DDRIG: Cementing Spaces: The Material That Made Room for New Cultures in the Twentieth-Century

Montana State University, Bozeman MT

Investigators

Abstract

“DDRIG: Cementing Spaces: The Material That Made Room for New Cultures in the Twentieth-Century United States” Timothy J. LeCain, PI; Kirke D. Elsass, co-PI Cement—the substance that binds together and solidifies concrete—is indispensable to building modern transportation, energy, and residential structures. Global production of cement contributes around eight percent of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions. Primarily for this reason, chemists and engineers around the world seek replacement materials and new building techniques that might reduce cement use. “Cementing Spaces,” a historical study of cement and society, complements and informs the work of those material scientists who are rethinking concrete. The study accounts for cement as both an environmental element and a cultural element in the past. It introduces evidence that conventional cement affected the development of cultures in both subtle and profound ways. In short, cement created new spaces with which people created new cultures. Studying the cultures created with cement in the past provides a framework for industry researchers and public officials to consider and anticipate the many consequences to society that will ensue from their exploration and implementation of alternatives to cement. “Cementing Spaces” focuses on the relative impermeability of cement. Cement’s potential to create environmental barriers, cultivated for control of water during the nineteenth-century canal era, proved to be an appealing and influential quality in a variety of ubiquitous twentieth-century structures. Case studies of home basements, public sidewalks, and prison cells will employ archived documents to deeply explore the ways cemented environments shaped new cultures of family, mobility, and incarceration. The project hypothesizes that cement, by separating people from water, dirt, or one another, had a role in turning cellars into modern basements, inviting new municipal codes and new footwear styles of urban life, and supporting carceral authorities’ use of solitary confinement as a punitive measure. The findings of “Cementing Spaces” will contribute to scholarship that reveals how nonhuman things participate in the development of societies, here with a novel focus on a material technology that despite its ubiquity is not popularly understood. 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.