J. Justin Castro - Böcker

Technocratic Visions examines the context and societal consequences of technologies, technocratic governance, and development in Mexico, home of the first professional engineering school in the Americas. Contributors focus on the influential role of engineers, especially civil engineers, but also mining engineers, military engineers, architects, and other infrastructural and mechanical technicians. During the mid-nineteenth century, a period of immense upheaval and change domestically and globally, troubled governments attempted to expand and modernize Mexico’s engineering programs while resisting foreign invasion and adapting new Western technologies to existing precolonial and colonial foundations. The Mexican Revolution in 1910 greatly expanded technocratic practices as state agents attempted to control popular unrest and unify disparate communities via science, education, and infrastructure. Within this backdrop of political unrest, Technocratic Visions describes engineering sites as places both praised and protested, where personal, local, national, and global interests combined into new forms of societal creation; and as places that became centers of contests over representation, health, identity, and power. With an eye on contextualizing current problems stemming from Mexico’s historical development, this volume reveals how these transformations were uniquely Mexican and thoroughly global.

Written by prominent scholars in their respective fields, the collected essays in Industrialization, Technology, and Sustainability: A World History Reader provide a big-picture view of modern world history by focusing on specific themes of particular relevance in contemporary society. Students become familiar with major problems and major possibilities in energy use, pollution, technological advancement, and more.The first section of the text features essays that address the move to modernity. Section Two examines industrialization, while Section Three explains how sound, thought, and image became connected through a process of technological advancement. In Section Four the readings explore connections between people and things through writings on the railroads, automobiles, and space exploration. The final section is devoted to the future consequences and possibilities of global industrialization.Industrialization, Technology, and Sustainability unites a broad range of current topics and gives them a single, coherent, relevant narrative. It is well-suited to courses in modern world history and civilization, and also makes an excellent supplemental reader for classes on globalization and the history of technology.