Beach Haven

​Bibliography
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2005. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

Sheila Jasanoff is a leading scholar on topics of how science and technology are coproduced with society. Each influences change in the other. In this work she examines how biology and politics interact with each other.

She uses examples of how scientific change is influenced differently in different societies. For example, in the US, foods using genetically modified organisms (GMO) such as grains have largely been adopted. There are parts of US society that feel uncomfortable with GMO foods. This created a market for ‘whole foods’ or ‘non-GMO’. People will pay extra for the labeling. When this same topic came up in the UK, there was sufficient public backlash to cause the government to create anti-GMO laws. Jasanoff points to several things that caused the different reactions. For one, in England there had been a health hazard created by the science community. Intending to help increase beef production efficiency through modifying cattle feed, the result was so-called ‘mad cow disease’. Much of the stock in the UK was slaughtered and burned to prevent the disease spreading to humans.

​Other areas explored in the book by Jasanoff include cloning, stem cell use, animal patenting, and reproductive technologies. She contrasts approaches in the US, the UK, and Germany. She also documents how rifts grew among these countries over how best to govern innovation in genetics and biotechnology.

Bibliography
​Daston, Lorraine, and Gregg Mitman, . 2005. Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Antrhopomorphism. New York, Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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This is a collection of articles (chapters) from multiple authors. Each chapter focuses on some aspect of how humans project themselves onto animals. For example, many fairy tales and Saturday morning cartoon characters include animals that talk and feel like humans. Some authors do the opposite, such as the chapter by Wendy Doniger in which she explores the idea that humans can be more bestial than beasts. Paul S. White looks at the use of animals in scientific experimentation during the age of Victorian Britain.

The list goes on. Authors tackle topics including evolutionary biology, psychology, human-pet relationships, digital beasts, media, politics, and conversation. Several chapters look into human-animal relationships from a scientific perspective, either their use in science, or scientific evaluation of the human in some connected way. These chapters are the main motivation for my reading the book as a part of my PhD program, but the rest of the perspectives are worth the read.

One example of a specific approach includes a study of “The Family that Live with Elephants” (Daston and Mitman 2005, 177). In this section, Gregg Mitman considers communications between the elephants and the human family that cares for them. The human father and daughter in particular discuss actions and noises the pachyderms make to express ideas. The humans ponder how subjective the elephant thoughts are, and not just simple one-word ideas. In a discussion about objective and subjective human evaluation of elephant language, the daughter eventually asserts, “But it’s HUMAN and subjective. They decide which bits of animal behavior to be objective about by consulting human subjective experience. Didn’t you say that anthropomorphism is a bad thing?” To which her father answers, “Yes – but they do try to be not human” (Ibid.).
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Bibliography
Steinberg, Ted. 2000. Acts of God: The Unnatural History of Natrual Disaster in America. 2nd. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

In this work, Ted Steinberg looks at human action increases events that count as catastrophic through increasing where we live and work. He also speaks to how our modification of geography, flora, fauna, and climate also increases the number and severity of natural disasters.

In terms of impact to human life, Steinberg shows how the poor, elderly and minorities are impacted more than those who have more means. In some examples such as specific floods, he shows how land values are higher as distance from flood zones increases. As land value increases the purchase prices grow beyond the ability of lower income home buyers and renters. In lower cost flood zones where poor people can afford to live, the increase of insurance costs means they are less likely to carry flood coverage. If all people could afford to live at higher elevations, then fewer buildings would be built in flood-prone areas and losses would be less.

Other examples are shared throughout the book where human activity adds to both the frequency and impact of largescale disasters. Crowded cities give way to faster spreading pandemics. As with pandemics, closely compacted homes built from combustible materials have made large fires engulfing whole portions of cities. Floods along the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, the burning of Chicago, Hurricane Katrina, and the list goes on.

There are, of course, many ways to mitigate both the frequency and impact, but they all take two things; money and social will. At least in the case of modern construction there are improvements, but generally only where zoning rules require them for new construction or major renovation. That doesn’t protect existing structures, nor do such efforts guarantee complete survivability. These efforts still don’t address where people live based on their economic strata. In America, we are slow to want to preclude people from their freedom to live where they wish, or at least where they can afford to. There are no easy answers, and the answers we do have are partial at best. 
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Bibliography
​Scott, J. C. (1998). Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 

Review by Michael Beach
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As the title implies, James C. Scott references several national policies in different economic and political universes that claimed to seek the betterment of the people living within a given sphere of control. Then, Scott goes on to discuss some of the failures within his example state policies. His focus is on policies that are adopted from the perspective of ‘high modernism’, or in other words, highly planned and symbolic communities as opposed to those whose growth is more organic.

Scott defines high-modernism as clean, sharp, repetitious, and completely planned. For example, one can drive around a subdivision in America and every house looks the same with every yard laid out in a way that keeps the ominous HOA off the back of the homeowner. More organic cities and neighborhoods are those that are more post-modern where each is unique, and the growth seems hodge-podge and random. Scott compares public policy and the effects of high-modernist and post-modernist with various art movements that followed similar courses.

The two main examples Scott uses are the Soviet Union collectivization, compulsory villagization in Tanzania. In each case the hoped-for outcomes were less than desired. People resisted the government efforts resulting in police-state approaches. For Scott, these examples show “how routinely planners ignore the radical contingency of the future” (Scott, 1998, p. 343). One of the fallacies he points out is how in planning there is a need for “standardizing the subjects of development” (p. 345). By assuming all the people to be roughly the same then planners can create buildings, parks, roads, market areas, etc. the same. Other things need to be standardized as well such as assumptions about weather, geologic forces, external economic effects, or other social movements that are guessed to be more or less the same in the future as they have been in the past.

Scott makes a plea for what he calls ‘metis-friendly institutions’. Those institutions that are tasked with planning should be “multifunctional, plastic, diverse, and adaptable” (p. 353). The issue he has with high-modernism is its general approach at simplifying the variables it plans for. Instead of one-size-fits-all, he is advocating for more voices in the process and a willingness to let go of efficiency in the name of sameness.

Bibliography
​Pickering, A. (1995). The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
 
Andrew Pickering takes a look at science as a practical work. While there are many philosophical arguments abounding in regards to science in theory, he examines social forces that shape and are shaped by the processes in scientific decision making.

Pickering offers some clarification around the word ‘mangle’. He realizes that this has a different meaning in different places. In America, for example, he notes that the word refers to completely messing something up from the original intention of the thing in question. In his sense mangle means, “practice, understood as the work of cultural extension” (original emphasis) (Pickering, 1995, p. 3). He equates ‘mangle’ with ‘change’. To Pickering, the practice of science is to change it from the theoretical to the real.

He uses some examples to show how process and outcomes don’t always follow original assumptions. One example includes experimentation using a bubble chamber. It includes “the extension of the mechanic field of science, specifically of the development of the bubble chamber as an instrument for experimental research in elementary-particle physics” (Pickering, 1995, p. 37). Pickering shares the history of decisions it took to get to a working model, and the modification of how ‘working’ was eventually defined. Since the chamber ultimately did not create the exact vacuum conceived, the vacuum it did achieve served to define what a bubble chamber is.

Other examples in the book include “hunting the quark,” “constructing quaternions,” and “numerically controlled machine tools.” Each comes with its own history of conception through realization with social compromises along the way. Finally, Pickering finishes with two chapters on conceptual arguments about the kinds of influences and ways to perhaps embrace or reconstruct them. In Chapter 6 for example, he puts some focus on scientific norms as espoused by Robert Merton which have been argued about since their inception. Pickering considers these norms (or any others) as ‘articulations’. 
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Bibliography
​Weintraub, S. (2014). A Christmas Far from Home: An Epic Tale of Courage and Survival During the Korean War. Boston: Da Capo Press.
 
Review by Michael Beach

The Korean War was my father’s war. To be honest, it's a war I personally know little about. To be technical, the political powers of the west didn’t want to call it a war to avoid what inevitably happened, involvement by China. Instead, they called it a ‘police action’ that involved countries that signed on as United Nations forces. In this book, Stanley Weintraub looks at the beginning engagements, the rout of American forces from the Chosin reservoir, and the military leadership decisions that seemed to bungle the whole thing.

It was late fall in Korea and the weather was turning cold. General Douglas MacArthur (yes, the one from WWII) was in charge of all the forces in Asia. He conducted Korean operations from a comfortable hotel suite and offices in Tokyo. At first, spirits were high in his offices, and initially with troops on the ground as well. Everyone heard that the whole thing will be over by Christmas. The armies of North Korea seemed to be a pushover. There was no reason to think the Chinese would involve themselves. Unfortunately, there was plenty of intelligence to the opposite. The intelligence was ignored. The result was that American troops pushed north toward the Yalu River with little resistance, then found themselves nearly encircled by Chinese regulars and plummeting temperatures.

Weintraub’s work is a combination of historical facts about what happened, and editorial perspective on why things went the way they did. His descriptions of the war that wasn’t a war, the first war America didn’t win, are well written. The reader can see the whole thing play out both from the perspective of generals who rarely joined the ground troops, to the forces themselves dodging death as they made their way back from the Yalu to the relative safety south. The reader gets both the grit of up-close warfare, and the confusion and assumptions at upper levels that reflected an 'alternate reality’ as events unfolded.

Bibliography
Sclove, R. E. (1995). Democracy and Technology. New York and London: The Guilford Press.

​Reviewed by Michael Beach
 
In this work, Richard Sclove examines both various forms of democratic societies and how they approach incorporating technology, and he also looks at where these approaches tend to fail. At the end of the book, Sclove proposes his own suggestion of democratic methods that he feels would work best in a ever more international environment.

Two of the examples Richard Sclove regularly refers to are water provision in rural Spain and Amish farming communities. In the case of the Spanish towns, old systems were quickly upgraded to ‘modern’ water systems. Among the results were increase used of home laundry systems. Community spirit decreased over time as people did not gather at local streams for cleaning clothing. Likewise, gathering at well sites went away as manual retrieval in buckets we no longer necessary. The Amish farmer example, on the other hand, included community discussion on adding any technology. The goal of continued community interaction and cooperation is at the heart of each decision to add or not to add a particular technology. That is different than what many assume. Amish communities are often thought to technology-averse. Sclove argues this is untrue. He points to technologies adopted over many years by Amish communities. The key is whether the implementation would cause separation or isolation among community members.

Among other areas, Sclove reviews topics like the role of experts, international and local impacts of technical decisions, and how power dynamics influence and are influenced by technology. User influence on technical design choices within differing forms of democracy wraps up this examination followed by the author’s own recommendations. What Sclove calls “A New and Better Vision” (Sclove, 1995, p. 239) is laid out in an earlier chapter in the book. There are nine criteria (Sclove, 1995, p. 98) divided into five categories. Each category is elaborated on in separate chapters. The categories include: toward democratic community, toward democratic work, toward democratic politics, to help secure democratic self-governance, and finally to help perpetuate democratic social structures.

From the perspective of Richard Sclove, it is possible to have a democratic approach in selecting technology, even within societies that are less democratic. At the same time a democratic government does not imply the same principles are used to select which technologies any particular society will adopt. 
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Bibliography
Graham, R. (1984). Spain: A Nation Comes of Age. New York: St. Martin's Press.

​Review by Michael Beach
 
For me as a reader, this book is close to my own experience. In 1982 and 1983 I lived in southern Spain serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I just a 19-year-old, pretty much oblivious to the world of politics and economics. In particular, before being called to Spain I really had even less knowledge as events outside the United States and my own experience were limited to what I saw on the news. Spain was not in the US media at the time, at least not to my memory.

Robert Graham published this book in 1984, so just after I left the country. I really was not all that aware of what was going on with in the country or its history, even when I was there. My focus was on sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, many years later I pay much more attention to the happenings in the world. I read some on the Spanish civil war and the history of Franco. I experienced the shift in government towards a more socialist philosophy after decades of fascist dictatorship. I wish now that then I had known more about it.

Graham discusses the transition of power through several tumultuous administrations. There was at least one coup attempt. The author looks at major influences in Spain in the post-Franco transitive period. He looks at the changes in wealth distribution, the influence of banks, the church, and the various factions within the military. Graham also looks at the Spanish media and its affect on public opinion. Finally, he discusses democracy as it evolved within Spain.

Many of the influences discussed by Robert Graham are echoed in other emerging democracies. Throughout the Franco period, Spain was in some ways considered a backward society within a more enlightened Europe. At the time of Graham’s writing its economy had gone through several booms and busts, but was strongly on the mend. It was among the fastest growing economies within Europe. History has shown Spain to have suffered from some of the pangs of a growing set of social benefits. During COVID most of Europe has had similar issues, but Spain, Italy and Greece were particularly in the news as countries with a growing dependency on EU funds.
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I appreciate the insights Robert Graham shares in this book. Anyone interested in the country and how international affairs affect and are affected by Spain should consider the read.

Bibliography
Bijker, W. E. (1995). Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge & London: The MIT Press.

Review by Michael Beach
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Wiebe Bijker uses three specific technology examples to explore how social factors affect technical outcomes. “The stories we tell about technology reflect and can also affect our understanding of the place of technology in our lives and our society” (Bijker, 1995, p. 1). Although this quote may sound as if Bijker is arguing along a co-constructive line, yet throughout the book it’s clear that he asserts that social influence on technology is the primary force.

The bicycle chapter looks at the evolution of how they were designed and constructed. The perceptions evolved from the large bikes that were for daring young men who at times suffered the odd broken bone or two. Such perception led to the eventual production of the ‘safety bike’ that looks ever more like the bikes we typically ride today. By changing front and rear tire size, adding breaks, making seats wider, and other modifications, the community of bicycle riders expanded to include older people and women.

Bakelite is a substance that I became very familiar with while serving in the US Navy. Pretty much every placard on the ship I served on were made of it. Bakelite is an early form of plastic created and modified over time by the company formed by Leo Henricus Arthur Baekeland. Through all sorts of chemical combinations and varying heating temperature and bake timing, he was able to form a number of plastics of different flexibility and strength. The hard relatively thin version seemed to gain the biggest use of Bakelite. Eventually this form of plastic was supplanted by more modern forms that require less toxic waste to create. Newer plastic is also less expensive to make. Nonetheless, for the better part of a century many needs formerly provided by less durable materials, or those more metallic-based and subject to oxidation, were replaced by this early form of plastic.

Turning to bulbs, Bijker looks at the creation of the electric florescent light. What eventually became the long tubes we have all come to know, the approach was thought to fill the need of longer lasting bulbs that could light larger areas than the small incandescent. Industrial facilities in particular had difficulty fully lighting large factory spaces with small incandescent bulbs, and larger spotlights required more frequent replacement. This example specifically addresses not only social influence on invention, but even organized social effort to standardize the eventual technology. Bijker shares several examples of groups of users and bulb manufacturers who even held conferences in an effort to agree on gases used, electrical voltage standards, and the like.

Wiebe Bijker makes the argument for a ‘constructionist analysis’ (p. 280). “Such an analysis stresses the malleability of technology, the possibility for choice, the basic insight that things could have been otherwise” (author’s emphasis) (Ibid.). Bijker immediately notes that not all technological change is so malleable. Later sociologists of technology would take this assumption of social preeminence in the relationship between technology and society to a more level two-way influence. That conception of a level playing field is known as co-construction.
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Bibliography
Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Restoring the Character Ethic. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore: Simon & Schuster.

Review by Michael Beach
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First, I find it interesting that I read this book at what is likely the winding down of my professional career. I had always assumed it was targeted at professionals seeking ways to improve their work performance. It is true that much of what is discussed incorporates ways to be better at our jobs. What I had not known is that many examples used to explain the habits are also depicted in non-work environments such as within the family or other groups (communities) we interact with every day. In later editions the subtitle changes from ‘Restoring the Character Ethic’ to ‘Powerful Lessons in Personal Change’. The later subtitled version includes a 3rd-person forward and some updated appendices from the author’s son.

In describing the seven habits, Stephen Covey often shares personal experiences within his immediate family. He shares early feedback as the ideas in this book formed over time through published academic papers or professional coaching presentations were critiqued by his consumers. In this way, Covey takes the reader along with his own learning journey.

Each of the habits has its own chapter. The habits make up the chapter titles (there are additional contextual chapters before and after), and are described in a command format. They are: Be Proactive; Begin With the End in Mind; Put First Things First; Think Win/Win; Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood; Synergize; Sharpen the Saw. If the reader recognizes some of these, Covey acknowledges these ideas are not unique to him. He sees himself as a consolidator of ideas. It’s also true that the popularity of this particular Covey work has caused some of these titles to work their way into common speech, even if those who quote them have never read this, or any other Covey book. 
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