Les techniques et la globalization au XXe siècle [Technology and globalization in the twentieth-century] ed. by Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Larissa Zakharova (review)

Les techniques et la globalization au XX^e siècle, consisting of fifteen research papers first given at a 2012 colloquium in Paris and supplemented by six commentaries, provides new perspectives on globalization, an important and challenging topic. The research papers, roughly divided between the periods before and after World War II, are tightly focused on their specific cases. They cover a diverse range of topics, from the role of NGO's in restructuring leather working artisans in Cameroon, to the production of steel in Meiji Japan. The editors have organized the volume so that the commentaries, however, are kaleidoscopic, linking the research papers to multiple broader themes and historiographies. (The authors could have done more of this themselves in a more focused way.)

The editors note several distinctive ideas in this collection: looking at globalization as a mode of study rather than a process, looking at the transfer of technologies, looking at the diversity of these global connections, and combining both the local and the global. In this way, it makes a good pairing with John Krige's edited volume How Knowledge Moves (University of Chicago Press, 2019).

Four articles address the transmission of technologies to the Soviet state during the interwar period, covering the development of tungsten technology (especially for lighting), talking movies, telephone switching, and aviation technologies. The methods for transfer ranged from industrial espionage (tungsten) and formal agreements with Western corporations (telephone exchanges) to plant visits in the United States (aviation). The essays show links between a variety of Western nations and the Soviet Union at multiple levels (state, corporate, individual) and consistent Soviet ambivalence due to the costs of foreign purchases or changes in government policies.

Another broad topic is biotechnologies. In one of the most fascinating pieces in the collection, Lucia Candelise shows the interplay of individuals, within a larger national and international context, in the transfer of "Chinese" acupuncture to France. She describes the key role of three figures in the establishment of Chinese acupuncture in France: a French diplomat with no medical training whose knowledge of acupuncture came through a Japanese physician in France, a French physician who received his exposure to acupuncture during his time in Vietnam, and a Vietnamese physician who learned acupuncture through Vietnamese texts he read in France. It is a dramatic reminder of how often the movement of technology is mediated by a variety of people and contexts, and the suspicions that should meet the ascriptions of a national identity to any technology.

A final section looks at global technical infrastructure, ranging from systems of patenting, to NGOs, to the United Nations and its affiliated organizations. In a piece of remarkable relevance, Ana Aranzazu details the development of the World Health's Organization (WHO) network of flu surveillance. She shows how, given China's position as an important entry point of previous flu outbreaks, China was brought into the WHO's flu surveillance network in 1978. However flu experts in both the WHO and the United States' Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were unsatisfied with the level of information received from China. The WHO, with the CDC often taking an informal leadership role, offered funding and technical assistance to the Chinese authorities, with some of the funding coming from pharmaceutical companies who stood to benefit from improved vaccines. While this arrangement improved vaccines available in the United States, China and other countries in the global South that lacked adequate public health systems and considered viral illness less important than other types, did not benefit from this surveillance.

As a non-native French speaker reading this collection, I was particularly attuned to the role of translation. Throughout the essays, competence in a foreign language (or lack thereof) plays a central role in the movement of a technology. It is...