Books by Ruth Oldenziel
A U-Turn to the Future: Sustainable Urban Mobility since 1850, 2020
“This is the book I’ve been waiting to read: an investigation into how our cities came to be as u... more “This is the book I’ve been waiting to read: an investigation into how our cities came to be as unsustainable as they apparently were in the recent past. It uncovers hidden histories containing important clues for how to make cities more sustainable in the future.” • Daniel Gordon, Edge Hill University
“The entire book is innovative, accessible, and well-written, with an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, sociology, economics, geography, and a number of other fields.” • Keith Laybourn, University of Huddersfield
Read the introduction here: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/EmanuelU-Turn_intro.pdf
DESCRIPTION
From local bike-sharing initiatives to overhauls of transport infrastructure, mobility is one of the most important areas in which modern cities are trying to realize a more sustainable future. Yet even as politicians and planners look ahead, there remain critical insights to be gleaned from the history of urban mobility and the unsustainable practices that still impact our everyday lives. United by their pursuit of a “usable past,” the studies in this interdisciplinary collection consider the ecological, social, and economic aspects of urban mobility, showing how historical inquiry can make both conceptual and practical contributions to the projects of sustainability and urban renewal.
From London and Paris to Barcelona and Berlin cities seek to boost cycling. Some cities manage to... more From London and Paris to Barcelona and Berlin cities seek to boost cycling. Some cities manage to create a lasting result. In other cities, urban cycling hardly increases. This richly illustrated book shows why some capitals and business centers became real cycling cities, while others did not. The book analyzes 100 years of urban cycling‒policy, use, and practice in 14 European cities in 9 countries. It shows how policy makers, activists, and cyclists may make a difference. The book also includes unique illustrations (ca. 80), graphs (ca. 100), and maps (ca 15).
Cycling Cities provides a fascinating new insight into 100 years of urban cycling in Europe. It analyzes 14 cities in nine countries, from the capitals Antwerp, Amsterdam, Budapest, Copenhagen, and Stockholm to the industrial hubs Eindhoven, Lyon, Manchester, and Southeast-Limburg, and the business towns Basel, Enschede, Hannover, Malmö, and Utrecht.
The 14 case studies show how each of the urban areas developed its own unique cycling culture. Over the past century, local European policymakers curtailed or encouraged cycling by: building or demolishing cycling infrastructures; granting or denying cyclists’ rights to all roads; creating public transit systems in competition or in tandem with walking and cycling; and curbing or facilitating automobility.
The authors trace the role of authorities and engineers as well as cyclists and community groups in shaping local cycling policies and practices. They show how these local outcomes featured in transnational debates on urban mobility and livability alongside traffic management and safety. They compare the urban areas' varying histories of embracing pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists
Cycling Cities presents a long-term and transnational perspective for everyone interested in today's urban mobility, sustainability, and cycling. The book offers policymakers, community groups, politicians, scholars, and teachers new and usable insights in the patterns behind the development of urban traffic.
The book is a must for any policymaker, student, or scholar interested in urban sustainable mobility.
Cycling Cities is the first outcome of the international research and teaching program Sustainable Urban Mobility, 1890-present (SUM). This program is initiated by Eindhoven University of Technology and the Foundation for the History of Technology. It focuses on the long-term development of urban sustainable mobility and wants to contribute to the current debate on how urban mobility can become more sustainable, by investigating developments in the past.
Editors: Ruth Oldenziel, Martin Emanuel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze, and Frank Veraart
Cycling Cities: The European Experience. One Hundred Years of Policy and Practice
Published by Foundation for the History of Technology and LMU Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society - ISBN 978-90-73192-46-1
Available through www.cyclingcities.info
“This book’s conceptual framework is truly innovative and makes a much-needed intervention in the... more “This book’s conceptual framework is truly innovative and makes a much-needed intervention in the vast literature on sustainability. Writing against the ‘techno-fix mentality’ that dominates so many contemporary environmental discourses, the editors persuasively argue for the need to resurrect ‘older technologies for a new purpose.’” Edward D. Melillo, Amherst College.
Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today.
Hacking Europe traces the user practices of chopping games in Warsaw, hacking software in Athens,... more Hacking Europe traces the user practices of chopping games in Warsaw, hacking software in Athens, creating chaos in Hamburg, producing demos in Turku, and partying with computing in Zagreb and Amsterdam. Focusing on several European countries at the end of the Cold War, the book shows the digital development was not an exclusively American affair. Local hacker communities appropriated the computer and forged new cultures around it like the hackers in Yugoslavia, Poland and Finland, who showed off their tricks and creating distinct “demoscenes.” Together the essays reflect a diverse palette of cultural practices by which European users domesticated computer technologies. Each chapter explores the mediating actors instrumental in introducing and spreading the cultures of computing around Europe. More generally, the “ludological” element--the role of mischief, humor, and play--discussed here as crucial for analysis of hacker culture, opens new vistas for the study of the history of technology.
Information & Culture (2015) “An excellent introduction by the editors frames the issues, periodic illustrations enliven the text, and the extensive bibliography is a treasure trove for further research, the book significantly extends our understanding of countercultural influences on computing. It is a necessary complement to earlier U.S.-centric treatments by John Markoff and Fred Turner.”
European History Quarterly, 46 no 1, 2016: “The wealth, diversity and international character of the contributions makes the volume an extraordinary insightful and entertaining read… Given the popularity of approaches towards social (co-)construction of technology, one can hope that the assembled contributions will spur a stronger interest in the history of home computers, their social meanings, and the subcultures that arose around them. In this domain, this volume will always remain a milestone.”
Who has decided how Europeans have dressed and dwelled? Traveled and dined? Worked and played? Wh... more Who has decided how Europeans have dressed and dwelled? Traveled and dined? Worked and played? Who, in fact, can be credited with the shaping of Europe?
Certainly inventors, engineers, and politicians played their parts. But in the making of Europe, consumers, tinkerers, and rebels were an unrecognized force—until now. In this book, historians Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael Hård spotlight the people who “made” Europe—by appropriating technology, protesting for and against it. Using examples from Britain and the Continent, the authors illustrate the conflicts that accompanied the modern technologies, from the sewing machine to the bicycle, the Barbie doll to personal computers. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of how Europeans have lived, from the 1850s to the current century.
The Making Europe series was awarded the Freeman Award by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in 2014, in recognition of its significant contribution to the interaction of science and technology studies with the study of innovation.
Journal of Design History 2015 “rare…sustained effort at integrating a staggering amount information”; an outstandingly
balanced treatment of west versus east, north…an example of how transnational history can be written.
Technology and Culture (2015) “book of truly imaginative scholarship and remarkable erudition”
Journal of Modern History (2016) “stimulating alternative history of material culture”
British History of Science and Technology (2015): “fascinating volume.”
Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev’s famous “kitchen debate” in 1958 involved more than the virt... more Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev’s famous “kitchen debate” in 1958 involved more than the virtues of American appliances. Both Nixon and Khrushchev recognized the political symbolism of the modern kitchen; the kind of technological innovation represented in this everyday context spoke to the political system that produced it. The kitchen connects the “big” politics of politicians and statesmen to the “small” politics of users and interest groups. Cold War Kitchen looks at the kitchen as material object and symbol, considering the politics and the practices of one of the most famous technological icons of the twentieth century. Defining the kitchen as a complex technological artifact as important as computers, cars, and nuclear missiles, the book examines the ways in which a range of social actors in Europe shaped the kitchen as both ideological construct and material practice. These actors—from manufacturers and modernist architects to housing reformers and feminists—constructed and domesticated the technological innovations of the postwar kitchen. The home became a “mediation junction” in which women users and others felt free to advise producers from the consumer’s point of view. In essays illustrated by striking period photographs, the contributors to Cold War Kitchen consider such topics as Soviet consumers’ ambivalent responses to the American dream kitchen argued over by Nixon and Khrushchev; the Frankfurter Küche, a European modernist kitchen of the interwar period (and its export to Turkey when its designer fled the Nazis); and the British state-subsidized kitchen design so innovative that it was mistaken for a luxury American product. The concluding essays challenge the received wisdom of past interpretations of the kitchen debate.
Reviews:
* Technology and Culture (2010); *Journal of Cold War Studies (2013); *English Historical Review (2015); Icon (2014);
*Enterprise & Society, “occupies a place of distinction in the literature on consumption, cultures of technology, popular culture of the Cold War, Americanization, and European identity and should be read by all interested in these field”
*Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte/Journal of Business History (2010) “particularly rich and coherent collection of essays.”
*Business History Review “most welcome book.”
* Women’s History Review (2012) “promises, and delivers, an innovative approach….one of the most illuminating recent accounts in the field of consumption, technology and gender history.”
Isis (2010) “strong collection…in a sophisticated conceptual framework…This collection is impressive for its strong research, transnational breadth, and thematic coherence…
Isis (2010) Oldenziel’s essay in this section is one of the best in the volume. She problematizes the very idea of the American kitchen.”
*Reviews in History (2010) “Oldenziel’s chapter serves as skillful summing up and conclusion to the subject-matter of the volume.”
For most of human experience, certainly of late, the artifacts of technological civilization have... more For most of human experience, certainly of late, the artifacts of technological civilization have become closely associated with gender, sometimes for physiological reasons (brassieres or condoms, for example) but more often because of social and cultural factors, both obvious and obscure. Because these stereotypes necessarily have economic, social, and political consequences, understanding how gender shapes the ways we view and use technology—and how technology shapes our concept of gender—has emerged as a matter of serious scholarly importance. Gender and Technology brings together leading historians of technology to explore this entwined and reciprocal relationship, focusing on the tools (cars, typewriters, computers, vibrators), industries (dressmaking, steam laundering, cigar making, meat packing) and places (factories, offices, homes) of North America between 1850 and 1950. Together, these essays reveal the ways in which technology and gender—far from being essential, immutable categories—develop historically as social constructions.
Contributors: Patricia Cooper, University of Kentucky; Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan; Wendy Gamber, Indiana University; Carolyn M. Goldstein, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts; Rebecca Herzig, Bates College; Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; Ronald R. Kline, Cornell University; Jennifer Light, Northwestern University; Rachel P. Maines, Cornell University's Hotel School Library; Judith A. McGaw; Joy Parr, Simon Fraser University.
Nina E. Lerman is an associate professor of history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Ruth Oldenziel is an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. Arwen P. Mohun is an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware.
"The essays selected for this volume cover a well-distributed range of subjects, bringing history of technology and gender studies together with studies of consumerism, labor, production, race, and other topics. The pieces included are well-written, thought-provoking, and frequently just plain enjoyable. The collection will serve valuable scholarly purpose, helping both to establish where research on the relationship between gender and history of technology currently stands and to suggest promising directions for future work."
— Amy Bix, Iowa State University
"This excellent anthology should become a standard source for those interested in the history of gender and technology, as well as a widely used text for courses in gender studies. The selection of articles is brilliant. The volume is grounded in the mature historical scholarship published in Technology and Culture, and significantly strengthened by the inclusion of key articles from other sources."
— Eric Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Women engineers have been in the public limelight for decades, yet we have surprisingly little hi... more Women engineers have been in the public limelight for decades, yet we have surprisingly little historically grounded understanding of the patterns of employment and education of women in this field. Most studies are either policy papers or limited to statistical analyses. Moreover, the scant historical research so far available emphasizes the individual, single and unique character of those women working in engineering, often using anecdotal evidence but ignoring larger issues like the patterns of the labour market and educational institutions.
Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges offers answers to the question why women engineers have required special permits to pass through the male guarded gates of engineering and examines how they have managed this. It explores the differences and similarities between women engineers in nine countries from a gender point of view. Through case studies the book considers the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion of women engineers.
o say that technology is male comes as no surprise, but the claim that its history is a short one... more o say that technology is male comes as no surprise, but the claim that its history is a short one strikes a new note. Making Technology Masculine: Men, Women, and Modern Machines in America, 1870-1945 maps the historical process through which men laid claims to technology as their exclusive terrain. It also explores how women contested this ascendancy of the male discourse and engineered alternative plots. From the moral gymnasium of the shop floor to the staging grounds of World's Fairs, engineers, inventors, social scientists, activists, and novelists emplotted and questioned technology as our modern male myth. Oldenziel recounts the history of technology - both as intellectual construct and material practice - by analyzing these struggles. Drawing on a broad range of sources, she explains why male machines rather than female fabrics have become the modern markers of technology. She shows how technology developed as a narrative production of modern manliness, allowing women little room for negotiation
Articles by Ruth Oldenziel
Journal of Transport History, 2020
The search for “smart” or ICT-based mobility solutions goes back to at least the 1960s. The Provo... more The search for “smart” or ICT-based mobility solutions goes back to at least the 1960s. The Provo anarchist Luud Schimmelpennink is well-known for designing mobility solutions and for being the driving force behind the 1965 “white-bike” experience. Less known is his 1968 project for shared electric cars (“Witkar”), which laid the foundations for the ICT-based bicycle sharing systems as we know today. By combining his talent for innovation with activism, he created a socially embedded design that could be part of the public transit system. Based on primary sources, we argue that these sociotechnical experiences paved the way for today’s mainstream bicycle sharing projects worldwide. We then show how since the 1990s, the Dutch railroad’s public transit bicycle (OV-fiets) has transformed Schimmelpennink’s original anarchist idea of bike sharing into a sustainable public transit system. It is a feat that has eluded other programs worldwide: the integration of the bicycle’s share in a door-to-door experience.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022526620908264
Being Modern: The Cultural Impact of Science in the Early Twentieth Century, edited by Robert Bud, Paul Greenhalgh, Frank James, and Morag Shiach London: UCL Press, 2018
Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History, 2017
Since the 1950s, cycling policy in China has gone through three phases: from active encouragement... more Since the 1950s, cycling policy in China has gone through three phases: from active encouragement (1955–1994) and systematic discouragement (1994–2008) to neglect and ambivalence (since the 2010s). Parallel to the expansion of automobility, the country has been unique in its development of innovations in electric-powered two-wheelers and a vibrant e-cycling practice since the 1980s. Electric bikes have given over 300 million low-status commuters and peddlers access to jobs and housing, even though planners have dismissed them as a problematic ›floating population‹ and remnants of the past. Given China’s current urban sustainable mobility challenges and ambition to become the world’s first ›Ecological Civilization‹ (2013), China’s bicycle industry, e-vehicle manufacturers, and the e-commerce sector may offer an alternative to the US-based ›car civilization‹ if ecological (e-cycles) and social (low-status workers) sustainability are brought into one analytical frame. Read here: http://www.zeithistorische-forschungen.de/3-2017/id=5521
Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, wit... more Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to Utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today. This historiographical essay lays out the groundwork.
Today most cities emphasize the construction of separate bicycle lanes as a sure path toward sust... more Today most cities emphasize the construction of separate bicycle lanes as a sure path toward sustainable urban mobility. Historical evidence shows a singular focus on building bicycle lanes without embedding them into a broader bicycle culture and politics is far too narrow. Bicycle lanes were never neutral, but contested from the start. Based on comparative research of cycling history covering nine European cities in four countries, the article shows the crucial role representations of bicycles play in policymakers' and experts' planning for the future. In debating the regulation of urban traffic flows, urban-planning professionals projected separate lanes to control rather than to facilitate workingclass, mass-scale bicycling. Significantly, cycling organizations opposed the lanes, while experts like traffic engineers and urban planners framed automobility as the inevitable modern future. Only by the 1970s did bicycle lanes enter the debate as safe and sustainable solutions when grass-roots cyclists' activists campaigned for them. The up and downs of bicycle lanes show the importance of encouraging everyday utility cycling by involving diverse social groups.
Reviews:
(Mats Fridland) the book's "explicit refocusing lens in several chapters is Hecht’s not... more Reviews:
(Mats Fridland) the book's "explicit refocusing lens in several chapters is Hecht’s notion of ‘technopolitics’, which helps in providing new fascinating perspectives on Cold War colonial(ist) histories. A potentially perspective changing essay is Ruth Oldenziel’s reconceptualisation of the US as a ‘networked empire’ with its technopolitical-global hinterland of thousands of strategic islands such as the Azores, Diego Garcia, Guam and Kwajalein." For details download article and review.
This archipelago anchors and moors US Cold War power by being intersecting
technopolitical nodes in strategic, large technical systems of communication,
surveillance and navigation.
British Journal for History of Science (2013).
Isis (2012) “Ruth Oldenziel’s marvelous lead chapter [succeeds] despite its enormous reach, …in drawing together histories of colonialism and anticolonialism with those of Cold War technical systems, including earth-spanning programs of nuclear testing and satellite communications.…;
Icon (2014): “A potentially perspective-changing essay is Ruth Oldenziel’s reconceptualization of the U.S. as networked empire” with its techno-political global hinterland.”
Counterfire (2012): “Oldenziel connects the whole breadth of military, economic and political interests and strategies across several phases of the American empire in an illuminating and judicious argument.”
When citizens recycle waste, we consider this an act of responsible ‘green’ citizenship. Today's ... more When citizens recycle waste, we consider this an act of responsible ‘green’ citizenship. Today's consumers query the environmental impact of their consumption. Shoppers wonder whether the goods they buy are properly recyclable; others translate their concerns for the environment into a daily practice of separating, storing, collecting and transporting reusable waste. Most European consumer-citizens have incorporated recycling into their daily routine. Today, modern recycling is usually seen as a product of the 1970s, when grass-root movements and environmental policies generated new consumer practices. The assumption is that recycling only gained widespread public support from industry, politics and consumers a few decades ago.
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Books by Ruth Oldenziel
“The entire book is innovative, accessible, and well-written, with an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, sociology, economics, geography, and a number of other fields.” • Keith Laybourn, University of Huddersfield
Read the introduction here: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/EmanuelU-Turn_intro.pdf
DESCRIPTION
From local bike-sharing initiatives to overhauls of transport infrastructure, mobility is one of the most important areas in which modern cities are trying to realize a more sustainable future. Yet even as politicians and planners look ahead, there remain critical insights to be gleaned from the history of urban mobility and the unsustainable practices that still impact our everyday lives. United by their pursuit of a “usable past,” the studies in this interdisciplinary collection consider the ecological, social, and economic aspects of urban mobility, showing how historical inquiry can make both conceptual and practical contributions to the projects of sustainability and urban renewal.
Cycling Cities provides a fascinating new insight into 100 years of urban cycling in Europe. It analyzes 14 cities in nine countries, from the capitals Antwerp, Amsterdam, Budapest, Copenhagen, and Stockholm to the industrial hubs Eindhoven, Lyon, Manchester, and Southeast-Limburg, and the business towns Basel, Enschede, Hannover, Malmö, and Utrecht.
The 14 case studies show how each of the urban areas developed its own unique cycling culture. Over the past century, local European policymakers curtailed or encouraged cycling by: building or demolishing cycling infrastructures; granting or denying cyclists’ rights to all roads; creating public transit systems in competition or in tandem with walking and cycling; and curbing or facilitating automobility.
The authors trace the role of authorities and engineers as well as cyclists and community groups in shaping local cycling policies and practices. They show how these local outcomes featured in transnational debates on urban mobility and livability alongside traffic management and safety. They compare the urban areas' varying histories of embracing pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists
Cycling Cities presents a long-term and transnational perspective for everyone interested in today's urban mobility, sustainability, and cycling. The book offers policymakers, community groups, politicians, scholars, and teachers new and usable insights in the patterns behind the development of urban traffic.
The book is a must for any policymaker, student, or scholar interested in urban sustainable mobility.
Cycling Cities is the first outcome of the international research and teaching program Sustainable Urban Mobility, 1890-present (SUM). This program is initiated by Eindhoven University of Technology and the Foundation for the History of Technology. It focuses on the long-term development of urban sustainable mobility and wants to contribute to the current debate on how urban mobility can become more sustainable, by investigating developments in the past.
Editors: Ruth Oldenziel, Martin Emanuel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze, and Frank Veraart
Cycling Cities: The European Experience. One Hundred Years of Policy and Practice
Published by Foundation for the History of Technology and LMU Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society - ISBN 978-90-73192-46-1
Available through www.cyclingcities.info
Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today.
Information & Culture (2015) “An excellent introduction by the editors frames the issues, periodic illustrations enliven the text, and the extensive bibliography is a treasure trove for further research, the book significantly extends our understanding of countercultural influences on computing. It is a necessary complement to earlier U.S.-centric treatments by John Markoff and Fred Turner.”
European History Quarterly, 46 no 1, 2016: “The wealth, diversity and international character of the contributions makes the volume an extraordinary insightful and entertaining read… Given the popularity of approaches towards social (co-)construction of technology, one can hope that the assembled contributions will spur a stronger interest in the history of home computers, their social meanings, and the subcultures that arose around them. In this domain, this volume will always remain a milestone.”
Certainly inventors, engineers, and politicians played their parts. But in the making of Europe, consumers, tinkerers, and rebels were an unrecognized force—until now. In this book, historians Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael Hård spotlight the people who “made” Europe—by appropriating technology, protesting for and against it. Using examples from Britain and the Continent, the authors illustrate the conflicts that accompanied the modern technologies, from the sewing machine to the bicycle, the Barbie doll to personal computers. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of how Europeans have lived, from the 1850s to the current century.
The Making Europe series was awarded the Freeman Award by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in 2014, in recognition of its significant contribution to the interaction of science and technology studies with the study of innovation.
Journal of Design History 2015 “rare…sustained effort at integrating a staggering amount information”; an outstandingly
balanced treatment of west versus east, north…an example of how transnational history can be written.
Technology and Culture (2015) “book of truly imaginative scholarship and remarkable erudition”
Journal of Modern History (2016) “stimulating alternative history of material culture”
British History of Science and Technology (2015): “fascinating volume.”
Reviews:
* Technology and Culture (2010); *Journal of Cold War Studies (2013); *English Historical Review (2015); Icon (2014);
*Enterprise & Society, “occupies a place of distinction in the literature on consumption, cultures of technology, popular culture of the Cold War, Americanization, and European identity and should be read by all interested in these field”
*Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte/Journal of Business History (2010) “particularly rich and coherent collection of essays.”
*Business History Review “most welcome book.”
* Women’s History Review (2012) “promises, and delivers, an innovative approach….one of the most illuminating recent accounts in the field of consumption, technology and gender history.”
Isis (2010) “strong collection…in a sophisticated conceptual framework…This collection is impressive for its strong research, transnational breadth, and thematic coherence…
Isis (2010) Oldenziel’s essay in this section is one of the best in the volume. She problematizes the very idea of the American kitchen.”
*Reviews in History (2010) “Oldenziel’s chapter serves as skillful summing up and conclusion to the subject-matter of the volume.”
Contributors: Patricia Cooper, University of Kentucky; Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan; Wendy Gamber, Indiana University; Carolyn M. Goldstein, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts; Rebecca Herzig, Bates College; Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; Ronald R. Kline, Cornell University; Jennifer Light, Northwestern University; Rachel P. Maines, Cornell University's Hotel School Library; Judith A. McGaw; Joy Parr, Simon Fraser University.
Nina E. Lerman is an associate professor of history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Ruth Oldenziel is an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. Arwen P. Mohun is an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware.
"The essays selected for this volume cover a well-distributed range of subjects, bringing history of technology and gender studies together with studies of consumerism, labor, production, race, and other topics. The pieces included are well-written, thought-provoking, and frequently just plain enjoyable. The collection will serve valuable scholarly purpose, helping both to establish where research on the relationship between gender and history of technology currently stands and to suggest promising directions for future work."
— Amy Bix, Iowa State University
"This excellent anthology should become a standard source for those interested in the history of gender and technology, as well as a widely used text for courses in gender studies. The selection of articles is brilliant. The volume is grounded in the mature historical scholarship published in Technology and Culture, and significantly strengthened by the inclusion of key articles from other sources."
— Eric Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges offers answers to the question why women engineers have required special permits to pass through the male guarded gates of engineering and examines how they have managed this. It explores the differences and similarities between women engineers in nine countries from a gender point of view. Through case studies the book considers the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion of women engineers.
Articles by Ruth Oldenziel
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022526620908264
(Mats Fridland) the book's "explicit refocusing lens in several chapters is Hecht’s notion of ‘technopolitics’, which helps in providing new fascinating perspectives on Cold War colonial(ist) histories. A potentially perspective changing essay is Ruth Oldenziel’s reconceptualisation of the US as a ‘networked empire’ with its technopolitical-global hinterland of thousands of strategic islands such as the Azores, Diego Garcia, Guam and Kwajalein." For details download article and review.
This archipelago anchors and moors US Cold War power by being intersecting
technopolitical nodes in strategic, large technical systems of communication,
surveillance and navigation.
British Journal for History of Science (2013).
Isis (2012) “Ruth Oldenziel’s marvelous lead chapter [succeeds] despite its enormous reach, …in drawing together histories of colonialism and anticolonialism with those of Cold War technical systems, including earth-spanning programs of nuclear testing and satellite communications.…;
Icon (2014): “A potentially perspective-changing essay is Ruth Oldenziel’s reconceptualization of the U.S. as networked empire” with its techno-political global hinterland.”
Counterfire (2012): “Oldenziel connects the whole breadth of military, economic and political interests and strategies across several phases of the American empire in an illuminating and judicious argument.”
“The entire book is innovative, accessible, and well-written, with an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, sociology, economics, geography, and a number of other fields.” • Keith Laybourn, University of Huddersfield
Read the introduction here: https://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/intros/EmanuelU-Turn_intro.pdf
DESCRIPTION
From local bike-sharing initiatives to overhauls of transport infrastructure, mobility is one of the most important areas in which modern cities are trying to realize a more sustainable future. Yet even as politicians and planners look ahead, there remain critical insights to be gleaned from the history of urban mobility and the unsustainable practices that still impact our everyday lives. United by their pursuit of a “usable past,” the studies in this interdisciplinary collection consider the ecological, social, and economic aspects of urban mobility, showing how historical inquiry can make both conceptual and practical contributions to the projects of sustainability and urban renewal.
Cycling Cities provides a fascinating new insight into 100 years of urban cycling in Europe. It analyzes 14 cities in nine countries, from the capitals Antwerp, Amsterdam, Budapest, Copenhagen, and Stockholm to the industrial hubs Eindhoven, Lyon, Manchester, and Southeast-Limburg, and the business towns Basel, Enschede, Hannover, Malmö, and Utrecht.
The 14 case studies show how each of the urban areas developed its own unique cycling culture. Over the past century, local European policymakers curtailed or encouraged cycling by: building or demolishing cycling infrastructures; granting or denying cyclists’ rights to all roads; creating public transit systems in competition or in tandem with walking and cycling; and curbing or facilitating automobility.
The authors trace the role of authorities and engineers as well as cyclists and community groups in shaping local cycling policies and practices. They show how these local outcomes featured in transnational debates on urban mobility and livability alongside traffic management and safety. They compare the urban areas' varying histories of embracing pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists
Cycling Cities presents a long-term and transnational perspective for everyone interested in today's urban mobility, sustainability, and cycling. The book offers policymakers, community groups, politicians, scholars, and teachers new and usable insights in the patterns behind the development of urban traffic.
The book is a must for any policymaker, student, or scholar interested in urban sustainable mobility.
Cycling Cities is the first outcome of the international research and teaching program Sustainable Urban Mobility, 1890-present (SUM). This program is initiated by Eindhoven University of Technology and the Foundation for the History of Technology. It focuses on the long-term development of urban sustainable mobility and wants to contribute to the current debate on how urban mobility can become more sustainable, by investigating developments in the past.
Editors: Ruth Oldenziel, Martin Emanuel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze, and Frank Veraart
Cycling Cities: The European Experience. One Hundred Years of Policy and Practice
Published by Foundation for the History of Technology and LMU Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society - ISBN 978-90-73192-46-1
Available through www.cyclingcities.info
Technology has long been an essential consideration in public discussions of the environment, with the focus overwhelmingly on creating new tools and techniques. In more recent years, however, activists, researchers, and policymakers have increasingly turned to mobilizing older technologies in their pursuit of sustainability. In fascinating case studies ranging from the Early Modern secondhand trade to utopian visions of human-powered vehicles, the contributions gathered here explore the historical fortunes of two such technologies—bicycling and waste recycling—tracing their development over time and providing valuable context for the policy successes and failures of today.
Information & Culture (2015) “An excellent introduction by the editors frames the issues, periodic illustrations enliven the text, and the extensive bibliography is a treasure trove for further research, the book significantly extends our understanding of countercultural influences on computing. It is a necessary complement to earlier U.S.-centric treatments by John Markoff and Fred Turner.”
European History Quarterly, 46 no 1, 2016: “The wealth, diversity and international character of the contributions makes the volume an extraordinary insightful and entertaining read… Given the popularity of approaches towards social (co-)construction of technology, one can hope that the assembled contributions will spur a stronger interest in the history of home computers, their social meanings, and the subcultures that arose around them. In this domain, this volume will always remain a milestone.”
Certainly inventors, engineers, and politicians played their parts. But in the making of Europe, consumers, tinkerers, and rebels were an unrecognized force—until now. In this book, historians Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael Hård spotlight the people who “made” Europe—by appropriating technology, protesting for and against it. Using examples from Britain and the Continent, the authors illustrate the conflicts that accompanied the modern technologies, from the sewing machine to the bicycle, the Barbie doll to personal computers. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of how Europeans have lived, from the 1850s to the current century.
The Making Europe series was awarded the Freeman Award by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) in 2014, in recognition of its significant contribution to the interaction of science and technology studies with the study of innovation.
Journal of Design History 2015 “rare…sustained effort at integrating a staggering amount information”; an outstandingly
balanced treatment of west versus east, north…an example of how transnational history can be written.
Technology and Culture (2015) “book of truly imaginative scholarship and remarkable erudition”
Journal of Modern History (2016) “stimulating alternative history of material culture”
British History of Science and Technology (2015): “fascinating volume.”
Reviews:
* Technology and Culture (2010); *Journal of Cold War Studies (2013); *English Historical Review (2015); Icon (2014);
*Enterprise & Society, “occupies a place of distinction in the literature on consumption, cultures of technology, popular culture of the Cold War, Americanization, and European identity and should be read by all interested in these field”
*Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte/Journal of Business History (2010) “particularly rich and coherent collection of essays.”
*Business History Review “most welcome book.”
* Women’s History Review (2012) “promises, and delivers, an innovative approach….one of the most illuminating recent accounts in the field of consumption, technology and gender history.”
Isis (2010) “strong collection…in a sophisticated conceptual framework…This collection is impressive for its strong research, transnational breadth, and thematic coherence…
Isis (2010) Oldenziel’s essay in this section is one of the best in the volume. She problematizes the very idea of the American kitchen.”
*Reviews in History (2010) “Oldenziel’s chapter serves as skillful summing up and conclusion to the subject-matter of the volume.”
Contributors: Patricia Cooper, University of Kentucky; Paul N. Edwards, University of Michigan; Wendy Gamber, Indiana University; Carolyn M. Goldstein, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell, Massachusetts; Rebecca Herzig, Bates College; Roger Horowitz, Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington, Delaware; Ronald R. Kline, Cornell University; Jennifer Light, Northwestern University; Rachel P. Maines, Cornell University's Hotel School Library; Judith A. McGaw; Joy Parr, Simon Fraser University.
Nina E. Lerman is an associate professor of history at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington. Ruth Oldenziel is an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam. Arwen P. Mohun is an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware.
"The essays selected for this volume cover a well-distributed range of subjects, bringing history of technology and gender studies together with studies of consumerism, labor, production, race, and other topics. The pieces included are well-written, thought-provoking, and frequently just plain enjoyable. The collection will serve valuable scholarly purpose, helping both to establish where research on the relationship between gender and history of technology currently stands and to suggest promising directions for future work."
— Amy Bix, Iowa State University
"This excellent anthology should become a standard source for those interested in the history of gender and technology, as well as a widely used text for courses in gender studies. The selection of articles is brilliant. The volume is grounded in the mature historical scholarship published in Technology and Culture, and significantly strengthened by the inclusion of key articles from other sources."
— Eric Schatzberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Crossing Boundaries, Building Bridges offers answers to the question why women engineers have required special permits to pass through the male guarded gates of engineering and examines how they have managed this. It explores the differences and similarities between women engineers in nine countries from a gender point of view. Through case studies the book considers the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion of women engineers.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022526620908264
(Mats Fridland) the book's "explicit refocusing lens in several chapters is Hecht’s notion of ‘technopolitics’, which helps in providing new fascinating perspectives on Cold War colonial(ist) histories. A potentially perspective changing essay is Ruth Oldenziel’s reconceptualisation of the US as a ‘networked empire’ with its technopolitical-global hinterland of thousands of strategic islands such as the Azores, Diego Garcia, Guam and Kwajalein." For details download article and review.
This archipelago anchors and moors US Cold War power by being intersecting
technopolitical nodes in strategic, large technical systems of communication,
surveillance and navigation.
British Journal for History of Science (2013).
Isis (2012) “Ruth Oldenziel’s marvelous lead chapter [succeeds] despite its enormous reach, …in drawing together histories of colonialism and anticolonialism with those of Cold War technical systems, including earth-spanning programs of nuclear testing and satellite communications.…;
Icon (2014): “A potentially perspective-changing essay is Ruth Oldenziel’s reconceptualization of the U.S. as networked empire” with its techno-political global hinterland.”
Counterfire (2012): “Oldenziel connects the whole breadth of military, economic and political interests and strategies across several phases of the American empire in an illuminating and judicious argument.”
“The entire book is innovative, accessible, and well-written, with an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, sociology, economics, geography, and a number of other fields.” • Keith Laybourn, University of Huddersfield
From local bike-sharing initiatives to overhauls of transport infrastructure, mobility is one of the most important areas in which modern cities are trying to realize a more sustainable future. Yet even as politicians and planners look ahead, there remain critical insights to be gleaned from the history of urban mobility and the unsustainable practices that still impact our everyday lives. United by their pursuit of a “usable past,” the studies in this interdisciplinary collection consider the ecological, social, and economic aspects of urban mobility, showing how historical inquiry can make both conceptual and practical contributions to the projects of sustainability and urban renewal.