Technocratic Elite Research Articles

Ecocriticism and the Long Eighteenth Century

Stefan Ruzowitzky's recent horror film Anatomie explores the fictional premise that underneath the democratic surface of contemporary Germany, and within its technocratic elites, traces of the country's fascist past still linger. However, Anatomie mobilizes this version of the historical uncanny only insofar as the film is marketed to an audience in the global marketplace, predominantly in the U. S. While the film plays to this audience's anxieties stemming from Germany's unsurmounted Nazi past, it articulates anxieties for its German audience that are specific to contemporary processes of socioeconomic restructuring and generational change. Central to these anxieties are the backlash against 1960s oppositional politics and its perceived mainstreaming, and the destabilization of social equality and middle-class prerogatives as a result of market deregulation.

Horror Film and the Historical Uncanny: The New Germany in Stefan Ruzowitzky's Anatomie

Stefan Ruzowitzky's recent horror film Anatomie explores the fictional premise that underneath the democratic surface of contemporary Germany, and within its technocratic elites, traces of the country's fascist past still linger. However, Anatomie mobilizes this version of the historical uncanny only insofar as the film is marketed to an audience in the global marketplace, predominantly in the U. S. While the film plays to this audience's anxieties stemming from Germany's unsurmounted Nazi past, it articulates anxieties for its German audience that are specific to contemporary processes of socioeconomic restructuring and generational change. Central to these anxieties are the backlash against 1960s oppositional politics and its perceived mainstreaming, and the destabilization of social equality and middle-class prerogatives as a result of market deregulation.

Conmemoración: a treinta años del 11 de septiembre de Salvador Allende

<p>A tres décadas del golpe de Estado que terminó con el gobierno y la vida de Salvador Allende, la evolución política de Chile es examinada a la luz de los cambios ocurridos en el mundo y de cómo el caso chileno fue utilizado como ejemplo. Los treinta años se dividen en periodos casi iguales de dictadura y democracia, en los que la elite política profesional, formada en su mayoría antes de 1973, adopta como interpretación de la historia su propia historia y un proyecto nacional definido por los intelectuales de la dictadura (en su mayoría tecnócratas economistas). Este rasgo caracteriza a la política chilena actual, la redemocratización posdictadura, un proceso escasamente diferente de los procesos democráticos del resto de América Latina. Una democracia que resulta desilusionante para amplios sectores de la población, en especial de los jóvenes, por no tener otro contenido económico y social que no sea el plegarse a las exigencias del nuevo mundo unipolar globalizado. A pesar de mostrar ciertos elementos (seleccionados de entre los más grotescos) de la evolución ideológica de algunos políticos latinoamericanos y chilenos de la izquierda adaptada a las nuevas condiciones, el propósito de este artículo no es de denuncia sino de exploración de los mecanismos ideológicos de dominación del gremio político que hacen resultar tan frustrantes los procesos democratizadores actuales.</p>

Democratization in the Arab World? Depoliticization in Morocco

����� �� In the 1950s, Morocco was one of the rare newly independent states to embark on a path of political pluralism and market economics. The following decades saw successive governments enact reforms establishing a relatively open political and economic system. And yet, almost half a century on, the country remains authoritarian. Why? Though favorable to democracy on the surface, Morocco’s liberal reforms have actually worked against it by depoliticizing the public sphere. By “depoliticization” I mean the marginalization of questions of legitimacy or sovereignty and—in the Moroccan case especially—the concomitant political primacy given to economic issues. Having unremittingly framed economic questions in strictly technical terms, the monarchy has succeeded in sidestepping a fundamental debate on the sources and distribution of power in the Moroccan political system. Parties that might have spearheaded democratic reform have meanwhile diluted their demands and embraced the monarchy’s claim that the country simply needs better economic management. Morocco’s trajectory over the past five decades sheds light on both the slow advance of democratization throughout the Arab world and the relationship between political and economic reform in the region— indicating that hopes placed in gradual liberalization there may be misplaced. Throughout the region, one can find widespread support for the rationalization of economic relations (particularly among business representatives and technocratic elites), economic justice and equity (among nationalist parties, trade unions, and Islamic groups), or civil Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, a Moroccan political scientist, is a visiting professor in the department of politics at Princeton University. Previously, he was a research fellow at Princeton’s Transregional Institute and taught Middle East politics at Georgetown University and the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

Eighteenth Annual Conference of the American Council for the Study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS)

The American Cowicil for the study of Islamic Societies (ACSIS) held its18th Annual Conference April 27-28, 2001 at Villanova University,Pennsylvania. ACSIS was established in 1983 to bring together scholarsengaged in the study of Islamic Societies and states around the world fromreligious, cultural, economic and political perspectives. ACSIS also has astrong focus on Pakistan Studies. The program director, Dr. Hafeez Malikmust be congratulated for consistency with which ACSIS continues to meetand produce its publication The Journal of South Asian and Middle EasternStudies.In a small symposium with a total of seven panels and some 20 speakers(except the absentees), panel areas covered ranged from Turkey and theWest to Muslims in Tibet and China, while the subjects were as diverse asforeign policy, media studies and pluralism.The first panel began with the discussion of Turkey's role in the EuropeanUnion (EU). Augusta State University's Michael Bishku's presented"Destination European Union? The Politics and Economics of Turkey'sCase for Admission" The paper put the conference to a good start becausethe following two papers by James Sowerwine and John Vander Lippedealt with topic directly related to Turkey's admission into EuropeanUnion. Respectively, these papers were "The Role of Turkey in EuropeanSecurity" and "Turkish-American Relations".Bishku pointed out at the unevenness and asymmetrical relationship thatcharacterized the Turkey-EU relations. EU's integration itself is notentirely a democratic exercise but a product of European search forenduring security, a quasi-Utopian dream of European integrationideologues and a generation of technocratic elite who want Europe unified.Similarly, the earlier Turkish elite wanted to enter EU for the reasons ofchanging identity, economic or civilizational, whereas the society at thattime was still traditional and felt a deeper bond with the Muslim world thansecular Europe. However, the current Turkish drive for membership in EUcomes surprisingly not from the secular elite but the very Islamic sectors ofsociety; while the elite wants to hold on to the Kemalist power apparatus,the society wants to democratize and join the EU, because by doing so, thestate will no longer be able to pursue its Machiavellian tactics on itscitizens, as it would have to abide by, in substance, to the Human Rights ...

East European Nationalism, Politics and Religion by Peter F. s> Sugar (review)

360 SEER, 79, 2, 200 I interestinRussianliterature'(p. 409).ARough Guide toRussia Abroad wouldhave probablybeen a bettertitleforthisstrikingunderachievement. Department ofSlavonic Languages andLiteratures ANDREI ROGACHEVSKII University ofGlasgow Sugar, Peter F. East European Nationalism,Politics and Religion.Variorum Collected Studies Series. Ashgate, Aldershot and Brookfield,VT, I999. xiv + 288 pp. Notes. Index. f52.50. WITHIN a matterof weeks of his death on 5 December I999, PeterF. Sugar's final book, East European Nationalism, PoliticsandReligion,was published by VariorumPress.The book is a fittingcapstone for a scholarwho did as much as any, and more than most, to shapethe fieldof EastEuropeanhistory. Aswith otherbooksin theVariorumseries,EastEuropean Nationalism consists of reprints of previously published essays and articles. This particular collection includes two theoretical discussions of ethnicity and nationalism, three chapters dealing with nationalism in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, two chapterson fascismin the interwarera, and fourchapterswhich explore the relationship between religion and nationalism. Most of the chaptershave a broadlyregional focus, though one chapter deals specifically with multinationalAustria-Hungary,anotherwith Austria-Hungary'srole in the Balkan crisis of the I87os, and a third with Balkan dynamics in the nineteenth century. Professor Sugar understood as well as any the potency of nationalism, though he suggestsin chapter one that there is a global process of reversion from 'acquired' loyalties (acquired through nationalist agendas) to 'natural' loyalties (pp. i, 69). In EasternEurope, as Sugarshows,language and religion have been the two issues around which 'national' identities have been built. His chapteron 'GovernmentandMinoritiesinAustria-Hungary',forexample, showshow languagedifferencesunderlayescalatingquarrelsandcontroversies in both halvesof the empire, even though each halfwas operatingon thebasis of a differentformula:Austriabecame steadilymore democratic,its ministers searchingfor consensus among the disparatenational groups in the Austrian half of the empire, while Hungary grew steadily more autocratic,pushing a programmeof Magyarizationand, in the years i875-191 I, actuallyreducing the numberof Slovakelementaryschools, forexample, from I,92I to 440. Yet for all that, Sugar writes, 'the nationalism of the various people in AustriaHungary was firstof all local-historicaland [the country'sinhabitants]would have been satisfiedwith home rulein a federativelyorganizedstate'(pp. iv, 7). This is vintage Sugar advancing a proposition running against much conventional wisdom, but doing so with such documentation and convincing argumentationasto leave littledoubtof the correctnessof hisanalysis. In a particularlyprovocative essay included in this collection ('Continuity and Change in EasternEuropeanAuthoritarianism:Autocracy,Fascism,and Communism'),Sugaroffersan originaland usefuldefinitionof authoritarianism. In hiswords, Authoritarianismis a political system in which separation of civil society and the political state has not been realized, in which the pluralismof economic, political REVIEWS 36I and ideological power has not been achieved, and in which consequently- all civil and political power and decision-makingis reservedto an individualor group claiming for a variety of reasons- to possess the authorityto act for the entire polity. (pp. vi, 3) Signalling his agreement with Vernon Aspaturian that authoritarianism must be considered an alternative or rival to democracy, rather than a more primitive stage of political development, Sugar notes how technocratic elites in Eastern Europe in the I930S believed that economic modernization could most effectively be realized if those groups associated with the 'old order' (including landlords and bankers) were marginalized and the powers of parliament reduced still further. The volume provides a fine introduction to some of the basic issues relating to nationalism in Eastern Europe, a topic with which Sugar has long been closely identified. East European Nationalism,Politics, andReligion could serve as an ideal supplemental text for upper division classes in East European history, as well as for graduate classes in European nationalism or in East European history. TheHMJ SchoolofInternational Studies SABRINA P. RAMET Universityof Washington Lovell, Stephen. TheRussian Reading Revolution: PrintCulture intheSoviet andPostSoviet Eras.Studies in Russia and East Europe. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 2000. Viii + 215 pp. Notes. Illustrations.Bibliography.Index. (42.50. THISis a very welcome addition to the modest corpusof scholarlytreatments in English of the Russian and Soviet printed media. In scope it is both long and broad, handling the entire period from the October Revolution to the present day (though with varying emphases) and giving a well-merited prominence to the periodicalpressalongsidebook publishing.Stephen Lovell begins with a wide-ranging introductory chapter which includes a short history of reading in Western Europe, then of reading...

The Russian Reading Revolution: Print Culture in the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras by Stephen s> Lovell (review)

REVIEWS 36I and ideological power has not been achieved, and in which consequently- all civil and political power and decision-makingis reservedto an individualor group claiming for a variety of reasons- to possess the authorityto act for the entire polity. (pp. vi, 3) Signalling his agreement with Vernon Aspaturian that authoritarianism must be considered an alternative or rival to democracy, rather than a more primitive stage of political development, Sugar notes how technocratic elites in Eastern Europe in the I930S believed that economic modernization could most effectively be realized if those groups associated with the 'old order' (including landlords and bankers) were marginalized and the powers of parliament reduced still further. The volume provides a fine introduction to some of the basic issues relating to nationalism in Eastern Europe, a topic with which Sugar has long been closely identified. East European Nationalism,Politics, andReligion could serve as an ideal supplemental text for upper division classes in East European history, as well as for graduate classes in European nationalism or in East European history. TheHMJ SchoolofInternational Studies SABRINA P. RAMET Universityof Washington Lovell, Stephen. TheRussian Reading Revolution: PrintCulture intheSoviet andPostSoviet Eras.Studies in Russia and East Europe. Macmillan, Basingstoke and London, and St Martin's Press, New York, 2000. Viii + 215 pp. Notes. Illustrations.Bibliography.Index. (42.50. THISis a very welcome addition to the modest corpusof scholarlytreatments in English of the Russian and Soviet printed media. In scope it is both long and broad, handling the entire period from the October Revolution to the present day (though with varying emphases) and giving a well-merited prominence to the periodicalpressalongsidebook publishing.Stephen Lovell begins with a wide-ranging introductory chapter which includes a short history of reading in Western Europe, then of reading in Russia. These lead into a review of the concepts of 'culture'which came to the fore in the newlyformed USSR, the central importance and high statuswhich were accorded to the act of reading, and the mythical image of the 'Soviet reader' to which they quicklygave riseand which finallysuccumbedonly to economic forcesin the I99os. In his next chapter, 'The Creation of the Soviet Reader', Lovell looks at the role of print culture as an instrumentfor the total re-education of Soviet readers as the literacy campaigns of the early I 920S induced the birth of a massreadership.The institutionalizationof reading,andthe normativemodel of kul'turnost', in a political culture totally hostile to the market as a guide or regulator for publishers, fostered the perception by the authorities of the reading public as a largely undifferentiated cohort. However, stimulating though his account is, we are not given even an outline here or later of the institutionalplayerswho held power over the publishingindustryand how they exercised it. Until the very late Soviet period, the Party'sPropaganda 362 SEER, 79, 2, 200I Department, the censorshiporgan Glavlit, and assortedministry-leveloffices such as Goskomizdatbetween them dictatedpolicy to publishersdown to the micro-level, far more compellingly and comprehensively than any influence exercisedby economic considerationsor readerdemand. Surprisinglylittle space is given to the Stalin years. Lovell may hold (thoughhe does not explicitly say so) that attitudesand policies in the Soviet printed media underwentlittle change between the early I930S and the midI950s , when his thirdchapterpicksup with 'The Arrivalof the New Reader'; but prima facie a quarter-centuryof rigorouscensorshipand political terror, which also included a fearful war, must have produced and subsequently reinforced massive effects on Soviet citizens as readers which deserve more attentionthan they receive here. The third chapter takes the action up to the end of 'stagnation'in the mid-i 980s. Lovell claims that what we see during these years are '[r]eaders who areincreasinglyable to makechoices aboutwhat they read [... .andwho] begin to thinkindependentlyof any would-be social ethos' (p. 69). There is a danger of circularityin the argumentthat readersbecome more selective and criticalbecause they have a widerrangeof booksfromwhich to choose. In the Soviet situation,it was as a resultof decisions made by the authorities,not by the publishers, which brought a larger assortiment into the bookshops and which determined its composition. As Lovell himself points out, the knithnyi bumof the seventies and early eighties resultedfrom a fairlylimited range of books being bought as commodities in...

Designing families and solid citizens: The dialectic of modernity and the matrimonial causes bill, 1959

Policy‐makers in the 1940s and 50s were intent on designing families which would produce solid citizens to engage in nation building. Historians offamilism treat it as an expression of modernism: a unifying, oppressive discourse now to be countered by the destabilising project of postmodernism. But this is not the whole story, for it omits the dialectical essence of ‘the modern’, which promises both ‘progress’ through technical rationality and individual achievement/self fulfilment. The other side of the dialectic has been avoided by dismissing individualism as a process of interpellation closely tied to the interests of technocratic elites. Out of the discontinuities within modernism there emerged opportunities for agency, the chance for people to make their own lives. The public controversy over the Matrimonial Causes Bill, 1959—at the height of what we are encouraged to think of as the familist decade—is explored as one instance.

Communist Party Membership and Regime Dynamics in China

This article uses event history analyses to examine how the criteria of political screening and educational credentials evolve in the attainment of Chinese Communist Party membership during the period between 1949 and 1993 and how party membership, in turn, influences individual mobility into elite political and managerial positions. We argue that political screening is a persistent feature and a survival strategy of all Communist parties and that the mechanisms of ensuring political screening are affected by the regime's agendas in different historical periods. Using data from surveys conducted in Shanghai and Tianjin in 1993, we found that measures of political screening were persistently significant predictors of party membership attainment in all post–1949 periods and that party membership is positively associated with mobility into positions of political and managerial authority during the post–1978 reform era. Education emerged to be a significant predictor of Communist party membership in the post–1978 period. These findings indicate that China has made historical shifts to recruit among the educated to create a technocratic elite that is both occupationally competent and politically screened.

Feminists and Technocrats in the Democratization of Latin America: A Prolegomenon

Women's movements made important contributions to ending the period of authoritarian rule in Latin America, but their participation in the reconstruction of democratic politics has been more limited than expected. This paper argues that the enormous influence exerted by technocratic elites in the democratization process in Latin America has represented an obstacle to the improvement of women's status in the region. Gender-biased assumptions and practices have been only partially addressed, in part because the policy-making process is under the control of economists, a professional group with a particularly unfriendly stand towards gendered analysis. It is suggested that reforms within economics may help in the task of making democracy more responsive to the demands of women.

The Fifteenth Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party: Full-Fledged Technocratic Leadership with Partial Control by Jiang Zemin

nist veterans, Chinese politics is entering a new era. The ascent of technocrats to dominance of the leadership is now clearer than ever in the composition of the new Fifteenth Central Committee (CC) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). All seven members of the Standing Committee of the CC's Politburo, the most powerful group in the country, are technocrats. Technocrats may be defined as people who have three traits: technical educations, professional experience, and high posts. They vie for power on all available grounds but cohere as a political elite partly because of their notion that technical professionalism confers some right to rule. Eighteen of the 24 Politburo members are engineers by training, and technocrats in this sense also constitute a majority of the whole 344-member CC. These engineers-turned-politicians are now the people running China. What are the main characteristics of technocratic elites? How have they come to power? In what ways do they differ from their predecessors? Does

Huxley: Evolution's High Priest by A. Desmond

Michael Joseph, 1997. £20.00 hbk (xiv+370 pages) ISBN 0 7181 38821

GIS—Democracy or Delusion?

Geographical information systems (GIS) are potentially powerful devices for integrating, manipulating, and communicating information, and are acknowledged to be vulnerable to the abuse of that power. A significant debate during the 1990s has challenged GIS users to respond to the suggestion that their technology is restrictive, elitist, and antisocial. In practice, the response from the GIS profession has been muted, and the paper therefore comments on the way in which professional GIS implementation might be interpreted from different perspectives. Comparisons are drawn between analytical GIS in post-Apartheid South Africa and operational GIS in the UK public utilities. GIS is shown to be an operational or decision support engine fuelled by information flows, and in creating the organisational pathways to support these flows it unlocks gateways the defence of which has traditionally underpinned the authority of management and government. A dilemma thus emerges. On the one hand, GIS has unprecedented power to disseminate access to usable information. On the other hand, it still supports a division which generates a technocratic elite. It is suggested that information democracy lies not in information flow as a technical process, but in information management. As a consequence, it is concluded that a code of data ethics may be at least partially effective in allowing a professional response to the critics of GIS.

Medicine, Male Bonding and Homosezxuality in Nazi Germany

Homosexuals were among those persecuted in nazi Germany. Various researchers have explained this in terms of National Socialist racist ideology and eugenics, because the, nazis justified their regulations on the basis of population policies. They were apprehensive at the appearance and spread of homosexuality because it would result in larger numbers of Germans no longer procreating. This persecution was inevitable and massive, so the argument runs, because in the Third Reich, sexuality above all served propagation, population expansion, biological health and the purity of the so-called 'Aryan' race.' Medical historians have characterized the nazi regime as a 'biocracy': major social and political issues like the Jewish 'question', ethnicity, gender, poverty, crime, 'asocial' behaviour and sexual deviance, were transformed into and reduced to biological and medical problems, for which there were apparently 'neutral', technical solutions. The willingness of the German medical profession to embrace the National Socialist cause was substantial, and biomedical scientists played an active role in the initiation, administration and execution of nazi 'biopolitics'.2 Thus it has been argued that the nazi biocracy was based on a strong affinity of the intellectual and social structures of professional medical science with authoritarian politics. The more science became expert knowledge and the domain of privileged professionals and a technocratic elite, the more it was conceptualized as undemocratic. Refuting the current notion that nazism corrupted, distorted and misused a supposedly neutral biomedical science, these authors assert that biology and medicine were already inherently politicized and that they lent nazism a specifically

Mexico and Argentina: Economic reform and technocratic decision making

This article examines the Mexican and Argentine cases of market reform and argues that despite important differences in regime type and in recent economic and political trajectories, the decision-making process in the two countries came to display important common features. In both cases, economic crises and debt negotiations played key roles in propelling technocratic reformers into positions of policy predominance; both exhibited exclusionary technocratic decision-making styles in which small technocratic elites insulated themselves from both extra and intra state pressures. While policy isolation was no doubt necessary for the successful implementation of market reforms, this style may be counter-productive to political stability over the long term.

Ceremonial regionalism, institutions and integration in the Americas

Latin America's recent integrationist proposals have been presented as part of a new commitment to increasing living standards and international competitiveness. However, the frustrating results of integration in the past three decades should caution us against placing excessive emphasis on the technical aspects of trade. The author argues that important lessons can be learned from previous attempts to promote integration in this region while neglecting the political dimensions of integration. Inadequate organizational forms, weak institutional arrangements ruled by technocratic elites, may be more helpful as ceremonial devices in the legitimation of those elites than in advancing the substance of the integration project.

Italy and EMU as a 'Vincolo Esterno': Empowering the Technocrats, Transforming the State

Abstract This case study analyses how the Italian 'core executive' operated in the negotiation of the Maastricht Treaty provisions on Economic and Monetary Union. The record of the Italian negotiators on EMU is examined in the framework of a 'two-level' bargaining game. It argues that policy was largely driven by a small technocratic elite, with limited ministerial involvement. The overarching foreign policy imperatives were to maintain Italian participation at the heart of the European integration process and to reduce the asymmetry of monetary power with Germany. Domestically, however, the technocratic elite shared a belief in the need for externally-imposed economic discipline (a vincolo esterno - external constraint), to overcome the problems posed by the partitocrazia - the domination of government by parties. EMU was used to effect domestic reform by redistributing power. In the process they unleashed powerful transformative effects on the Italian state. The domestic effects of EMU were thus much more far-reaching than the Italian impact at the European level on the final EMU agreement.

Soviet Zion: The Quest for a Russian Jewish Homeland

Anti-Semitism, Anticapitalism, and Jewish Colonization - Establishing the Partnership for Jewish Colonization - Larin, Bragin, and the Soviet Jewish Technocratic Elite - Mikhail Kalinin and Soviet Political Leadership - James Rosenberg and the American Jewish Community - Semyon Dimanshtein and the Jewish Communists - The Antagonists: Russians, Zionists, Ukrainians, Crimean Tatars - Crimea Defeated - To a Jewish Land: The Soviet Jewish Territories - Death and Determination: War, Revival, and the Final Defeat of the Territorial Idea - Contemporary Resonances

Academic Ideology and the New Attention to Teaching

am using the term academic in a sense similar to Jay Lemke's.1 He discusses classroom decorum and the balance be tween the that students are not to speak to one another during and the fact that a certain amount of interstudent conversa tion is permitted during any meeting except examinations. Lemke sees the code of student silence as belonging to that category found in many social situations where the rules are largely pro forma, yet nevertheless honored as the rules. I propose that they [only-sometimes enforced rules] operate as part of an ideology ; that is, as a of beliefs that systematically hides its own true social functions. If the rules were strictly enforced, the ideology would be exposed as such because we would have to question the basis of a rule whose enforcement made our lives impossible. But by permitting a rule to be broken as often as necessary to avoid this, this maintenance continues to serve its hidden function (LS 236). In this essay, and in his subsequent book Talking Science,2 Lemke explores how the teaching of science is governed by the ideology of individualism, which, in class, stays back, so to speak, and emerges in a few selected places, one of which is testing. Lemke describes how the restrictions on talk create a picture of classroom learning that distorts its social nature to make it seem as if each student is solely responsible for what he or she learns or fails to learn in class (LS 236). He argues that this classroom ideology is a fundamental part of the social system of awarding grades, opportunities, jobs, and radically different standards of living. In turn, At the base of this system, of course, behind the grades and before the opportunities, most often stand test results. According to this interpretation, it is no accident that the only classroom activity type in which the rule against talk between students is strictly enforced is test taking, that moment when the social process of the classroom is temporarily replaced by an artificial set of separate, isolated individuals (LS 236). Tests in science courses represent an ideological node that exercises the influence of the technocratic elite {TS 139) in the teaching philosophy of most American schools. When in any classroom, this ideology constrains the

L’Invention de l’ingénieur moderne: L’École des Ponts et Chaussées, 1747–1851 by Antoine Picon

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 181 perpetuates a tradition of civil engineering histories written by engi­ neers or closely based on their accounts. While the engineer’s viewpoint can provide insight into design and construction, the mindset and concerns of engineers often vary from those of historians as well as most of the general public. For those who seek to go beyond the bounds of the historiographic tradition that Marrey chose, Les ponts modemes will appear somewhat lacking. It avoids thematic interpretation and passes over scholarship in the history of engineering. While it covers 200 years in 300 pages, no explicit questions tie the book together. Chapter organization is ran­ dom: bridges are grouped according to geography, material, type, and supposed historical epochs; the overall organization is chronological. Marrey does not clarify the agenda that leads him to reject recent synthesis while citing primary materials. Most or all of the book originally appeared as a series of articles, and these have not been well accomodated to book form. This compendium nevertheless has much to recommend it. There is a lot of information here; in a field as underresearched as the history of modern civil engineering, a book of this type will automatically become a source for those who need to identify the major engineers, entrepre­ neurs, and works. And Les ponts modemes contains many entertaining stories. Moreover, Marrey often emphasizes neglected aspects of civil engineering. He pays particular attention to the complexities of the building process. He even brings up the treatment of workers (p. 192). Though he often quotes fromjust one or two sources, a practice that will not satisfy historians, historians are not his intended audience. Les ponts modemes is typical of many civil engineering histories; it delivers a series of accounts and illustrations to a reader with an abiding interest in the subject. As Marrey had so much source material within his grasp, however, it is a pity that he did not try to reach out to a wider readership. The book may not attract readers of Technology and Culture who steer clear of “bridge books,” but it will satisfy the bridge fanciers for whom it was intended. Gregory K. Dreicer Dr. Dreicer is a curator at the National Building Museum. His research concerns intercultural exchange and the history of civil engineering. L’Invention de l’ingénieur moderne: L’École des Ponts et Chaussées, 1747-1851. By Antoine Picon. Paris: Presses de l’Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, 1992. Pp. 768; illustrations, tables, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. F 380.00 (paper). The Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées (literally School of Bridges and Roads), well known to historians of engineering as the oldest engineer­ ing school in France, is still one of the most prestigious of the French system of grandes écoles from which much of France’s technocratic elite is 182 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE recruited. Predictably, therefore, it has been the subject of quasihagiographical studies by graduates and has also received the attention of historians of administration. Antoine Picon, however, a historian who is himself a graduate of the school as well as an architect, has produced something considerably more than a narrow institutional history. This fine book, a major event in the historiography of engineering that should be translated quickly into English, attempts nothing less than using the history ofthe school to study the history of “technical rationality.” This makes Picon’s history more than just a case study of purely national interest, for it raises questions and suggests answers that are fundamental in the understanding of modem engineering everywhere. From the rich archives of the Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, the author has drawn not merely valuable information on curriculum and organi­ zation but also the student essays he exploited so well as a mirror of the ideology of the school in earlier work. The same archives provide many of the book’s numerous and beautiful illustrations of design drawings, cartography, and architectural projects that give a real sense of students’ work. Picon has used them skillfully to establish his theses. His finely textured analysis of technical rationality is developed from the attentive study of the lines...