Abstract:

The project aims to analyse the way in which from the end of the eighteenth century and throughout nineteenth century the construction and dissemination to a general public of new representations of industrial civilization was becoming evident.
Special attention will be given to the forms of visual communication of the new technologies created in the nineteenth century (lithography, photography, cinema) and to the phenomenon of great international exhibitions, as an impressive movement of self-representation of modern industrial society.
The international exhibitions during the nineteenth century defined a cultural Koinè that linked Europe and North America around the ideals and symbolic elements of the new industrial society, establishing a clear hierarchy with the other areas of the world.
The economic historiography in recent years has analyzed many cultural aspects of the industrial activities. We know a lot about the mentality of entrepreneurs, on work cultures, professional skills and technical education. There are many studies on the construction of the social representation of the entrepreneurial world in the nineteenth century (the self-helpism studies or more recent ones about the inclusion of entrepreneurs and inventors in the National Pantheon, C.MacLeod,2007); there are many studies on the genesis and development of myths and ideologies of this period such as those related to the concept of progress and social development. Recent discussions of economic history, from the proto-industry to the role of technology, entrepreneurs and the relationship between small and medium enterprises, devote much attention also to cultural aspects.

However this analysis’ only concern is with economic thought, or mentalities history, while rarely studying the circulation channels, the languages, the mechanisms of representation and construction of public imaginaries which promoted pro-industrialist ideas among a general public.
The research project aims to identify and analyse the mechanisms, the diffusion channels and content – from an iconographic point of view– of the industrialist message.
These elements are largely new and in close connections with technological development. Also, they also needed new social actors who produced and managed them. Initially, the “social engineers” feed the public imaginaries by the production of projects and representations of new social realities.

Next to them, there were more traditional actors, such as artists or scientific societies that express an interest in social issues related to the industrial society, or even - towards the end of the century – the associations of workers and employers.
The research project begins by the deep examination of the transformation that has occurred since the second half of the eighteenth century in the representation of industry and labour. As several studies have shown such as those of J. Sewell, already the Encyclopédie of Diderot and D'Alembert was the expression of a cultural and political program which tended to overcome the traditional “craft secret”. It was opposed to the closed corporate traditions, supported a visibility that allowed the rationalization, sharing and improvement of work processes. The illustrations in the Encyclopédie were not merely decorative, but an essential part of this program in order to enhance technical and productive knowledge; so, they represent the most visible of a new process of building a “social space of the technology” (L. Perez). This space is developed on the basis of the Enlightenment, but also on the basis of the new networks of communication and exchange, stimulating new habits and attitudes to compare, to imitate, to transpose. These new practices exceed the narrow confines of the world of crafts and break the boundaries of the universe of corporations. Some studies of the international research group connected with the University of Padua and based in Paris (Paris Diderot 7/ Centre Koyrè EHESS/ CNAM), stressed that the Encyclopédie was the key point of passage from technique to technology. The network system of the Encyclopedia allows the development of a comparative thought, encyclopedic and humanist, establishing close links between the technical and social sciences, and therefore allowing us to think of a "technology as human science "(A.-G. Haudricourt).

World exhibitions were intended to extend a such logic to an international and global scale, along a path that goes from the first national exhibitions (mainly French, but also in many other European countries, and even in Italy), until the Great Exhibition of 1851.
From 1851 another aspect of the Expositions became explicit, which is linked to another great source for creating social imaginary related to the world of technology and progress: the great utopias that characterized the end of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century.

The "public display" of World Fairs was diametrically opposed to the logic of Bentham’s panopticon, but nevertheless aimed at a similar goal of social control. The difference was that the optical devices were now centered on the logic of the goods as a spectacle, which warranted the support of broad masses of the population. The appearance of exhibitions as phantasmagorias, stressed by Benjamin, expressed the extreme richness and articulation of the imaginary accompanying the exhibition phenomenon.

The utopian ideas profoundly affected the phenomenon of large international Exhibitions, because the intellectuals inspired by utopian thought tried to combine their social projects, linked to the new industrial society, with the traditional tendency to foreshadow an “ideal city”. In this sense, the architecture of the World Fairs, the construction of exhibition citadels, planned rationally and laden with symbolic meanings and implications, were particularly suitable to convey the message of those currents of thought that made direct reference to the role of technocratic elites, science and industry in the construction of the new civilization. Therefore the research will analyze the role, the figures, the language of "social engineers", often directly and explicitly linked to the utopian currents.

Research fellow:
Dr. Anna Pellegrino