Doctoral Dissertation Research: A History of Muscle-Powered Transportation Infrastructure Planning and the Broader Political Economy

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a doctoral dissertation research project in the history of technology that focuses on muscle-powered transportation and the political economy of transportation technology infrastructure. The project involves archival research and oral history interviews. The historical data promises to illuminate socio-technological policies and practices. The results of this study will be of interest to colleagues working on various disciplines including Science and Technology Studies and Infrastructure Studies through workshops and academic conferences, and they will be incorporated into university courses and presented to broader audiences through public lectures. The doctoral dissertation researcher will spend five months conducting research in three counties interviewing locals and consulting archives. The research will triangulate the textual, visual and ethnographical data collected to bring to light insights concerning transportation infrastructure planning and the broader political economy of transportation technology. The project will use the theoretical insights by incorporating actor-network theory into the socio-political context in order to engage with a scholarly tradition that critically reflects on the politics of technology, which holds that the politics of technology embedded in man-machine relations is not universal across time and space, but must be examined in its political, social, and environmental system. By employing a framework of actor-network theory in this way, the project will investigate the multi-layered, multi-directional relations that transportation technologies foster between users and other actors in the socio-politico-technological system. In so doing, it expands the theoretical framework of ANT by reconceptualizing the actors and the network in a broader context. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.