When I found out last year that Tina Adcock and Edward Jones-Imhotep were working on a new edited collection about modernity, science, and technology in Canadian history, I was immediately excited. I don’t like to talk about it, but once upon a time I was enrolled in engineering sciences. Earlier this year, I had the chance to speak with Adcock and Jones-Imhotep about their book, Made Modern: Science and Technology in Canadian History, and this blog post is the result of that conversation. Enjoy!
Edward Jones-Imhotep is a cultural historian of science and technology and an associate professor of history at York University. He is the recipient of the Sidney Edelstein Prize in the history of technology for his book The Unreliable Nation: Hostile Nature and Technological Failure in the Cold War. He has held visiting fellowships at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and was the Northrop Frye Visiting Fellow at the University of Toronto.
Tina Adcock is a cultural and environmental historian of modern Canada and an assistant professor of history at Simon Fraser University. She has published work in Swedish, Norwegian, Canadian, and American scholarly journals and volumes. She is an associate of the L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History at McMaster University.
The Book Itself
Made Modern is an edited collection that focuses specifically on how science and technology has shaped Canada since 1867. There are thirteen articles organized into three sections, plus an introduction by the authors and an afterword by Dolly Jørgensen. The first section, “Bodies,” focuses on how Canadian bodies (both human and more-than-human) experienced and were transformed by modernity and new ideas about what it meant to be Canadian. The second section, “Technologies,” considers the relationship between technology and society, in terms of infrastructure and technoscientific cultures, and the relationship between technology and identity. Finally, section three, “Environments,” explores the relationship between modern Canada and the non-human world, and how each has shaped the other.
The articles within the book cover a range of topics, including ethnography, medical history, the history of energy, social history, cultural history, Indigenous history, agricultural history, and the history of transportation. While the book is focused on Canadian history, it is both national and transnational in approach.
The editors described it as follows:
Rather than telling a story of diffusion from European origins, [this edited collection] asks how the relations among scientific knowledge, material artifacts, and the modern were made, mobilized, and challenged in a nation at once deeply embedded in European political, social, and cultural norms and profoundly shaped by colonial anxieties. The chapters tease out these ambiguities, contradictions, and instabilities in Canadian scientific and technical activities throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to engage diverse iterations of the modern. They unsettle historical and contemporary assumptions about the meanings and experiences of modernity, and they make important interventions in national and international historiographical debates. Most of all, they seek to explore how science and technology have formed sites for Canadians to imagine, renounce, and reshape themselves as modern. (p. )4
Origin Stories: A New History of Science and Technology in Canada
Like so many other edited collections, this book came out of a conference. This particular conference was organized to honour the contributions of the late Richard Jarrell, who played an important role in establishing the field of Canadian history of science and technology. All of the papers, with the exception of the pieces by Andrew Stuhl and Dolly Jørgensen, came out of this conference, which was held at York University in 2015. As Jones-Imhotep explained to me, the conference was designed to not only explore the themes and concerns in Jarrell’s work, but to pick up and expand upon them. As a historian of science, Jarrell placed the relationship between science, technology, and modernity, particularly with respect to the aspirations and anxieties of modernity, at the heart of his work, hence the subject of this book.
As a social historian, albeit one with a science background, I admittedly do not know a great deal about the history of science and technology. However, much like the history of medicine (which I know slightly better), the earliest historians of science and technology were not in fact historians at all – they were scientists. These earlier works were often concerned with showing the good that has arisen out of science and technology, and focused on major projects, like the invention of insulin and the Avro Arrow. However, both Jones-Imhotep and Adcock emphasize that just because this earlier work emphasized different methodologies and had different interests, doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some good and that previous research can help to direct where the field will go in the future. But over the last fifty years, the field has largely been turned over to the professional historians, who are trained in social and cultural methodologies, and the field has developed into a sophisticated one. For instance, since the cultural turn, historians are interested in telling much quieter, though no less important, stories about everyday experiences. For instance, how did we learn to use dial telephones? These too are stories about science and technology, and ones that can highlight new issues and make us rethink the present.
This is one of the reasons why Made Modern is such an important book. This is the first edited collection of original material published in the field of the history of science and technology in Canada since 1993. Edited collections published before that date were largely reprinted essays from journals like Scientia Canadensis or source readers. This is also one of the first collections of material to focus on the modern history of science and technology, since most previous work focused on the pre-Confederation period. As the editors noted, this book was sorely needed.
Modernity, Hope, and Fear
As you can probably imagine from the title of the book, modernity is a central concern in this edited collection. Just what the term means, however, is a little more complicated. Jones-Imhotep explained it as two different but related concepts. First, it is a historical condition, involving social, economic, and political transformations, that emerged in the late 18th century, developed in the 19th century, and culminated at the end of the 20th century. These transformations include, but are not limited to, the rise of industrial capitalism, an increasingly secular society, and the emergence of nation-states. Second, modernity is about responses to these transformations. The pace and scope of the changes were such that they evoked strong (and often contradictory) emotions. Individuals experienced anxiety about the speed of change, fears of falling behind, and hope about future possibilities. However, both Jones-Imhotep and Adcock emphasize that there are many ways of understanding modernity, as well as the fact that there is no single modernity, but rather multiple and irreconcilable iterations.
I was also particularly struck by the fact that the editors drew attention to stories that show “pragmatic, recuperative, hopeful, and optimistic experiences,” often in spite of the damage done by modernity. But this is not to suggest that this is an uncritical history. Far from it. As Adcock explained, an important strand in this volume is that the sense of optimism about science and technology is just as important a part of modernity in Canada as fear. Modernity is often aspirational, and individuals aspired to be modern, even when there were negative consequences. This is an important part of the story that needs to be recognized. To do otherwise would be to deny agency to historical actors.
For instance, the North played a central role in the settler colonial project in Canada, and is an important example of both the tension and contradictions inherent in modernity and Canadian identity. From the early 20th century onwards, settlers viewed it as the “last frontier,” and many strongly felt that the modernization of the North would mark the completion of the settler colonial project, and Canada would achieve its unique destiny. But this hope and optimism existed alongside anxiety about “besmirching” the Inuit. Whalers began importing European foods and goods into the Arctic and trading with Inuit in the early 19th century. But by the middle of the 20th century, white southerners began to argue that the Inuit were being “contaminated” by contact with Europeans, and that the mistakes of the south would be replicated in the North. They were aghast, for example, that Inuit women were wearing calico dresses rather than sealskin.
The ways in which hope and fear lived alongside each other here is important. Science and technology were important conduits for Canada’s “natural” maturation, its transition from colony to nation. However, as Adcock explained, part of the story of Canadian modernity is the way in which settlers tried to deny some people living in this place we call Canada the chance, and some would say the privilege, to become modern. This is settler colonialism at work, where Indigenous peoples are not seen as part of the modern world, but people out of time. In many respects, this othering is a necessary condition for modernity, for in order for one group to be constructed as modern, another must be constructed as not-modern/primitive/pre-modern/anti-modern. But, at the same time, better understanding the relationship between modernity and Indigenous peoples presents a tremendous opportunity for exploring stories of resilience and resistance.
Science and the Humanities
Inevitably, our discussion turned to the relationship between the humanities and science. In 2019, there is a fundamental inequity between science and the humanities. Science is often given a great deal more value and prestige by society at large. The entry barriers into history are perceived as lower, and history is seen as something that anyone can do. What’s more, a strong intellectual division persists between the humanities and science. I am not the only one who makes jokes about being allergic to math. As Jones-Imhotep and Adcock explained, a lot of this is due to our educational system. As children, many of us love science because we get to experiment. But, as time goes on, there is a shift in how science education is approached. Eventually, we are forced to pick between the humanities/social sciences and sciences, and many of us who think we are bad at sciences choose the former. These divisions are then replicated over and over again, such as through the existing SSHRC/NSERC funding system.
However, the boundaries are less clear in practice, and there is much to be gained from cross-disciplinary collaboration. Because the reality is that the fields have a great deal in common. For example, science is not just about technical knowledge, but also about important philosophical questions. Which is not to suggest that these collaborations don’t involve a great deal of work. Jones-Imhotep noted that as he was doing his PhD in the history of science and technology, his supervisor also expected him to complete the equivalent of a BA in math and physics. By contrast, as Adcock noted, environmental historians often come to the field through science, and then have to go back and learn the field of history. But the humanities, and history in particular, are a necessary complement to science, and historians of science and technology create important bridges that connect us all.
While this book is very much a history of science and technology in Canada, I think it has a great deal to offer Canadian historians in other fields. After all, modernity is not just of concern to historians of science and technology. This book raises important conceptual questions about the meaning of Canada, challenging our preconceptions, and showing that “modern Canada is less northern, less peaceful, and smaller than we’ve been led to believe.” It makes a persuasive argument about the need for the history of science and technology to be fully integrated into mainstream Canadian history. Like both of the editors, I would especially highlight Dolly Jørgensen’s epilogue, which is focused on the Canadian $5 bill.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s blog post, featuring a conversation with Edward Jones-Imhotep and Tina Adcock. It was a pleasure to speak with them, and I am so grateful that they agreed to participate in this interview! If you did enjoy this week’s blog post, please consider sharing it on the social media platform of your choice! And don’t forget to check back on Sunday for a brand new Canadian history roundup. See you then!
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