New Profession, Old Order

ISBN-13: 9780521371988 / Angielski / Twarda / 1990 / 368 str.

Kees Gispen

Opis

New Profession, Old Order is an exploration of the creative tension between modern technology and preindustrial Germany. It concentrates on the social and educational history of engineers as a microcosm of the larger society between 1815 and 1914, and asks why this new occupation, so successful in transforming the physical world, did not achieve the professional power, cohesion and prestige that its technological accomplishments would seem to have warranted. The author proposes answers that center on the historical situation in which the engineering profession found itself. He develops his thesis through careful consideration of the strategies, organization, and development of technical education in nineteenth-century Prussia, the educational struggles and political debates of German engineers and their various associations, changing career prospects, and the relations between engineering management, salaried employees, professionalizers, and government. The result is a study that demonstrates the seamless links between Germany's long-term socioeconomic modernization and its temporary political traumatization.

Recenzje

"Studies of professionalization tend to be success-oriented accounts of the rise of expert groups to social dominance. Gispen's analyses of engineering provides a refreshing contrast in tackling what amounted to a failed profession....Gispen shows that engineers remained fragmented with various competing groupings....He does provide a finely crafted and intellectually sophisticated analysis of professionalization in a distinctive political context, and opens challenging new perspectives for historians interested in education and the social repercussions of German industrialization." Paul Weindling, German History

Spis treści

List of tables; List of figures; Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; Part I. Emulation: Bildung and the Bureaucratic Order: 1. technical education and society before 1850; 2. Nationalism, industrialization, and technology: the first years of the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure; 3. The pursuit of Bildung: Grashof and the VDI, 1856–76; 4. The reform of technical education in Prussia, 1876–9; Part II. Reorientation: industrial capitalism and a 'practical' profession: 5. Reorientation in the engineering industry, 1876–84; 6. Crisis and renewal in the VDI, 1877–90; 7. The rebirth of nonacademic engineering education, 1879–1901; 8. Public authority, private power, and the production of engineering personnel, 1901–14; Part III. The crucible: technical careers and managerial power, 1900–14: 9. Career prospects and the Btib's reform efforts; 10. The unified employment code and the Patent Law; 11. Direct action; 12. The reaction of the VDDI; Epilogue; Appendix; Bibliographical note; Index.