The history of ‘Social Technology’, 1898–1930

Since the term was first coined, in the late nineteenth century, ‘social technology’ has had a mixed fate. Whereas ‘technology’ has become one of the keywords of the twentieth century, ‘social technology’ never quite seemed to settle in the vocabulary of social theory. In this article, we focus on the early history of ‘social technology’, tracing its spread from its origin in the sociology department at the University of Chicago, and describing the increasing competition from the term ‘social engineering’ starting in the 1920s. We argue that this shift in terminology is significant, because it is an index of changing ideas about the demarcation of sociology, about the application of science in the betterment of society and about the nature of technology.     

Measure of Despair: the Syndicate for Commerce and Industry,the London Tribune,and German Foreign Policy, 1906–8

Based on fresh archival sources in Germany and Britain, this article offers new insight into the mindest of the German Foreign Ministry in the aftermath of the First Morocco Crisis of 1905/06. Eager to arrest the deterioration in the Anglo-German relationship and concerned about its fallout for US-German relations, the German Foreign Ministry, in league with twenty of the country's top financiers, took a radical initiative which resulted in Germany's largest expenditure, before the First World War, on influencing the press. The article closes with a transnational comparison, detailing a similar influence-buying scheme masterminded by a high-level British political wire-puller.     

From Revolution to Dissolution: The Quai d'Orsay,the Banque Russo-Asiatique,and the Chinese Eastern Railway, 1917–1926

This article explores the use made of Christianity during the Second World War and the dilemmas created for the Allies by Stalin's religious record. It is particularly concerned with the way in which Christianity appeared for a while to become a bridge between East and West, with the explicit promise of continued post-war co-operation. However, in the immediate aftermath of the war, Anglo-American policies in particular switched from using Christianity to rehabilitate the adverse image of the Soviet regime to what had been the inter-war policy of using religion to demonise it. Inter-war demonisation held up the Soviet Union as a model not to be emulated. Post-war demonisation pointed to the Soviet Union as an expansionist threat bent on world domination. The article examines Stalin's responses, and Allied perceptions of those responses, to the changes in Western religious policy and propaganda from the Second World War to the emergence of the cold war. The article seeks to show how both sides used religion for political purposes, but that in the final analysis Western reluctance to relinquish what was perhaps its most emotive means of indicting and containing Communism meant that Christianity, instead of becoming a bridge, became a divisive factor that contributed to both the onset of the cold war and public acceptance of it.     

In Search of the Good Life: Life‐History of a Kenyan Indian Settler. A Sartrean Approach to Biography and History

This article recounts how a young Shi’a Muslim Indian born in north‐west India migrated to Kenya in the early twentieth century in the context of the evolving trade linking the two continents, and rose to become a successful merchant and respected member of the community. It portrays the struggles that he undertook with fellow Kenyan Indians against British colonial policies of racial discrimination and political marginalization, and shows some of the unintended consequences of these actions for the group in the post‐colonial period. Through the application of Jean‐Paul’s Sartre’s concepts of project, situation, seriality and dialectical totalization, the article attempts to capture some of the historical processes that took place during the period at four interconnected levels: individual; communal; regional; and global.     

Disorienting Rhythms: Gypsyness, “Authenticity” and Place on the Greek–Albanian Border

Against a located background—a focus that highlights the significance of place in the constitution of Gypsy identifications and runs counter to most of the assumptions shared by recent studies on Gypsies—the article tries to explore the tensions, ambiguities and contradictions generated by the involvement of the Gypsy musicians of Parakalamos, a village on the Greek–Albanian border, in issues concerning “tradition” and “authenticity”. More specifically, the article considers how Gypsy music playing practices initially allowed Gypsy practitioners to be included in the nation‐state project in a somewhat “dishevelled” form as local musicians; however, in the face of recent shifts in politics, culture and representation in Greece concerning multiculturalism and “cultural heritage”, Gypsy musicians find themselves in the position of being recognised as “musical outsiders” that should by implication adhere to their distinct musical tradition. In this respect, although it has hardly been admitted, such a move runs counter to what constitutes the core of Gypsy musicianship: their locatedness. The article argues that within such “identitying” practices lurks an occlusion of the ways Parakalamos Gypsyness has been, and continues to be, dependent on place and music, and not on a separate, distinct and self contained Gypsy identity, thereby casting doubts on assumptions about what constitutes identity as such.