Technocratic Visions

This book brings together nine studies on engineers, architects, and other experts who constructed technological networks, helped develop industrial and urban projects, and acted as brokers between society and the state in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Mexico. Although its chapters are arranged in chronological order, certain elements also allow them to be grouped by theme. The first three chapters show the state's failures in rational decision-making, the proper use of resources and available knowledge, and workers' health and safety issues. Chapters 4 and 9 discuss the state's technocratic projects and their intricate linkages with communities and social groups. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 highlight the influence of military perspectives on Mexican affairs and the inescapable presence of the United States. All of this is complemented by chapter 5, which provides an overview of state sponsorship of science and technology. I will examine the chapters according to these themes.Marcela Saldaña Solís's essay (chapter 1) shows how some skillful architects from elite families, like Emilio Dondé Preciat, developed a new architecture of steel, glass, and concrete in Mexico City. Despite the Porfirio Díaz regime's preference for foreign experts, Dondé made a brilliant career working for the state and private clients to implement urban modernization and hygiene improvements. Chapter 2, by Lucero Morelos Rodríguez and Francisco Omar Escamilla González, surveys the construction materials collection and laboratory at the Escuela Nacional de Ingenieros. The collection testifies to engineer Antonio Anza's efforts to classify and experiment with materials. Lack of funds and equipment, along with state inefficiency, dulled interest in the project, but it highlights civil engineering development in Porfirian times. Rocio Gomez's contribution (chapter 3) remembers that mining safety concerns became topics of international discussion in the nineteenth century. In Mexico engineers were held accountable for miners' safety, although they had no experience in safety matters. The federal government also neglected to enforce mining laws, leaving workers and engineers to take the blame when accidents happened.In chapter 4 James A. Garza focuses on the Gran Canal del Desagüe. That big project, framed by its backers as part of the process of modernization, pleased Mexico City elites but disrupted water supplies and local ecologies in the surrounding areas. The project introduced modern applied engineering to Mexico, as well as “social engineering” with the handling of petitions, negotiations, and confrontations caused by community protests against the project's effects on circulation and commerce (p. 76). The Gran Canal del Desagüe was successfully completed, but it was not a permanent solution to the city's drainage problems. Matthew Vitz's brilliant essay (chapter 9) provides an overview of urbanization projects from the Porfiriato to the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. He proposes the configuration of a “techno-bureaucratic state” as an alliance between technocrats, politicians, and real estate entrepreneurs forced to contend and negotiate with the middle classes as well as with the urban poor and working classes. Their disputes highlighted the habitability of cities and gave rise to the notion of “the right to the city.” This technocratic-urban-popular history has not been integrated into the usual narratives of Mexican social and political change. With this history, Vitz demonstrates that neither the 1968 students' movement nor the 1985 earthquake was so decisive for the emergence of civil society.J. Justin Castro's chapter (chapter 6) analyzes Mexican experts involved in diplomatic affairs in the United States during the Mexican Revolution. These men, fluent English speakers, used their knowledge and skills to introduce themselves as apolitical, rational experts who could be trusted by the American people. By doing so the Mexican envoys, most of them Constitutionalists, got support for their cause. The chapter proves the transnational nature of technocratic discourse, which can be advantageous in complex political scenarios. In chapter 7, Jayson Maurice Porter addresses the 1916–17 Punitive Expedition. The experience acquired during the expedition helped the US military to improve equipment and strategies on the eve of entering World War I. Among the improvements were the construction of “military-grade” roads, mechanical advances in vehicles, and the quality of cantonments (p. 145). In addition, open collaboration was fostered between the US and Mexican militaries, as well as cross-border commercial exchange, before the Bucareli Accords. Chapter 8 focuses on nationalist attempts to develop an aviation industry, a prized technological project of the postrevolutionary state. Pete Soland argues that aeronautics helped to conceal contradictions between the revolution's cultural and social goals and the development strategies that endured after the fall of Díaz. That industry fell short of its promises, but the Mexican state used it to forge a favorable public image for itself.Finally, Juan José Saldaña provides in chapter 5 a general account of the postrevolutionary state's support for innovative change in science and technology. The state undertook a modernizing effort with a nationalist tone that translated into state control over natural resources. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that some engineers managed to launch successful private companies.Overall, the volume is solidly grounded in primary sources and supported by theoretical frameworks: the complex connections between science, technology, and society (STS) and the social shaping of technology, among others. This book is an excellent contribution to Mexicanist historiography on STS, especially because it stresses the importance of noneconomic technocracy on Mexican state formation. The book is highly recommended for students and scholars interested in technocracy, state formation, and Mexican history

Art · Art history · Download · Humanities · Icon · Library science · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Technocracy · Vision · World Wide Web · Anthropology · Computer Science · Diverse Historical and Scientific Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History of Science and Medicine · Law

• Rationalizing geosociality

  Elizabeth Reddy•Human Organization•2024

  Add to list