Scientists' Expertise as Performance: Between State and Society, 1860–1960 (History and Philosophy of Technoscience)

The essays in this collection explore our reliance on experts within a historical context and across a wide range of fields, including agriculture, engineering, health sciences and labour management. Contributors argue that experts were highly aware of their audiences and used performance to gain both scientific and popular support. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title 4 Copyright 5 CONTENTS 6 Acknowledgements 8 List of Contributors 10 List of Figures 16 Introduction: Performing Expertise 18 Part I: Setting the Scene – Experts and their Public 32 1 Ethnicity, Expertise and Authority: The Cases of Lewis Howard Latimer, William Preece and John Tyndall 32 2 Arbiters of Science: Expertise in Public Health in Nineteenth-Century Belgian Medical Societies 48 3 Borderless Nature: Experts and the Internationalization of Nature Protection, 1890–1940 66 Part II: Science as a Belief – Experts and Social Reform 84 4 The Hour of the Experts?: Reflections on the Rise of Experts in Interbellum Europe 84 5 The Psychiatrist as the Leader of the Nation: Psycho-Political Expertise after the German Revolution, 1918–19 98 6 Contested Modernity: A.G. Doiarenko and the Trajectories of Agricultural Expertise in Late Imperial and Soviet Russia 116 Part III: Diplomatic Strategists – National Government and Expert Ambitions 132 7 The Rise of the Scientist-Diplomat within British Atomic Energy, 1945–55 132 8 The Reform Technocrats: The Strategists of the Swedish Welfare State, 1930–60 152 Part IV: Objectification – Expertise and its Discontents 164 9 Rationalization Comes to Rome: Expertise in Labour Management at the Third International Congress, 1927 164 10 Scientific Expertise in Child Protection Policies and Juvenile Justice Practices in Twentieth-Century Belgium 178 11 Expertise and Trust in Dutch Individual Health Care 190 Notes 208 Index 250 Pt. 1. Setting the scene : experts and their public -- pt. 2. Science as a belief : experts and social reform -- pt. 3. Diplomatic strategies : national government and expert ambitions -- pt. 4. Objectification : expertise and its discontents