New Materials : Towards a History of Consistency / Amy E. Slaton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Slaton, Amy E., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Manufacturing processes.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 300 pages) : illustrations

Other Title:

New Materials

Place of Publication:

Amherst, Massachusetts : Lever Press, 2020.

Summary:

This edited volume gathers eight cases of industrial materials development, broadly conceived, from North America, Europe and Asia over the last 200 years. Whether given utility as building parts, fabrics, pharmaceuticals, or foodstuffs, whether seen by their proponents as human-made or "found in nature," materials result from the designation of some matter as both knowable and worth knowing about. In following these determinations we learn that the production of physical novelty under industrial, imperial and other cultural conditions has historically accomplished a huge range of social effects, from accruals of status and wealth to demarcations of bodies and geographies. Among other cases, New Materials traces the beneficent self-identity of Quaker asylum planners who devised soundless metal cell locks in the early 19th century, and the inculcation of national pride attending Taiwanese carbon-fiber bicycle parts in the 21st; the racialized labor organizations promoted by California orange breeders in the 1910s, and bureaucratized distributions of blame for deadly high-rise fires a century later. Across eras and global regions New Materials reflects circumstances not made clear when technological innovation is explained solely as a by-product of modernizing impulses or critiqued simply as a craving for profit. Whether establishing the efficacy of nano-scale pharmaceuticals or the tastiness of farmed catfish, proponents of new materials enact complex political ideologies. In highlighting their actors' conceptions of efficiency, certainty, safety, pleasure, pain, faith and identity, the authors reveal that to produce a "new material" is invariably to preserve other things, to sustain existing values and social structures.

Contents:

Front Matter (pp. i-ii)

Table of Contents (pp. iii-iv)

Member Institution Acknowledgments (pp. v-vi)

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION (pp. 1-36)

Amy E. Slaton

PART I: MATERIALS TESTED, SUCCESS DEFINED

CHAPTER TWO MUDDY TO CLEAN: The Farm-Raised Catfish Industry, Agricultural Science, and Food Technologies (pp. 39-72)

Karen Senaga

CHAPTER THREE ROOM AT THE BOTTOM: The Techno-bureaucratic Space of Gold Nanoparticle Reference Material (pp. 73-116)

Sharon Tsai-hsuan Ku

PART II: MATERIALS PRODUCED, LABOR DIRECTED

CHAPTER FOUR THE SCIENTIFIC CO-OP: Cloning Oranges and Democracy in the Progressive Era (pp. 119-150)

Tiago Saraiva

CHAPTER FIVE PLYSCRAPERS, GLUESCRAPERS, AND MOTHER NATURE'S FINGERPRINTS (pp. 151-174)

Scott Gabriel Knowles and Jose Torero

PART III: MATERIALS INTERPRETED, COMMUNITIES DESIGNED

CHAPTER SIX THE INMATE'S WINDOW: Iron, Innovation, and the Secure Asylum (pp. 177-202)

Darin Hayton

CHAPTER SEVEN CULTURAL FRAMES: Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced Polymers, Taiwanese Manufacturing, and National Identity in the Cycling Industry (pp. 203-236)

Patryk Wasiak

CHAPTER EIGHT GRENFELL CLOTH (pp. 237-270)

Rafico Ruiz

AFTERWORD: OLD MATERIALS (pp. 271-278)

Projit Bihari Mukharji

List of Contributors (pp. 279-282)

Acknowledgments (pp. 283-284)

Index (pp. 285-300).

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Includes bibliographical references and index.