白馥兰教授：Technology as culture

　　报告题目：Technology as culture

　　报 告人：白馥兰（Francesca Bray）教授

　　报告时间：2016年11月15日下午1：30

　　报告地点：中国科学院自然科学史研究所 209会议室

　　报告摘要：Technology (技术,科技) is commonly defined and understood as a sophisticated modern phenomenon, a vector of continual progress, distinct in design, efficacy and scope from traditional, backward crafts (手工, 工艺).

　　In this view, technology, as the crystallisation of engineering logic, stands in antithesis to culture: technology itself is beyond the scope of cultural analysis, yet “cultural factors” need to be understood because they often hamper technological progress.

　　Two schools of thought, the French “anthropology of techniques” and Science and Technology Studies (STS), offer conceptual tools for rejecting facile and misleading dichotomies between innovative technology and conservative craft, or between the “hard” logic of engineering and the “soft” resistance of culture.

　　Analysing technology as culture gives us new ways to understand systems of power, gender and subjectivity in pre-modern as well as modern societies, and constitutes a robust basis for trans-cultural and trans-historical comparison.

　　报告人简介：

　　白馥兰（Francesca Bray），爱丁堡大学社会人类学教授（Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh），技术史学会现任主席（President, Society for the History of Technology）。

　　近期著作有Rice: Global Networks and New Histories http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/regional-and-world-history-general-interest/rice-global-networks-and-new-histories ，以及Technology, Gender and History in Imperial China: Great Transformations Reconsidered http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415639590/