America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940 by Claude S. Fischer

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424 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. By Claude S. Fischer. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Pp. xv+424; illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, in­ dex. $25.00. In recent years, most sociological studies of technology have at­ tempted to show how specific technologies have been shaped by socioeconomic conditions. Considerably less fashionable is the intellec­ tual tradition that takes the opposite tack by seeking to understand the social consequences of particular technologies. Although thejury is still out on the value of the social-constructivist method, America Calling demonstrates the value of the latter approach. In presenting a socio­ logically informed history of the telephone in America up to 1940, Claude Fischer pursues two general objectives. The first is to gain an empirically based understanding of how the telephone affected social and personal life. The second is considerably more ambitious, for it seeks to use the social history of the telephone as a means of gaining insight into that most elusive of concepts: “modernity.” The author’s general orientations are presented in the opening chapter, an excellent review of contemporary thinking about technol­ ogy and modern life. This chapter raises the key issue developed in the body of the book, the relationship between technological and sociopsychological change, while at the same time noting the methodological pitfalls inherent in any study of so vast a theme. America Calling rises to the challenge, for its underlying methodology is both deep and broad. To gain an understanding of the consequences of telephone use in the United States, Fischer and his research associates consulted archival sources, censuses and other surveys, and contemporary publications. A tighter focus was attained by an intensive study of three northern California towns through an examination of local newspapers, tele­ phone and city directories, and interviews with longtime residents. One of the major conclusions of the study is that there was no “technological imperative” determining how the telephone was used; the employment of the telephone strongly reflected the needs and intentions of its users. To take one example, while the industry’s management at first discouraged the use of the telephone for social calls, by the mid- 1920s it not only bowed to the inevitable but also began to use “sociability” as a key marketing theme. Reinforcing this view of the telephone as something less than a technological juggernaut, Fischer finds that it did not fundamentally change patterns of social interaction. Taking issue with numerous commentators who have seen in the telephone an instrument of delocalization, Fischer finds that, far from becoming rootless cosmopolitans, people maintained their local social connections, using the telephone for precisely this purpose. Telephone use expanded the social networks of many people, but not at the expense of local ones. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 425 To provide perspective on what the telephone did and did not do, the examination of the telephone is paralleled by a less detailed survey of the historical diffusion of the automobile. This is a meaningful comparison, for both can be seen as examples of space-compressing technologies that gained widespread acceptance, although at different rates of adoption (it is rather surprising to read that, during the late 1920s and the 1930s, working-class families were much more likely to have cars than to have telephones). At the same time, the car and the telephone represented potentially competing technologies, as illustrated by the absolute drop in rural telephone installation during the 1930s, a time when automobile ownership remained constant. By considering the two in tandem, Fischer is able to note the parallel and the separate reasons for their appeal, as well as the different sources of the resistance they encountered. Although it is impossible to reconstruct with complete accuracy how technologies were used and perceived decades ago, America Callinggives us a convincing picture ofhow a particular technologybecame part ofeveryday life. Readers expecting a narrative ofvast social and cultural changes flowing from telephone usage will be disappointed, but those willing to accept a more complex exposition will find in America Calling a model for future studies of the interaction of technology and other sources of change. Rudi Voi.ti Dr...