Publicação
Colonial Centres and Peripheries: Low-cost Roads and Portuguese Engineers in the 1950s
| Resumo: | Scholars within the Science and Technology in the European Periphery network have proposed that with technological and scientific peripheries there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on the history of appropriation, which means considering the receptor environment active, acknowledging the point of view of the receivers and studying this history through its conflicts, i.e. those caused by the different agendas of the actors (political, technical and others). How can this concept be applied in a European periphery, such as Portugal, in its relation as a centre to the colonies of Angola and Mozambique? We answer this question by following road engineers from the metropole in their technical missions to these African peripheries, and how they adapted their discourse on traffic engineering and economic development to a discourse on the low-cost roads to be built there in the 1950s. By taking this approach we aim to challenge the concept of appropriation and apply it to the mobility realm, also bringing an interpretation of the dynamic relation between centres and peripheries. |
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| Autores principais: | Sousa, M. Luísa |
| Assunto: | European peripheries colonial occupation low-cost roads road engineers reverse appropriation |
| Ano: | 2016 |
| País: | Portugal |
| Tipo de documento: | capítulo de livro |
| Tipo de acesso: | acesso restrito |
| Instituição associada: | Universidade Nova de Lisboa |
| Idioma: | inglês |
| Origem: | Repositório Institucional da UNL |
| Resumo: | Scholars within the Science and Technology in the European Periphery network have proposed that with technological and scientific peripheries there needs to be a greater emphasis placed on the history of appropriation, which means considering the receptor environment active, acknowledging the point of view of the receivers and studying this history through its conflicts, i.e. those caused by the different agendas of the actors (political, technical and others). How can this concept be applied in a European periphery, such as Portugal, in its relation as a centre to the colonies of Angola and Mozambique? We answer this question by following road engineers from the metropole in their technical missions to these African peripheries, and how they adapted their discourse on traffic engineering and economic development to a discourse on the low-cost roads to be built there in the 1950s. By taking this approach we aim to challenge the concept of appropriation and apply it to the mobility realm, also bringing an interpretation of the dynamic relation between centres and peripheries. |
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