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Representing American Culture

Technology and the Construction of American Culture

By: David E. Nye

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Hardcover | 1 October 1997

At a Glance

Hardcover
242 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
24.3 x 16.6 x 1.8

Hardcover

$152.90

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Machines are a central part of daily life, and yet how this came to be so has only recently become a subject of study. Only in 1958 -- more than a decade after the atomic bomb -- did the first journal addressing technology and culture appear, and graduate education in the subject was not available until after the Apollo XI landing on the moon. Yet public fascination with technology has been wide-spread and growing since the middle of the nineteenth century: millions of Americans flocked to World's Fairs to see the latest machines and spectacular lighting effects; millions rode the new railroads as a form of tourism; vast throngs used scarce vacation time to see space ships launched from Cape Kennedy.David Nye's Narratives and Spaces examines the interrelationships between technological change, economic development, and mass culture. He examines the conquest of the American West by irrigation, railroads, and electricity; rural electrification in the 1930s; the energy crisis of the 1970s; andthe widespread adoption of the computer; he provides new ways to think about how and why these technologies have entered daily life. Nye shows through these examples why we must reject the idea that technology is a deterministic or autonomous force: rather machines and systems are shaped as people incorporate them into new contexts and translate them into narratives. This is a lively volume, accessible to a wide audience.

Industry Reviews

". . . For its revealing details, enlightened historiography, breadth of interpretative expertise, and depth of insight this book will be valuable reading for anyone interested either in how American culture was constructed or in what American Studies scholarship can achieve." (American Studies Today, Summer 1998) "The American frontier has always been as much technological as geographical. And if a mythical Wild West underpins America's idea of itself, there are other ways of seeing the same landscape that depend on stories told about electrification and the railroad rather than rifle-toting cowboys. So argues cultural historian David Nye in this intriguing collection of essays about how the citizens of the US have viewed themselves and their country. His theme is how they have constantly refigured the expansion and modernisation of their culture in the vast spaces of North America."

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