Technology has transformed the world. Yet technology affects society differently in different cultures. One needs only to examine the differences in housing, in heating systems, in appliances (even in toilets, as illustrated in the novel "Fear of Flying"), in order to see how society shapes as well as is shaped by technology. In order to understand this interaction of technology and society, it is critical that we see these forces at work in a number of different settings. In this project, Professor Bray is investigating specific ways in which technological systems relate to various types of power relations and cultural features within a society, taking pre-modern China as an example. She stresses the role of technology as a cohesive force embodying relations of production as well as interacting processes of technological processes of technological, social, and cultural change. Historians of Western technology have brought considerable sophistication to such analyses, but these methods have not as yet been systematically applied to China. She is also applying approaches to technology developed by social and cultural anthropologists. Under this grant, the principal investigator is examining a restricted number of topics grouped around three thematic headings: divisions of labour (e.g significance of the household as the predominant unit of production; the contributions of women to production); culture mental and material (e.g. the implications of scarcity; how architectural forms reflect cosmological beliefs and social practice); forms of control and the exercise of power (e.g. water control; the importance of standardized measures; access to medical expertise). Eventually, Professor Bray hopes to develop this approach into a systematic treatment of technology in Chinese society and culture.
