Technical Knowledge in American Culture

by Cravens, Hamilton; Marcus, Alan I.; Katzman, David M.

• ISBN13: 9780817307936
• ISBN10: 0817307931
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Alabama Pr
• More Book Details

Summary

Technical Knowledge in American Culture addresses the relationships between what modern-day experts say to each other and to their constituencies and whether what they say and do relates to the larger culture, society, and era. These essays challenge the social impact model by looking at science, technology, and medicine not as social activities but as intellectual activities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction. Technical Knowledge in American Culture: An Analysis	p. 1
The Ohio Mechanic's Institute: The Challenge of Incivility in the Democratic Republic	p. 21
The American Career of Jane Marcet's Conversations on Chemistry, 1806-1853	p. 37
From Individual Practitioner to Regular Physician: Cincinnati Medical Societies and the Problem of Definition among Mid-Nineteenth-Century Americans	p. 53
Diagnosing Unnatural Motherhood: Nineteenth-Century Physicians and "Puerperal Insanity"	p. 73
The Inventor of the Mustache Cup: James Emerson and Populist Technology, 1870-1900	p. 91
Race-ism and the City: The Young Du Bois and the Role of Place in Social Theory, 1893-1901	p. 110
The German-American Science of Racial Nutrition, 1870-1920	p. 125
The Case of the Manufactured Morons: Science and Social Policy in Two Eras, 1934-1966	p. 149
Responding to the Airplane: Urban Rivalry, Metropolitan Regionalism, and Airport Development in Dallas, 1927-1965	p. 169
Unanticipated Aftertaste: Cancer, the Role of Science, and the Question of DES Beef in Late Twentieth-Century American Culture	p. 189
Afterword	p. 206
Notes	p. 209
Contributors	p. 253
Index	p. 257
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