Technology and Culture in Twentieth-Century Mexico

Technology and Culture in Twentieth-Century Mexico offers a novel approach to Mexican studies by considering the complex relationship between technology, politics, society, and culture.

While it is widely accepted by scholars that substantial changes in technology occurred in Mexico during the last century, very little has been written on these issues, perhaps because of a propensity to associate Mexico with tradition and folklore rather than technology, progress, and modernity.

This diverse collection of chapters—written by historians, literary scholars, social scientists, and cultural critics—tells this long-neglected story of technological change. Contributors examine themes ranging from the introduction of new forms of travel (automobiles, buses, trains, and subways) to innovations in media (radio, film, and the Internet) to the relationships between technology, literature, art, and architecture. Covering the twentieth century and beyond, Technology and Culture in Twentieth-Century Mexico, edited by Araceli Tinajero and J. Brian Freeman, illustrates the invention, use, and adaptation of technology, as well as the diverse ways that technology itself is both shaped by and shapes culture. This interdisciplinary book points to new directions in the study of Mexico and makes an important contribution to Latin American Studies and the history of technology.

Contributors: Claudia Agostoni / Sandra Aguilar-Rodríguez / Edward R. Burian /Antoni Castells-Talens / J. Brian Freeman / Celeste González de Bustamante / Guillermo Guajardo / Joanne Hershfield / Anna Indych-López /Lynda Klich / Viviane Mahieux / Carlos Monsiváis / John Mraz /Ricardo Pérez Montfort / José Manuel Ramos Rodríguez /Paolo Riguzzi / Erja Vettenranta / Juan Villoro / David M. J. Wood /Naief Yehya

Araceli Tinajero is an associate professor at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA and the cofounder of the Mexico Study Group at the Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies. She is the author of Orientalismo en el modernismo hispanoamericano, El lector de tabaquería: Historia de una tradición cubana (El lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader), and the editor of Cultura y letras cubanas en el siglo XXI.

J. Brian Freeman is a visiting researcher at the Centro de Investigacones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). His work has been published in various journals, including Studies in Latin American Popular Cultureand the Journal of Latino-Latin American Studies. He is currently working on a book on the history of the automobile in twentieth-century Mexico.