Users of European Infrastructures
Status: Completed
In the TIE project he will work on the general framework, Europe's system builders, and the institutional uses of transnational infrastructures.
General framework
The project started with a review of several literatures. A historiographic survey suggests that the role of transnational infrastructure development in 19th and 20th century European history has hardly been studied so far. Notably, canonical publications in the fields of European history and European integration history do attribute a crucial role to infrastructure development. However, they do not follow up this observation with actual analysis of infrastructure history and its entanglement with European history at large.
The project started with a review of several literatures. A historiographic survey suggests that the role of transnational infrastructure development in 19th and 20th century European history has hardly been studied so far. Notably, canonical publications in the fields of European history and European integration history do attribute a crucial role to infrastructure development. However, they do not follow up this observation with actual analysis of infrastructure history and its entanglement with European history at large.
On the other hand, infrastructure development is systematically studied within economic history and the history of technology, but these fields tend to focus upon (sub)national levels of analysis and rarely address processes of transnational (de)linking. This state of the art impedes an understanding of the crucial interactions between transnational infrastructure building and the shaping of transnational polities, societies or economies in 20th century Europe. Over the last decades a few explorative projects have tried to place the topic of transnational infrastructure building on the historical research agenda. They have called for a more systematic research effort. The TIE project is a response to that call. On a conceptual level, he finds the Large Technical Systems
body of literature, the main framework of reference for studying infrastructures in the history of technology, particularly promising. For details and references see Erik van der Vleuten and Arne Kaijser, 'Networking Europe', in: History and Technology 21 (1) (2005) forthcoming; Erik van der Vleuten,‘Historiographical perspectives on network technologies and societies: The research field of large technical systems’, forthcoming in Van der Vleuten and Kaijser (eds), Networking Europe.
Europe's System Builders
The neglect of the history of transnational infrastructures and their interactions with broader history goes hand in hand with a neglect of a certain types of actors: so-called 'system builders' engaging in transnational infrastructure building and thereby involved in the material integration, and occasional disintegration, of Europe. These might include major international bodies like the League of Nations, United nations, NATO, COMECON or the European Union, but also specialized bodies such as the International Telecommunications Union, the International Railway Union, the European Broadcasting Union or the Union for the Coordination of Production and Transport of Electricity. The TIE project will identify such actors, their concerns with building a peaceful, secure, competitive, or war prone Europe, and their strategies for implementing such overall aims.
The concepts of ‘system builder’ and ‘system building’ were developed in the Large Technical Systems literature to study how such actors simultaneously manipulated and shaped technological and societal structures. Notably, the concept does not imply that such actors top-down constructed European networks and subsequently structured European societies. Rather, it is a methodological device to get access to both the sociotechnical practice, ambiguities and conflicts surrounding transnational infrastructure building and intended effects of these infrastructures on the shaping of Europe.
Institutional Uses of Transnational Infrastructures
There is little doubt that transnational infrastructure building had major implications for the shaping of European society/ies in the 20th century. These implications were not given by the infrastructures built, but also by their subsequent use – the organization of flows by a wide range of other historical actors. The TIE project will analyze how a particular type of 'institutional users' such as the food industry, the military, or tourism mobilized (and sometimes adapted) and used infrastructures to build new social structures of their own (e.g. food chains). I intend to study several of such 'superstructures'.
For the development of this approach and further references see Erik van der Vleuten, ‘Infrastructures and societal change. A view from the Large Technical Systems field.’ Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 16 (3) (2004), 395-414; Van der Vleuten, ‘In search of the Networked Nation. Transforming technology, society and nature in the Netherlands in the 20th century.’ European Review of History 10 (2003), 59-78.
