Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans
eBook - ePub

Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans

The Politics of Everyday Technologies

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans

The Politics of Everyday Technologies

About this book

What do bananas, rocket ships, bicycles, and French fries have in common?

Who would have guessed that the first sports bra was made out of two jockstraps sewn together or that it succeeded because of federal anti-discrimination laws? What do simple decisions about where to build a road or whether to buy into the carbon economy have to do with Hurricane Katrina or the Fukushima nuclear disaster? How did massive flood control projects on the Mississippi River and New Deal dams on the Columbia River lead to the ubiquity of high fructose corn syrup? And what explains the creation—and continued popularity—of the humble fish stick?

In Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans, historian Paul R. Josephson explores the surprising origins, political contexts, and social meanings of ordinary objects. Drawing on archival materials, technical journals, interviews, and field research, this engaging collection of essays reveals the forces that shape (and are shaped by) everyday objects.

Ultimately, Josephson suggests that the most familiar and comfortable objects—sugar and aluminum, for example, which are inextricably tied together by their linked history of slavery and colonialism—may have the more astounding and troubling origins. Students of consumer studies and the history of technology, as well as scholars and general readers, will be captivated by Josephson's insights into the complex relationship between society and technology.

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Yes, you can access Fish Sticks, Sports Bras, and Aluminum Cans by Paul R. Josephson in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Technology & Engineering & Consumer Behaviour. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Epigraph
  5. Contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction: Technostories
  8. 1. The Ocean’s Hot Dog: The Development of the Fish Stick
  9. 2. The Sports Bra: Gender and Technology
  10. 3. Sugar, Bananas, and Aluminum Cans: Technology, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism
  11. 4. Mass-Produced Nutrition: Industrial Potatoes, Industrial Sweeteners
  12. 5. Technology and (Natural) Disasters: You Cannot Fool (Mother) Nature
  13. 6. Big Artifacts: Technological Symbolism and State Power
  14. Conclusion: What Have We Learned from This? Books, Bicycles, and Other Things That Go Bump in the Light
  15. Notes
  16. Suggested Further Reading
  17. Index