and Tarr within larger historiographic trends associated with the two subfields. Then we highlight scholarship produced since Stine and Tarr’s essay that advances these historiographic trends. And if there is one theme that emerges, it is this: nature and technology—and the way in which we understand the two—have become more and more entangled , blurring boundaries that once seemed so clear. Nature and Environments in the History of Technology Technological change has been a topic of systematic historical study for about a half-century, with a good marker being the founding of SHOT in 1958. By that time scholars studying political and intellectual history recognized the history-shaping role of major technological innovations, but few saw any need to study technological change in any detail. In general, discussions of technological change tended to be brief, sometimes focusing only on who achieved what first. Indeed, those who paid too much attention to technology were often viewed as antiquarians with narrow interests. Even historians of science, who might be assumed to have an interest in technological change, typically did not.≤ They generally framed technology as ‘‘applied science’’ and saw little reason for studying how engineers, in their view, transformed the theories of scientists into machines.≥ The historians who founded SHOT did not have an explicit interest in human interactions with nature and environments. In general, it was not until the 1980s that historians of technology began to explicitly consider how societal goals related to environmental quality, resource use, and ecological integrity could shape the direction in which a technology evolved. Instead, the initial questions motivating this set of scholars revolved around (a) the dynamics of invention and innovation, (b) the theme of autonomous technology , and (c) the relationships between technology and other cultural and societal forces, especially science and economics.∂ Reasons for interest in these questions varied, but they centered on a desire to understand better the process of innovation and the role of technology in industrialization and modernization. In addition, e√orts to build museums that featured tech- Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? | 267 nological history encouraged some early SHOT members to...