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9780801886935 Academic Inspection Copy

The Mantra of Efficiency

From Waterwheel to Social Control
  • ISBN-13: 9780801886935
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Jennifer Karns Alexander
  • Price: AUD $126.00
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 14/05/2008
  • Format: Hardback 256 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: History of science [PDX]
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Efficiency—associated with individual discipline, superior management, and increased profits or productivity—often counts as one of the highest virtues in Western culture. But what does it mean, exactly, to be efficient? How did this concept evolve from a means for evaluating simple machines to the mantra of progress and a prerequisite for success? In this provocative and ambitious study, Jennifer Karns Alexander explores the growing power of efficiency in the post-industrial West. Examining the ways the concept has appeared in modern history—from a benign measure of the thermal economy of a machine to its widespread application to personal behaviors like chewing habits, spending choices, and movement, to its controversial use as a measure of the business success of American slavery—she argues that beneath efficiency's seemingly endless variety lies a common theme: the pursuit of mastery through techniques of surveillance, discipline, and control. Six historical case studies—two from Britain, one each from France and Germany, and two from the United States—expertly illustrate the concept's fascinating development and provide context for the meanings of, and uses for, efficiency today and in the future.Reviews''I find this to be the finest study I have ever read and likely will ever read on the evolution of 'efficiency' as an intellectual concept and, simultaneously, on its many applications over time. Alexander's book has remarkable depth, detail, coverage, and insight. Her work is most impressive in its tracing of efficiency from its origins as an obscure philosophical concept through the present, as a popular social and personal ideal.''—Howard Segal, University of Maine, author of

List of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Varieties of Efficiency1. Static and Dynamic Efficiency: The Waterwheels of Smeaton and the Franklin Institute2. The Effects of Control: Gérard-Joseph Christian and Perfected Machines3. Economy of Nature: Darwin, Marshall, and the Costs of Efficiency4. Balance and Transformation: Technical and Popular Efficiency in the Progressive Era United States5. An Island of Mechanical Predictability: Efficient Worker Seating in Late Weimar Germany6. Pride in Efficiency: The Dispute over Time on the Cross7. Global Efficiency: An Enduring Industrial Value in a Postindustrial WorldConclusion: The Future of EfficiencyNotesBibliographic EssayIndex

""An ambitious book that... largely succeeds.""

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