Antonio Gramsci Revisited: Historians of Science,Intellectuals,and the Struggle for Hegemony

Fuller Steve , Thomas S. Kuhn: A philosophical history of our times (Chicago, 2001).

Fuller , Thomas S. Kuhn (ref. 1), 11.

Aronowitz Stanley , Science as power: Discourse and ideology in modern society (Minneapolis, 1988).

Shapin Steven , “Discipline and bounding: The history and sociology of science as seen through the externalism—internalism debate”, History of science, xxx (1992), 333–69.

Pestre Dominique , Science, argent et politique: Essai d'intersection (Paris, 2003).

Jasanoff Sheila , States of knowledge: The coproduction of science and social order (London, 2004), 14. See also Bensaude-Vincent Bernadette , Les vertiges de la technoscience (Paris, 2009).

Bijker Wiebe E. , “The need for public intellectuals: A space for STS”, Science, technology and human values, xxviii (2003), 443–50, p. 444 (my emphasis).

Werskey Gary , “The Marxist critique of capitalist science: A history in three movements?”, Science as culture, xvi (2007), 397–461, p. 442, 446.

Werskey's critique of the STS movement, as a whole, has been questioned by some historians of science. See, for instance, Hamlin Christopher , “STS: Where the Marxist critique of capitalist science goes to die?”, Science as culture, xvi (2007), 467–74.

Werskey , ” The Marxist critique” (ref. 8), 446.

Under the leadership of Nicolai Bukharin, one of the more assertive members of the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party, who was later executed in 1938 during Stalin's purges, it included, among other talks, the even more famous paper by Boris Hessen, himself a victim of the purges in 1936, on ” The social and economic roots of Newton's Principia”. The best reference for Hessen's paper is Freudenthal Gideon McLaughlin Peter (eds), The social and economic roots of the Scientific Revolution (Dordrecht, 2009), with an extensive introduction and biographies of Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann. See also: Graham Loren , “The sociopolitical roots to Boris Hessen: Soviet Marxism and the history of science”, Social studies of science, xv (1985), 1985–22. For a revisited approach to Hessen's paper, see: Boris Hessen, Les racines sociales et économiques des Principia de Newton: Un rencontre entre Newton et Marx à Londres en 1931, transl. with commentary by Serge Guérout, postscript by Christopher Chilvers (Paris, 2006). For the influence of Marxism on the History of Science and Science Studies, see: Anna K. Mayer “Setting up a discipline, II: British history of science and ‘the end of ideology’, 1931–1948”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxxv (2004), 2004–72; Sheehan Helena , Marxism and the philosophy of science: A critical history (Atlantic Highlands, 1985); Sheehan Helena , “Marxism and science studies: A sweep through the decades”, International studies in the philosophy of science, xxi (2007), 2007–210; and Dorn Harold , “Science, Marx and history: Are there still research frontiers?”, Perspectives on science, viii (2000), 223–54.

Werskey Gary , The visible college: The collective biography of British scientific socialists of the 1930s (London, 1978). Cited by Dorn, “Science, Marx and history” (ref. 11), 237.

Mayer , “Setting up a discipline” (ref. 11), 41.

Ravetz Jerome R. Westfall Richard , “Marxism and the history of science”, Isis, lxxii (1981), 393–405. See also: Ravetz Jerome R. , Scientific knowledge and its social problems (New Jersey, 1996 [1971]).

Werskey refers here to authors such as: Joseph Ben-David, Derek Price, Warren Hagstrom, but also to Thomas S. Kuhn. Werskey ” The Marxist critique” (ref. 8), 426.

Young Robert M. , “Discussion paper. Evolutionary biology and ideology: Then and now”, Science studies, i (1971), 177–206; Teich Mikuláš Young Robert M. (eds), Changing perspectives in the history of science (London, 1973). For details on Robert M. Young's c.v., see the webpage: http://www.human-nature.com/rmyoung/. See also: Sheehan Helena , Marxism and the philosophy of science (ref. 11), and Helena Sheehan, “Marxism and science studies (ref. 11). For the New Left, see: Raymond Williams, Marxism and literature (Oxford, 1977). The movement founded its own journal: The New Left review, which is still being published today. See: http://newleftreview.org.

Young Robert M. , “Marxism and the history of science”, in Olby R. C. Cantor G. N. Christie J. R. R. Hodge M. J. S. (eds), Companion to the history of modern science (London, 1990), 77–86, p. 85.

See for instance: Golinski Jan , Making natural knowledge: Constructivism and the history of science (Cambridge, 1998); Pestre Dominique , “Pour une histoire sociale et culturelle des sciences: Nouvelles définitions, nouveaux objets, nouvelles pratiques”, Annales histoire, sciences sociales, May—June 1995, 487–522.

For details on Gramsci's biographical profile, see references on the International Gramsci Society webpage: http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/.

Forgacs David , (ed.), The Antonio Gramsci reader: Selected writings 1916–1935 (New York, 2000). For a general overview of published primary sources see: Crehan Kate , Gramsci, cultura y antropología (Barcelona, 2002). See also: Hoare Quintin Smith Geoffrey N. (eds), Selections from the prison notebooks (London, 1971); Mouffe Chantal (ed.), Gramsci and Marxist theory (London, 1979).

For a genealogy of the concept, see Laclau Ernesto Mouffe Chantal , Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics (London, 1985), chap. 1.

Broman Thomas H. , “Introduction: Some preliminary considerations on science and civil society”, Osiris, 2nd ser., xvii (2002), 1–21.

Forgacs , The Antonio Gramsci reader (ref. 20).

Holub Renate , Antonio Gramsci: Beyond Marxism and postmodernism (London, 1992), 6.

Young published a paper on Gall: Young Robert M. , “The functions of the brain: Gall to Ferrier (1808–1886)”, Isis, lix (1968), 251–68, and he is the author of Gall's biography in the DSB.

Morrell Jack , “Brains of Britain”, Social studies of science, xvi (1986), 735–45, p. 736–7 (my emphasis). See also: Cooter Roger , The cultural meaning of popular science: Phrenology and the organization of consent in 19th century Britain (Cambridge, 1984).

Quoted in: Forgacs , The Antonio Gramsci reader (ref. 20), 301.

Forgacs , The Antonio Gramsci reader (ref. 20).

For STS references on intellectuals see: Epstein William M. , “The obligation of intellectuals”, Science, technology and human values, xv (1990), 244–7; Bijker , “The need for public intellectuals” (ref. 7); Stevens Sharon McKenzie , “Speaking out: Toward an institutional agenda for refashioning STS scholars as public intellectuals”, Science, technology and human values, xxxiii (2008), 730–53.

Said Edward W. , Representations of the intellectual (New York, 1996).

Ibid., 70–1.

Fred Jerome systematically analyses Einstein's anti-racism. Jerome Fred , “Einstein, race, and the myth of the cultural icon”, Isis, xcv (2004), 627–39.

In 1983, Seymour Mauskopf pointed out that: “Chemistry did not participate directly in the great and dramatic transformative scientific revolutions of the beginning of the twentieth century, associated with such celebrated names as Einstein, Bohr and Freud. And in contrast to physics, biology, and the behavioural sciences, chemistry has not seemed to have much import from the great philosophical or existential issues of our time. Hence it has not been integrated in cultural history the way these other sciences were.” Mauskopf Seymur H. (ed.), Chemical sciences in the modern world (Philadelphia, 1993), p. xii.

Harris David , From class struggle to the politics of pleasure: The effects of Gramscianism on cultural studies (London, 1992); Giroux Henry A. Simon Roger (eds,) Popular culture, schooling, & everyday life (Granby, 1989). See also: Forgacs , The Antonio Gramsci reader (ref. 20), chaps. 2 and 10.

Shapin Steven Barnes Barry , “Science, nature and control: Interpreting Mechanics Institutes”, Social studies of science, vii (1977), 31–74.

On the Mechanics' Institutes see: Ian Inkster, “Science and the Mechanics' Institutes, 1800–1850”, Annals of science, xxxii (1975), 1975–74; Inkster Ian , “The social context of an educational movement: A revisionist approach to the English Mechanics' Institutes, 1820–1850”, Oxford review of education, ii (1976), 277–307; Garner A. D. , “The English Mechanics' Institutes”, History of education, xiii (1984), 1984–52, and xiv (1985), 255–262; Firth Ann , “Culture and wealth creation: The Mechanics' Institutes and the emergence of political economy in early 19th century Britain”, History of intellectual culture v (2005), 1–14. See also: Topham Jonathan , “Science and popular education in the 1930s: The role of Bridgewater Treatises”, The British journal for the history of science, xxv (1992), 1992–430; Turner Frank M. , Between science and religion: The reaction to scientific naturalism in late Victorian Britain (New Haven, 1974); Turner Frank M. , “Public science in Britain, 1880–1919”, Isis, lxxi (1980), 1980–608; Desmond Adrian , “Artisan resistance and evolution in Britain, 1819–1848”, Osiris, 2nd ser., iii (1987), 77–110.

Shapin Barnes , “Science, nature and control” (ref. 35), 32.

Topham , “Science and popular education” (ref. 36).

Firth , “Culture and wealth creation” (ref. 36), 13.

In 1969, Raymond Williams had already warned about the rhetoric of political neutrality in the educational plans of the Mechanics Institutes. In his own words: “Politics in the wide sense of discussing the quality and direction of their living, was excluded from these Institutes, as it was to remain largely excluded from the whole of nineteenth-century education”, Williams Raymond , The long revolution (London, 1961), 143.

Berman Morris , Social change and scientific organisation: The Royal Institution, 1799–1844 (London, 1978).

Bennett Tony , The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics (London, 1995), 5–6.

Ibid., 9.

Olesko Katherine M. , Physics as a calling: Discipline and practice in the Königsberg seminar for physics (Cornell, 1991).

Kaiser David , Drawing theories apart: The dispersion of Feynman diagrams in postwar physics (Chicago and London, 2005).

Kaiser David , (ed.), Pedagogy and the practice of science: Historical and contemporary perspectives (Cambridge, MA, 2005).

Fleck Ludwik , Genesis and development of a scientific fact (Chicago, 1979 [1935]).

In her own words: “… we should study the less tangible, less interesting and less obvious aspects of the subjects that history of science is used to approach …”, Olesko Katherine M. , “Science pedagogy as a category of historical analysis: Past, present, & future”, Science & education, xv (2006), 863–80, p. 877.

Rudolph John L. , “Historical witing on science education: A view of the landscape”, Studies in science education, xliv (2008), 63–82.

Cohen Yves , “Scientific management and the production process”, in Krige J. Pestre D. (eds), Science in the twentieth century (Amsterdam, 1997), 111–24. Taylor's ambitious principles were directed “… to show that … [they] are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great corporations …”, cited by Young Robert M. , “Science, alienation and oppression”, in Olby Cantor Christie Hodge (eds), Companion to the history of modern science (ref. 17), 886–97, p. 894.

Cohen , “Scientific management” (ref. 50).

Holub , Antonio Gramsci (ref. 24), 111.

“Gramsci was among the first to realise that Fordism was a new phenomenon, embracing not only a new mode of mass production, but the need for a new kind of social discipline, a new man to work in the new conditions. A loose form of economic determinism is suggested by this formulation, and a new metaphor — ‘regulation’ — Giving due allowance for religious, social and even sexual practices”, Harris , From class struggle to the politics of pleasure (ref. 34), 45.

Forgacs , The Antonio Gramsci reader (ref. 20).

Marcuse Herbert , One dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society (London, 1964); Habermas Jürgen , Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’ (Frankfurt, 1968). See also: Habermas Jürgen , “Science and technology as ideology”, in Barnes B. (ed.), Sociology of science (Harmondsworth, 1972), 353–75.

Fox Robert Guagnini Anna , (eds), Education, technology and industrial performance in Europe (Cambridge, 1993).

Bauer Martin , (ed.), Resistance to new technology (Cambridge, 1994).

Stine Jeffrey K. Tarr Joel A. , “Essay: At the intersection of histories. Technology and the environment”, Technology and culture, xxxix (1998), 601–40.

Edgerton David , “From innovation to use: Ten eclectic theses on the historiography of technology”, History and technology, xvi (1999), 111–36. See also: Edgerton David , The shock of the old: Technology and global history since 1900 (Oxford, 2007).

Rosenberg Nathan , “Technology and the environment: An economic explanation”, Technology and culture, xii (1971), 543–61.

Abir-Am Pnina G. Elliot Clark A. , (eds), Commemorative practices in science: Historical perspectives on the politics of collective memory (Osiris, 2nd ser., xiv (1999)).

Holub , Antonio Gramsci (ref. 24), 7, 113.

“One can say that until now folklore has been studied primarily as a ‘picturesque’ element…. Folklore should instead be studied as a conception of the world and life implicit to a large degree in determinate (in time and space) strata of society and in opposition (also for the most part implicit, mechanical and objective) to ‘official’ conceptions of the world.” Quoted by Bennett , The birth of the museum (ref. 42), 109.

Chartier Roger , “Culture as appropriation: Popular cultural uses in early modern France”, in Kaplan S. L. (ed.), Understanding popular culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century (Amsterdam, 1984), 229–53, pp. 233, 235. See also: Burke Peter , History and social theory (Cambridge, 2005).

Secord James , “Knowledge in transit”, Isis, xcv (2004), 654–72; Topham Jonathan , “Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenth-century Britain”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xxxi (2000), 2000–612; Fyfe Aileen Lightman Bernard (eds), Science in the marketplace: Nineteenth-century sites and experiences (Chicago, 2007).

Lilley Sam , Men, machines and history (London, 1948).

Conner Clifford D. , A people's history of science: Miners, midwives and ‘Low Mechanics’ (New York, 2005).

Morrell , “Brains of Britain” (ref. 26), 741.

Gomis Cels , La bruixa catalana (Barcelona, 1987). (Biographical note by Llorenç Prats, pp. 5–31).

Among his works, it is worth mentioning: Lo llamp y'ls temporals (1884); Meteorologia y agricultura populars ab gran nombre de confrontacions (1888); Botànica popular (1891); Rudimentos de agricultura española (1900); Zoologia popular catalana (1910); La lluna segons lo poble (1912). The last-named had already been published in 1884 in short articles in the periodical L'avens.

Gomis Cels , La lluna segons lo poble (Barcelona, 1884), 15.

Gomis , La bruixa catalana (ref. 69), 21–9.

Cooter Roger Pumfrey Stephen , “Separate spheres and public places: Reflections on the history of science popularization and science in popular culture”, History of science, xxxii (1994), 237–67.

Ibid., 237.

In a recent paper, Ralph O'Connor “analyses current historian's usage of the categories ‘popular science’ and ‘science popularization’ and argues against the view that these categories should be expunged from our vocabulary (except as actors' categories)”. O'Connor Ralph , “Reflections of popular science in Britain: Genres, categories and historians”, Isis, c (2009), 333–45, p. 333.

For a general reflection on the historiography of hegemony and resistance, see Burke , History and social theory (ref. 64).

See for instance Callon Michel , “The role of lay people in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge”, Science technology & society, iv (1999), 81–94, and Durrant Darrin , “Accounting for expertise: Wynne and the autonomy of the lay public actor”, Public understanding of science, xvii (2008), 5–20. Here again, there is no reference to Gramsci.

Bensaude-Vincent , Les vertiges de la technoscience (ref. 6), 34.

Young Robert M. , Colonial desire: Hybridity in theory, culture and race (London, 1995).

Said Edward W. , Orientalism (London, 2003 [1978]), 14.

Krige John , American hegemony and the post-war reconstruction of science in Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2006).

Guha Ranajit , History at the limit of world history (New York, 2002); Carney Judith , Black rice: The African origins of rice cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

Haraway Donna , Primate visions: Gender, race and nature in the world of modern science (London, 1989).

Kumar Deepak , Science and the Raj: A study of British India (Oxford, 2006 [1995]).

Carney , Black rice (ref. 82).

Guha Ranajit Spivak G. C. , (eds), Selected subaltern studies (Oxford, 1988). See also: Raina Dhruv , Images and contexts: The historiography of science and modernity in India (Oxford, 2003); Arnold David , “Europe, technology, and colonialism in the twentieth century”, History and technology, xxi (2005), 85–106.

Guha , History at the limit of world history (ref. 82), 1.

Ibid., 21–2.

” The noise of world-history and its statist concerns has made historiography insensitive to the sighs and whispers of everyday life … the events and sentiments which inform the prose of the world remain unacknowledged”, Guha , History at the limit of world history (ref. 82), 73.

For a general Introduction to the so called “Postcolonial Studies”, see: http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Intro.html (accessed 24 March 2009).

Lal Vinay , History of history: Politics and scholarship in modern India (New Delhi, 2003); Raina , Images and contexts (ref. 86).

Nakayama Shigeru , “History of East Asian science: Needs and opportunities”, Osiris, 2nd ser., x (1995), 80–94, p. 82.

Esguerra Jorge Cañizares , How to write the history of the new world: History, epistemology, and identities in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world (Stanford, 2001); Esguerra Jorge Cañizares , “Iberian science in the Renaissance: Ignored how much longer?”, Perspectives on science, xii (2004), 2004–120; Osorio Antonio Barrera , Experiencing nature: The Spanish American empire and the early Scientific Revolution (Austin, 2006); Nieto-Galan Agustí , “The history of science in Spain: A critical overview”, Nuncius, xxiii (2008), 211–36.

Gorbach Frida Beltrán Carlos López , (eds), Saberes locales: Ensayos sobre historia de la ciencia en América Latina (Michoacán, 2009). See also: Cueto Marcos , Excelencia científica en la Periferia: Actividades científicas e investigación biomédica en el Perú 1890–1950 (Lima, 1989); De Greiff Alexis Nieto Mauricio , “What we still do not know about South—North technoscientific exchanges: North-centricism, scientific diffusion, and the social studies of science”, in Doel Ronald Söderqvist Thomas (eds), The historiography of contemporary science, technology, and medicine: Writing recent science (New York, 2006), 239–59. See also: Nieto Mauricio , “Scientific instruments, Creole science and natural order in the new Granada of the early nineteenth century”, Journal of Spanish cultural studies, ii (2007), 2007–52; Vera Eugenia Roldán , The British book trade and Spanish American independence: Education and knowledge transmission in transcontinental perspective (Aldershot, 2003).

Simón Josep Herrán Néstor , (eds), Beyond borders: Fresh perspectives in history of science (Newcastle, 2008); Gavroglu Kostas , “Science and technology in the European periphery: Some historiographical reflections”, History of science, xlvi (2008), 153–75.

Gavroglu , “Science and technology in the European periphery” (ref. 95), 168.

Simón Herrán , Beyond borders (ref. 95), 5.

Shinn Terry Whitley Richard , (eds), Expository science: Forms and functions of popularization (Dordrecht, 1985).

Nieto-Galan Agustí , Colouring textiles: A history of natural dyestuffs in industrial Europe (Dordrecht, 2001).

Gavroglu , “Science and technology in the European periphery” (ref. 95).

Papanelopoulou Faidra Nieto-Galan Agustí Perdiguero Enrique , (eds), Popularizing science and technology in the European periphery, 1800–2000 (Aldershot, 2009).

Morrell , “Brains of Britain” (ref. 26).

29th November–1st December 2007: International Gramsci Society-Mexico Conference: “Gramsci a setenta años de la muerte” (Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México); 9th–11th November 2007: Gramsci Symposium at Michigan State University, “Gramsci now: Cultural and political theory”, an international symposium to mark the 70th anniversary of the death of Antonio Gramsci; 1st, 2nd December 2007: Gramsci Symposium in Tokyo — A symposium commemorating the 70th anniversary of the death of Antonio Gramsci at the Liberty Tower of Meiji University (Surugadai), Tokyo; 28th January, 2007: Third International Gramsci Society Conference, “Antonio Gramsci: A Sardinian in the ‘vast and terrible world’”. For more details on these academic events see: International Gramsci Society: http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/.

Werskey , ” The Marxist critique” (ref. 8), 447–9.

Anderson Perry , “The antinomies of Antonio Gramsci”, New Left review, cxliv (1976), 96–113, p. 96.

Forgacs , The Antonio Gramsci reader (ref. 20), pp. 12–13 of the introduction by Eric Hobsbawn.

Holub , Antonio Gramsci (ref. 24).