Technology and Culture

abstract:

Craft and mechanization are often cast as antithetical. This article questions the facile distinction by examining the customization and modification of American spinning machines to China's diverse local conditions, especially its varieties of cotton. It draws on machine manuals and contracts, engineering textbooks and journals, and correspondence between an American machine firm and its engineers in Shanghai. Engaging with the revisionist scholarship of industrialization that highlights craft continuing into the age of mass production, as well as recent studies challenging Western- and inventioncentered narratives in the history of technology, this article argues that the skills and knowledge that Chinese users of foreign machines possessed were critical elements in mechanization. It establishes the "hand" and the "machine" as mutually constitutive categories on the factory floor, presenting Chinese engineers and technicians as active participants in the coconstruction of global spinning technologies.