Technological Choices: Transformations in Material Cultures since the Neolithic

by Lemonnier,Pierre

• ISBN13: 9780415296441
• ISBN10: 0415296447
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2002-11-15
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Technological Choicesis an examination of the challenges technological innovations present to various cultures. Based on case studies covering a wide range of chronologies and geographies, this book moves rapidly from Neolithic Europe to the modern industrial age, stopping on the way to examine the tribes of Papua, New Guinea, rural Indian and North African societies and several European peasant communities. The techniques studied range from the manufacture of stone implements to the development of high-tech transportation devices.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
List of figures	xi
List of plates	xiv
List of tables	xvi
Introduction	1	(35)
Pierre Lemonnier
North Wind, South Wind	36	(41)
Neolithic technical choices in the Jura Mountains, 3700--2400 BC
Pierre Petrequin
The Watch and the Waterclock	77	(31)
Technological choices/social choices
Genevieve Bedoucha
The Reindeerman's Lasso	108	(18)
Tim Ingold
Pigs as Ordinary Wealth	126	(31)
Technical logic, exchange and leadership in New Guinea
Pierre Lemonnier
Pottery Techniques in India	157	(24)
Technical variants and social choice
Marie-Claude Mahias
Of Mills and Waterwheels	181	(33)
The hidden parameters of technological choice
Robert Cresswell
Technical Innovation and Cultural Resistance	214	(13)
The social weight of plowing in the vineyards of Les Corbieres (Languedoc)
Georges Guille-Escuret
The Hunter and His Gun in Haute-Provence	227	(11)
Nicolas C. Govoroff
Giving the Potter a Choice	238	(51)
Conceptual aspects of pottery techniques
Sander van der Leeuw
A Gazogene in Costa Rica	289	(49)
An experiment in techno-sociology
Madeleine Akrich
The Factory as Artefact	338	(34)
Bryan Pfaffenberger
Ethnography of a ``High-Tech'' Case	372	(27)
About Aramis
Bruno Latour
Dominant Representations and Technical Choices	399	(14)
A method of analysis with examples from aeronautics
Jean-Francois Quilici-Pacaud
Index	413