Consumers, Tinkerers, Rebels The People Who Shaped Europe [Paperback]

Who has decided how Europeans have dressed and dwelled? Traveled and dined? Worked and played? Who, in fact, can be credited with the shaping of Europe?

Certainly inventors, engineers, and politicians played their parts. But in the making of Europe, consumers, tinkerers, and rebels were an unrecognized force - until now. In this book, historians Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael H?rd spotlight the people who 'made' Europe - by appropriating technology, protesting for and against it. Using examples from Britain and the Continent, the authors illustrate the conflicts that accompanied the modern technologies, from the sewing machine to the bicycle, the Barbie doll to personal computers. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of how Europeans have lived, from the 1850s to the current century.
Introduction. - PART I: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: SHAPING NEW TECHNOLOGIES. - 1. Poaching from Paris. - 2. Creating European Comfort. - 3. Crossing Borders - in Style?. - PART II: AFTER THE GREAT WAR: WHO DIRECTS TECHNOLOGY?. - 4. Bicycling and Driving Europe. - 5. Eating around the Continent. - 6. Living in State-sponsored Europe. - PART III: BEYOND THE 1960S: USERS EMPOWERED?. - 7. Saving the Nation, Saving the Earth. - 8. Toying with America, Toying with Europe Conclusion In this entertaining fusion of social and technological history, Ruth Oldenziel and Mikael H?rd argue that much of Europe's contemporary culture was created from below after 1850, as active consumers tinkered with and appropriated both machines and processes to change the ways that they worked, traveled, communicated, dressed, and ate. Not politicians or generals but consumers have increasingly shaped the experiences that define what it means to be European. - David E. Nye, author of Technology Matters and America's Assembly Line

From cycling to the internet, and from Magdeburg to Milan, this rich comparative study reveals how attention to users and the social constructiló¢