I am delighted that Warfare State is appearing in Japanese. Although Japan is barely mentioned in... more I am delighted that Warfare State is appearing in Japanese. Although Japan is barely mentioned in the book, it was a case I had in mind when writing it. For Britain and Japan were both industrialised islands, reigned over by emperors, just off the coast of mighty continents. Both were major naval powers. Yet Japan became militaristic on the Prussian model in ways Britain generally did not. Of course its Navy was influenced by the Royal Navy, and neither British nor Japanese navalism was pacifist. The comparison thus argues against straightforward economic or geographical determinism. Politics and ideology matter! This becomes even clearer when we consider changes over time. After the Second World War Britain and not Japan had a conscript army (at least for a while) and Britain spent vast sums on the military, whereas Japan spent relatively little. It is now ten years since the work appeared in English, sufficient time to reflect on how it has been received and how I might now rewrite it. I must admit to some surprise that some have chosen to interpret my argument as being that Britain was a warfare state rather than a welfare state; indeed some criticise me for implying, in their view, that welfare was not part of warfare. But it is clear from the text that I argue that it was a warfare as well as a welfare state, and that I am concerned with the relation between the two. What was misleading was the view that Britain became a welfare state and that this was sufficient description of the state and explanation for its expansion. As I show the relations of welfareness and welfareness changed over time, and that in the period most associated with the rise of welfarism, it was warfarism that in fact advanced. My study thus reaffirms the importance of the shift to welfarism in the interwar years, and from the 1950s. Another disappointment, a related one, is that not much attention has been paid to the last two chapters, where I look in some details into how the warfare state was written out of the history of modern Britain. They are important because they set out the deep reasons the history of Britain came to written from a decidedly civilian perspective, which systematically downplayed the role of the military and military institutions. These historiography chapters are, unusually, at the end rather than at the beginning of the book and perhaps it is for this reason
This essay argues that taking the economy seriously in histories of science could not only extend... more This essay argues that taking the economy seriously in histories of science could not only extend the range of activities studied but also change--often quite radically--our understanding of well-known cases and instances in twentieth-century science. It shows how scientific intellectuals and historians of science have followed the money as a means of critique of particular forms of science and of particular conceptions of science. It suggests the need to go further, to a much broader implicit definition of what constitutes science--one that implies a criticism of much history of twentieth-century science for defining it implicitly and inappropriately in very restrictive ways.
espanolEs precisa una comprension mas profunda del mundo tecnologico (asi como del mismo concepto... more espanolEs precisa una comprension mas profunda del mundo tecnologico (asi como del mismo concepto de ‘tecnologia’). Si no disponemos de una historia de las tecnologia en uso que sea aplicable dificilmente dispondremos de una historia aplicable de la invencion o de la innovacion. Necesitamos unos cambios radicales de orientacion. En primer lugar, debemos evitar confundir lo que esta en uso con lo que resulta de la innovacion. En segundo termino, debemos estudiar por separado el uso y la innovacion, y examinar sus conexiones de maneras nuevas. En tercer lugar, debemos reconocemos que nuestros conceptos implicitos de invencion y de uso son altamente parciales, puesto que se refieren a un conjunto atipico de tecnologias en lugares atipicos. En 1859 una sociedad dirigida por James Lowry, natural de Belfast, fundo una ciudad en un lugar llamado Fray Bentos. Estaba situada en la parte uruguaya del amplio y navegable rio Uruguay, uno de los dos que alimentan el Rio de la Plata. En las afuer...
I am delighted that Warfare State is appearing in Japanese. Although Japan is barely mentioned in... more I am delighted that Warfare State is appearing in Japanese. Although Japan is barely mentioned in the book, it was a case I had in mind when writing it. For Britain and Japan were both industrialised islands, reigned over by emperors, just off the coast of mighty continents. Both were major naval powers. Yet Japan became militaristic on the Prussian model in ways Britain generally did not. Of course its Navy was influenced by the Royal Navy, and neither British nor Japanese navalism was pacifist. The comparison thus argues against straightforward economic or geographical determinism. Politics and ideology matter! This becomes even clearer when we consider changes over time. After the Second World War Britain and not Japan had a conscript army (at least for a while) and Britain spent vast sums on the military, whereas Japan spent relatively little. It is now ten years since the work appeared in English, sufficient time to reflect on how it has been received and how I might now rewrite it. I must admit to some surprise that some have chosen to interpret my argument as being that Britain was a warfare state rather than a welfare state; indeed some criticise me for implying, in their view, that welfare was not part of warfare. But it is clear from the text that I argue that it was a warfare as well as a welfare state, and that I am concerned with the relation between the two. What was misleading was the view that Britain became a welfare state and that this was sufficient description of the state and explanation for its expansion. As I show the relations of welfareness and welfareness changed over time, and that in the period most associated with the rise of welfarism, it was warfarism that in fact advanced. My study thus reaffirms the importance of the shift to welfarism in the interwar years, and from the 1950s. Another disappointment, a related one, is that not much attention has been paid to the last two chapters, where I look in some details into how the warfare state was written out of the history of modern Britain. They are important because they set out the deep reasons the history of Britain came to written from a decidedly civilian perspective, which systematically downplayed the role of the military and military institutions. These historiography chapters are, unusually, at the end rather than at the beginning of the book and perhaps it is for this reason
This essay argues that taking the economy seriously in histories of science could not only extend... more This essay argues that taking the economy seriously in histories of science could not only extend the range of activities studied but also change--often quite radically--our understanding of well-known cases and instances in twentieth-century science. It shows how scientific intellectuals and historians of science have followed the money as a means of critique of particular forms of science and of particular conceptions of science. It suggests the need to go further, to a much broader implicit definition of what constitutes science--one that implies a criticism of much history of twentieth-century science for defining it implicitly and inappropriately in very restrictive ways.
espanolEs precisa una comprension mas profunda del mundo tecnologico (asi como del mismo concepto... more espanolEs precisa una comprension mas profunda del mundo tecnologico (asi como del mismo concepto de ‘tecnologia’). Si no disponemos de una historia de las tecnologia en uso que sea aplicable dificilmente dispondremos de una historia aplicable de la invencion o de la innovacion. Necesitamos unos cambios radicales de orientacion. En primer lugar, debemos evitar confundir lo que esta en uso con lo que resulta de la innovacion. En segundo termino, debemos estudiar por separado el uso y la innovacion, y examinar sus conexiones de maneras nuevas. En tercer lugar, debemos reconocemos que nuestros conceptos implicitos de invencion y de uso son altamente parciales, puesto que se refieren a un conjunto atipico de tecnologias en lugares atipicos. En 1859 una sociedad dirigida por James Lowry, natural de Belfast, fundo una ciudad en un lugar llamado Fray Bentos. Estaba situada en la parte uruguaya del amplio y navegable rio Uruguay, uno de los dos que alimentan el Rio de la Plata. En las afuer...
En esta entrevista, Edgerton critica el alcance de los estudios CTS (Ciencia, Tecnología y Socied... more En esta entrevista, Edgerton critica el alcance de los estudios CTS (Ciencia, Tecnología y Sociedad) dentro del diseño, apuntando a la redundancia de aplicar perspectivas que resultan obvias para una disciplina que se ocupa de la invención y el uso. Además, señala que debemos abandonar el concepto de “tecnología” y reemplazarlo con términos más descriptivos, precisos y útiles.
War has long played a central role in discussions of the rise of the British welfare state. War d... more War has long played a central role in discussions of the rise of the British welfare state. War did not just help create the welfare state, but shaped its nature. This paper, drawing on much recent revisionist literature, retells the story of the relations of war and welfare in this key case. It makes clear that the welfare state for service personnel and veterans was, in both world wars, different from the welfare state for the mass of the population and that there is a need to systematically consider the two over time. In peace and in war, the British state was both a welfare and a warfare state, each operating to different rules. The paper also endorses the view that the reforms in welfare of the 1920s were very much more significant than those of the Edwardian years, and indeed created a working-class welfare state which was extended to the whole population after 1945.
The book examines the evolution of one of the most important technologies that has emerged in the... more The book examines the evolution of one of the most important technologies that has emerged in the last fifty years: biotechnology - the use of living organisms, or parts thereof to create useful products and services. The most important application of biotechnology has been in medicine, in the development of new drugs. The central purpose of the book is to explain how firms based in the US took the lead in commercialising the technology, and why it has been so difficult for firms in other countries to match what the leading American companies have achieved. The book looks at the institutions and policies which have underpinned US success in biotechnology. This is the US innovation "ecosystem," and it is made up of several interlocking elements which constitute a powerful competitive advantage for US biotechnology firms. These include, a higher education system which has close links with industry, massive support from the Federal government for biomedical research, and a financial system which is well equipped to support young entrepreneurial firms in a science-based industry. In the light of US experience the book examines in detail the performance of UK biotechnology firms over the past forty years, starting with the creation of the UK's first dedicated biotech firm, Celltech, in 1980. The book shows how the UK made a promising start in the 1980s and 1990s but failed to build on it. Several leading firms failed, and after an initial burst of enthusiasm investors lost confidence in the British biotech sector. It is only the last few years that the sector has staged a revival, attracting fresh investment from the US as well from the UK. The story told in this book, based on extensive interviews with industry participants, investors, and policy makers in the UK, Continental Europe, and the US, sheds new light on one of the central issues facing governments in the advanced industrial countries - how to create and sustain new science-based industries.
Three separate literatures have grown up in recent years, each concerned with one aspect of a lar... more Three separate literatures have grown up in recent years, each concerned with one aspect of a large, interrelated subject. Increasing attention has been given to the relationships between the state and war, to those between the state, technical innovation and economic performance and to the connection between warfare and technical innovation. In the course of this growth, three hallowed assumptions of Western social theory have come to be questioned. It had been assumed widely that the state and inter-state relations were not centrally significant, that economic progress — its rate and nature — was the product of civil society, and that war and preparation for war were destructive and wasteful. These assumptions have not been held universally: outside the ranks of those engaged in the new turn of thinking there is an author who has written the most detailed, interconnected analysis of the state, war and technical innovation in Britain. Correlli Barnett has been described as ‘probably the only modern British historian whose creed is Bismarckian nationalism’ (Addison, 1986, p. 7), and yet, notwithstanding this judgement, The Audit of War has won widespread critical acclaim and is set to join Martin Wiener’s English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit as the reflective, action-orientated analysis of the British decline. Both works have been influential across the political spectrum. Indeed, Perry Anderson (1987) has gone as far as to describe The Audit of War as ‘the most detailed and devastating panorama of the misery of British industry … and the most radically wounding to national illusions. It is’, he writes, ‘composed at a … depth that makes previous treatments seem indulgent sketches by comparison’ (p. 47n.).
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