Langdon Winner “Do Artifacts Have Politics?”

Langdon Winner “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Daedalus, Vol. 109, No. 1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? (Winter,1980), pp. 121-136

“I shall offer outlines and illustrations of two ways in which artifacts can contain political properties. First are instances in which the invention, design, or arrangement of a specific technical device or system becomes a way of settling an issue in a particular community. Seen in the proper light, examples of this kind are fairly straightforward and easily understood. Second are cases of what can be called inherently political technologies, man-made systems that appear to require, or to be strongly compatible with, particular kinds of political relationships.”

Taking an example of a bridge on Long Island, he writes: “In our accustomed way of looking at things like roads and bridges we see the details of form as innocuous, and seldom give them a second thought.” (123) Low overpasses in order not to let buses (associated back then with Black Americans) pass through them, only private cars with White Americans. “One can point to Baron Haussmann's broad Parisian thoroughfares, engineered at Louis Napoleon's direction to prevent any recurrence of street fighting of the kind that took place during the revolution of 1848. Or one can visit any number of grotesque concrete buildings and huge plazas constructed on American university campuses during the late 1960s and early 1970s to defuse student demonstrations.” (124) History of technology is similar, as new machines and tools were invented and introduced not only to make the industrial process more effective, but also in order to secure current regimes and practices of domination.

Takes an example of a tomato harvesting machine to argue that development of new technologies is “an ongoing social process in which scientific knowledge, technological invention, and corporate profit reinforce each other in deeply entrenched patterns that bear the unmistak able stamp of political and economic power.” (126)

“The things we call "technologies" are ways of building order in our world. Many technical devices and systems important in everyday life contain possibilities for many different ways of ordering human activity. Consciously or not, deliberately or inadvertently, societies choose structures for technologies that influence how people are going to work, communicate, travel, consume, and so forth over a very long time. In the processes by which structuring decisions are made, different people are differently situated and possess unequal degrees of power as well as unequal levels of awareness.” (127) This is totally true for Soviet history as well. Inefficient industry was instrumental for the preservation of bureaucracy which could not be challenged by other social groups; hence inefficient industry was reproduced to the degree of idiocy, whereas efficient solutions were carefully uprooted. And modelling or even imagining “future” technologies was a way of symbolic building of a better, more efficient world, in which Soviet technical intelligentsia hoped to occupy a more prominent place, replacing bureaucracy.

“Taking the most obvious example, the atom bomb is an inherently political artifact. As long as it exists at all, its lethal properties demand that it be controlled by a centralized, rigidly hierarchical chain of command closed to all influences that might make its workings unpredictable. The internal social system of the bomb must be authoritarian; there is no other way.” (131)  Winner then develops the argument and claims that certain artifacts do require certain political and social conditions for them to emerge; once they emerge, they start reproducing (contribute to reproducing) of these conditions (131-132).

“Alfred D. Chandler in The Visible Hand, a monumental study of modern business enterprise, presents impressive documentation to defend the hypothesis that the construction and day-to-day operation of many systems of production, transportation, and communication in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries require the development of a particular social form – a large-scale centralized, hierarchical organization administered by highly skilled managers.” (131)

Jones, Polly (ed.). The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization

Jones, Polly (ed.). The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization. Negotiating Social and Political Change in the Khrushchev Era. London: Routledge, 2006.

Introduction by Polly Jones: an accent on de-Stalinization as the main aspect of Khrushchev’s era. Miriam Dobson, “Show the bandit-enemy no mercy!” – an account of how Soviet state and society tried to react to the problem of crime rise after the first wave of rehabilitations. Polly Jones, “From the Secret Speech to the burial of Stalin” – a sketch of different strategies to promote, support and resist de-Stalinization both from above and from below. Susanne Schattenberg in “’Democracy’ or ‘despotism’? How the Secret Speech was translated into everyday life” looks at the cult of technology as a result of de-Stalinizaiton and attempt to push forward the struggle ‘inventors’ vs. ‘bureaucrats’. Denis Kozlov “Naming the social evil. The readers of Novyi mir and Vladimir Dudintsev’s Not by Bread Alone, 1956-59 and beyond’ analyzes readers’ responses to the novel .

Christine Varga-Harris, “Forging citizenship on the home front. Reviving the socialist contract and constructing Soviet identity during the Thaw” analyzes how Soviet citizens used the language of reward and compensation to secure their place (literally, in terms of housing) in the socialist society. Ann Livschiz in “De-Stalinizing Soviet childhood. The quest for moral rebirth, 1953-58” looks at how literature (patterns of behaviour and positive characters) was used to educate children into disciplined socialist subjects. Juliane Fuerst “The arrival of spring? Changes and continuities in Soviet youth culture and policy between Stalin and Khrushchev” analyzes how youth was caught between enthusiasm and maintenance of control, and hence youth policy demonstrated multiple continuities (in terms of stilyaga-hunt, e.g.). Donald Filtzer examines how new forms of labor mobilization were tested (including raised salaries, campaigning, increased role of engineers, etc.), which, however, led to increased exploitation of women’s labor and other contradictions.

Bittner, Stephen V. The Many Lives of Khrushchev’s Thaw

Bittner, Stephen V. The Many Lives of Khrushchev’s Thaw: Experience and Memory in Moscow’s Arbat. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008.

A focus on artistic intelligentsia. An interesting metaphor – Thaw as an operation of ‘inclusion’ in comparison to ‘exclusion’. Discusses why Thaw was not an attempt of ‘liberalization’ in its own right (which is true), but doesn’t mention the point that it was an attempt of return to ‘pre-stalinist’ visions of the soviet state, hence it could not, by definition, be anything going in the western direction. Chapter 1 “History and Myth of the Arbat” – a socio-cultural description of the place, “the Arbat myth.” Chapter 2 “A Cult of Personality and a Rhapsody in Blue.” Gnesin institute as a site of struggle over formalism and reforms.

Interestingly – he doesn’t make this conclusion, but his material shows that since there was only one site of cultural production in the Soviet Union, stakes in struggle between different cultural forms were unusually high: whereas in other societies they simply differentiated in different sites, here that had to come along within one framework of cultural production (chapter 1, second part – 54-65, for example, but in many other places as well).

Chapter 3, “Raining on Turandot.” Theater as a return to the revolutionary poetics of the 1920s. Chapter 4, “Remembering the Avante-garde” – how New Arbat was built to embody new post-Stalinist architecture and visions of the urban space. Arbat as an old place of memory damaged. New Arbat as rehabilitation of constructivism. Chapter 5, “Preserving the Past, Empowering the Public”: how public support was rallied to preserve certain (read: intellectuals’) visions of the past and secure their voice and say in politics/cultural production. Preservation of historical buildings as a field where new Russian nationalist discourse of Brezhnev’s time was born. Chapter six “Dissidence and the End of the Thaw” – about ‘closing’ of the political and cultural system in the wake of Khrushchev’s dismissal. Arrest of Daniel and Sinyavsky as a turning point where Thaw became an object of nostalgia itself.

Dobson, Miriam. Khrushchev’s Cold Summer. Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform After Stalin

Dobson, Miriam. Khrushchev’s Cold Summer. Gulag Returnees, Crime, and the Fate of Reform After Stalin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009.

Draws on rich materials from Soviet letters to ‘power’ to show ambivalent character of ‘popular’ attitudes to Stalinist and post-Stalinist policies. Argues that skills to ‘write bolshevik’ were very different in all cases, an indication which shows that the ‘internal world’ remained affected in a different way than targeted and envisioned by official media. Search of narrative form to make one’s life experience expedient for ‘sale’ to authorities. Discusses the party’s search for truth and purity as driven by interaction between party leaders and narrated experiences of gulag. Speaks of the ‘cult of criminality’ as a released social phenomenon. Different biometaphors (life, garden, purge, decease, etc.) as metaphors shaping and making sense of social relations – in particular, of treating outcasts. In many ways, an excellent cultural and language analysis of soviet realities of Khrushchev’s time. Her emphasis of the ways in which the concept of truth was used is particularly illuminating of many things behind political and social reforms of Khrushchev’s time.

Filtzer, Donald. The Khrushchev Era: De-Stalinization and the Limits of Reform in the USSR

Filtzer, Donald. The Khrushchev Era: De-Stalinization and the Limits of Reform in the USSR, 1953-1964, London: Macmillan, 1993

Draws on parallels between Gorbachev and Khrushchev. Regards Khrushchev as a product of Stalinist system, but at the same time idealistic. Why reforms after Stalin’s death: poor labor productivity, “terror and coercion were no longer effective” (9) – quite far-fetched, they (a) were effective, (b) in 1953, they weren’t used much. So basically, his main explanation is that de-stalinization was caused by economic problems and by mass dissatisfaction of Soviet citizens with the oppressive regime.

Quite biased account, anyway. “[after khrushchev’s speech] within a few months by the release of some 8 to 9 million political prisoners from the labour camps...” – whereas even the Black Book of Communisms evaluates the number of Gulag prisoners in 1953 as ca. 2.5 million people in camps and ca. 2.75 million people in ‘special settlements’, and then just one amnesty signed by Beria on 27 March 1953 released 1,2 million prisoners.

A good brief account of events in agriculture, industry and political life.