Inspired by New Materialist approaches and STS studies, the past few years have seen a significant increase in scholarship from multiple disciplines that look into the role of non-humans in societal, cultural, scientific, and ecological change. Among these once inert but now vibrant and sentient actors, non-human animals increasingly draw attention as active participants in historical and contemporary transformations. Following this ‘animal turn’ in humanities and social sciences, the two-day workshop investigated the agency of animals within the field of history of technology in an attempt to understand and conceptualize their role as active actors in historical technological change. The four panels and keynote looked into various aspects of the animal-human-technological interactions from different periods and geographic regions. Focusing on different animals and their relationships with technologies, the various case studies took the workshop’s discussions not only to human-made spaces but also to the multiple habitats where these animals reside and act.
The potential of animals to incorporate diverse social and ecological environments into the study of the history of technology and offer conceptual and theoretical novelties to understanding technologies was brought up by CHRISTIAN ZUMBRÄGEL (Berlin) in his opening talk. After reviewing the current state of literature, Zumbrägel introduced the central questions at the core of this workshop’s investigation: 1) How should studies that analyze the historical relationship between animals and technology incorporate more-than-human perspectives and multispecies approaches that have been established in STS and Human-Animal Studies? 2) What can the history of technology contribute to the methodological and theoretical basis of studies of animals and technology in other disciplines? 3) Which stories about animals and technology do we wish to write in the Anthropocene?
The speakers of the first panel, chaired by DOROTHEE BRANZ (Berlin), examined how humans use different technologies to gain access to animals’ behaviors in an attempt to understand and control them. As is often the case, these technologies were not merely offering an objective way for humans to study animals but actively affected their interactions. SANDRA JASPER (Berlin) and JONATHAN PRIOR (Cardiff) explored the wildlife sound collection at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. By focusing on the Animal Sound Archive, established in 1951 by Professor Günter Tembrock, their paper interrogated the role of sound recording technologies in mediating knowledge of animal lives. After introducing the archive and situating it within its historical context, Jasper and Prior considered how the recorded animals’ agency shaped the processes and technologies of sound archiving. Here, human knowledge production was predicated on the perceived qualities of animals. Similarly, animals’ place-based reactions and behaviors were also taken into account in the human effort to categorize and standardize their voices. Lastly, Jasper and Prior considered the implications and challenges that might emerge from the digitization of animal sound archives.
The second paper in this panel by VANESSA BATEMAN (Maastricht) studied the history of two bird habitat dioramas from the Bell Museum at the University of Minnesota. Previously understood as static or Edenic representations of the natural world, Bateman analyzed the two bird dioramas from the 1940s as expressions of unfolding and unstable human-animal relations. Bridging museum history with environmental history, Bateman’s paper demonstrated how these dioramas were not only made as a multidisciplinary assemblage of cultural and social ideologies projected onto animals and the landscapes within which they lived but are also productive archives of human-animal histories within and beyond the museum.
CHRISTOPH BORBACH (Siegen) examined terrain-modeling boundary practices and virtual fencing technologies used to wall animals in digital environments interrelated with the geophysical territory. His paper historicized “smart farming”, i.e., highly technological and digital forms of fencing animals with sensor-based technologies in the context of animal husbandry and agriculture. Borbach showed that from the point of view of fencing systems and their representation, illustration, and technological development, livestock animals were not understood as passive entities but as sentient beings with their own agency, which has to be actively isolated or encapsulated within controlled spaces of digital herding.
The second panel, chaired by FRANK UEKÖTTER (Bochum), focused on animal interaction with artifacts and technologies that humans have placed in their habitats in order to shed light on the historical relationship between animals and infrastructures. First, BARBARA ORLAND (Basel) examined fish breeding attempts in the Rhine region at the border of France, Switzerland, and Germany by a scientific institution in Huningen during the mid-19th century. Orland’s paper pointed to the importance of the agency of animals and the techno-ecological environments within which they operated in the history of knowledge production. Orland shed light on how most of the technological constraints and limits aquaculturists encountered in their work were caused by particular problems that stemmed from the needs and habits of specific fish species and the properties of the Rhine’s water.
DANIEL BOWMAN (Stavanger) considered the historical significance of domestic dogs in the early decades of American automotive culture between 1900 and 1920. Focusing on how these furry companions played an essential role in creating familiarity with the motor car, Bowman maintained that the perceived approval of canines was crucial in normalizing the car and encouraging the idea that this machine was the natural successor to the horse. Bowman argued that the visibility of dogs as familiar animals taking to the road helped to obscure the fates of many others unintentionally. Lastly, Bowman drew attention to the bio-political implications of humans deciding which animals must be displaced by new technologies and which may become consumers of horsepower metaphorically and corporally.
KATE STEVENS (Waikato) examined the disconnections of shipping infrastructure and environmental knowledges caused by the spread of molluscan marine borers such as Teredo navalis in the Pacific waters. Stevens argued that the disastrous consequences of the interaction of this naval shipworm with underwater wood opened space to explore Pacific ports as a terraqueous assemblage that connected sea and land in complicated and unexpected ways. By focusing on the scientific and technological work of experts in Suva, Sydney, and Honolulu during the 1930s and 1940s, Stevens points to the contours of multispecies mobility that emerged alongside human and knowledge (im)mobility in and across oceans.
MARGOT LYAUTEY (Hamburg) and HEINRICH HARTMANN (Hamburg) analyzed animal breeding in Tunisia initiated by German post-colonial overseas development programs during the 1950s-1970s. Lyautey and Hartmann described how the German “technical development” experts took on the work of the French colonial state during the interwar period. These efforts aimed to expand cattle breeding and develop meat and milk markets by encouraging smallholders to invest in dairy production. In addition, they pointed to the transnational flow of ideas and matter that were mobilized to that end. Their paper analyzed cow breeding initiatives, which had unintended consequences on the ecological and infrastructural environments and the humans and nonhumans that operated within.
The keynote by DOLLY JØRGENSEN (Stavanger) proposed a nuanced look into the role of animals and birds, in particular, in shaping technological changes as active and animate technology users. Jørgensen first reviewed different conceptualizations of human-animal interactions in humanities and social science. She called to incorporate this ‘animal turn’ into the history of technology by studying animals as users of technology, which react to, integrate, modify, and maintain technologies. In her case study, Jørgensen focused on the purple martin in the US during the 20th century in order to expose how the technologies and designs of birdhouses were modified over time to reflect both human and nonhuman preferences. The purple martin thus revealed itself as an active user and historical agent in developing technological artifacts.
The third panel was chaired by MICHAEL K. SCHULZ (Potsdam) and investigated animals as technologies to understand how their ‘liveliness’ and active agency shaped socio-technical processes. First, MARTIN KALB (Bridgewater) explored the history of traction animals, such as camels and oxen, in Germany’s colonial enterprise in Southwest Africa between 1884 and 1915. Kalb showed that these animals helped to make the colony by supplying the labor and energy for imperial expansion and infrastructural development. He argued that replacing these animals with machines and engines remained a challenge in arid environments despite being described as tools of the past. Also here, global networks were crucial to the movements of animals between social and ecological environments. Lastly, Kalb considered the role transport animals played in everyday violence that defined German settler colonialism in Africa.
CORINNA RÖVER (Linköping/Berlin) proposed to reconceptualize animals not as merely ‘living technologies’ but as sentient beings with various multifaceted functions and meanings. Drawing on the history of animals in the European Arctic region during World War II, such as the reindeer and horse, Röver argued that while their role as transport technologies was indeed crucial to the invading Nazi army and local population, it was itself shaped by, and sometimes contested, other functions and meaning ascribed to them by a variety of actors. Röver’s case study showed animals' multifaceted dimensions and properties and how those affect their role as technologies in the past and present.
RUŽA FOTIADIS (Berlin) focused on the transportation and distribution of donkeys and mules to Yugoslavia and Greece, which the UN organized in the mid-1940s. This mission was a part of the post-WWII European Recovery plan and aimed to relieve hunger conditions in Southeast Europe. Fotiadis considered how local authorities and farmers adapted their strategies to foreign experts and imported animals and looked into donkeys and mules' adaptability to the mountainous terrains and climatic conditions of Southeastern Europe. Fotiadis argued that a focus on animals and their persistence in everyday work provides new perspectives on technological change in the industrial age and might offer new insights into the different temporalities in the use of technology.
The fourth panel, chaired by GISELA HÜRLIMANN (Dresden), explored animals’ bodies beyond agricultural (by-)products and considered how their role as multifaceted resources might open new avenues to understanding technological change. The first paper by CHAD DENTON (Seoul) studied the history of bones collected from slaughterhouses in Nazi Germany during the 1930s-1940s and their usage in industry. Denton introduced the various players that shaped bone collection and manufacturing schemes and contextualized the debates on bones in industry, science, and national security discourses. Denton ended by considering whether animal by-products or carcasses could be analyzed within the sphere of “animal history” and whether dead organic matter can have “embodied agency.”
BEAT BÄCHI (Zurich) explored the history of pathogen-free pigs since the 1950s by analyzing the work done in fattening experiments in Switzerland. Looking up close at the production of specific pathogen-free (SPF) pigs, Bächi pointed to the various human and non-human historical actors involved in this process and contextualized their discussions in specific scientific ideas, like the ideas of a “germ-free life” and social worlds they tried to understand and create. Bächi also showed how this process was by no means a linear story of success but was contested by both humans and pigs, as the latter resisted the barn being turned into a laboratory.
TAMAR NOVICK (BERLIN) and LUCY BEECH (Berlin) ended the workshop with a presentation and a film screening of their joint project, which explores the intermingles between animals-as-technologies, gender, and science. Novick started by introducing the project, which was also published as a special “Technology and Culture” issue in 2023. In her talk, Novick presented this special volume that focuses on bovine bodies in order to investigate the interactions and intertwinement of animals with technological systems. Novick also introduced her work on the “Hebrew Cow” and the attempts to create a colonial dairy industry in British-ruled Palestine.
Following Novick, Beech showcased her film Flush (2023), which explores how farmers and scientists have been trying to use the ambiguous sexual characteristics of freemartins. The film also showed how dairy farmers have turned freemartins into a tool for detecting heat, thereby enhancing the reproductive performance of other cows. The persistent scientific and agricultural pursuit of freemartins as technologies and scientific objects has led to new perspectives on the concept of biological self and non-reproductive sexual pleasure in the context of industrial farming.
The workshop concluded with a joint discussion on several reoccurring themes and paved the way for future unexplored paths of inquiry into the relationship between technologies and animals. First, the difficulties of tracing animal voices in the archive and the limits of the archival material in researching animals and technologies were discussed. Furthermore, as several papers pointed to the importance of global networks of moving animals and knowledge about them, it was suggested that this might serve as an important avenue to explore. Similarly, since the different papers also pointed to the different social and ecological environments (museum, archive, desert, arctic, etc.) in which animals and technologies entangle, it was also suggested to explore their relationship with a stronger emphasis on the material and ecological in which it is embedded. Lastly, looking into the role of Capitalism and the Anthropocene as the structural framework in which the relationships between animals and technologies or animals as technologies take place was proposed as another potential productive path to take in the future.
Conference overview:
Welcome and Introduction
Christian Zumbrägel (Berlin): Reanimating Animals in the History of Technology. A Conceptual Introduction
Panel I: Technologies between Animals and Humans
Chair: Dorothee Brantz (Berlin)
Sandra Jasper (Berlin) / Jonathan Prior (Cardiff): Animal Voices in the Archive
Vanessa Bateman (Maastricht): Just Passing Through. Mediating Migratory Birds at the Natural History Museum
Christoph Borbach (Siegen): Virtual Borders/Invisible Fences: Structuring Animal Territory with Sensor Technology within Agriculture
Panel II: Animals as Actors in Technological Landscapes
Chair: Frank Uekötter (Bochum)
Barbara Orland (Basel): False Hope in Technology? Urban Fish Breeding Initiatives since the middle of the 19th Century
Daniel Bowman (Stavanger): Petro-Pets: American Automobility and Animal Acceptance
Kate Stevens (Waikato): Chew-Points across Pacific Ports: Marine Borer and the Disruption of Colonial Infrastructure
Margot Lyautey (Hamburg) / Heinrich Hartmann (Hamburg): Threatened by Modernity. Tunisian Rural Development and Animal Resistance (1950s-1970s)
Keynote
Dolly Jørgensen (Stavanger): Building for Birds: Cohabitation, Design, and Nonhuman Users of Technology
Panel III: Animals as Living Technologies
Chair: Michael K. Schulz (Potsdam)
Martin Kalb (Bridgewater): Sustaining Empire: Animal Dependencies in German Southwest
Africa
Corinna Röver (Linköping/Berlin): (Beyond) Living Technologies: Animals in the European Arctic during World War II
Ruža Fotiadis (Berlin): Seagoing donkeys and mules: From the American Midwest to the European Southeast after WWII
Panel IV: Animals as Resources
Chair: Gisela Hürlimann (Dresden)
Chad Denton (Seoul): Bones for Industry: The Technological Transformation of Animal Remains into Resources in Nazi Germany
Beat Bächi (Zurich): The Dream of a Germ-Free Life: Specific Pathogen-Free Pigs as Technoscientific Organisms
Tamar Novick (Berlin): Bovine Regimes: When Animals Become Technologies
Lucy Beech (Berlin): Film Screening “Flush” (2023)