A vast synthesis restores the diversity and complexity of technical activities and the meaning they take on in contemporary society.
Restore the diversity and complexity of technical activities, as well as the meaning attributed to them in society in contemporary times: such is the ambitious objective of theGlobal history of techniques coordinated by Guillaume Carnino, Liliane Hilaire-Pérez and Jérôme Lamy. To do this, the coordinators mobilized around fifty authors thanks to whom the work undertakes a “ world tour of techniques », considers the developments of major technical fields over nearly two centuries, and questions some major questions transversal to the fields and geographical areas. However, it is important to place this volume within an even broader collective work.
An editorial company witnessing the vitality of research
For around twenty years, the history of technology has experienced, in France, a certain dynamism, measurable by the growth of studies and the diversification of points of view, as well as the publication of a series of historiographical syntheses and reference works in which this is part. Global history of techniques. Collective works follow one another which place techniques at the heart of historical developments on a world scale. The heterogeneity of practices and cultures, the territoriality of knowledge and collective representations, as well as the phenomena of circulation and hybridization are at the heart of the reflections presented in these volumes. The problem of globalization as well as the contributions and limits of global, transnational and connected approaches are also directly addressed by researchers.
The whole thus constituted stands out from previous editorial undertakings, notably in formal and material aspects. Unlike theGeneral history of techniques coordinated by Maurice Daumas for example, we are now dealing with (at least) five collective works published by five different publishers. Three are around 350 pages while the other two volumes, dedicated to the history of techniques on a world scale in the modern and then contemporary era, span 608 and 872 pages respectively. In a very material way, a certain heterogeneity is imposed on readers.
The number and diversity of authors involved in this long-term adventure reinforce this dimension which echoes the scientific bias of the coordinators. Indeed, if the history of techniques is treated on a world scale, the project is opposed to large generalizing and simplifying frescoes, as well as to diffusionist readings. On the contrary, the capacity of individuals and social groups to produce, transmit, appropriate, transform, contest or even ignore techniques in varied and always situated territorial spaces is highlighted. In this work, the first part is crucial in this regard. It is developed after an erudite and vigorous introduction which specifies, in particular, a terminological choice which also sheds light on the entire project.
The choice of words
Against the English calque technologythe coordinators of the work invite to “ maintain and even develop the use of the word technical, to designate activities and know-how with or without tools, since the relationship to industrial sciences is not at the heart of the subject » (p. 13). It involves engaging in the study of a “ coupling » (p. 13) between embodied knowledge and tools, and which goes far beyond the attention paid to the applications of modern science or to “ techno-scientific hybrids » (p. 12). The expansion to non-Western areas but also, and above all, to the meaning attributed to techniques in non-Western societies, is thus due to this terminological choice. Clarifying the meaning given to the technique also helps to clarify what we mean by “ technology » (p. 563-587), an effort to which several researchers from the collective had already contributed.
The terminological requirement is also expressed in the contributions, and extends into the reflections on the categories and standards to which several authors invite (spatial standards which have been used to map different regions of the world, analytical language and concepts, local specificities which are reflected in the use of vernacular terms, articulations between technique and temporality). This requirement echoes, on a completely different level, the developments devoted to certain notions, such as those of industrial culture (p. 476-480) or intellectual property (p. 627). In this regard, the contributions of cultural history and intellectual history to the history of technology appear clearly.
THE transformations of the world on a global scale of the contemporary era are at the heart of “ cross-cutting issues » of the third part thanks to chapters which focus on the internationalization of Taylorism (Patrick Fridenson), the role of international organizations such as the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (Céline Fellag Ariouet, p. 643-661) or the study of the intertwined dynamics of technological development and pollution which involves the study of the development of industrial production (Soraya Boudia and Nathalie Jas, p. 811-824). The first two parts also contribute to the understanding of these dynamics and major transformations of the world. For example, the proposed synthesis of “ developmental policies » carried out in the Maghreb countries in the 1970s by Yamina Bettahar (p. 81-99) directly sheds light on the history of the colonization and decolonization processes. Another example, the question of the cultural homogenization of modernity is addressed through the study of the electrification of information and communication techniques by Vincent Kuitenbrouwer (p. 459-474).
The history of technology and other human and social sciences
As a whole, the volume reflects the relationships that the history of technology maintains with other human and social sciences thanks to the historiographic dimension of the different contributions. Some authors deliberately approached the synthesis exercise required of them in the form of a historiographical analysis. Through their analyses, we perceive the extent to which the history of technology dialogues with economics, anthropology, sociology, women’s history and even the history of medicine.
Although disciplinary exchanges and crossings have been underway for a long time, the relative positions of the disciplines are nevertheless evolving. Thus, the history of techniques has long been subordinated to economic history and its periodizations or conceptualizations, but today it appears autonomous with regard to it… while benefiting from the approaches and questions that are developed at the intersection of economic history and management sciences. Readers will thus find, particularly in the second part of the book, case studies which borrow from the history of companies.
The work also testifies to the fruitful relationships that the history of technology can maintain with the studies of science, as long as it retains its objects and questions. Thus, it is not a question of reviving the linear and hierarchical model of innovation, which still guides part of scientific policies, but rather of adopting the technical point of view to consider anew scientific objects, forms of organization or spaces and, as such, mainly studied by historians of science. Such a shift brings interesting perspectives and complements, for example when laboratories are seen as “ sociocultural spaces shaped by the presence (or absence) and application of techniques » (p. 591) or when the Big Science is conceptualized from the technical point of view and is revealed, at the beginning of the XXIe century, like a “ little science on big machines » (pp. 615-616).
Other connections between disciplines still run through the work. They testify to the advanced position occupied by the history of techniques in revealing and thinking about the complexity of globalization and the transformations of the world in the contemporary era, the effects and scope of which are discussed: processes of colonization and decolonization, imperialism and development policies, cultural homogenization, conduct of war, development of norms and international organizations, transformations of professional training and development of academic education, or environmental degradation.
The work goes well beyond the stated objective of breaking with a form of event history, centered on the inventors. Rather, it is a masterful development which allows us to grasp the place and role of techniques on a global scale, by playing with scales and approaches. We could perhaps simply regret the absence of an index of proper names, concepts or even organizations which would have allowed readers to more easily construct their own path through the volume. Because if an effort to organize the chapters aimed at making “ cursive reading (…) as fluid as possible » (p. 284) has been well produced, the work encourages consultation rather than linear reading. But, from one chapter to another, both historiographical and historical questions diffract, allowing reading paths of various natures to which the volume, by the very fact of its richness, lends itself.
This Global history of techniques constitutes at the same time an important synthesis, the reflection of a dynamic discipline, an invitation to celebrate the plurality of perspectives and to think about the importance of hybridizations, circulations and superpositions… In short, a very useful proposition to take the time to think about our world, its complexity, and the challenges it faces.