Instruments and Knowledge: Towards a Model of Technology in the Rural Caucasus in the Late Russian Empire

• In Event: Technology, Empire, and Internationalism in Eastern Europe

Abstract

This paper is an initial foray into a model of how local lifeways and industry came into contact with technological interventions at the local, regional, and state levels in the Russian Caucasus in the late nineteenth-century. It examines how localized, embodied knowledge of the environment and its resources by the population was impacted by networks of science, technology, and commerce. The paper draws from the carpet-weaving industry and commercial agriculture as examples of rural livelihoods and seeks to de-center discussions of empire, technology, and the environment that have placed imperial interventions at the center of inquiry.

Author

• Sohee Ryuk, U College Dublin (Ireland)