Contemporary Social History  (20087)

Degree/study: Grade in Humanities
Year: 3rd..
Term: 3rd
Number of ECTS credits: 5 credits
Hours of studi dedication:
Teaching language or languages: classes in English (exams and pieces of work in any of the official languages of the UPF)


Teaching Staff: Enric Ucelay-Da Cal

1. Presentation of the subject

 

The subject Contemporary Social History, with the subtitle "Technology, Technical Change and Long-term Social Structures", does not aim to be a study and interpretation of the main social episodes of the contemporary times. As a part of a new program in the Faculty and Department of Humanities, it will be taught in English, even though it is not compulsory for students to answer using this language. The professor can speak the three official languages of the UPF and therefore he will be able to help students if they cannot understand everything.

The purpose of the course 20087 Modern Social History: Technology, Technical Change and Long-term Social Structures is to familiarize students both with teaching in English, and, more important, to teach them about the relevance of technological change in social dynamics, especially in the last two centuries, the major characteristics of which have been defined by the ongoing changes in production, communications and transport, as well as accessibility and consumption, all based on forms of applied engineering. Such a narrow perspective of society, while enormously enriching to humans as a whole, evidently misses out on factors which have not been foreseen, as much of critical thought in the last twenty years has insistently pointed out. 

 

2. Competences to be attained

General competences	Specific competences
1) Understanding study in a foreign language; 2) Full capacity for synthesis in a multi-sourced framework; 3) Narrative rationality, mixing logical argument with adequate sourcing; 4) The use of historical perspective in relation to other disciplines and / or fields.	1) Attaining the capability to analyze social processes outside narrow ideological mindsets; 2) Retaining a general perspective of social, economic, and technological evolution over time, and the implications of such evolution for the future

3. Contents

 

Block 1: Antecedents

-Discovery, invention, and borderline knowledge, and their differences: human evolution without biological natural selection, dependent exclusively on culture

-The paradox of steam power and the contradictions inherent in the European myth of progress: the tradition of Chinese leadership in technological innovation

-Predispositions for the perception and/or reception of technological change  

Block 2: The Big Change

-The transformation of communications in the Nineteenth Century: sailing technology, cannons, and creation of the European sea power

-European moveable print and the "Scientific Revolution"

-The Enlightenment as an exercise in generalized engineering  

Block 3: The First Industrial Revolution

-The beginning of "manufacturing": from hand-made to machine-made; from "tinkering" to interchangeable parts

-Blood traction" and HP measurement: economies of scale, transportation, schedules, and the need for a personalized sense of official time

-Industrial networks, from the British Isles to the Continent and North America: technology and urbanization  

Block 4:  The Second Industrial Revolution

-Heavy industrialization and the sustained transformation of urban life: the idealized resistances to industrial change and its concomitant social hierarchy

-Production as an ideal, and the slow development of an awareness of the importance of consumption

-The onset of war economies, with the idea of large-scale economic planning and social engineering  

Block 5: The Information Society

-Post-industrial societies, and the changes they wrought

-The hyper-acceleration of communications, and information storage-retrieval as a new social and economic reality

-New "emergent" industrializations and the recognition of a truly globalized and deeply interactive economy

 

*The full version with the sections 4. Assessment, 5. Bibliography and teaching resources, 6. Methodology and 7. Planning of activities is available in the original version.

 

4. Assessment

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5. Bibliography and teaching resources

5.1. Basic bibliography

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5.2. Complementary bibliography

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5.3. Teaching resources

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6. Metodology

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7. Planning of activities

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