Start

09-08-2022
08:00 PM

End

09-08-2022
09:30 PM

Location

Online Event

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Event details

Guest Speaker: Victor Seow, Assistant Professor of the History of Science, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University

Host: Zhaojin Zeng, Assistant Professor in Business and Economic History, Duke Kunshan University

Time and Date: 20:00 – 21:30 BJT, Thursday September 8, 2022

Zoom Meeting ID: 910 5006 9156, Passcode: Kunshan

Abstract

What might an examination of the relationship between energy and power reveal about the making and unmaking of industrial society? In this talk, I introduce my recent book, Carbon Technocracy (Chicago, 2021), which explores the deep links between fossil-fuel extraction and technocratic politics through the history of what was once East Asia’s largest coal mine—the Fushun colliery. In delving into the origins of carbonization and developmentalism in China and Japan, this book unearths both the dominant role of the state in energy transitions toward coal and oil and the enduring reliance on human labor power in the carbon age.

Bio

Dr. Victor Seow

Victor Seow is a historian of technology, science, and industry. He specializes in China and Japan and in histories of energy and work. His first book, Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia (Chicago, 2021), explores the relationship between energy and power through the history of East Asia’s onetime largest coal mine. At present, he is writing a new book that uses the history of industrial psychology in China to examine how work functions as a subject of scientific inquiry.

The Duke Kunshan Seminar Series on Environment and History is hosted by the Center for the Study of Contemporary China and the Environmental Research Center. Please email your inquiries to series organizers Zhaojin Zeng and Joseph Giacomelli.