Seawalls at Work
Envirotech and Labor on the North Sea Coast before 1800
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4969266 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tim Soens (0000-0003-1040-5266), Greet De Block (0000-0001-6587-3548), Iason Jongepier (0000-0001-6773-180X) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 688-725 |
| Publication date | 2019-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Technology and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/tech.2019.0070 |
| PMID | 31422963 |
| OpenAlex | W2968022219 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 26 |
For more than a thousand years, the building of seawalls has been the dominant strategy to cope with flood risk in the coastal wetlands of the North Sea area. In debates on coastal adaptation, the seawall has become a symbol of "hard" infrastructure contrasting with "soft" engineering and "building-with-nature" technologies. Inspired by both environmental history and STS, this article challenges dominant narratives on the history of seawalls as inevitably evolving towards the rigid infrastructures we know today. Throughout history, seawalls responded to changing and varying socio-spatial realities. Pronounced differences were not so much situated in technical evolutions or external environmental pressures, but rather in the changing organization of labor (and capital), the power and knowledge claims embedded in the seawall and their interaction with the physical environment. Despite improvement-rhetoric, "modern" seawalls were not inherently "superior" or "more effective" than their more localized predecessors. They just corresponded to different realities
Archaeology · Capital (architecture) · Geography · Rhetoric · Seawall · Situated · Work (physics) · Coastal and Marine Dynamics · Coastal and Marine Management · Coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics · Computer Science · Engineering
The measure of reality
In the Nature of Cities
The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–1600
The International Handbook of Political Ecology
Water wizards
Looking at half a millennium of co-existence
The 'English Lowlands' and the North Sea Basin System
Forced Solidarity
Storminess in the Low Countries, 1390-1725
Storm flooding, coastal defence and land use around the Thames estuary and tidal river c.1250–1450
From disaster to sustainability
Humans, Cities, and Nature
La Commedia, secondo l'antica vulgata
The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567-1659. The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries' Wars
An Uncommon Threat
De geschiedenis van de landbouw in de Beijerlanden
Resilient Societies, Vulnerable People
Ecological infrastructure in a critical-historical perspective
Learning from Disaster
Ecological Challenges, Technological Innovations
The Origins of the Wheelbarrow
Designing the Nation
Intersections
The Medieval Wheelbarrow
System Building from Below
Dikes and Dams, Thick with Politics
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2024 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |