Artefact N° 20/2024 - Grand Format

It has long been taken for granted that technology is one of the factors behind economic growth, thus reducing technology to the application of science to industry. In recent years, however, a new body of literature has reconsidered the teleology of progress and innovation. This issue gathers the contributions presented at the session "Technology as Resource : Material Culture and Processes in the Pre-Modern World" held at the 19th World Economic History Congress in Paris in 2022.
A group of scholars working in a variety of discipline - economic and art history, material culture and curatorial practice - reflect on the meaning of techniques and on processes of technical change in a comparative and global context. They ask how a deep engagement with materiality and material culture helps us to rethink technology as a "traditional efficient action" - in the words of Marcel Maus - and thus as a repository of processes and as a resource.