Infrastructures of modernity: technology as an agent of modernization at central-southern Cuba (1860-1920)

Abstract

This paper aims to support the process of co-construction of modernity and technology, through the notion of sociotechnical infrastructure. To achieve this, the patterns that certain technological transfer processes developed between 1860 and 1920 marked in Cienfuegos, a region of central-southern Cuba, as agents of modernization are analyzed. The research is focused from the field of social studies of technology due to its interdisciplinary vision and plurality of approaches and methods. It is adopted as a starting theoretical idea that all social systems of modernity are sociotechnical systems. Consequently, within the framework of the objective of this study, the notion of sociotechnical infrastructure is redefined due to the analytical potential it contains to correlate it with the notion of modernity through different levels of analysis. First, the gradual articulation of an efficient sociotechnical infrastructure at the service of the sugar agroindustry that maximized the competition of Cienfuegos’ sugar in international markets is analyzed. Likewise, the effects that the modernizing flows generated by the different technological systems that integrated it, had in other areas of regional life are also highlighted. Finally, emphasis is placed on the role that modernization played in the service of foreign interests already in the new century and on the character of sociotechnical infrastructure as a tool of political control.

Keywords:

Modernity, Modernization, Sociotechnical infrastructure, Cienfuegos, Region, Cuba